Amit Paley
CEO and Executive Director, The Trevor Project
I think often, people need to be seen. They need to be heard, they need to know someone is seeing their pain.
Summary
This week on “Leadership Matters,” Alan sits down for a conversation with Amit Paley, CEO and Executive Director of the Trevor Project. A nonprofit focused on preventing suicide among young people in the LGBTQ+ community, the Project provides those in crisis with access to trained volunteer counselors through round-the-clock phone and messaging hotlines. Amit took the reins at the Trevor Project in 2017, just before the twentieth anniversary of the organization’s founding. Starting out as a volunteer, his passion helped carry him up the organization’s ranks — to this day, he continues to work those same volunteer shifts.
In his conversation with Alan, Amit discusses his early life, the inspiration he has found in his family, and the work he is doing to expand the Trevor Project’s work worldwide to protect LGBTQ+ youth everywhere. With harmful legislation targeting the LGBTQ+ community being enacted around the globe, the Trevor Project’s work is more important than ever, a fact Amit fully recognizes. Amidst the darkness he sees everyday in his line of work, Amit finds it more helpful to focus on the light that he and his organization can bring to those most in need.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Guest Bio
Amit Paley is the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of The Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ young people. He began as a counselor on The Trevor Project’s 24/7 TrevorLifeline in 2011, and since then he has answered hundreds of calls from LGBTQ youth in crisis. Amit is the first volunteer counselor to become the CEO of the organization in its history and he still continues to answer calls on the TrevorLifeline.
Under Amit’s leadership, the organization has dramatically expanded the number of LGBTQ youth that it serves and the breadth of programming that it offers. During his tenure, The Trevor Project built and launched a new, integrated crisis services platform, expanded its chat and text services to 24/7, and more than quadrupled the number of youth served each month. The organization has also transformed its TrevorSpace platform into the largest safe-space social networking site for LGBTQ youth and expanded the Trevor Project’s research initiatives. Trevor also now operates the largest grassroots campaign in the world to end conversion therapy.
Before Amit became the CEO of The Trevor Project, he was an Associate Partner at the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he served numerous non-profit organizations, Fortune 500 companies, and governments. He served as a leader of McKinsey’s LGBTQ group and spearheaded the firm’s global efforts on inclusion for transgender and nonbinary people. Prior to joining McKinsey, Amit was a reporter at The Washington Post. He covered numerous beats, including as a foreign correspondent based in the paper’s Baghdad bureau, where his work was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Amit is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College with an MBA from Columbia Business School and a Master’s from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. He is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and serves on the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Steering Committee and the Executive Committee of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. Amit has served on the board of the Center for Public Integrity and as an adjunct professor at City University of New York. He is a renowned expert on the mental health of LGBTQ young people and suicide prevention, and his voice has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NBC, Reuters, Fortune and more. Amit has won several awards and accolades for his leadership: Fortune’s 40 Under 40, Fast Company Executive Board, Crain’s 40 Under 40, NBC’s #Pride 50, Logo30, City & State’s Pride Power 100, GLG Social Impact Fellow, and more.
Clips from This Episode
Episode Transcription
Alan Fleischmann
Today's guest is a CEO who truly understands and embodies the notion of leadership by example. Amit Paley is CEO and Executive Director of the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on preventing suicide among young people in the LGBTQ-plus community. The project provides those in crisis with access to trained volunteer counselors through around the clock phone and messaging hotlines.
Amit took the reins of the Trevor Project in 2017, just before the 20th anniversary of the organization's founding. Starting out as a volunteer, his passion helped carry him up the organization's ranks. To this day, he continues to work those same volunteer shifts. With harmful legislation targeting the LGBTQ plus community being introduced by state legislators across the country. The Trevor Project work is more important than ever. Since becoming CEO, Amit has grown his organization's activities to have an even greater impact. Under his leadership the Trevor Project has expanded its digital hotline services, launched a social network as a safe place for young people, and ramped up its advocacy efforts against anti trans policies, conversion therapy, and other harmful practices. Amit, welcome to “Leadership Matters.”
Amit Paley
Thank you so much for having me.
Alan Fleischmann
I'm so glad you're here. And I'm really looking forward to diving in with you. It. Let's start a little bit about your background. Let's start at the very beginning with your family. You grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, your mom worked as a biochemist at MIT, and your father, as a real estate developer, if I understand correctly. What was life like around the house? Tell us a little bit about your folks, your family.
Amit Paley
My parents are very different people. My mother grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and what some people consider one of the purest forms of socialism that ever existed. So, she has a very distinct worldview. Coming from that background, my dad is more conservative in his political views. So there are often a lot of heated arguments at the dinner table about politics and about life. And then I ended up becoming a journalist. So I think part of that was being accustomed to people having very, very different perspectives on the world and trying to understand what are ways to reconcile that and what might be commonalities are ways of understanding very different points of view of what people experience with the world.
Alan Fleischmann
Any brothers, sisters?
Amit Paley
I have a younger sister.
Alan Fleischmann
What does she do?
Amit Paley
She is the head of people at a startup in the Boston area.
