Click here.
When our team first met with Taylor in 2013 to write the following article, she was working as a graphic artist and donating her time to an organization called Sparkrelief. We wanted to share this article with you again and give you an update as to what Taylor has been up to since then. This article first appeared in the TASIS England Alumni eNews, Spring 2013 issue.
Mrs. Fleming once said, "So, I expect each and every one of you, my dear students, to make a difference, in fact to make the world a better place for every human being to live in peace and prosperity." Taylor is one of our shining examples of how our alumni are out in the world making a difference to the lives of others.
Sparkrelief is an organization committed to improving disaster relief services through systematic change. Through our website sparkrelief.org, we help organization and individuals efficiently find, offer, and coordinate disaster relief in locations throughout the world. All emergency and relief information is mapped on our website, where users can quickly find the critical information they need to alleviate suffering caused by disasters.
Eli Hayes founded Sparkrelief in summer 2010. At the time, wildfires raged through the Rockies, and Eli who lived in Boulder, Colorado, found it difficult to learn how to help. Recognizing a need, he and a few volunteers raced to build an online forum to make it easier for people to lend a helping hand. In fewer than five days, the site received nearly 1,000 offers of relief (including a donation of 400 meals) and was visited by 25,000 people seeking disaster relief and aid information.
Eli revamped the website in response to the Japan earthquake and subsequent disasters, eventually giving rise to our current site. Since joining the organization as a volunteer in 2011, I have worn many hats. I took on design projects, marketing, communications, managing volunteers, and fundraising. My contributions over the last year-and-a-half have helped contribute to Sparkrelief's growth. Similarly, my work with Sparkrelief has encouraged me to grow. I am learning new skills, like front-end web development and marketing tactics, which are extraordinarily valuable to my professional advancement.
After Hurricane Sandy, Sparkrelief helped to feed over 5,000 people. We partnered with Aubuchon Hardware to collect and distribute goods donated by thousands of individuals, and we helped LUSH Cosmetics distribute over $40,000 worth of bath products for those in need along the coast in New York and Jew Jersey. Also, we helped countless numbers of people find shelter from the storm. One woman, for example, had been searching for hours on the streets of Brooklyn for housing. When she found Sparkrelief's number and called; we helped her to get to a nearby shelter in a matter of minutes.
At Sparkrelief, we feel fortunate to have the skills to improve the lives of millions of people. Our core team of three volunteers, based in Colorado and New York, keeps overhead costs low by working out of donated office space and using our computers. We are a unique disaster relief nonprofit in that we do not purchase 1,000 water bottles and distribute them, person, to person. Instead, we identify individuals and communities in need and connect them with the appropriate donors and services. Together, we aim to prevent the misallocation of resources, such as that which occurred in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
Sparkrelief's mission is to dramatically improve the lives after a natural disaster by providing one platform to simplify relief coordination across the globe. As social entrepreneurs, we are working to empower communities to help those less fortunate. We have big plans for the future: to be the go-to resource for major government entities, organization, and individuals turn to in response to a disaster.
Sparkrelief has organized aid for the following disasters: the tornado in Oklahoma City; earthquakes in Pakistan, China, Delhi, Iran, India, and Japan; flooding in Chicago and Queensland; fires in Australia, Alberta, and Boulder, Hurricane Sandy; the Mount Mayon volcano; and the Dhaka building collapse. To make a donation or to volunteer help, go to www.sparkrelief.org. For disaster relief contact yourfriends@sparkrelief.org or call/text 001.724.436.1010.
Taylor photographed with her husband.
RedOwl is an information security startup based in Baltimore with offices in New York, San Francisco, and London. Taylor joined the team two years ago as the 30th employee and has since seen the company grow to 80. As with any small company, those who have the ability to work in various capacities tend to wear many hats. She began her work at RedOwl as a Senior Product Designer where she built out the design team and focused on creating and improving the company's application for enterprise clients to use to find anomalous and risky behavior in their organizations. Since then, she has expanded her role and now oversees all branding and design, directing product strategy and delivery, working with clients to integrate their feedback into the company's future offerings, and leading an engineering team to implement the product. She has fount it to be an exciting opportunity to learn about different parts of the organization and to have a part in shaping the future of the company.
RedOwl offers an interesting opportunity for large enterprises to get a look into the inner workings and daily activity of their employees. Their product began as a tool to help financial institutions meet various compliance needs, as banks are required by law to review a random sample of emails from their firm on a daily basis in order to monitor for things like insider trading and market manipulation. Before RedOwl, clients would simply open an email client and begin clicking through emails. As one might imagine, this resulted in tedious and largely uninteresting work that saw many bulk emails, such as newsletters and research updates. With RedOwl, the available suite of analytics filters out noise so that when tasked with meeting compliance regulations, employees are able to scan through emails with far more value. They have also expanded into the Information Security space, offering insight into anomalous behavior using advanced behavioral analytics developed by their in-house team of PhD Data Scientists.
While extremely powerful, the analytic suite has to be easily understandable, which is a massive design challenge. That, in combination with the very smart and driven people Taylor works with, keeps her coming to work every day excited to see (and shape) the next chapter for RedOwl. The company is hiring! So please get in touch with Taylor if you'd like to jump on for the journey.
On the side, Taylor has co-founded a peer-to-peer lending company called SoLo, teaches classes about organization and life tips on Skillshare, and works on home improvement projects with her husband in their new home in Brooklyn. To learn more about Taylor, visit www.taylorconophy.com.