Carrie Zhou, the CTO of Change.org, has some insight for any company that is looking to make an impression. She encourages teams to work rapidly, to lean into tech, and to focus on solutions. Zhou has an impressive background in the fast-paced startup economy, and she wants to utilize her knowledge to make a difference. Change.org is a nonprofit organization with 700 million users from 196 countries – a vast user base. Therefore, Zhou wants their team and tech strategies to be representative of their large user base.
Change.org’s engineering team may be small, but Zhou believes that modernizing and streamlining operations is essential for smaller teams. That’s when technology becomes a powerful tool for growth. Zhou’s strategy is to identify the problem that can be solved with AI and then build a model that their users can trust. To do this, she encourages a “human in the loop” approach in which AI is used but the output is still verified. Moreover, she connects with Change.org’s users and monitors how they use the software.
As the CTO of Change.org, Zhou has to stay up to date on technology advancements and ensure that the team can continue to keep up with the demands of their large user base. She understands the importance of taking full advantage of technology and that organizations need to think of themselves as tech companies. This way, they will be able to create better solutions, be more adaptive to the market, and provide better user safety.
