Bringing Results Count to the Private Sector

Alice Shobe is the glob­al direc­tor of Ama­zon Com­mu­ni­ty Impact, the char­i­ta­ble arm of the multi­na­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny. With a career span­ning more than 25 years in the pub­lic, non­prof­it and phil­an­thropic sec­tors, Shobe has led efforts to address home­less­ness, equi­table com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment and oth­er com­plex social issues. Along the way, she has applied com­pe­ten­cies and con­cepts learned from her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Chil­dren and Fam­i­ly Fel­low­ship^® — the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s inten­sive exec­u­tive lead­er­ship program.

“The Casey Fel­low­ship was the piv­otal moment of my career,” said Shobe. ​“The Fel­low­ship tools have real­ly helped me at Ama­zon, which is always think­ing big and think­ing at scale. I have been using those skills every step of the way here.”

Help­ing Peo­ple Do More Together

Shobe com­plet­ed her Casey Fel­low­ship while work­ing as direc­tor of the Gates Foundation’s Sound Fam­i­lies Ini­tia­tive, which is a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship focused on reduc­ing home­less­ness in Washington’s Puget Sound area. Like oth­er Fel­lows, she received a thor­ough ground­ing in Results Count^®, the Casey Foundation’s data-dri­ven approach to help­ing social-sec­tor pro­fes­sion­als achieve bet­ter out­comes for chil­dren and families.

Results Count taught Shobe about using one­self as an instru­ment of change — the notion that indi­vid­u­als can lead from what­ev­er posi­tion they hold in an orga­ni­za­tion. ​“Reflect­ing on one’s role and author­i­ty, lever­ag­ing what you can con­tribute and under­stand­ing people’s dif­fer­ences and behav­iors in groups was an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for me,” she said.

Shobe also recalls learn­ing about Results-Based Facil­i­ta­tion™, the process of design­ing and con­tribut­ing to meet­ings that move groups from talk to action and hold par­tic­i­pants account­able for their com­mit­ments. ​“The Results-Based Facil­i­ta­tion part of the Fel­low­ship par­tic­u­lar­ly res­onat­ed with me, because it was about help­ing peo­ple do more togeth­er,” she said.

As a mem­ber of the 2007–2008 class of Casey Fel­lows, Shobe was able to apply her new­ly acquired skills to achieve the ambi­tious goals of the Sound Fam­i­lies Ini­tia­tive. Once com­plete, the $40 mil­lion project had tripled the num­ber of new hous­ing units avail­able to fam­i­lies emerg­ing from home­less­ness in Washington’s King, Pierce and Sno­homish counties.

Build­ing Changes

Before land­ing at Ama­zon, Shobe served as deputy direc­tor and then direc­tor of Build­ing Changes, a non­prof­it inter­me­di­ary ded­i­cat­ed to address­ing home­less­ness in Wash­ing­ton state. The orga­ni­za­tion engages in pol­i­cy advo­ca­cy, col­lab­o­rates with pub­lic and pri­vate part­ners, and uti­lizes infor­mal author­i­ty to influ­ence change.

Shobe infused the cul­ture of Build­ing Changes with lessons from Results Count. ​“I had 100% of my staff go through both results-based account­abil­i­ty and facil­i­ta­tion train­ing,” she said. ​“This train­ing was core to the kind of work we were doing as an intermediary.”

Under Shobe’s lead­er­ship, Build­ing Changes helped to secure a 30% reduc­tion in fam­i­ly home­less­ness statewide and suc­cess­ful­ly lob­bied for $14 mil­lion in leg­isla­tive allo­ca­tions for com­mu­ni­ty-based efforts sup­port­ing youth and fam­i­lies expe­ri­enc­ing homelessness.

@Amazon

Shobe joined Ama­zon in 2017 as the found­ing direc­tor of the company’s com­mu­ni­ty impact team. With an ini­tial focus on Seat­tle — the loca­tion of the company’s head­quar­ters — as well as the Unit­ed States, she led a small team that devel­oped five char­i­ta­ble priorities:

1. com­put­er sci­ence education; 
2. food inse­cu­ri­ty;
3. afford­able housing; 
4. dis­as­ter relief; and 
5. a vol­un­teer pro­gram for Ama­zon employees.

Shobe’s empha­sis on results and account­abil­i­ty has meshed well with Amazon’s data-dri­ven cul­ture. The com­pa­ny has mul­ti­ple busi­ness­es in many coun­tries — a com­plex­i­ty that has afford­ed Shobe ample oppor­tu­ni­ties to use her Results-Based Facil­i­ta­tion skills to build part­ner­ships and dri­ve shared con­ver­sa­tions to achieve shared goals.

For exam­ple: In the first weeks of the pan­dem­ic, many school sys­tems shut their doors and shift­ed sud­den­ly to remote learn­ing. The Seat­tle pub­lic school sys­tem need­ed to get 8,200 lap­tops in the hands and homes of stu­dents who might oth­er­wise have no oth­er means to keep up with their coursework. 

Shobe and her team met with school offi­cials and tech­ni­cal staff from Ama­zon and the group agreed to shift the school system’s tra­di­tion­al pro­cure­ment approach — buy­ing expen­sive, robust lap­tops that could be recy­cled among stu­dents — to a cheap­er alter­na­tive: Giv­ing Chrome­book lap­tops out­right to kids. As a result of these meet­ings, Ama­zon shipped the 8,200 Chrome­books direct­ly to stu­dents — a dona­tion val­ued at $2 million.

Going Glob­al

In 2020, Shobe began expand­ing Amazon’s com­mu­ni­ty impact work glob­al­ly. The team’s suc­cess­es to date include: 

• sup­port­ing Ukrain­ian refugee relief in Europe;
• devel­op­ing a pro­gram that has deliv­ered 33 mil­lion meals to fam­i­lies fac­ing food insecurity;
• and expand­ing Amazon’s glob­al dis­as­ter relief net­work to 15 hubs that have dis­trib­uted 25 mil­lion relief items since 2017.

Today, Ama­zon pro­vides below-mar­ket financ­ing and grants to pre­serve and cre­ate afford­able hous­ing for low- and mod­er­ate-income fam­i­lies. Yet, the company’s record of financ­ing afford­able hous­ing only began once Shobe arrived.

To grow Amazon’s exper­tise in this area, Shobe assem­bled a team of ded­i­cat­ed finan­cial and legal lead­ers to col­lab­o­rate across the com­pa­ny. The team cre­at­ed the pro­gram and worked with com­mu­ni­ties to ensure that their needs were being met.

Ama­zon has com­mit­ted $3.6 bil­lion to help pre­serve and cre­ate 35,000 afford­able hous­ing units in the Puget Sound region, greater Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and Nashville, Ten­nessee. Since 2021, the com­pa­ny has cre­at­ed or pre­served over 21,000 afford­able homes and more than 10,000 in the Puget Sound region.

Results Count Mindset

Through­out her career, Shobe has con­sis­tent­ly embod­ied the Results Count mind­set. A water bot­tle on her desk bears her straight­for­ward lead­er­ship approach: ​“Get stuff done.” This sim­ple reminder reflects her unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to account­abil­i­ty, action and achiev­ing mean­ing­ful out­comes — prin­ci­ples that have guid­ed her career and cre­at­ed waves of pos­i­tive change for count­less communities.

Read about how results-based facil­i­ta­tion moves groups from talk to action

Learn how fel­lows col­lab­o­rat­ed to strength­en finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty in Minnesota