Alan Fleischmann
You attended Harvard… I shouldn't probably go to Harvard right away. But tell us a little bit about your formative years, I guess, in elementary, middle and high school. Anything you can highlight, anything you want to mention? Any leadership roles you held, for example?
Amit Paley
I mean, one of the things that I spent a lot of time doing in middle and high school was around journalism. My mother heard on the car radio one day when I was in fifth grade, the voice of a young woman who I went to nursery school or preschool with on a kid's radio show in Boston that was called Kid Company. And I began to do stories and worked as a reporter for that kid's radio show. I was the “Chief International Correspondent,” and would interview foreign leaders that would come through. And so I just got very involved in journalism. I love journalism. Worked in journalism in high school. I interned at NPR, our local NPR station in Boston. And that was something I spent a lot of time on. I swam competitively when I was younger, as well. Not really that great at it as I got older, but spent a lot of time doing that in earlier years. And I also did a lot of debate when I was in high school, I was the head of our debate team.
Alan Fleischmann
That's great. So when did you go to Harvard, how’d that happen?
Amit Paley
Well, it was not something I had necessarily thought all that much about when I was younger, my parents both did go to college, but not necessarily the Boston area. And they also went to very different types of schools. I went to a small high school where a lot of a lot of the students ended up going to Harvard, and did a lot of tours of schools and was excited and attracted to a lot of things about Harvard, including the school newspaper–I had mentioned that I was very involved in journalism. And so I really loved the legacy of the newspaper there, which ended up being something I spent a lot of time on.
Alan Fleischmann
Well, you were president of the Crimson, right?
Amit Paley
I was. I liked the idea that I was not living at home, I was far enough from my parents that they couldn't sort of just pop in and see me, but that I was close enough that I could go spend time with them. So I thought the proximity to my home was pretty appealing as well.
Alan Fleischmann
You know, I went to college in Washington and grew up in Baltimore. So I always loved that feeling of being away. But we could also share a lot of experiences too, which was nice. So you attended Harvard, you were the president of the Crimson, which is extraordinary. And while at the paper, you wrote a rather influential series of articles about the Harvard Secret Court of 1920. Can you tell us a little bit about the Court and your research?
Amit Paley
Yeah, and it's interesting: that story, which I spent a lot of time on when I was an undergraduate in college, ended up tying to a lot of themes of my life and work that I that I do right now at the Trevor Project. But I was a reporter, an editor at the time at the Crimson, and was trying to do a different story at the time. And I was in the archives of the university when I came across an entry that referred to a secret court and 1920, literally talked about a secret court. And there was a brief explanation of what that was: that it was a body that convened to investigate and effectively persecute LGBTQ students at Harvard and resulted in the deaths, and deaths by suicide, of several of those students, and many of their lives destroyed and ruined. It ended up being a long journey, because I asked to see the records, there was an entry of it, and the archives, the very nice kind people of the archives said, “we need to check with the administration about that.” And it sort of set up a series of events that, even though my view was that, according to the rules of the university, those records should have been public and accessible. The university did not release them. And I engaged in a series of appeals to higher and higher leaders at the university and eventually a group convened and they decided to release the records, but they redacted the names of every single person in it, which made it very difficult to really tell their stories. And then months of work with a number of colleagues at the Crimson, we were able to un-redact the records and name the people whose lives were ruined, and name the people who ruined their lives.
That was 2002. And it seemed to be clear that there was some sense that the names had to be redacted because of the idea that it would be embarrassing or shameful for their names to be revealed. And my view of the newspaper at the time was that you’re making an assumption that there's something wrong with who they were. They were trying to live their lives and Harvard University ruined their lives. They deserve to have their stories told and to be remembered for who they were. So we eventually were able to tell their stories. And it did eventually result in recognition and a statement of apology for what happened to those students. So that was a very memorable and important story. And it was actually the week that that story was published was the week that I was elected president of the Crimson. So important moment, in my my time as a journalist.
Alan Fleischmann
I would say, a real window into the future for you, and what you ended up pursuing and fighting for. How has that early research informed your work now at the Trevor Project?
Amit Paley
I think that it’s emblematic of a lot of the experiences that I had as a journalist, which I think informed my perspective on the importance of having empathy and trying to understand the world through other people's perspectives and eyes, and how challenging that sometimes can be, when people, because of what circumstances they're living in, might have really very, very different views of the world and experiences. And yet how important that is that we try to work to understand the perspectives of other people. And it was also I think, an insight–I was not yet out at the time when I reported that story. It was an insight into, I think some of the subtle ways that it can be very difficult to be an LGBTQ person. I mean, the people that were preventing access to the records. I know many of those people, I knew many at the time. And I know many of them now. They're very supportive of LGBTQ inclusion and LGBTQ people.
I think there are unconscious views that people have of what is acceptable and what is not, what are things to be proud of, and what are things to be ashamed of. And I think that did inform some of the calculations that led people to say, “we want to protect these people from people knowing that they were LGBTQ people, even though it was clear from looking at the records that they were who they were, and, 80 years later, my view was there’s not a reason for us to ascribe shame to them. Especially when they didn't necessarily think–we don't know what they would have thought today. And putting people in the shadows can contribute to stigma and shame and just how important it is for people to be able to be who they are, and also for people to talk about mental health issues, because it was clear from that story. People were suffering in silence and were not able to get support. And that resulted in people dying by suicide. And that's obviously what I now spend most of my waking hours working on is to try to help save lives, and make people feel proud and not ashamed of who they are.
