EKMH Innovators Interview Series
An interview series spotlighting global tech influencers, disruptors, visionaries, and of course, innovators.
Each week the Innovators series spotlights global trailblazers who demonstrate and inspire much-needed positive change, especially during these challenging times. In today’s interview Apto Global Founder / CEO Traci Snowden reiterates the importance of language and cultural fluency in global collaboration by leveraging Apto Global’s technology for equality and education. Apto Global’s mission dares to imagine a world in which our global community can use technology to make “real” human connections across the traditional barriers of language and local culture. Through Apto Global’s unique learning platform, users or “Explorers” immerse themselves into a curated culture, language and local knowledge program with the expertise of global “Guides” from 20+ international locations.
Launched in 2015, Apto Global initially provided its concierge services to multinational employees relocating to the United States. Now Apto Global also empowers virtual explorers, travelers, tourists, students and immigrants through its authentic immersion live action-video based situations, stories and experiences.
After fellow Nashville entrepreneur and BrainTrust Founder Sherry Deutschmann e-introduced me to Traci, our scheduled chat turned into a much longer, elucidative FaceTime (camera on!) conversation. A world traveller with wide-ranging interests and diverse career experience, learning more about Snowden’s own journey as an educator, model, actress, musician, marketing executive, exchange student, entrepreneur and founder certainly proved both fascinating and relatable. In the following interview Snowden discusses a variety of topics including the value of multi-language fluency and cross-cultural understanding, the importance of an authentic education, the impact of covid and helpful interview tips. Our interview follows.
EKMH: How did your own language learning experiences and your German and Foreign Language Education academic background inform your creation of Apto Global? Which other experiences proved critical to your founding and building Apto Global into a formidable company?
Traci Snowden: First, I think these experiences trained my brain for the systems thinking and unconscious competence needed when breaking down and effectively integrating a new language, especially within the language’s original cultural framework.
In the history of mankind, spoken and written communication is a relatively recent innovation - that’s why so much communication is non-verbal and is tied to the local culture and its people. Secondly, I developed a deeper empathy for anyone facing a cultural identity adjustment or adapting across the traditional barriers of language, culture, geography, etc. I know what it feels like to straddle those lines and am still learning to authentically own and embrace my own story with compassion, so I very much feel empathy for those in that same boat.
I was first exposed to ESL and the world of global mobility at Cinci-Lingua. I learned a lot from the P&G ex-pat families with whom I worked, specifically about what helped them adapt and inequities in the system. That seminal experience would come back to me more than a decade later when I was forming the predecessor company to Apto.
EKMH: How has your own multi-language fluency and cross-cultural understanding given you an edge as an entrepreneur and leader?
Traci Snowden: Well, multi-language fluency and cross-cultural understanding certainly makes relating to others across cultures --and attracting diverse, global team members and partners-- easier. My background has not only informed the foundation and cultural values of Apto but has also reaffirmed the deep understanding that one’s external brand directly reflects one’s own internal culture and team.
EKMH: What sets Apto Global’s platform apart in its utilization of cutting-edge software and technology to help virtual learners, particularly travelers, tourists and relocating professionals? How does Apto Global better tap into authentic context and cultural nuances of global destinations?
Traci Snowden: As with any technology-driven company, there is a constant tension between the existing platform and the future state. Our current platform does stand on a proprietary methodology, but we also are an early stage startup; in order to remain solvent, we have relied heavily on open-source technologies, as well.
The key differentiators in our current state platform include leveraging some of these existing solutions to create a 2-way social learning experience that bundles elements critical to our vision of guiding individuals to flourish within global diversity and our mission to empower internationals from everywhere to adapt to local communities and environments anywhere.
Think of the Apto Global platform as YouTube for global citizenship: individuals sign up, create a profile that outlines their culture of origin and native language, that they are from Seoul, Korea and they speak Korean, for example. They then select a destination for exploration, perhaps Champagne, Illinois. All content is geo-tagged and push notifications can geo-target them, as well. Next Apto users choose a learning outcome, or current goal. Maybe they are considering studying abroad at the University of Illinois. Later those same end users may decide to switch their settings in order to explore other opportunities such as what it might be like to travel the countryside and forage for asparagus in Vaulx, France, or post graduation, to get a haircut at a Tokyo barbershop during a business trip, or to communicate more effectively while negotiating in the UAE. The platform is built on the concept of human reciprocity and the idea that culture and language training should be democratized.
I would much rather learn from a local in an authentic setting, wouldn’t you? That’s why the platform allows Guides from all over the world to contribute content and “pay it forward,” by welcoming those Explorers who need to interact, travel to or relocate to “their neck of the woods.”
Our platform goes beyond language learning: Apto is grounded in the idea that we need to learn to “speak human,” to move beyond transaction and more deeply understand and connect with one another, especially in regard to intra-cultural communication. Those who want to join the Apto community need to be willing to accept themselves, including the fact that we all have biases, and be compassionate and curious when starting the journey in order to create the kind of safe environment wherein people can authentically and more deeply share their own stories, cultures, backgrounds, languages and local gems.
As Apto continues to progress we are working on leveraging AI/Machine Learning, Biofeedback, AR and more...but that’s a story for another time.
