♪ -next, a "kqed newsroom" special on local business leaders changing the way we live, work, and connect with our communities.nt -we ut to build a resource that connected neighbors to the information that was most relevant to them. -a co-founder tass about helping neighb tear down walls online. alsos an executive at reddit about the challengesci the popular online forum. -what we have tried to focus on is what is the core that makes reddit powerful? and it's that conversation. -plus, we hear how one startup is winning over consumersan by ditching d labels. -millennials don't want to buy the products they grew up with, because those brands were "trust marks," and they lost trust. -and a ceo's mission to reke the food industry reen. -it's very personal, and it's very high-impact. we need to do something about our broken food system. -hello. i'm thuy vu. welcome to a special edition of "kqed newsroom."

on this program, we're re-visiting intervie from our archives with game-changing business leadern who are the web to create and strengthen communities or pioneering new alternatives to staples in our fridge and pantry.o we ak them about the difficulties silicon valley has had with diversity, especially in key leadership positions. s our first conversationwith , the co-founder and chief architect of nextdoor. the san francisco company alloto share resourceseate e and information about their communities. according to the company, more than 180,000 neighborhoods from the us or europe are using next to share hyperlocal content. and we want to disclose that kqed is a media partner of nedoor, using its service to deliver content to four bay area cities. welcome. -thanks for having me, thuy. -so, how did the idea for nextdoor come about? -so, about seven years ago, when we first started the company, we noticed a trend of social networksiq

becoming more tous and mainstream. facebook for your friends. h twitter to connect wople with whom you shared interests. and of course linkedin for your professional network. rabut we found it sort of e that there was not a network where you could connect with the people right outside your front door -- your neighbors, the people that were most important to yom in your local ity -- and so we set out to build a resource that connected neighrs to the information that was most relevant to them, and that's now nextdoor came about. you've seen among orsof the most inton nextdoor?eractionsig because, you know, i've used it i've used itk for moving boxes when i was moving, and then gave it back to other people when i wasn't. i posted about tm. and there are certainly a lot of posts i see about missing dogs -- and found dogs. but there was also someone who found an organ donor. -yeah, that's right. we've seen everything from day-to-day kinds of recommendationsgh that neirs exchange with one another for babysitters, plumbers, auto mechanics. but we've also seen more critical use cases, especially around disasters.. for example, in hurricane hasey or the napa wildfi

or the ventura county wildfires, we've seen neighbors banding together when the public infrastructure is under a lot of strain,ci esly 911 or first responders. and in the case of the liver donor, we did see that a neighbor put out a message saying, "hey, one of our neighbors is in the hospital and looking for someone to donate an organ," and we actually found a liver donor within the neighborhood community, if you can imagine that. -extraordinary. -so a wide variety of different use cases. -yeah. but, you know, there are lots of other entities that offer similar services, right? you could do facebook groups.f craigslist hasction where you could form a group. there are homegrown forums. why should people use nextdoor? what sets you apart? -so, i think there are two things that really set us apart. the first is, when you look at networks like facebook or twitter or some of these other social networks, these are largely platforms for self-expression. they're a place for you to share photos, status updates,a these are largely platforms for self-expression. and really reveattle bit more about yourself. nextdoor is purely utility-driven. people are coming to nextdoor to use their neighbors as a resource to help them solve problems.

and the second thing that i think is unique about nextdoor is, everyone that you're interacting with is a verified member of the neighborhood community. each neighborhood is a geographically-bounded entity on nextdoor. -how do you verify that th actually live there? -we have a number of different ways that we verify. we can do verificahvia po, verification.on where you redeem an invitation token that proves that you actually had to go to your mailbox and take it out. we have a number of different hverification mechanisms. and once people are verified, that increases the level of trust that they'e interacting with peo who are actually in their neighborhood, and facilitates a wide variety of more intimate types of exchanges tha these . -and in this world where the internet is so ubiquitous, as you say, there's a concern thatfaeople aren't interactin. so, why is a neighborhood social network necessary? why ca t neighbors just go ou. hi. i'm your neighbor. let's chat face-to-face. -yeah, i think we are combating a trend that has been happening in the united statespe ally over the past 50 years of a decline in community.

in fact, one of the inspiring statisticshat we saw when we started the company was that 29% of americans claim to knoworvery fg and 28% of americans claim to know not a single neighbor by name. so you're talking about er half the populatio with very weak ties into their community. a so yoand so, as stranit er may seem in our kind of modern, technological world, to use an app to facilitate thnse in-person interact in the community, it actually is happening. we feel like our job is best performed when an online interaction on nextdoor for example, your box story.ion. when you needed boxes, ultimately, you had to go interact with someone to exchange the boxes, and now you know a new neighbor in your communit and we see that all the time. -you've also had some growing pains, like many tech companies. there have been some problems with racial profiling. about people of colorg urgenin their neighborhoods. -yeah. -wret have you done to a this?