Alan Fleischmann
Extraordinary. And I want to ask you a bit more on your career, and then we're going to come back to talk about the Trevor Project, which is so incredibly important. When you first graduated, you went to work at the Washington Post as a reporter, kind of fulfilling that dream of being the journalist and obviously, coming off the Crimson. And then you did some foreign foreign correspondent work in Baghdad. You got a Pulitzer Prize nomination. Tell us a little bit about your time in the field overseas, and in the United States during that period. And then, after almost a decade of the Post, you changed into becoming a professor of journalism. I'm just curious about that journey. And then what made, you having had the passion and success of being a journalist both in college and after, want to change that?
Amit Paley
So I have, it was incredibly exciting. When I started working at the Washington Post, as I shared, it was my dream to be a journalist from when I was in fifth grade. And it felt like such an incredible honor to be in a newsroom with some of the most talented and credible journalists in the world. I was an intern at that time, the Washington Post hired people for summer internships. And then if you sort of proved your worth, you were extended into what was effectively a two year internship. So when I was hired into that two year sort of probationary period, I was hired to cover Calvert County, Maryland, which is in Southern Maryland, this is a very different time in the history of journalism in the United States. But at that time, the Washington Post owners and the editor of the Washington Post considered the Washington Post to be a local paper. So we had the Metro desk that was the biggest desk at the newspaper. And so I covered full time a county that many people in the DC area had never had heard of. And it was an incredible experience. And one of the things that I was advised and taught by people is that if you wanted to get your stories from some of the farther out suburbs, onto the front page, you really you needed to be able to tell the stories of what were going on there almost as if you were a foreign correspondent, because a lot of the people were in the paper were either in DC or the immediate closest in suburbs, like Montgomery County, or Fairfax County. It was a great learning experience. I met a lot of incredible people.
And one of my closest friends ended up going to Baghdad on a temporary stint. And it never really occurred to me that the newspaper would send me to Baghdad. I was, I think, 24 when I went for the first time. But I was doing the same job as my friend. He was older, but we were doing the same job. And I thought, “well, if they'll send Josh, maybe they'll send me.” And so I had a conversation with the foreign editor. And they sent me for a brief stint. And then I ended up going back and joining the Foreign desk and covering the war in Iraq full-time based out of Baghdad. It was one of the both scariest and most meaningful experiences of my life. And I was there from 2006, for the first time, and I went there for the last time at the very beginning of 2009.
In the middle of that, there was a financial crisis in the United States in 2008. And there was a new editor, a new executive editor of the Washington Post, and he asked if I would cover the financial crisis and do accountability reporting related to it. So I ended up coming back, covering the financial crisis even though I was not a financial reporter, and sort of having gone from one crisis very quickly into another, I want to take a little bit of a break. So I ended up doing a fellowship for mid-career financial journalists and ended up getting my MBA. That's where I ended up doing some teaching as an adjunct professor of journalism. And I learned an incredible amount about business when I was in business school as well. And I spent the summer in between business school in the Corporate Strategy Office of the Washington Post.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s really exciting. You were there for how many years?
Amit Paley
I started at the Washington Post in 2004 and I left in 2011. So seven years.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah, seven years. And then you went from there, am I right, that you became an adjunct professor in New York, in journalism, am I right? Was that a full-time job? Was that a part-time job?
Amit Paley
No, it was a part-time job. And I love teaching and I love journalism. So as I was segueing into a different career path. There was an opportunity that presented itself to both teach, which I love doing, and to be involved in thinking about journalism. The teaching that I did the longest was a program in entrepreneurial journalism. So I was helping students in the journalism school in a CUNY to learn skills related to business that would be helpful as they were thinking about new business models to help save and change the journalism field.
Alan Fleischmann
Where were you teaching?
Amit Paley
At CUNY.
Alan Fleischmann
You were, great. And then you went from there to McKinsey?
Amit Paley
Yes. There's a little bit of overlap there. But I, because the adjunct Adjunct Professor work was very part time, sort of passion work. My sort of main work was working at the Post, and then I was at school, and then I went to work at McKinsey.
Alan Fleischmann
Well, tell us a little bit about that experience. And how long were you there?
Amit Paley
I was at McKinsey for six years, working out at the New York office. And it was an extraordinary experience. I had one job before I worked at McKinsey, one full time job, which was working at the Washington Post as a reporter. And there was just an incredible amount for me to learn when I went when I went to McKinsey. I mean, I still remember one of the first projects I worked on, I think, I guess I was 29 at the time, right? Maybe 30 at the time. And the person who was my manager was maybe a year out of college. And she asked me to send an email to a client and I wrote the email. She said, when you're done with it, let me take a look at it. And I thought, well, that's really strange. She wants to review my email. I'm a professional. I was a professional journalist, I know how to write, I know how to write an email. I didn't say that, I was just thinking that in my head, and then she took a look at the email. And she made a number of edits and comments and read me a huge amount of feedback. And I realized, Oh, I actually do not know how to write an email in this context at all, but it's effective. It was sort of really eye opening, because it it had never occurred to me that I did not know how to effectively write an email to people in a context, I just assumed that the way I would write an email would be as good as anyone else's.
