The following is a conversation between Tracy DeTomasi, CEO of Callisto, and Denver Frederick, the Host of The Business of Giving.
Denver: Callisto is a trailblazing nonprofit that uses technology to combat sexual assault and empower survivors. Through innovative tools, they help survivors document incidents and identify serial offenders, thereby facilitating justice and creating safer communities. And here to give us deeper insights into this impactful work is the driving force behind the organization, Tracy DeTomasi, the CEO of Callisto.
Welcome to The Business of Giving, Tracy.
Tracy DeTomasi CEO of Callisto
Tracy: Thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Denver: Share with us the evolution of Callisto from its beginnings as Sexual Health Innovations to the focus mission it holds today.
Tracy: Yeah, so we were founded by Jess Ladd in 2011 as Sexual Health Innovations, as you mentioned. And she really worked to create technology to help sexual health. And one of those projects was Callisto. And in 2015, we got a big grant from Google.org. And at that time, she had gotten rid of the other technology that she was working on and really started to build out what is now Callisto.
And so in 2016, we switched our name from Sexual Health Innovations to Callisto just to focus on this technology. And pretty much, here we are. Our first technology was called Callisto Campus, and it was really meant to be sold to Title IX offices, and it was a reporting tool to really help the work and enhance the work that Title IX offices did.
And after some several years of that, we realized that there was a better way to do things, to not have the barriers for survivors. And a lot of survivors told us they were looking for something before they reported. So Jess and her team at that time went back and kind of reinvented the wheel a little bit.
And now we have the tool called Callisto Vault. And so we… about 40 campuses right now have access. And in the fall, anybody with a .edu account will have free access, with no cost to the school.
Denver: Fantastic. The statistics surrounding sexual violence among students are really staggering. Share with listeners what some of those numbers are.
Tracy: Yeah. Well, 13% of college students in the U.S. will experience sexual assault each year. So that’s 2,468,700 students, which is roughly the population of Chicago. And so that further breaks down to one in four women, one in five trans or gender non-conforming students, and one in 15 male students. And so those numbers are just absolutely horrendous.
And for historically oppressed racial groups, LGBTQ folks and people with disabilities, those numbers are even worse, actually. And some of the numbers, the statistics that we focus on here at Callisto is that when you hear a number like two and a half million, it feels like the problem is insurmountable.
The issue is, is that two and a half million isn’t actually the problem. That is the symptom of the problem. And so often, we’re not actually focused on what the problem is. And the problem is perpetrators.
Denver: Yeah.
Tracy: So on college campuses in the U.S., about 90% of the sexual assaults committed on college campuses are committed by serial perpetrators, who on average commit six offenses while in college… to six different victims. And so if we can stop a perpetrator from offending after two offenses rather than that six, we can reduce college sexual assault by 59%.
Denver: Wow. This is not equivalent at all, but I had Arne Duncan on the show, and he’s dealing with guns in Chicago, and there’s so many guns on the street, but he said, Really, it’s not as many as you think. It’s the number of people who are using them as offensive weapons is really actually kind of tiny, and everybody has it to protect themselves.
So you don’t have to focus on the whole universe; you have to focus on that universe. Of these sexual assaults, do you have any idea as to how many of them go reported?
Tracy: Less than 6%.
Denver: Wow. Less…
Tracy: So most… Yeah. Most people don’t report sexual assault for a variety of reasons. The systems are pretty terrible that they report to. They’re often really… they re-traumatize the survivor. A lot of survivors are not believed. They’re complicated. They take a long time. And again, they’re even worse for people in marginalized groups.
But a lot of times also, survivors don’t recognize what they experienced is sexual assault because maybe they consented to making out with somebody, but they didn’t consent to sex. And so then they feel partially responsible, and they feel alone, and they feel like they won’t be believed. And so they choose not to report.
Denver: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Callisto Vault, let’s go back to that. It’s a remarkable set of tools. Why don’t you walk us through how this matching system within Callisto Vault has really been a game changer in detecting repeat offenders and fostering some coordinated action.
Tracy: Yeah. So with the matching system, we’ve made it really quick and easy. So it’s really about three steps for somebody who has access to Callisto Vault to enter the matching. And the first thing that they do is they enter the state in which the assault occurred.
Denver: Okay.
Tracy: And so we do this because the laws around sexual assault vary from state to state. So we want to make sure that we’re prepared with what state they’re in to understand those laws prior to connecting with them.
The second thing they do is they add a unique identifier for the perpetrator. And that is a social media handle, email address or phone number for the perpetrator. And most survivors can find that out. And we also do this because a name isn’t unique enough. I have a cousin named John Smith. If you put John Smith’s name into Callisto Vault, there would be way too many people. And so that’s why we wanted something that was really unique.
Denver: Got it.
Tracy: The third step is that they confirm their contact information, which the employees at Callisto don’t have access to. That’s all protected information, and that is really there for the legal option counselor. So then they review their entry, and they hit submit. And that’s it.