-yeah, first, we were definitely shocked to see our platform being usedn this way. and especially as a bay area native, hearing about communities in oakland, where we first became aware of this happening, was a real shock to the system. but we worked together with these communities to re-design our product in a way that i think where we changed tduct.ted -how did you re-design? -so, a few things that were really importantto s were, number one, to make people aware of the fact that they were using descriptive text without the context around what actually was suspicious about the activity. so we introduced friction into the posting process to force pbople to be more specific the circumstances under which they were posting, not to be purely describing people on the characteristics of their race withouassome additional contex. you know, a person of color riding a bike in a neighborhood is not in and of itself worthy of putting out an urgent alert to all of your neighbors. but if they're casing the neighborhood

or breaking into cars,sc now, that's the ptivecasing text that accompanies it. -so, then, what kinds of posts -- how do you regulate something like this? because what about other kinds of posts that other peoplemay fi, maybe concerning gender or religion. where do you draw thline? -well, we expect, through our community guidelines, that neighborhood leads are responsible for sort of mandating the social decorum of the communities in which we land this product. so, unde0,tanding that we are in 0 different neighborhoods across the country, the product takes on a lot of the identity of the communities in which you land it. and so there are, in some cases, local, specific issues that need to be discussed, but need to be done with civil discour in mind. and so our community guidelines, our neighborhood leads, and then we hasupport q that helps when those neighborhood leads feel like they're a little bit beyond their capability to hdle things. but we try and self-moderate. -and, in 10 seconds, are you making any money yet?

-we are starting to earn revenue through sponsored posts, native advertising in the feed and in our e-mails, -we are starting to earn revenue and now with realtors, as well. -nextdoor co-founder prakash janakiraman.th k you so much. -thank you. -turning now from connecting neighborhoods to bringing together millions of people online. imagine a free website where you can find more than 100,000 discussion forumsch on pretty any topic i. welcome to reddit.nc its launch in 2005, reddit has become the fourth most popular website in the us. each month, hundreds of millions of visitors comment on and post links to various tops, known as subreddits. s but with that growth coallenges. like facebook, twitter, and other social media, reddit is grappling with how to protect free speech while fighting hate speech and online bullying. here now to talk about all of this is the general counsel and vice president of reddit, melissa tidwell.to melissa, nicave you here. -thanks for having me. -so, reddit is one of the most popular websites, not only in the us, but in the world.

yet it doesn't have the same name recognition as, say, youtube or facebook. why do you think that is? -you know, i think it's a couple of things. when i started at the company in 2015, we were about 60 people, and now we're about 400. -that's hypergrowth. -it's a lot of growth. but, you know, in comparison to, sort of, our user growth, we're an incredibly small company. and so, in terms of users sort of being out there, and thbrand perception, some users are doing interesting things for the world, and some users want to maintven their privacy and hat. -how do you balance reddit users' right to free speech while monitoring and even shutting down hate speech? -yeah, i mean, i thiwe'reg a great conversation today on those questions. i think for reddit, we are focusing on a couple of thingsp as i sait of our growth is growing the company, and growing the functions that we need to have for the company to be successful. so for us, that means we have an actual policy team now that thinks about these things from a big-picture perective. we have a trust and safety team, which are the enforcers,

and that ensure that, they can enforce at scale. we have the anti-evil engineering team.re -that's what thealled?that, anti-evil engineering team?le. -our current name. -thaand so they help ushat, anti-evilbuild the tools.m?le. -do you think that social-media sites have an obligation to curb hateful content, including conspiracy theories? -yst know, it's a great qn. i think for us, as acuompany, what we are d on is ensuring that the conversation is healthy. i think we're at a time where it's important to have hard conversions, and it's important that, as a platform, we recognize that and facilitate it. it's not okay to allow a small number of voices to short of over-shout what's happening, and that's a hard thing to manage. at we have tried to focus on is, what is the core at makes reddit powerful and it's that conversation. if there's an article posted about the washington nationa and whether or not they made the playoffs -- is it people shouting over each other and yell ig about the players, it people talking about what was awful about them not making it, and what they should do about it.