And so it was, it was that sort of just very steep learning curve of sort of questioning a lot of things that I thought I knew how to do and do them in different way. And then many things that I knew I did not know how to do, I needed to learn. But there's really a culture of everyone learning. Feedback is incredibly important. Everyone's expected to solicit feedback and to accept feedback, and provide feedback to others. And so I just learned an incredible, incredible amount. And it's a lot of those skills that I learned that have helped me in serving clients, and that also are helpful leadership skills that I use today.
Alan Fleischmann
I imagine there's a huge correlation between what you learned there and what you actually do now. I'm really excited to talk about your work, what you're doing as CEO. But let's take a step back here. Your time that Trevor Project actually began as a volunteer, which I'm sure stemmed from the research that you did way back when. What prompted you to first get involved? And then how did you go from being an active volunteer to actually coming in full time?
Amit Paley
Yeah, so I started volunteering in 2011, taking calls on the Trevor Project, 24/7 phone lifeline. And that was around a period of time that, you might remember, there are a number of very well publicized suicides of LGBTQ young people in the news over the past couple of years, and it really hit me in a very personal, emotional way. And I felt like I needed to do something to try to give back. I thought, under other circumstances, I could have been one of those, I could have been one of those young people. And so I felt like I was so lucky and privileged to be in the situation that I was in that I wanted to do what I could to try to prevent any young person from being in a situation like that, where they felt that they were alone. And they weren't able to access the support that they needed. So I began volunteering towards the end of 2011. And it was almost immediately after I began volunteering, I think it was the next month that I began working at McKinsey. And some of the work I was doing at McKinsey was for nonprofit clients. And I realized that there were skills that I was learning from my colleagues that could be helpful to the Trevor Project at that time.
The Trevor Project had maybe two dozen employees at that time. And like so many nonprofits, not enough resources, not enough people to do certain types of work. So I began begging all my colleagues at McKinsey to do pro bono work to help the organization and so that included doing data analysis. There wasn’t a data analyst at the organization. Again, to make it clear, most nonprofits across the country and around the world do not have resources that many people in the for profit sector consider the sort of basic types of skills or functions that you would need. So I just became more and more involved in the organization, trying to help the organization, create strategy, help to help the organization create a strategic plan, data analysis, thinking about different types of organizational design, different types of marketing support to make more people aware. And I thought the Trevor Project would be my passion work on the side, and I would continue doing whatever it is that consultants do.
And that really changed very dramatically for me after the presidential election in 2016. Because the day after the presidential election in 2016, our call volume at the Trevor Project more than doubled in a 24 hour period of time. And it was heartbreaking as a volunteer counselor to hear so many young people who were, I mean, just struggling so profoundly. Feeling like the rhetoric that was going on, suggested that there wasn't a place for them in the world, that the world would not accept or welcome them. And so it began to sort of make me rethink what I might want to do with my life professionally. And the organization happened at that time to be looking for a new CEO. And I had a background in management and nonprofit, and healthcare work. And I've been a longtime volunteer. And so I began as CEO almost exactly five years ago. And it's been both an extraordinarily rewarding experience. And this has also been, I would say, in terms of what is going on in the world. And I'm not a person who just is necessarily naive about the challenges or difficulties in the world. There have been so many unexpected things happening, and so deeply impacting LGBTQ people that have much more profoundly impacted their lives and mental health than I would have expected five years ago.
Alan Fleischmann
Amazing. You're listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM and leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. And today I'm talking to a leader, Amit Paley, who's the CEO and Executive Director of the Trevor Project. Those first days as a volunteer, when still learning how to be an advocate, are often where mentorship figures emerge. And I'm just curious, is there anyone who comes to mind who guided you? You know, that kind of took you to that next phase where you realized, “I should be that CEO, I can actually lead this if an opening came up?” Are there other people who play that role?
Amit Paley
I mean, there are so many people, I think, who've played that role once, and some of them have explicitly said things like, “I think you would be good for this type of position.” But there are many other people, I think, who provided the type of mentorship that was so important to me, helping me to see the world and see different ways of being a leader, different styles of being a leader. Understanding how to have patience with people who might be different than you or have different expectations or that type of grace when encountering situations that are really challenging. I sort of think about those people throughout my life who I think made me think about all the possibilities in the world when I think at times, depending on what was happening, it made it easy to think about all the things that might have been restricting and closing off possibility. And to think about that sort of in an expansive way. And I would say probably the single person I think who most impacted me that way was my mother who passed away earlier this year.
My mother really was this huge personality. I think she had a very loud voice, just in a very literal way. People noticed her and people paid attention to her. But she just exuded this warmth and this energy and there's sort of this, this passion for life, that quote: sucking the marrow out of life. I feel like my mother sucked the marrow out of life every day that she lived and encouraged me and others to do it. I’m trying to think of the right words to describe her: she really thought anything was possible. And that sometimes manifested itself it in this sense of encouragement and possibility and expansive thinking and sort of creative thinking. That also manifested itself, I think, in extremely, extremely high standards. She would expect to have people believe in the possibility of doing life changing, world changing things. So I think it's hard to imagine anything that I would have done in my life without my mother having been that type of person.
