In this episode of the Achieve Podcast, host Taylor Baker interviews Tyler Clark, CEO and co‑founder of Zawadi, a social‑impact BPO that employs refugees to provide customer service and business operations for large corporations. Clark recounts the origin story: after building remote libraries in Africa and witnessing a refugee’s struggle, he and his wife created Zawadi to give displaced people dignified work rather than charity. The company now has about 35 full‑time staff, with growth driven by business process outsourcing demand and AI‑augmented workforce solutions. Clark discusses cultural integration challenges—balancing refugees’ work ethic and local customs with U.S. corporate expectations—and the perception hurdle of convincing clients to trust refugee‑run teams. Marketing relies heavily on LinkedIn referrals, while AI tools (real‑time accent modification, ChatGPT for tone adaptation) are being experimented with to improve communication. Clark reflects on a missed early adoption of AI, wishing he had leveraged it sooner. Looking ahead, he aims to focus the next 90 days on marketing—showcasing the team’s professionalism through photos, videos, and stories—to overcome perception barriers. The conversation ends with a call to action for listeners to connect via Zawadi’s website and LinkedIn.
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Welcome to another episode of the Achieve Podcast, the show where we highlight leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs who are building meaningful businesses and shaping their industries and having an impact on society. I'm Taylor Baker Baker, your host, and today we're excited to be joined by Tyler Clark, the CEO and co-founder at Zawadi, and you can find them at zawadi.com. Z-A-W-A-D-I-E. Now, Tyler, What you guys are doing here is, is a bit of a niche, and I love the story that I've learned so far. But give us the backstory, how you got into the space and who you guys are currently serving.
Yeah, no, um, I'll try to keep that brief because it's been, it's been a long road. Um, so me and my wife, for the last 6-7 years, we've been building libraries, and we specialize in remote libraries. Uh, so we built 22 throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and we ended up building one in a refugee camp just because we heard there were 15,000 kids. We're like, oh, awesome, that's a great place to go. And we knew basic stuff about refugees, but when we got there, it was pretty intense. You know, seeing the situation of the camp, which is more like a city, is pretty earth-shattering. The lady that we were with and that was guiding us around, her English was perfect. And she was wonderfully articulate. And when we started asking, hey, what's your story? She was telling us, well, you know, I got my master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, right? And we're in Africa. We're in the middle of Africa. And we're like, wait, what? She's like, well, I was a Fulbright scholar. I worked for the UN for a little bit. And then I came back to my country and I was pretty outspoken with things I didn't like that the president was doing. And next thing I knew, I heard from a coworker that the president had a kill squad coming to kill me and my family the very next morning. So they left their 3-car garage, their beautiful home, the wonderful life that she had built, and they left the middle of the night and they've been living in a shack for the last 6 years, right? And that's the story of so many refugees, right? And even to this day, I can't post her name or her photo because she's they're still looking for, right? And the thing that she said that really hit me and why we started Zawadi was she said, "I'm sick of charity. I just want to work again," right? And as we all know, like, there's a lot of dignity with being able to work, especially when you have those abilities and you have those skills. So when I got back to the United States, and I'm from Utah, I started meeting with executives around Silicon Slopes. And I was like, hey, you know, can they do customer service for you? We have a whole facility down there. What work can we have them do remotely? And that's where Zawadi was born, right? And now we do customer service, business operations for a number of large corporations here. One that's very well known is the Mutual Dating Group. We do a ton of stuff for them, their customer service. And it's been a wonderful, fulfilling ride. Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. There's a lot to unpack in that story.
Yeah.
The, yeah, I just think about that, like having the degree, having the education and, and I love, I love that line. I'm sick of charity. I just want to work again. It's like, I don't want to hand out. I want to hand up. Yeah.
Yeah.
An opportunity.
Wow.
Now at this day, so the organization itself, how big is it? How, how big is the team?
Um, we have about 35 full-time people now. That fluctuates with projects. Um, we do have some major contracts coming through that might double that in the next week or two. Um, but yeah.
