We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ali Stone. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ali below.
Ali, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
When I graduated in college with an English degree, the country was in the middle of a recession. I cycled through a series of retail jobs before I found myself in my first B2B marketing role where I began mastering skills in digital marketing, content development and online branding during the time of the “internet of things”. Over a course of 10 years, I worked in a variety of B2B marketing and communications roles at global companies and PR agencies. While I loved the tactical work, I was unhappy with my day-to-day and felt stuck in my career, so I decided to make a bold career switch. I quit my corporate job and spent a year volunteering with The Mockingbird Foundation, a nonprofit organization born out of the Phish community that supports music education. This volunteer experience was eye opening. I had always thought volunteering meant helping at event, spending time serving meals at a food pantry or assisting the elderly. I was recruited to lend my marketing abilities to elevate the Foundation’s largest fundraiser that year, the release and sale of an 898-page book called The Phish Companion, 3rd Edition. I was quickly able to apply my marketing experience from corporate America to online fundraising—and I loved it! I had found my niche: I loved harnessing the energy of music communities to give back.
After a year of full-time volunteer work and living off my savings, Conscious Alliance, a nonprofit organization that started by hosting food drives at concerts and music festivals, had an opening for a marketing and communications role. I immediately applied and tapped into the network of music industry professionals I had grown while volunteering to support my efforts. I started working at Conscious Alliance full-time in 2018 providing basic marketing support and channel management. In the past 4.5 years with the organization, I have been able to leverage everything I learned in corporate America, lean in to my passion for live music and apply it something I truly cared about, feeding families in need.
It was the best decision I have ever made.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Conscious Alliance is a movement of musicians, artists, food makers and music lovers on a mission to end hunger. We started 20 years ago hosting a food drive at a concert with The String Cheese Incident. Fans were asked to donate canned goods in exchange for an event poster. This grew into a national movement and we now host over 100 ‘Art That Feeds’ Food Drives at concerts and music festivals across the country. Additionally, we work with food brands to rescue excess food and products from going into landfills and getting them into the hands of people in need.
Right now we’re very focused on addressing the environmental impact of food waste. Every year 108 billion pounds of food go to waste while 1 in 10 people are food insecure. We’re trying to reinvent the food system by using innovative methods to gather and move food to vulnerable communities nationwide. Since our work relies on a lot of trucking, we offset our carbon footprint through a program with Trees, Water, People.
I’m incredibly proud of the work our team is doing to help families recovering from the Marshall Fire. We were on the ground the day after the fire serving meals to first responders and families who’d lost their homes. In the first month we distributed over 22,000 meals through giveaway events, home deliveries and our partnership with World Central Kitchen. We launched our ‘We Got This’ initiative that rallied brands like Danone and ALOHA to donate products and gift cards to create care packages that will be distributed to fire victims over the next year. Our fundraising efforts shifted to fire recovery; we partnered with Greensky Bluegrass, raising funds through an online auction and participated in the Music for Marshall benefit at the Boulder Theater. Our National Distribution Center was in the evacuation zone of the fire. The entire team is truly dedicated to rebuilding our community. For us, this isn’t a relief response, we are committed to being there for our neighbors for the long haul.
I learned about Conscious Alliance by attending their benefit events along the front range. A lot of my favorite musicians are supporters of their cause. I got involved by becoming a member and started visiting their booth at concerts. When Conscious Alliance had an opening for a marketing and communication role, I was volunteering full-time with a nonprofit called The Mockingbird Foundation. I joined the team in 2018, officially transitioning away from B2B marketing and starting my career in the nonprofit sector.
Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
I have mixed feelings about NFTs. While I am not particularly pulled in by the space’s current focus (and share many’s concern about the environmental impact of their current implementation), I have hope that the technology will evolve to both work in a manner that’s more responsible to the planet, and to yield more solutions that solve real, tangible problems.
For example, I have friends who are working on NFTs as a replacement for certificates of authenticity on physical, valuable items like autographed memorabilia or classic cars. In my mind this makes sense—a piece of paper authenticating that signed guitar could be forged, but not the NFT!
Buying bored apes though? Not for me.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
I’ve always been a fan of Seth Godin’s philosophy. His book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable really resonated as I was growing my career and carving our my space in the workforce. According to Godin, a linchpin is somebody in an organization who is indispensable—who simply cannot be replaced because their role is just far too unique and valuable. A linchpin is someone who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create and make things happen. We all have untapped potential; Godin tells readers to focus on finding the artist inside of you, the genius tamped down by workplace expectations to follow the rules. Even in our world of automation, he teaches that a machine isn’t something that can create art, we need linchpins to do that. Art isn’t always just what we think it is in the conventional sense, it is also anything brought on by passion, creativity and personality. Godin helped me evaluate the work I was doing and ask “are you doing it because you have to do it or because you’re passionate about it?” When you find your passion and direct yourself towards it, you’ve given yourself the opportunity to really create art. His book made clear for me that I wasn’t creating art, I was a cog in a system following set instructions, not thinking, doing my job to the book so I didn’t have to be responsible for decisions. I was a replaceable commodity. You can’t have employees that are both obedient AND artistic, motivated, connected, aware, passionate and genuine.
Godin also advises that you can become a linchpin by giving away your art for free. By giving away your gifts, you are building tribes of people who are connected through genuine and authentic art of the person who created that gift and is giving it away. That’s incredibly powerful, to give your art away for free! I love this quote from the book, “One reason that art has so much power is that it represents the most precious gift we can deliver. And delivering it to people we work with or connect with strengthens our bond with them. It strengthens the tribal connection.”
Image Credits
Tobin Voggesser, NOCOAST, Adam Smith, Regan Bervar