Alan Fleischmann
How long was she sick?
Amit Paley
My mother had pancreatic cancer. For six years she had pancreatic cancer. She was a fighter.
Alan Fleischmann
It’s a tough cancer. My mother had cancer too. And she also passed away young. And I believe that there's a huge part of who I am. Because she was also a bigger than life figure and memorable and challenged everybody. And in many ways, I feel like she lived in the moment, like your mother probably did, because she really appreciated it. It sounds like your mother’s case that way, that she had that personality, but I'm sure it even got even more so that you cherish those moments and, you know, didn't let things just go by in an idle or complacent way.
Amit Paley
Yeah, I mean, that was very much my mom. And I think my mother was born in British Mandate Palestine. I mean, the physical place where she was at that time, it was a very, very rural, undeveloped area. There wasn't much access to medical care, which was the reason her mother died very young. Because she couldn't get medical care. And when my mother lived on a kibbutz, she grew up in a children's home. So it was that pure form of socialism. They believe that the collective raise children, not the parents, so she didn't live with her mother–many of the children didn’t. When she came to the US, she had no property, she had no money. And so I think that, like my mother, in a very visceral way, I think, I understood what it was like to be. And my mother also didn't speak English very well when she came to this country. So she knew what it was like for people to treat you differently, based on who you are, knew what it was like to see people around you who are accessing things that you couldn't access. And I think she always carried that sense of privilege and gratitude. I mean, just incredible gratitude, I think, for where she was, and I think sometimes sort of astonishment of where she came from, and also a sense that, that we owe an obligation to other people to fight for them. So she's just sort of thought about that in a political sense.
But also, we always had guests at our dinner table, and sometimes they seemed like they might be random guests. And I don’t know where my mother pick these people up, but she had this very visceral view of, “I know what it was like when there were holidays, when I was alone in a country where I knew no one and had no family. If there's ever a moment where I meet someone like that, and I can bring them home to my table, I am going to do that. So I don't want anyone to feel that feeling that I felt when I was younger.”
Alan Fleischmann
So a lot of the values and you live your life. The idea of bringing people together on common tables of debate. Seems like a lot of it came from her.
Amit Paley
Yeah, yeah.
Alan Fleischmann
That's amazing. Your dad was different?
Amit Paley
Well, my dad was born in the US in Massachusetts. And so, you know, did not have that experience of being in a place where the resources were as limited as my mother's were. My father certainly had things that were challenging in his life. My father had one brother, my uncle, who was very, very sick as a child and it was challenging, very difficult, obviously for my uncle, who is, you know, a fighter and overcame incredible odds of that, that childhood illness was difficult. But that's a difficult toll on a family to be dealing with a challenge like that. And so I think maybe they just come from different life perspectives.
Alan Fleischmann
And your mom grew up… Where was the kibbutz in Israel?
Amit Paley
In the north near Tiberias, near the Sea of Galilee.
Alan Fleischmann
No, it's an amazing way to grow up, I've always felt that there's a purity in a Kibbutz. It may not always work when you translate it beyond that, but the idea that everybody's in it together, they raised their children together. It’s that pure socialism in the true sense. I’ve always found it fascinating and amazing. So let’s talk a little bit about the organization, where it was when you took it over. It obviously had a storied history before you took it over. But it's really good to be known since you've been the CEO, in my opinion. Tell us a little bit about the journey of the Trevor Project, and then where you found it, and some of the successes that you've had, or some of the challenges you have as well.
Amit Paley
Yeah, the organization was founded in 1998. So the Trevor Project is coming up on celebrating its 25th anniversary. And I mean, that we could talk for hours and hours about the incredible people who built that organization at a time when it was very challenging to talk about LGBTQ issues, and in so much of the country it still is challenging in many parts of the country, and also very challenging to talk about suicide and mental health. I mean, the stigma and taboo around suicide in particular, is still enormous. And what was even less commonly discussed in the late 90s, when that organization was founded.
So I think, all of us who work at the Trevor Project, everyone who benefits from the Trevor Project services, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to those people who are talking about expansive thinking. These were people who imagined something out of nothing, and people who weren't sure it could be done and weren't sure how it could be done. And the determination of our founders and of our early staff and early volunteers and supporters and board members. I sort of feel warm all over and just this incredible admiration, when I think about what they created, what they built. You know, in terms of the organization, over the past five years, we've been continuing to grow and expand on those previous generations. I mean, this has been one of the reasons felt so called to this role. It was because I knew in a very personal way from being a volunteer, that this organization saves lives every single day.
This organization has literally saved lives of people every single day, for 24 years. And I knew from different types of analyses that I had seen that there were still so many people in the United States, and certainly many, many more people around the world who did not have access to the Trevor Project services. And so what I thought was a vision that we could help to build, how can we take this work that we know is so important and saves lives of LGBTQ people? And how can we scale it so that every single young person who feels alone and support knows that they are not alone and have someone who they can reach out to for help. And so that's really been the focus of the organization and our leadership team. And so we've launched new programs, launched new services, and really work to scale, the work that we're doing, I'm speaking to you now from from Mexico City, where we're preparing to begin expanding our crisis services outside of the United States for the first time and then launch our services here in Mexico later this year.
