
Fresh From the frank Stage
Standout talks from the most recent 2023 gathering, featuring bold voices, urgent truths and unforgettable moments.

Amahra Spence
Liberation Rehearsal Notes from a Time Traveler

Shanelle Matthews
Narrative Power Today for an Abolitionist Future

Nima Shirazi
Irresistible Forces, Immovable Objects
The Speaker
Stacy Hess Business Development Consultant
Stacy Hess is a communications expert with nearly 20 years in PR, marketing and crisis management. Founder of positivePR, she builds grassroots support for social causes and has worked on high-profile cases like kidnap survivor Hannah Anderson’s. Stacy holds degrees in Communications and Spanish.
Watch Next
Amber Alert 2.0, Leveraging Technology + Media to Find Our Children
FamilyPublic Interest CommunicationsSocial MediaTechnology
Transcript
That is arguably the most technologically advanced way we have today. I’m going to come back to talking about the Amber Alert and thank you for sharing a little bit of that story. So yesterday I was sitting out here on a bench and I heard this beautiful music wafting up from somewhere outside. And like a child of Hamlin I followed it down to the front area and I thought, oh my gosh there’s a cellist and a violinist playing spontaneously in front of the hippodrome. And I learned this morning that it was not so much spontaneous, it was orchestrated by the amazing Aaron Hart, however, oh, Anne. Anyway, so I got to thinking as I was sitting down there on this bench listening to this music and other people started showing up and gathering around. I got to thinking about the idea of community and it’s a topic I think a lot about. And so just as the music that I heard yesterday created a community of people, what we all just heard now makes us part of a community. We’re now part of a community of people who know what a mobile Amber Alert sounds like. So now when you hear that you can share that information with other people and maybe that will help make our community bigger. So you can belong to a community for years or for a moment, you might belong to a community and not even know it. I’m sure you can all think of lots of communities that you belong to or have belong to or might aspire to belong to. Creating a community is a great way to create social change. You build a community and you inspire other people to join your community or at least support it. So back in August I became a member of a community that I didn’t even know existed and that was a community of people who understand and advocate for the importance of the Amber Alert. And so that’s what I want to talk about a little bit today. Oh, I have to point up there. It’s not, oh, whoops. So 679, that’s the number of children who have been safely returned to their families as a result of the Amber Alert since the program’s inception in 1996. Depending on the polling agency, the effectiveness rate of an Amber Alert is anywhere between 48 and 65 percent, which sounds pretty good until you learn that annually in the United States, 797,500 children are reported missing. Let me put that in perspective for you. In 2013, the population of Columbus, Ohio, the state capital was 797,500 people. So imagine everyone in Columbus, Ohio, disappearing over the course of a year. That’s how many of our children are reported missing every year. But that’s okay because there are lots of other ways to find our missing kids, right? Absolutely. In fact, between 1996 and 2012, that’s 16 years for the people who don’t like math. I had to do it on my iPhone. 205 children were recovered as the result of flyers that were hung at Walmart stores. 153 were recovered as the result of direct mail campaigns. And in that 16-year period, 10 children were recovered as the result of Nightly News broadcasts. In that same 16-year period, 572 children were recovered thanks to the Amber Alert. So here’s what we know. The Amber Alert works. The Amber Alert saves children. And it saves children like Hannah Anderson. I get a little emotional. So for those of you who don’t know Hannah or what happened with Hannah, she was kidnapped by a close family friend, Jim DiMaggio, early August. And an Amber Alert went out for her on August 4th. It was discovered that Jim had murdered her mother and her younger eight-year-old brother, Ethan. And on August 5th, the state of California issued its first statewide mobile Amber Alert. And that’s when I became interested in understanding what was happening with the Amber Alert. I’ve spent a lot of years in technology and I found myself wondering, why exactly is it that we’re using decades-old technology to disseminate a system that we know works to people who can help find kids? So I started doing a little research and what I found out was that in 2011, Facebook forged a partnership with the Amber Alert system. And this partnership was designed to use Facebook to push Amber Alerts out. But it wasn’t terribly successful. In fact, in the three years since that program started, 2011, January 2011, through November of 2013, approximately 450 Amber Alerts were issued. Exactly three of them were put on Facebook. So not terribly successful. So what can we do to leverage social media and technology to help find more of our missing children? Well, there’s a really simple solution. You can use existing geo-targeting technology and algorithms that’s already being used by Facebook to place ads on your newsfeed and my newsfeed. And you can use that to push out Amber Alerts. So right now I’m working with some folks in San Francisco to get some messaging that hopefully will get us a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg so we can talk about that. I believe that if Mark Zuckerberg can rally the Titans of Technology to find a way to get internet connectivity to the farthest reaches of this planet, he certainly can do the same to help find our missing children. So my challenge to each of you is to help us build a community around finding ways to get more Amber Alerts out using technology and social media. And my challenge to Mark Zuckerberg, and I’m talking to you, Mark Zuckerberg, is that you rally the Titans of Technology and put as much effort into finding our missing children as you put in placing ads on our newsfeeds, technology on our faces, and creating look-back videos in celebration of your own 10-year anniversary. The reality is that unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing’s going to get better, it’s not. And that is the wonderful Dr. Seuss. And with my last 55 seconds, I want to take a picture of you guys. My mom and dad don’t really believe I’m doing this. They don’t really understand what I do or why I might do this, so I just… They’re from Ohio, they don’t believe anything. So anyway, I’m going to take your picture. I’m going to… Pardon me? I could… No, that’s too advanced for them. They have web TV until a year ago. So I’m going to start here. Everybody smile and wave to Sandy and Jack. All right. You guys are next. Smile and wave, Sandy and Jack, and you guys. All right. Thank you. Thank you.
Watch Next



