Stephanie Yim, Co-Founder of Good Call
As you are reading this, 450,000 people in the U.S. are sitting in jail who haven’t been convicted of a crime. Why? Because they simply can’t afford to pay bail, or didn't have access to a lawyer or their loved ones at the time of arrest. Stephanie Yim, Co-Founder and Director of Design at Good Call, is on a mission to change that. Good Call is a tech nonprofit focused on early legal intervention for the arrested in New York. The arrested and their loved ones can call 1-833-3-GOODCALL 24/7 and get connected to a free lawyer immediately. As a designer leading the organization, Yim is bent on ensuring that her organization keeps the community at the center of everything they build.
Shannon Farley: Long before founding Good Call, you were a kid growing up in Queens, New York, a place that had a profound impact on who you are today. Take us back to your experience growing up.
Stephanie Yim: As freshmen in high school, my classmates and I had to make an ephebic oath, which is a statement of commitment to civic duty. Looking back now, I’ve taken that oath to heart and it influences how I think about my work today.
Also, growing up in the most diverse place in the world - Queens, New York - I was exposed to so many cultures and walks of life. I belonged to - not only my community - but the communities of my friends. As I got older, I learned of the intersecting systems of oppression that affect people based on their backgrounds. What keeps me motivated to do the work I do is driven by my desire to return the support and love I’ve experienced from these communities.
Farley: Can you tell us more about why the issue of criminal justice is so important to you?
Yim: To give some perspective, in New York alone, 700 people are arrested every day, a majority of those arrestees coming from low-income communities of color. Worse yet, 1 in 3 black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. There is clearly racial injustice in our criminal justice system. I remember the moment I heard Ray’s story. Ray was arrested in front of his home for a robbery happening nearby simply because he “fit the description.” He ended up spending a week in Rikers Island. After hearing that injustice, I knew there must be something that we could do.
Ray from Brooklyn, at one of the Good Call focus groups
Farley: Prior to co-founding Good Call, you designed for big brands like Mastercard and Chrysler. What motivated your shift to social impact tech?
Yim: For a bit of background, my dad was a designer. He taught me to notice how design impacts every aspect of our lives; that design is about improving things as much as it is about daring to redefine the status quo. I had always wanted to apply these design principles in service of positive social impact, but didn’t really know how to access the social justice and nonprofit space.
When I learned about the Blue Ridge Labs social impact fellowship, I thought to myself, this is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. The fellowship’s theme that year was “access to legal justice.” Aside from this theme being a social justice issue I cared deeply about, my mom had been an immigration paralegal for over 20 years and I knew that innovation was needed in that space.
Farley: That’s where you met Jelani Anglin, Gabriel Leader-Rose, and Eugene Lynch, the group that would become the founding team of Good Call. What was the process of designing Good Call like?
Yim: The idea for Good Call came forth after spending a lot of time talking to people that have been affected by the criminal justice system. We spent months interviewing New Yorkers, even surveying people being released from Central Bookings in exchange for sandwiches. We kept hearing similar stories...when you’re arrested, your phone is taken away. Unless you have a lawyer’s phone number memorized, you often can’t talk to one - or even your loved ones - until it’s too late.
We learned that what people wanted most was immediate relief and support during an arrest. That was when we decided to create a hotline.
Team Good Call with our community and legal partners Picture the Homeless at City Hall advocating ... [+]
Farley: Can you describe your tech nonprofit, Good Call?
Yim: Good Call runs a free 24/7 arrest support hotline in NYC. In the case of an arrest, anyone or their loved ones can call 1-833-3-GOODCALL and be connected to a lawyer in under a minute. We do this by partnering with all the public defender offices in NYC, so individuals and lawyers can reach each other at the moment of crisis through our platform. Although not a prerequisite to calling the hotline, Good Call also runs an emergency contact directory that allows anyone to save friends and families’ contact info on goodcall.nyc so that loved ones can be notified by a lawyer in case of an arrest. Our goal is to protect the rights of all people, particularly the over-policed, by providing immediate access to legal assistance in case of arrest.
Farley: You don’t often see a designer in the co-founding team of an organization. How has this influenced the trajectory of the Good Call organization and product?
Yim: I push our organization to think about community-centered design. The impact of a person’s arrest cascades down and impacts their loved ones, friends, and community. Knowing this, how then can we design solutions that support and strengthen all these people, including the lawyers that are doing their best but are overworked? As a designer and co-founder, my job is to inject this community-centered design thinking into - not just our product decisions - but all aspects of our organization.
From a product perspective, Good Call needs to be reliable, credible, and usable, since we’re asking people to trust us during arrest, especially because there is so much justified mistrust in the criminal justice space. We keep the community at the center of every part of the design process. For instance, at one point we considered creating an app, but once we heard that pulling out a phone can be misconstrued as pulling out a gun from one of our community focus groups, we quickly abandoned the idea.
Stephanie Yim at a Good Call community event letting people know about the hotline
Farley: Can you tell us a story about how Good Call has positively affected a person’s life?
Yim: A few months after launching Good Call, we received a call from a mother whose son was arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack. She had no idea which precinct her son was taken to and she had to be at work, so she called Good Call.
She was immediately connected to a lawyer at The Bronx Defenders. The lawyer located her son and went to the precinct, where he witnessed him being placed in a biased lineup - her son was shown to the victim before anyone else. Upon hearing this in court, the judge threw out the case and her son was able to return home. The young gentleman is going to play college basketball this fall. Stories like these show how early legal intervention can make the difference between someone going home justly, or going to jail for the wrong reasons.
Farley: What’s the best piece of advice you’d pass on to other women entrepreneurs?
Yim: You are enough.
It’s common for me to be the only woman and queer person of color in the room and I’ve struggled with self-doubt. Whether that is doubting that my words carry as much weight as my fellow male co-founders or if I am talking too much or too little in a meeting, it’s been easy to tell myself that I’m not good enough.
Once I confronted my limiting beliefs and allowed myself to celebrate my accomplishments, I learned that I - we - are capable of more than we often believe. Daring to pursue your passion with the tenacity to continue working on something despite its challenges is already more than enough proof that you have what it takes.
In addition to working on Good Call, Yim is a lettering artist (More of her work here: ... [+]
Farley: What will the world look like when Good Call is successful?
Yim: When Good Call is successful, everyone will have access to early legal representation, no matter who you are or how much money you have. The promise of the 6th amendment - guaranteeing everyone a lawyer - will no longer be an ideal we strive towards, but a reality. And the impact of our work will influence policies that redefine our criminal justice system. If one day we can put ourselves out of business because Good Call is no longer needed, then we will know we’ve succeeded.