EKMH: How have you pivoted Apto Global’s mission and strategy during the covid pandemic to address students’ need “for support, for stability, and for understanding”? How will you leverage technology to continue to engage and empower learners empathically, while also ensuring post-covid growth?
Traci Snowden: Higher Education, Cross-Cultural Exchange and international students were already a dominant focus for us and, speaking of empathy, as we saw the headlines, and more importantly, took phone calls and e-mails from our student user base and our friends and colleagues in international education, we knew we had to do something to add value and help innovate. We began rallying the troops, so to speak, everything from resources on affordable student housing for displaced internationals to language learning activities for the children of educators working from home. We organized a series of webinars on Crisis Triaging and began engaging high quality speakers to expose educators to ideas and interventions - that effort continues.
More directly, we launched a “Beta Innovation Partner” plan, to provide a select number of institutions of higher education with 12 months free platform use in exchange for commitments to usage and testing that would help us innovate and enhance our platform so that international programs could continue to educate and front-line staff would be better equipped as first responders users’ needs and to internationalize education overall, so that ultimately, programs could continue to provide a high quality experience and community of belonging for these students, regardless of mobility restrictions.
I don’t think there will be a “post-covid” world in a certain sense; eventually, mobility restrictions will lighten (if not go away), but I think our eyes now are open to the necessity of seamless online to offline transitions in order to have an ongoing powerful virtual program.
EKMH: How has your experience as a model and actress helped you effectively communicate across cultures, screens and stages? What advice do you have for those addressing virtual or live conference sessions and interviews? And for levity, what are some absolute no-nos?
Traci Snowden: Haha. That’s a fun question. I studied foreign language education and acquisition along with international business at university, but promptly left school to pursue the language of music, because I had some serendipitous opportunities which took me to international stages. I always made a point to learn how to greet my audience in their native language, whether I was in Japan, Cambodia, Ghana or Germany. I genuinely wanted to make a real connection.
In terms of advice...be fully present...turn your camera on. Mute when not speaking. Seek to listen and understand first. Ask clarifying questions - don’t assume - because you are losing even more non-verbal communication.
In terms of absolute no-nos... I think competing for air space is one of the biggest no-nos and I have little respect for those who interrupt habitually. Of course, it happens to the best of us from time to time, but the most formidable speakers are those who listen first and listen carefully. This may not be a popular opinion as the nation’s media seems to think that interrupting is a perfectly acceptable means of communication (which is completely perplexing and unnerving), but I recommend that you speak slowly, with intention and NEVER talk over one another. Pause, draw in your audience and when you speak, simultaneously speak with authority and empathy.
EKMH: What techniques have you adapted in the “new normal” schedule to build you and your team’s connectivity and productivity and maintain Apto Global’s positive culture?
Traci Snowden: Funny you should ask...we are actually in the process of using the Apto platform FOR Apto to help our own multinational company communicate and connect better in these crazy times and ongoing.
EKMH: Please share your vision for Apto Global’s growth. How do you reflect the dynamic nature of language and communities and keep the platform current for your clients?
Traci Snowden: Like all tech companies built on solid design principles, we are heavily reliant on user/learner feedback and stories. Design is by nature dynamic and iterative. People change, ecosystems change, how we learn and live changes. Therefore, technology must change.
Unlike most, if not all, online language learning platforms, we believe that language and cultural learning should be a democratized exchange. We believe that the individuals who live and breathe the culture through the spoken language should be the experts. Our job is to create a platform that is fun, intuitive and allows for human connection so that they can share and explore content. Our job is also to validate that content through curation, which remains heavily informed by real theory put into real practice. Such curation is no small feat and requires a form of ‘buy-in’ participation from real, everyday people around the globe. Those who want to pay it forward and share their stories, can also symbiotically learn from others’ stories in order to understand; be understood; influence and succeed; navigate situations; and connect deeply with others...aka "to be human." LOL!
Right now, the Apto Global team is very focused on understanding the stories and needs of our student learners around the globe, especially ages 16-25, who are preparing for, progressing to higher education and/or translating that education into their professional journey.
Spending time with these young agents of change is one of my greatest personal joys. I am dedicating time to hearing from them and the stakeholders in education whose passion is ensuring their success through systems innovation.
EKMH: And finally, which books, podcasts and/or films do you recommend?
Traci Snowden: Right now I can’t get enough of Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman. I feel like the episodes just keep putting out consistently relevant content - relevant to the times, relevant to me as a CEO and even relevant to things happening in my industry or the stakeholders we serve.
I was inspired to revisit Utopia by Thomas Moore, thinking about our socio-political climate and the evolutions of thought throughout history around the topic. I’m also reading Lunch with Lucy, by Sherry Stewart Deutschmann, a mentor and friend. That book is chock full of anecdotes, experiences and hacks for creating great employee culture and teaming.
And because my brain is constantly percolating and needs different types of stimuli at different times, I am also reading A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle. I am discovering that he and I share some worldview perspectives on very “human” challenges, ranging from the individual to collective. It’s interesting to read his take and how he arrived there.
***Be sure to check out the EKMH Innovators’ archive! The current format only shows the most recent 30 interviews in thumbnails above. Please search below and also click here for past interviews and more information.