Wow. And what would you say is driving growth for the organization right now?
Um, the biggest driver is business processing, and a lot of corporations looking to outsource, uh, core issues that they're doing, as well as they're very interested in AI-augmented workforce, which is what we do.
That makes sense. Now, looking back for you personally, what turning points, positive or negative, have molded the way you think about running this organization?
Um, so originally, one thing that was very interesting to me was the importance of culture. Um, you know, as I mentioned with the story, like, a lot of these people, they are hard workers. I mean, working 14 hours a day is not an issue for them. They actually had a really hard time with me when I started because like, all right, you guys are going to work 8 hours a day, you're going to get the weekends off, you're going to get 3 weeks of vacation, you know, kind of standard stuff that we're used to, right? And, and they got really upset with me and they're like, Tyler, you don't understand, there's nothing to do in the camp, like let us work over the weekend. And I was like, okay, but you still Sunday, Sunday's got to stick off. And so wonderfully work ethic, amazingly, um you know, optimistic all the time and great problem solvers. But there are cultural differences, right? And there are cultural differences that do go head-to-head with working with US corporations, right? Yeah. And, and that was a big learning curve for me to realize, hey, we need to address and we need to do proper training so they have those core competencies with working with the US corporation. But at the same time there are cultural differences that actually give them a strength in the United States. So it's a hard balance with— we're not trying to make them into American workers. We're really trying to help them give the skills so they know how to communicate with US workers while still being themselves.
Right. Wow.
Wow.
I love that. And that is a nav— a tight line to navigate.
Yeah.
Yeah. Now, as you guys try to grow and expand, what have been some of the biggest bottlenecks or obstacles that have shown up?
Um, one of the biggest things that we have a challenge with is perception. Um, people love what we do. It's not hard for us to get meetings, right? People love— yeah, I'd love to help refugees, I, I, I love to make a difference. Like, people are good, right? But once it comes down to, hey, how would you like them to do your core business, right? Then, then things a little change, right? You know, when you think of Africa, what do you typically think of? You think of huts, you know, you think of that, which is not Africa at all. Well, there are places that are like that, but you know, you walk down Nairobi in Kenya and it's anywhere like, you know, Silicon Valley, right? You go to Accra, Ghana, and it's as nice, as beautiful as any part of Washington, DC, right? And so you have kind of a mix of cultures with that. But the other thing as well is when you say refugees, a lot of people, you know, they've just grown up watching the charity shows, Donate, which are needful. And, you know, there definitely is a need there, but it gives a perception of like, oh, I don't, I don't want to hire homeless people, or I don't want to hire displaced people to do a core business, something that provides for my family. And so it's kind of a two-edged sword. On one side, it gets us in the door. But we have to show them like, no, these are very competent individuals. Many times they outperform their US counterparts, right? But trying to convince them to do that is very difficult.
Wow. I could see that. Yeah. So when it comes to your messaging and outreach, your marketing systems, what's been working well and where do you feel the gaps and frustrations?
Um, what's been working really well is LinkedIn outreach as well as for the referrals. Most of our business right now actually comes from referrals. Our customers that are with us love us, and so they'll, you know, reach out with their counterparts as well to take up our service as well. You know, email marketing is, of course, becoming by the day less and less effective. Doing phone calls is also something that we've really— we've been able to get some business from that, but that's one where we're really experimenting with AI augmentation. There's amazing AI tools that allow us to change our accents. They don't even realize that the person calling them is in the heart of Africa, right? Um, and so we're— but we're in the process of experimenting. Like, we're trying new things, and hopefully we'll get a payday from it.
So AI— so yeah, I mean, with the AI, you're saying they can change the accent in the middle of the phone call, or like a pre-recorded No, real time, real time.
It's amazing.
Oh my word. So what other AI tools you guys have found internally to utilize and where do you still see more opportunity?