Alan Fleischmann
And a lot of your organization is really built on extraordinary volunteers, right that with the network of people who are active and out there in the community are the volunteers. Correct?
Amit Paley
Yes. Correct. I mean, the Trevor Project would not exist or have the impact that it has had and continues to have have without volunteers. And it is so inspiring. When I talk to our volunteers or when I'm on a shift with our volunteers, there are so many things that every person can do every day with their time. Time is very valuable. And 1000s of people at the Trevor Project, our volunteers, they take their their time and say, “I'm going to invest that, in helping young people that don't have somewhere else to go, I'm going to invest my time in having conversations with young people and letting them know that their life is worth living, and that that helping them to explore what what options are alternatives,” and validating their feelings and emotions and letting them know that it is very challenging for so many of the people we serve, we can't snap our fingers and change that situation, we want them to know that their feelings are valid. And that when they are in feelings of shame, or loneliness, or fear, we want them to know that, yes, there may be people in the world who don't accept them for being who they are. And those people might be their parents, and it might be their teacher or their faith leader. And we also want them to know that there are many, many people in the world who will not only accept them for being who they are, but we'll celebrate them for being who they are. And those are the types of things that our counselors tell young people every single day.
Alan Fleischmann
And you give them the tools and the language and the opportunity to kind of share those insights with other words. If they come with the idea that they're highly empathetic, and they care, are you giving them all sorts of training and providing them with the tools and the information that they need?
Amit Paley
Yes, we have extensive training. So we do not just let people without preparation to talk with young people who may be suicidal. You're correct that we don't require people to have a PhD in psychiatry, we need people who are empathetic and caring, and also people who have the capacity and willingness to learn. Because we do have an extensive training process. We have dozens of hours of training, and people go through role plays to practice. And then when they begin taking conversations, they are supervised. And we always have supervisors on every shift. But there's a long process that people go through because we both want to make sure that they have the appropriate tools to support the young people who need it. And we also want them to feel that they are comfortable and have gotten the training that they need.
And I will say I think that's, you know, for us, our volunteers on our crisis services, they are providing that direct support for LGBTQ youth so that our volunteers are in that direct service work, creating enormous impact. They're saving lives, they're changing lives. And outside of those direct interactions, the training that we provide to our counselors to our volunteers, around LGBTQ competency around mental health and suicide prevention, how to feel comfortable asking someone, “Are you thinking of killing yourself, and not feeling stigma around that and potentially understanding warning signs.” Those are then skills and practices that those volunteers take into their communities across the country. And they are those skills we hear from our volunteers that, you know, they say, “the skills I learned about how to interact with someone in crisis that was helpful for me when my child had a difficult situation, my cousin had a situation a co-worker,” and so we hope that those skills will have continuing and lifelong impact on the community.
Alan Fleischmann
And do they train the trainers? Once the volunteers are successful, they end up being trainers as well? In other words, do they go in-house? Or do they keep doing what they’re doing.
Amit Paley
We don't have a train the trainer model in that way. I mean, our volunteers do have other ways that they get involved in the organization and in some cases, they can result in providing support of other kinds but we are accredited by the American Association of Suicidology. We have a whole training process that we want to make sure it's following certain standards. And so our training is conducted and overseen by our paid staff to ensure that it is consistent and of high quality. But I will say that we do often have volunteers who spend time volunteering and then they decide they want to make a change in their career. Sometimes they end up working at the Trevor Project. Sometimes it's you know, I'm thinking of particular volunteer who started volunteering and decided, “I no longer am going to pursue my current professional path, I want to be a psychiatrist. And I want to go for quite a few years to do schooling and training. Because I now see a different path for how I can create impact in the world.” And so we hear a lot of stories about how being a volunteer at the Trevor Project has changed people's lives, it certainly has changed mine. And right from the beginning, it was the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life. And I think that's a very common sentiment among our volunteers.
Alan Fleischmann
And you find that people stay on as volunteers for a long time?
Amit Paley
It's really a mix. So we have volunteers who've been volunteers for more than a decade, we ask all our volunteers to commit to a year, given the time that we invest in their training. And so some people I think, say, I'm probably going to be a volunteer for a year. And they do that. And then they're done. We have people who stay for several years, and I said, we have volunteers who stayed for more than a decade. And I think it's actually that variety and the type of volunteers that we have, and the different experiences that they bring that can create the beauty of our volunteer community.
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM and leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. Today I'm talking to an extraordinary leader. Amit Paley, CEO and Executive Director of the Trevor Project.
Preventing suicide is at the heart of the project's work. And I have gotta imagine, it's pretty sobering, from a cultural point of view. You seem like someone who builds a culture. I certainly see your eyes light up when you're talking about your mother and how she built a culture of energy, passion and purpose. That's a pretty sober, difficult topic. And I'm curious if the organization itself needs extra loving care, because you're dealing with such important life or death situations, and whether your leadership skills and your priorities, which is very positive, helps when you're dealing with such darkness and shadows at times.
