Help us connect untold stories to the media
Media organizations are more lean than ever before. Lioness is building a tech-enabled product to help journalists find and vet stories.
Project Description
Over 30,000 journalists have been laid off, furloughed, or seen their pay cut due to economic woes arising from the Covid-19 crisis. Despite that, news organizations are receiving more tips and whistleblower stories than ever, many from people on the frontlines of coronavirus. Journalists have to juggle dozens of roles at once: find sources, vet tips, interview people, conduct outside research, and write and edit stories.
Lioness is building a tech-enabled product to help media organizations sort through the chaos. The platform will help the public submit their tips through a secure portal. It will allow for anonymity, and remove identifying metadata from any screenshots they might include in their tip. Our team will vet and route these tips to journalist partners. Our system will use machine learning to flag keywords, so that tips end up in front of journalists who cover the applicable sectors (like health, science, business, or tech).
We have healthcare workers already sending in tips to Lioness via email and social media, and our journalist partners are eager to use our product. Our wireframes sit in wait and we have a team of developers with expertise in cybersecurity ready to build our platform. We just need the funding to pay our developer team, and to test the product with journalists!
We are an all-women team -- writers, strategists, designers -- who have received zero outside funding to date.
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Who is on your team?
Ariella Steinhorn, Founder
Ariella is a storyteller, writer, and advocate for workplace equity. After a series of personal experiences in the workplace, she co-founded Simone, a workplace equity organization that guided hundreds of people through workplace challenges including sexual harassment, discrimination and abuse. Ariella lives in New York City with her partner and very affectionate cat, Tiger, and when she’s not speaking truth to power, she is working on a book about her experiences with men in power.
Amber Scorah, Senior Writer
After leaving the fundamentalist religion she was raised in, Amber was shunned by her community as an apostate. Moving to New York City to start a new life, she discovered that the zeal and determination she had brought to her preaching was much better suited to creating positive change in the real world. Amber became a parental leave advocate whose story of the loss of her son on his first day in childcare touched millions. Her critically-acclaimed memoir Leaving the Witness details her experience of leaving a high-control religion.
Megan Capiak, Advisor
Megan has spent her career working in the cross section of technology, policy, and communications. She has worked for one of the fastest growing start-ups in the world as well as the world’s number one CRM software company. Having begun her career in the marble halls of the nation’s capital, she understands firsthand the importance of trust, transparency and accountability in corporate America and on Capitol Hill.
Just Because I Care
A cozy red sweatshirt with a powerful lioness illustration!
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Just Because I Care
A cozy red sweatshirt with a powerful lioness illustration!