Notes from Priscilla Chomba-Kinywa, CTO of Greenpeace

We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Priscilla Chomba-Kinywa, the CTO of Greenpeace International for our podcast, Memberful Design. Throughout her career, she's helped to make technology more accessible to communities across the globe, whether they're facing a lack of infrastructure or a violent conflict. Priscilla is a tech powerhouse, with years of experience managing and optimizing ICT systems for organizations like the World Food Programme, UNICEF, and ActionAid.

During our conversation, she shared her wisdom on sustainable ways to expand access to technology, cultural differences in solution-making, and much more. Find our biggest takeaways below.

Throughout her storied career, Priscilla has lived and worked in many different parts of the world. From New York City to Nairobi, Priscilla goes where the job requires. In places with little digital infrastructure, she ensures local communities receive effective solutions for their challenges without imposing technology on them that they won't use.

Priscilla always focuses on designing programs that work for communities, not the other way around. It's a very memberful approach to a common tech problem. Here's her take:

“A lot of [my process] is listening, not even talking. Once I hear the challenges, the question becomes; is there potential for tech to shift something?”

“We all understand the power of technology. For example, we have a remote area that's very hard to reach, but we need to check the progress on facilities that are being set up there by the local communities themselves. Why not put tablets in the hands of chiefs so they can send data in real time? They can monitor if villages are doing well and what their lessons are. It’s a lot of seeing challenges. In this case, for example, the challenge is, we can't go to those communities often. So that's my passion, making sure we understand how technology can solve real-world big challenges.”

Later, we shifted the focus to talk about creating a better understanding of those we design for and their perspective. We love Priscilla’s way of describing the importance of ‘putting yourself in other people’s shoes’:

“One has to do a lot of thinking about the user experience. That is really important for me because I think that we must respect people regardless of their situation in life at that moment, and we have to give them the dignity they deserve. If I wouldn't want to be treated that way, then I need to design so that they are not being treated that way.”

As the CTO for Greenpeace International, Priscilla travels all around the world getting to know communities and constantly facing novel issues that require global solutions:

“Sometimes wrapping solutions around the problem does not fix anything.”

“We tend to think that throwing tech at people will solve problems, but sometimes it doesn’t.”

“I keep asking; the West developed by killing our planet, and Africa is just starting to develop. How do we make sure that we're not being penalized because of all the sins of everybody else? That's why I believe technology has some of the power to make sure that we can still continue developing while taking the environment into consideration."

And then the talk swiftly turned to prioritizing “me time” when Priscilla talked about her firm “no-meeting policy” on Fridays:

“I just made a rule: we're off on Fridays, do not speak to me. It is the time I use to think, it is the time I use to deal with things that are pending.”

From Ebola to refugee camps to disaster zones, below is an excerpt of what she's learned in crisis environments:

“Working in an emergency context is a very interesting experience. When you're in the moment, you don't feel the pressure. When it's over, you start to feel the anxiety.”

What it’s like being the least technological person in the world of technology, in the words of the CTO of Greenpeace International:

“I call myself the least techie tech person you've ever met. I always say, “technology should not be what's driving you, it should be the problem you're trying to solve.” And then technology will be the thing that enables that to be achieved much faster. I always try to pull people back from the tech a bit to avoid the problem I talked about earlier, of finding the solution before you've defined the problem.”

Priscilla is fighting silos within organizations, particularly in the nonprofit world. Find out how she works to facilitate collaboration at Greenpeace International, and why emphasizing the importance of a community-focused approach to technology within organizations is so important:

“With Greenpeace, we have very big technology teams that can provide the infrastructure and design the solution, but there are silos between the teams. This is a big challenge for many organizations, particularly in the nonprofit world. The guys working in some communities are not speaking to the tech folks. They don't even know the possibilities that exist. The tech folks are too busy fixing the internet, so they don't know that there's a challenge that they can contribute to.

Part of my role is always thinking about how do we start to collaborate better? How do we start creating visibility around what everybody's doing? Even now, Greenpeace has a very big technology ambition, and one of their work streams is breaking silos. How do we make sure we are collaborating?

Normally when people see technology, they see infrastructure, coding, and so on. But whenever I see technology, I look more at the cultural aspect of how the organization is working, because I don't think technology belongs to one department in this day and age. Everybody should be a technologist in any organization.”

Curious to know about designing with communities in mind, the unique story of Priscilla Chomba-Kinywa, and more? Check out Memberful Design — our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. We’ll see you there.

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