Amit Paley
Yeah, a lot of people asked me about this, because I think a lot of people think of a suicide prevention organization as something that must be very depressing work. That must be very gross work. And I think very different types of people come from different perspectives. I will say, I don't normally think about our work as primarily preventing death, I think about our work as celebrating and enabling life. And so I think there's a lot of darkness in the world. I mean, there's always been a lot of darkness in the world. I think when we think about mental health and the treatment of marginalized people, always a lot of darkness. And it seems, in recent years, there's just wave after wave of difficult, challenging dark things. And, for me, personally, reflecting just on the darkness, is both, I think, not necessarily that helpful for trying to bring the light. And it's also I think a difficult place for many people to be. So in recognizing how that darkness and the challenge and the difficulty that so many people face, I try to focus the work that I do as much as I can on what light I can bring in these times of darkness.
My rabbi often says, “No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.” And so I think at those times, and I share that a lot with our teams, the times when I feel how can how can this be happening in the world, this is so difficult, I really try to focus on the agency that I have, and that every human being has to try to affect change and make a difference. And that's not to say that all of us can win. None of us can change everything. But I think as much as possible. I try to focus on the work that we do. And I also try to focus on the people that I know that are making such a huge difference, which is every single person at the Trevor Project, everyone on our staff, all our volunteers, or supporters are board members. I mean that the light that they bring into the world, it brightens me when I see clouds on the horizon, or clouds that are directly overhead.
Alan Fleischmann
Does that become part of the culture? I mean, clearly the CEO often is a mirror of the culture. But is the culture like that, the way you just described?
Amit Paley
I think culture is always a difficult thing to describe. We're an organization that has many different types of people. And we have many different programs and people who are coming from different perspectives and doing different types of work. And I also, I also recognize that I, as Amit, experience the world in a particular way. And I have certain ways that I think and view the world and there are people who are very different people, and they might have different types of mechanisms to do that.
So I don't think I'm, I’m not prescriptive in the way that any one individual needs to have an outlook on the world or how they go about doing things. I would say, in general, I think the Trevor Project, we are an organization, we are a collective group of individuals, and we are a team and we're an organization that tries to see the possibility, tries to see the possibility at all times, and that does not mean–I just want to be clear–that does not mean that we do not recognize the emotions that people are going through. And that's both true in our service to young people.
And I think also in our staff, because some people are surprised by this, we do not give advice to people on our crisis line. So if someone said calls and says, I'm being kicked out of my home by my parents, because they don't accept me because I'm a lesbian, or because I'm trans. You know, we don't say, it'll be fine, don't worry about it, you know, things will get better. Or, you know, these are the five steps I think you should take. One, we don't always know what steps someone should take, we need to help people be able to process their own feelings and circumstances to decide what to do.
But second, I think often people need to be seen. And they need to be heard, they need to know someone is seeing their pain. And so I think we don't want to come from a place where we are bright, citing the pain and difficulties in the world. I wouldn't want someone doing that to me, and I don't want to do that to someone else. And I can share my experiences of how I make sense of the pain and darkness in the world. And I think hopefully that creates a culture where we can recognize difficult experiences and truths while also working in determined and indefatigable ways to overcome them.
Alan Fleischmann
If you had an “impossible list” of things that you would want people to help you go from impossible to possible, what would be on that list?
Amit Paley
I mean, our vision, which I do not think is an impossible vision, but is a vision that is far from the reality we're in right now. I would want every single LGBTQ person — everywhere in the world, no matter what accident of birth, where they happen to live, or what family they happen to be a part of, what community they a part of — I want every LGBT person to know that they are deserving of love and respect, and that they are not alone. And that they can live their lives, being proud of who they are, and other people being proud of who they are. And that they can access a service like the Trevor Project, to get help when they need it.
That is a vision that we are working to implement. That’s why we are focused on so many young people around the globe, who are in countries with so little access to support and services. We want them to know that there are everywhere thinking about them. The Trevor Project is thinking about you whether you're an LGBTQ young person in Mexico or the United States, or in Asia, or Russia or wherever you are, even in places where you can't even name who you are for fear of death. There are people who love you, they're people who are thinking of you and you're not alone.
Alan Fleischmann
That's great. And you’re in Mexico City right now? Are you creating Trevor Projects around the world?
Amit Paley
We are starting to do that to expand our services. So there is Trevor Project Mexico now, and we are hiring our leadership team here and we'll be rolling out our services later this year to LGBTQ people in Mexico. And we will be announcing other countries in the future. But that is our goal because the mission of the Trevor Project has always been to end suicide among LGBTQ young people. It was not constrained by a particular geography that is only for people only for LGBTQ people north of the Rio Grande and south of the Canadian border. Every young person, every single young person, no matter where they live deserves life saving services and to know that they are valued and loved for who they are.
Alan Fleischmann
Great. What didn't I ask you that I should be asking you?
Amit Paley
I think you covered a lot.
Alan Fleischmann
You've had this extraordinary career as a journalist, you've been out there on the front lines as a journalist, and then certainly you've been mentoring and teaching and doing the things that one needs to do to kind of keep the door open for others. And then your McKinsey background certainly led to where you are now. Are you committed to this to a certain point, is this your life's work now? It’s certainly a central part of your journey, at least professionally. But is that something you want to do and hope to do for the next several years? And if so, what do you want to look like in five years?