we are trying to encourage those types of behaviors, and we try and do that in different ways. sometimes that's wnth our community manageeam, to reach out to the moderators to say, "hey, yo o conversation has go the rails. get your users back on track. focus-or else what?opic se we'll take action.ty is."r -and how do reddit users differ from users of facebook, twitter, or other social media? s -i wou, one of the big lessons for me was the importance of thinking about the reddit community. come from google to reddit, we do posts on a very congistent basis where wee with our users. and they're very honest. they give really -- we're almost like politicians. they give us real-time feedback on what they think we're doing rightth and what thek we're doing wrong. -and they're anonymous, too. -they're pseudo-anonymous, so it's just a user name and password that's required to create an account and take action. -so, on the one hand, that could be good, because if you were talking abos like maybe an eating disorder or something, you don't want your identity know.

t does staying anonymous also make it easier to bully someone, or trolling? -you know, perhaps it does. bupei think it also allows le to sort of stand up. i think on other, real-name platforms, there's a risk of, how are your friends gonna react to what you're saying, right? and i think part of the beay -- we have a community called ask a trump supporter, which is, i think, a great commungty of people who are sa "listen, i don't agree with everything he says, i thbut i'm here to beratio, of people who are sa from a policy perspective, what's actually happening."t -what abke accounts? facebook has come under fire for allowing fake accounts to influence elections or to fan political tensions. are fake accounts a problem for you as well,wh an do you do about it? -that's a great question. for us as a company, we have voting on our platform, upvoting and downvoting.e our rules is that there is not allowed so, from our very days,ion.rl we have focused on the integrity of the vote. and thateteans, for us, looking r the users ensuring that arfighting spamual real usersr and dealing with those issues. the same time, there are good bots.

there are communities who have created bots that will warn you, g,at the beginning of postthe r. so politics, as a community, will say, "we require civil discsion." that is an automated bot,so thing that reminds the users. so i think it's important for us to remember that there are good bots and things c th be helpful to users, and there are bad bots. -let's talk about silicon valley's diversity gap, as well pr reddit, you spent eight years as an attorney at google. so you've been able to sort of bre through the ranks. but you're a rarity. -mm-hmm. -studies show, government figures show that, in tech companies, the executive level is 84% white. it's nearly 70% men. what can you do to change that and move more women and people of color into positions of tech leadership? -it's definitely a problem in tech, and i think tech is starting to realize that. as a black female executive, one of the very few,

i think a couple of things are really important. number one, it's important that you have the conversation at the ecutive level. so, i started at the company. steve huffman, who's oureo, came probably a month or two after i did. and we've had a very open and host conversation about diversity and the importance of it. -what do you do about it? -you have to acknowledge the issue, and you take steps to address it. i think, for us, as an executive team, our executive team reflects diversity,po and therefore our s reflect diversity. i think, for us, as an executive team, it's not shocking that, as a minority executive, i then have three out of four women who are my leads. it's not shocking that, as a minority executive, itof my own teamg h more intuitive,sity m because i'm looking for different things. i am looking for different perspectives. thand we try and talk abou as a company, as to how other teams can sort of think differently' you just search on linkedin. you can't just look for, ac"i need someone who has y done this at this type of company."

you have to thint outside the box and do different ways. and so i think it's a problem that's never-ending, and something that you just have to continually work at. ne step at a time. melissa tidwell, general counsel at reddit. thank you for being with us. -thank you. -moving on now from the way we connect to thway we shop. brandless is an e-commerce startup based in san francisco. the so-called anti-brand got its start in 2017is with a mon to offer quality products at a very low cost. their inventory includes a broad range of everyy necessities, from food to beauty products to office supplies, each with a price tag of $3. kqed's marisa lagos sat down with the ceo of brandless, tina sharkey. -tina, thanks for coming in.ch -thank you so for hav. -so, everything at brandless is $3, which is very low. tell me what kind of products we're talking about. the whole idea of brandless was to create a simple, organized, edited assortment of the things that you love, from chips to crackers to cookies, you name it.

and then in the essentials -- soorganic spices or organic all-purpose flours and baking mixes -- as well as personal care -- e,so fluoride-free toothpa esse. -was there a particular moment that sort of drove you to create this brand? you've been in business for a while and done a l of other things that are pretty different from this. -yeah. i would say what's interesting is, it all started with my co-founder. ido leffler and i decided that wactually wanted to change the world together in our own small, humble way. otand we were both doing of other things at the time, but we said, "let's carve outhe time and the space to actually figure out what's broken and what we want to fix." i came from building communities. i came from building commerce and media and di ct consumer experiences. and he came from creating consumer packaged-goods products. so t said, "what if we were to, like, fuse and build a community that's based on something that's bigger than anything that we sell?"

