We were lucky to catch up with Carrie Rogers-Whitehead recently and have shared our conversation below.

Carrie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

My company Digital Respons-Ability’s work is to teach digital citizenship, the ethical and responsible use of technology. Simply, we try to create better humans online. As the internet enmeshes more and more in our daily lives, not to mention the pace of technology and the increase of Artificial Intelligence, being a digital citizen is more important than ever. One of my changes in the education system would basically put me out of business—but I feel like these concepts in digital citizenship should be embedded across multiple grade levels and subjects.

As an older Millennial with Boomer parents, we were the test generation of the internet. I had absolutely zero instruction on how to use it, and I couldn’t ask my parents or really anyone for help to navigate it. I know I certainly made some mistakes! So my work with Digital Respons-Ability is personal too. As a mom I don’t want my child to make the same mistakes I did. The internet has been an amazing thing in my life, it’s helped me learn, make friends and start a business. Overall I see it as positive, but education around using it responsibly should be more prevalent so the positives can outweigh the negatives.

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.

Digital Respons-Ability is a woman-owned, Utah-based educational services company. They are the state sponsored provider of digital citizenship education to both parents and students in Utah and teach tens of thousands of parents, students and educators each year. Digital citizenship is the ethical and responsible use of technology and includes such topics as digital literacy, communicating online, digital safety, media literacy and more.

Digital Respons-Ability holds both state and federal contracts to provide digital citizenship and other educational services. digital literacy education. We are practitioners in the classroom and have taught over 200,000 hours to parents and students in-person. We talk and survey students and feel we have an on-the-ground approach to this big topic.

I’m proud of how far the business has come since I started it in late 2016. It was just me for a while, going out to different after school programs and schools, refining and improving the education. Now we are in multiple states and soon to be international, this fall we will be in Vietnam teaching digital citizenship. I’m proud that we have kept to our mission of reaching students where they are at, making curriculum inclusive, but also fun. Recently we were awarded a 2022 Tech & Learning award for our secondary curriculum and it’s great to be recognized after all these hours of work with so many students.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

My background is as a public librarian before I pivoted to start my own business and move to the private sector. Books still remain an important part of my life and there’s been a few that have helped me on my business journey: 1. The E-Myth Principle by Michael Gerber
This is an oldie but goodie. It talks about how there are different skill sets for running a business, versus working in the business. This book helps to remind me to delegate and try to focus on my strengths.
2. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker
I write a lot in my work, everything from marketing copy, to writing grants to writing books. This book eloquently helps me with my writing and gets me out of my blind spots.
3. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses” by Eric Ries
This modern classic helped me look at marketing and sales processes differently.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I vividly remember a very emotional and overwhelming moment where the weight of business and my personal life collided all at once. Digital Respons-Ability had recently started a state contract in Utah and I was scaling rapidly, but also balancing bills. We were on a reimbursement contract and everything had to be paid for up front, and then we’d wait sometimes up to a month or more for reimbursement. I was securing funding, hiring and doing a lot of trainings over the state.

Also at this time I had just finished a book that was due to my editor, and I had another one due a few months after that. I normally wouldn’t write two books at the same time—but the opportunity came up and I couldn’t turn it down. So bills, book deadlines, hiring, scaling all were happening—but then an even bigger stressor was going on. I had just found a lawyer and was planning on filing for divorce.

I was an activity for my kid’s school and was grateful for the Wi-Fi and an hour to just work and try to catch up. Then an email came in from my editor, she needed another 14,000 words for the book I just turned in. And it was due that month.

It was the last straw for me and I remember bursting into tears in the kid’s pizza play place, arcade games buzzing and kids running around. I got a few stares, this woman on her laptop heaving sobs. I didn’t know how I was going to get through the month, let alone get through the divorce.

Despite the stares the crying helped. It released some of that weight and pressure. And the next morning I got up very early and got back to work. I ended up adding those additional words, and that book ended up winning an award from the American Library Association—despite that 14,000 words being written in a stressful, emotional rush!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://respons-ability.net
• Instagram: @digitalrespons_ability
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerswhitehead/
• Twitter: @digital_empower

Image Credits
The images attached are by me.