Amit Paley
I am very committed to the Trevor Project. And we are at this pivotal moment for the Trevor Project and a pivotal moment, I think, in the movement to end LGBTQ youth suicide. My vision in five years would be that far more LGBTQ young people are getting life saving services from the Trevor Project in the United States, and around the world, that we are able to successfully advocate for respect and dignity and help ensure policies and laws that create love and acceptance and support for all LGBTQ young people and help to stop the laws that are targeting them. I mean, we didn't talk that much about it. But this is, from a political perspective, and I don’t even consider it a political perspective, our perspective of what is happening right now in many countries, including its states, many people in positions of power, are attacking people who are the most vulnerable. And in the US, we are seeing many people pass laws that are creating significant harm for transgender and non binary people. And I'm hoping that through the efforts of the Trevor Project, and many of our partners and as more people come to learn more about the experiences and reality of transgender and non binary and people that we will create a world that is focused on loving and accepting and supporting people and less on some division and less on what tears us apart.
Alan Fleischmann
What unites us and binds us are the things that we often overlook, what divides us are the things that we always focus on, which is probably not a good thing. But I find the Trevor Project is dealing with such urgent and necessary issues, and certainly, its mission is to really help people who are really vulnerable, but also feel like there's a positive energy that comes from it. So there's this belief that we can turn dark clouds into sun and your sunshine, with the right messaging and the right interventions and the right support and the right love.
Amit Paley
Correct. I mean, we are, we are not a partisan organization. We're not a political organization. We're a suicide prevention organization. And I don't believe that suicide prevention should be a political or partisan issue. And at the Trevor Project, we've worked with people over so many years from all different walks of life, people of all different political parties, ideological views. Because it's about saving lives. And I think, I think the more people see the impact of what it means to be a child, and feeling alone, and what that what that feels like when people in positions of power, take steps that further isolate you or prevent you from being able to participate in school activities with your friends or being able to use the restroom or being able to access medical care.
I think most people want to support children and want children to have good outcomes. So I think our approach is that we want to be able to advocate on behalf of the people that we serve, but we also want to be able to communicate with the people who might have very different views than us because it is the people that currently think that they are not supportive of LGBTQ people.
We want to have conversations with them and provide them with information about what are the experiences of people that they might not know and understand. One of the things that scares me a lot about where we are right now in the world and in this country is that we increasingly have a polarization that puts people into camps and puts people into us versus them. And you're immediately attempt to sort people. And that prevents people from being able to have conversations with each other. And I don't, I don't know how we can. It makes me worried about how we can live together. And how we can create that more love and acceptance and support if we can't engage in civil conversation with each other. And if we can't be engaged in doing what is best for children.
Alan Fleischmann
What can people who are listening to the show today do? You know, we've got a lot of aspiring leaders, we've got leaders, we've got CEOs, we've got investors, we have active volunteers, who all listen to this show, what would you say you need? And what would you say you'd like? Either a partner as a volunteer, as a supporter, what are you looking for?
Amit Paley
Yeah, I mean, I'll answer maybe on two levels. So Trevor Project, as an organization, we have a huge vision of changing the world and making the world a better, brighter place for LGBTQ people and for everyone. And so to do that, we need a lot of partners and supporters, we need people who who want to invest in our work. Financially, we need people who want to volunteer their time, to become a trained counselor and support LGBTQ young people. We need people who can join us in our advocacy work and lend their voices, their either their individual voices or their group voices are the voices of their companies and businesses to stand up for mental health and suicide prevention and LGBTQ young people. We need people to join our team. You know, we were hiring folks, if people are interested in joining as a member of the team, we're looking for that too. And then people who can also help enable our growth and expansion to other other countries. That's sort of the target of our organization.
Of course, anyone who helps us achieve our mission of ending suicide among LGBT people, is also very, very much helping the Trevor Project. And so there's so many things that everyone listening to this can do. You can be an ally, you can be a champion for LGBTQ young people, you can be an ally and a champion for suicide prevention and mental health and not making those topics stigmatized and taboo. You can speak out against legislation that is targeting transgender and non binary young people and speak up for laws and policies that will help support children and mental health. I mean, the last thing I'll end with is, some of these things might seem small, but they can have enormous impact. I think one of the most powerful statistics from the Trevor Project, is that having just one, just one accepting adult in an LGBTQ young person's life can reduce the risk of suicide by 40%. And so every single person listening to this, you can be that person. You can be that accepting, loving, affirming person. And in doing that, through small acts in your every day, you can help and will help to save lives.
Alan Fleischmann
That's great. That's great. Well, on that note, you're listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM, and leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. And I really enjoyed this last hour with with you, Amit. You are an extraordinary leader as the CEO of the Trevor Project and as Executive Director, you’re an inspiration and someone I see as a great role model for many. You are making a difference. And I'm sure every single solitary life that you save gives you the energy and the passion, the purpose that takes you to the next day. And for those of us who were listening to this today, I hope that they will jump in and help Amit and his colleagues and his friends and his volunteers and his associates at the Trevor Project. Do this important work at scale. So thank you so much for joining today. It really means a lot.