So we do a lot of ChatGPT for our messaging. That's a big part as well. Like, you know, programming the AI to talk in an American tone. Many of these individuals, I mean, their English is great, but it's more of a UK English, right? Or proper English, right? And so, you know, how they communicate, words that they say seem too formal, and because they seem too formal, kind of puts off a lot of Americans. So a lot of times we have to put through our responses as we're talking with customers and customer-facing to make sure that it has more of an American tone. And AI allows us to do that without doing lengthy training for all of our, you know, all of our agents on how to communicate as an American. Wow.
It is amazing to see the changes that have come. Yeah. So when you think about the next stages of the business, what are you most excited about?
What— so, you know, the, the growth and, and what we're able to do is, is exciting, but really the most exciting thing to me is, um, the development of the agents themselves. Like, one of the funnest things this morning is we have a weekly check-in on some core initiatives And this morning I, I, um, I, I joined in and, um, I was there a couple minutes late because I was getting my kids to school. And when I got there, our leaders were running through and doing it, and they were doing an amazing job. And I love to see the initiative, I love to see the productivity, and I love to see how they're progressing and growing within these roles enough that it's at the point where I'm like, I don't know if they need me anymore. Like, I think I'm dead weight at this point. Like, they, they could run this business on their own.
That's awesome. But it's good to see that when it takes flight and, and grows organically like that. Yeah, man. So when you look at your own journey, the wins, the mistakes, what lessons stand out to you, and what do you wish you understood sooner?
I wish I would have really jumped onto AI sooner. Like, it's— and it's just crazy with how fast it's grown. Yeah, right? Within like months, every month it's different. But at the beginning, I was like, ah, I saw it as more of a threat to what we were doing because we're still focusing on, you know, menial low-wage jobs that we can come in and kind of take over that, do that. Um, AI though really is an augmentation tool, right? I think there are some roles that AI will take over, but really it's more to augment human productivity. And I wish I would have done that sooner because we would have been so so much farther down the road if we would have done that.
That makes sense. I can see that for sure. Now, Taylor Baker Baker, if you had to pick one constraint to focus on and solve over the next 90 days, what would it be?
Um, that's a good question. Um, I think the biggest thing for us is, um, is our marketing. Um, you know, if I could focus on nothing but our marketing over the next 90 days and really solve that problem we were talking about before about perceived perception, which is, which is easy to do, but it's photos, it's videos, it's stories, it's showing these individuals, it's showing them in, you know, we have a really nice workstation there, showing them that to show like, hey, this is a place you can trust, you can go. And that really, if I could focus on the 90 days, I think that would take us where we really want to be.
That makes sense. And that clarity on the story. I mean, the story is real and the talent skills are there. And so I can see that the conflict somebody would have is like you had mentioned, this homeless person, personal, these are intellectual people with a skill, with a job, with a degree. They're just as competent. So, wow. Wow. Tyler, thank you for coming on and sharing your story, sharing what you guys do. And for those who want to reach out and want to learn more, and they can go to your guys' website and go to LinkedIn. And so, Zawadi.com, anywhere else you want to send them?
Yeah, reach out to me on LinkedIn, Tyler Clark. You'll see a picture of me in the Zawadi banner. Um, but more specifically, go to zawadi.com, and that's C-A-W-A-D-I-E, um, and schedule a call and we can talk through it. And if we're the right fit for you, we'll do it. If we're not, we'll refer you to someone that is. Um, but at the end of the day, we just want to make sure that you're successful and also these refugees get some dignified work.
I love that, dignified work. Thank you. And thank you to our sponsors of today's episode, Achieve Fractional, which provides fractional executive leadership for growing businesses. And if you enjoyed today's episode, share it with a friend, with a colleague. If you're looking to branch out, you're looking to get some virtual assistants, reach out to Tyler and the team. Very competent. And, and do good and get good help at the same time.
Like that.
I love that. Tyler, thank you so much.
Oh, thank you so much, Taylor.
And thank you for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode of the Achieve Podcast.