-- this whole idea that we could democratize access to better things at fair prices for everyone. so we set off to do that. -so, how are millennial customers different from, maybe, their parents? -it's so interesting about the millennial csumer, because think of them as first time head-of-household, right? either they're setting up their college dorm room or they are setting up their first apartment or they' having babies. millennial moms are gonna be the largest segment of moms. they probably already are. and if they're not, they will be in two seconds. 78% of millennials have said they don't want to buy the products that they grew up with or that their parents used.-t t's so interesting to me, because i feel like product branding is so ingrained in us. -i know, but it's changing.da because the brands of yesterday don't represent the value system. and i think it's like 67% of americans say -- not just millennials -- they want to shop from a company that represents their values. td so millennials don't wto bs thth grew up with because brands were "trust marks," and they lost trust.

so people are turning over their taste. it's millennials, but it's also perennials -- people who are changing their habits, changing their consumption patterns, -you call yourself a social capitalist. and changing the brands that they want to reach for. i mean, how important is it,es from a busperspective, too, to have a company that's sort of aimed at the broader good? ve i know you guys oney to programs for feeding folks whenou buy something. -yeah, so, we partner with feeding america. there's 41 million people in this country that go hungry every day, and feeding america is the largest hunger-relief organization in this country, with the broadest network of food banks. when y check out at brandless, we will purchase a meal through feeding america in your honor, because we believe that the whdoing in life is what matters, and we don't wait for ging tuesday. every time you can do a tangible act of kindness is just kind of how brandless rolls. so our community is always doing things. and, in fact, as we celebrated our first anniversary, we'd already given away over 1.6 million meals.

t -wow. so you have a experience as an entrepreneur, an executive. you co-founded ivi,age which, at the ti was the largest online community for women. you were president of bycenter. how's the business landscape changed as a woman in tech, and business broadly? -you know, it'lyfunny, but i never redentified as a woman or a man in terms of who i was as a leader. i'm tina. and i have my experience. i have my passions. i'm also a mom. i' salso a friend. i'm alsoter. i'm lots of things. but when i show up at work, i'm a leader who's there to build an extraordinary business, and i don't think of it as s."it's a female-run busin it's a business that fully expresses the commitment and passion of the people that come to work for us and the mog.ment that we're build and so i think the landscape has changed in that havi t that real seat at tle because i represenonlys very, my own business experience,

but also my personal experience. and 89% of the purchasing in this country is done by women, so the idea that women wouldn't have a seat at the table for any consumer business -- let alone any business to begin with -- is kind of crazy. but i don't think about it as, "oh, i'm a woman, therefore..." i think "i'm tina, and this is my experience." beand i don't want to be "d" or given an advantage other than my skand executing.on, ang bi -so, what would be youest piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? -i would say always be your authentic self, because authenticity scales. bring smarter people around you that complement your skill set and complement what you can bring to the table. always make room. diversity and inclusion, it's not just about color or race or ethnicity. it might be about style. it might be about approach. and so not everybody has the same approach to things. -right. it mi-but as an entrepreneur, part of your job is to sort of convene a diverse set of voices,

a diverse set of experiences, and a diverse set of opinions, and then surround yourself with people who actually want to stay with you and your movement for the long game. -fabulou well, tina sharkey, thank you so much for coming inr -thank youaving me. -our next ceo created method, a line of environment-friendly cleaning products. l adamowry sold method in 2012 and embarked on a new mission to reduce the planet's carbon footprint. his new company is ripple foods, located in emeryville. its flagship product is a non-dairy milk made from peas. that's right, peas. all right, so, milk made from peas. whghpeas? -yeah, that's pea milk, eh? -yeah. -you know, peas are gh in protein. and the situation right now is, most alternatives to dairy products are actually pretty bad dairy alternatives. they don't have any protein in them, or have vy little, and most people agree that they're kind of thin and watery. so by making milk out of peas, we were able to make something really high in protein

