Hi, I’m Shaley.

I grew up in a small town. In high school, I knew of only 1 computer available for use by more than 1000 students. My Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) teacher said it connected to the “Internet,” but nobody knew what that meant and nobody cared at the time—me included. Phrases like “global network” and “global economy” were meaningless. As far as I was concerned, everything to be learned in the world—everything that would ever matter to my life—could be found in the public library’s Encyclopedia Britannica.

Flash forward 20 years, and Earth felt like another planet. I felt like a totally different person.

The Encyclopedia Britannica I mentioned? It had only 32,640 pages. As of June 2019, the Internet had 5.78 billion pages and it’s growing exponentially.

Now, thinking back to the old days makes me cringe. Remember when we had to take a doctor’s word for everything, no questions asked? People kid about the pitfalls of using the web to self-diagnose, but in 2017, when 2 local doctors insisted thyroid surgery was my only option—and they scheduled the procedure—I only kept my thyroid because I searched online for Thyroid Cancer Centers and Cedar Sinai popped up. In just 3 appointments Cedar’s specialists diagnosed that I did NOT have cancer, that surgery was entirely unnecessary, and they fixed the issue with a minimally-invasive outpatient procedure.

That kind of experience makes it feel like, in terms of opportunity and access, this is the best time to be alive! And personally, I usually feel that way.

These days, I work from home 90% of the time, mostly several time zones away from “the office.” I am completing a master’s degree from Harvard, almost entirely online. I have never met most of my colleagues in person, but it hasn’t stopped me from building lasting relationships with many of them.

I never worry about my car breaking down. I’ll just call Uber. Can’t find my dentist’s office? Google Maps will find it. Don’t know how to replace my windshield wipers? YouTube has step-by-step videos. Want to travel somewhere exotic? Surely there’s a blog.

If I want to video chat with my grandmother, publish another book, binge watch my favorite show, or research the impacts of trust, the Internet puts a utopia of information, products, and services at my fingertips.

But people are also more anxious than ever. I frequently get questions from friends and family about if an email is safe, if it’s okay to block someone on Facebook, or if I can explain something they don’t understand. Millennials, especially, feel extreme “pressure to constantly be ‘on.’ To look and sound perfect, and act like [they] have it all together.” And children are struggling with physical and mental health issues caused by too much or poor-quality screen time. Clearly, technology for the sake of technology is not the answer. As far as humanity has come, we still have a long way to go.

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous. And it is now reaching a point of crisis overall.”

Edward O. Wilson, American Biologist, Theorist, Naturalist and Author 

Technology should make life better—that’s my motto. People and technology—those are my passions. As a result, my career has grown like this:

1. I knew I wanted to help people use technology better, so I became a software trainer for faculty and staff at Cornell University.
2. When it became apparent that the campus community didn’t know what software services were available to them, I moved into IT communications.
3. It turned out that the technology we were communicating about was hard to use (pre-cloud when small teams were trying to build and maintain complicated homegrown systems), so I moved into user experience (UX).
4. Despite my growing reputation as the go-to person for UX, I lacked the authority required to adequately influence executive decisions. So to get more experience, I became a contractor while working on my Master of Information Management Systems degree through Harvard University Extension School.
5. A combination of contract and academic work helped me realize that I am an advocate and change agent.

I want to help people live happier, more fulfilling lives (and I believe technology is key), so I started thinking about my own experiences over the past 2 decades. In every case where technology was underutilized by an organization or individual, low trust was a primary issue. This made sense to me, since in order to feel confident working from home 100% of the time from 2010-2016, I had made it my mission to develop processes, skills, and behaviors that ensured my colleagues would always TRUST working with me, regardless of whether I was in the same office—or on a tiny island, 6,000 miles away.

Peering through the looking glass of TRUST, I realized the following:

1. Attendees in my software-training classes often lacked trust in themselves that they understood how something worked or that they were doing things right.
2. Faculty and staff could have figured out what IT services were available to them, but they didn’t trust that they were looking in the right place, would select the right system, or that they (and their students) were allowed to use systems en masse.
3. Skeptics (rightfully) hesitated to incorporate systems that they did not trust would be well supported or easy to use.
4. Leadership did not trust that someone without an advanced degree (or who worked from home full time) could possibly know or care enough about customers and systems to warrant a management role.
5. Collaborative technology can increase organizational speed, agility, and innovation, but people always drive value. And they will not change the way they work without a high level of trust.

At work, people are suffering from a lack of trust in themselves, in each other, in company culture, and in the technology they use:

• They do the bare minimum with collaborative technologies to avoid appearing ineffective or incompetent.
• They avoid high-risk, high-emotion discussions about changing workflows to improve productivity.
• They dismiss technologies that support work-life balance, because of personal insecurities or flex-work politics.
• They abstain from learning new, rapidly-changing technologies because of valid, unaddressed fears.

Even when organizations have the best intentions, time after time the introduction of new technology leads to business as usual. Or worse, it adds stress, reduces productivity, and erodes company loyalties.

People are also struggling at home. They need help, but they don’t know where to turn, or they are afraid to ask:

• They get anxious about basics like online banking, spotting fake emails, and creating strong passwords.
• They have no idea how to help their kids complete homework using online tools.
• They surrender their lives and sanity to gamified applications that are hell-bent on capturing attention for profit.
• They (hopefully unintentionally) spread false information that undermines efforts to protect the environment and human rights.

Trust Changers are the first step. They are processes, skill sets, and behaviors everyone should use to get the most value out of working, connecting, and collaborating online. Personally, I feel EMPOWERED by what I can do online, and soon—with tools to build trust in yourself, other people, culture, and technology—you can too.