So we don’t make them explain their whole experience when entering the matching because if they don’t match, we don’t want to re-traumatize them by having them tell their experience before they’re ready.
And then what happens is if somebody else goes in and puts that same unique identifier– so that same Instagram, that same TikTok profile– there’s a match. And what initially people think is that we’re like a Tinder site or a dating site where they say, it’s a match! And that’s not what happens because that wouldn’t be safe.
What happens is that we get notified, and there’s a two-step process to decrypt the information because all of the information is stored on our server in the encrypted state, and our matching works in the encrypted state. So what happens is that we get notified. We go into our backend portal; we cannot see the name of the survivor or the perpetrator. We are not a list of perpetrators.
So we get a case ID for both the perpetrator and the survivor, but we can see the name of the school where the survivor attends, and we can see the state in which the assault occurred. And then what we’re able to do is assign that to a legal options counselor.
And a legal options counselor is an attorney that is of no cost for the survivor that specializes in sexual assault. And they contact each survivor individually. And that’s the first time the survivor is aware that there’s a match. And the information, the only reason that the legal options counselors have that information is because it’s protected under attorney/client privilege. And so that information cannot be shared with anybody.
And so they meet with the survivor, and they go through their legal options. This is what it’s like to go through the criminal justice system. This is what it’s like for a civil case. Here’s the difference. Here’s what Title IX might look like. Do you have a Title IX case? Is that even possible depending on who the offender is?
Maybe the survivor wants to blast the perpetrator’s name on social media, and the legal options counselor can tell them what are the legal ramifications of that because that often ends in defamation.
Denver: Yep.
Tracy: So they go through all of that. Once the survivor is ready, the attorney will say, “Did you want to connect with the other person?” If both are… all the matched survivors want to connect, the survivors work to safely connect them, as long as it’s not going to impact any potential legal cases that these survivors want to pursue.
And then the survivors can work towards healing or justice, whatever it means to them. Because in doing this work for 20-plus years that I have, there’s two things that survivors always tell me. The first thing is that they felt so alone for years and years and years. They always felt so alone. The second thing is they say, “I wish I would’ve reported to make sure that that person didn’t do it to anybody else.”
I reported because that person, I didn’t want that person to do it to anybody else, or I felt guilty for not reporting because I worried about that. And this is a way that they can determine if somebody else has been offended by the same person without having to publicly name themselves, which is really important. So that’s the basic part of the matching system within Callisto.
“We’re the only organization really doing this, and so there’s a lot of questions that we’re still determining like any new tech company, of what is the best way to collect this data in the safest way for survivors. And we would rather err on the side of protecting survivors than we would of collecting all of this rich data, which most companies do the opposite.”
Denver: That’s a great rundown. And it’s wonderful how you really remove all the friction, particularly upfront. You make it as easy, as frictionless. Obviously when you get a match, there’s another level you go to, but you’re not going to that level just for the sake of going to that level. You’re going there when there’s really some reason to do so.
Have you been able to measure the impact of this in terms of what happens, what survivors most often do, or just the outcome that has resulted?
Tracy: Yeah. Right now, about 15% of matching entries actually find another survivor of the same perpetrator.
Denver: Okay.
Tracy: And we have matches with more than one or more than two survivors, so we’re finding these perpetrators to match with 3, 4, 5 different survivors. And we also have cross-campus matches. So that means the survivors attend two different schools, but the perpetrator is still the same.
And as far as ongoing impact, we are still collecting a lot of data on that because data is security issues, and so we want to make sure that our system is secure as possible. And so we are developing some new ways to really figure out the long-term impact of this.
We know that about 50% of the people do want to match or do want to connect with the other survivor; a lot aren’t ready, and that’s okay. We give them the choice. And so in the next year, we are going to do a lot more data analysis to really figure out the bigger impact. But we’re the only people doing this.
Denver: Yeah.
Tracy: We’re the only organization really doing this, and so there’s a lot of questions that we’re still determining like any new tech company, of what is the best way to collect this data in the safest way for survivors. And we would rather err on the side of protecting survivors than we would of collecting all of this rich data, which most companies do the opposite.
Denver: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s sometimes what I hope that distinguishes the nonprofit space from some of the others because of the care and that concern for people’s privacy.
Do you think there’s going to be anything with emergent technologies and innovations that are going to take this even farther than it’s already gone, or is that getting a little bit ahead of the game?
Tracy: That’s a good question. I’m not sure. That might be getting a little bit ahead of the game for the moment.
Denver: Yeah. Okay. So talk a little bit about the Double Red Zone because that happened, I guess, post-pandemic, and just give us an idea of what that was about.
Tracy: Yeah, so the Red Zone is really when about 50% of sexual assaults occur, or over 50% of sexual assaults occur on a college campus, which happens from basically the beginning of the school year. So whether it’s August or September, depending on when that college starts campus classes until right before Thanksgiving, so around Halloween.