but ally creamy and deliciou and at the end of the day, that's the way we're gonna get more people toat healthier, more nutritious, and more sustainable foods. -you're a chemical engineer byraining. you were a climate scientist at one point. -youwhere did the inspiration for this company come from? does your environmental training come into it? -yeah, partially. i thork a big part of this also, is my co-founder, neil renninger, who's a phd biochemist. he's the real scientist between the two of us. w and he created to get totally pure protein out of any plant source. and when you do that, it's tasteless. many people don't know that protes have no flavor. so if you get really pure protein from plants, you can make foods out of it that are really delicious. and then they are foods that a lot more people will buy and enjoy. -and i think you were also inspired by this philosophy of trying to cut down on the carbon foprint, right? -mm-hmm. -tell us about that.an -yeah. i you mentioned that i do have a background as a climate scientist. that was a long time ago. and that was a big part of the inspiration

for my to create socialmethod, and environmental impact. now, fortunately, that's become a muchore mainstream idea now. food is even more personal, and has even more impacts on our environment and on our health, of course, than cleaning products, and so that was why i reallys wanted to get into food, ,because it's very personand it. we need to do somethinabout ou, and we need to do it through food that are really delicious that people enjoy. -and that don't cause a lot of carbooutput, for example, because dairy products and meat product contribute to the carbon footprint. -yeah, exactly. so, dairy is about a quarter of our food carbon footprint, and food's about 30% t. our human carbon footpr that means dairy is about 8% of humanity's carbon footprint. and most of the alteteatives are not much b you know, almond milk,for, takes a lot of water. -mm-hmm. and i know that this was also the inspiration behind your method cleaning products,

your prior company, you started it with your college, eric ryan, and in the beginning, you were actually making different method formulas i. -that is correct. yeah, it was sort of the most ironic place you could think of a cleaning-products company being born, which is the bachelor pad of five guys in eir mid-20s. -a probably not-so-clean bachelor pad. -it was exactly as clean as you would think it would be. and, yeah, we made the product there. actually used beer pitchers and things like that initially, and we were selling it door-to-door to grocery stores. but now method is actually the largest green cleaning company in the world. -is it really? -mm-hmm. -that's a great silicon valley story, isn't it? but silicon valley has come a long way. it makes amazing products that billionheof people use aroundorld. but there's also been criticism that silicon valley companies don't do enough to be good corporate citins. for example, on things like housing. what are your thoughts othat? -well, i think in today's environment, you have to ha a civic identity

that has a sense of purpose as a company. it's no longer appropriate to just sit on the sidelines. now, what i don't mean is that a company has to be overtly political. there is a difference between polics and policy. and i think that businesses have a responsibility there is a difference betwto put forward ideasy. about hoa they can make the worltter place, whether that be environmental or whether that be social,ay whatever the issuee.make tand i think that it's -- -do you think silicon valley has done enough on that front? -well, clearly there are some places where silicon valley has some ways to go. i mean, it's the hotbed of innovation. there's a spirit of creativity hereut that's absy fantastic. and i think we've seen some examples where we needtt to do as an overall business community in this area. so i think that's where examining the impacts that a business can have socially and environmentally is really critical, and then being consc tus and deliberate aboing

to do better in those areas. -yeah. and just real quickly, since we're on the topic c porate social responsibility, this week we saw a number of companies step forward on the gun-control debate, united and delta cutting their discounts for nra members, for example, walmart and dick's spoing goods changing their gun-sales policies. how do you feel about companies taking stands on controversial issues? -yeah, i think it's important for companies to have a point of view, and to share that point of view. and as i said, it can be a little bit of a tricky line when it starts to toe the line into politics, and the sausage-making of politics.do but t think it's appropriate anymore to not be involved.in i think that trustociet, it's appropriate anymore trust in business is really at an all-time low, and we need to rebuild that by saying, "hey, this is what we stand for. this is what we think is right and wrong." and live that. -okay. adam lowry, co-founder and ceo of ripple foods. thanks for being here. -yeah.hanks for having me.

go to kqed.org/newsroom. -and that will do it for us.for, i'm thuy vu. thank you for joining us. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ robert: a legal storm looms over

president trump and the nation remembers senator jonathanoh --n mccain. i'm robert costa, welcome to "washington week." president trump: our justice department and our f.b.i. have to start doing their job and doing it right and doing it now. robert: president trumpacing mounting legal changes rallies his supporters and says he is frustrated with his attorney general and the head of the f.b.i. president trump: i want them to do their job. il get in there if i have to. robert: in rapid fire tweets and interviews, the president lashed ou at other targets this week, ahead of a potentially stormy season in his presidency. he called the russia probe