And that’s when a significant amount of the sexual assaults happened. And they called it the Double Red Zone that first year back after the pandemic because students… there’d been several years of classes that hadn’t taken place.
And so there were students who hadn’t been around other people for a year or two, finding this newfound freedom and abusing it… where you looked at these perpetrators who were just ready to do things, which was really unfortunate. And so the numbers went up significantly for a lot of reasons that I think that there’s a lot of people still really studying that.
But a lot of college students going into school don’t really think about being sexually assaulted. That’s not a concern. They’re looking to get away from their parents. They’re looking to party.
Denver: Yes.
Tracy: They’re looking for newfound freedoms and looking to figure out who they are as a person. When you’re 18, 19 years old, they’re not thinking about sexual assault. So all of the warnings, they don’t… they’re risky. They take risky behaviors. We all did. Like that is just a phase of life when you’re 18 to 22.
And so they weren’t aware of that. And then I think that they were, given the pandemic and given the isolation, there were just even more risk factors that occurred during that time. So yeah, sexual assaults were very, very rampant… and they always are, and they were even worse that first year post-pandemic.
Denver: Yeah, no, I think you see that across society in every kind of discourse that people have, whether it be on airplanes or in lines, people just seem to be a little shorter and a little bit more violent than they were, at least as I remember.
You’d mentioned you’re on about 40 college campuses. I think you had your first national partnership reaching over a half million. Tell us a little about that partnership and those 40 campuses that you’re on.
Tracy: Yeah. So right now we’ve really piloted the first two years with different campuses across the country, from East Coast to West Coast. We have religious institutions, state institutions— and big and small all over the place just to see… our technology is only going to work as well as the amount of people that know about it. So we wanted to figure out different strategies of really kind of implementing this across campuses.
And we are a third-party nonprofit, so we are a neutral third party. We want the campuses to be really involved, but we also know that there’s red tape there. And so the students have access… and actually anybody at those campuses with a .edu account has access, regardless if the school wants them to or not because we do really act again as that neutral third-party nonprofit.
But what’s really exciting is that this fall, hopefully we meet all of our goals by October of 2023. Anybody with a .edu will have access to it for free, at no cost to the school. And so we’ve learned a lot of lessons from those 40 schools, and we’re looking to continue our outreach and to continue the marketing to make sure that people really know that they have access to this really important free tool.
Because it is so new, people don’t know how to use it. They think matching takes a long time. It takes about five minutes as long as you know the social media handles of the person. And we’re really, really excited about that because we know that we can identify perpetrators who are evading accountability by switching schools.
And we see that time and time again. And we see that survivors haven’t been able to connect in a safe way before, which is another reason why perpetrators continually get away with it. And survivors shouldn’t have to be the one to hold perpetrators accountable. The systems should, but the systems aren’t.
And so we can see with the history of the Me Too Movement of how that collective voice of survivors from one perpetrator can really work together to hold that perpetrator accountable, or just experience healing on their own. And that’s also really powerful.
“We’re working on some partnerships with some different companies as well to really, again, promote this in a different way because sexual assault impacts everyone. Absolutely everyone. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and if you don’t think you know a survivor, you absolutely know a survivor. And if you don’t think you know a perpetrator, you also absolutely know a perpetrator.“
Denver: Tracy, share with listeners your thoughts on scalability because I think there are going to be some people tuning in who are saying, Oh, they must have about a hundred people there with what they’re being able to do.
But you have really leveraged technology and leveraged partnerships to reach an awful lot of people with a very few staff people. Talk a little bit about it and what some of the keys have been to really scale your impact.
Tracy: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that nonprofits are small and mighty, and we do things that people and for-profits don’t always really consider. And so we are a small and mighty team. But we really work with partners. We know what our lane is; we know what we want to do.
And we know that there are a lot of people out there and a lot of organizations and companies and schools that really want to end sexual assault and really have a new way to help survivors. And so we partner with those organizations. So we partner with organizations who are already speaking to survivors, so that they know that in their presentations and their discussions that they can tell the survivors that this is another tool.
We partner with schools so we have schools that the student government organizations put in decrees, or whatever, that say all freshman orientation courses have to go through this. And Callisto has to be added to those freshman orientations so they know that this is a resource.
We’re working on some partnerships with some different companies as well to really, again, promote this in a different way because sexual assault impacts everyone. Absolutely everyone. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and if you don’t think you know a survivor, you absolutely know a survivor. And if you don’t think you know a perpetrator, you also absolutely know a perpetrator.
And so there’s a lot of people that are really valuing spreading the message and being involved, whether that’s through simply liking and sharing our social media posts through donating… because we rely on donors. We rely on individual donors; we rely on foundations and corporate sponsorships and everything.
So we are a hundred percent philanthropically funded, which I think people wonder about the scale of that. But I know that people are interested in this topic. And as soon as you give them the opportunity to give and to be able to make a difference, they step up and they do.
“But one, the information in Callisto is private and nobody is going to get to that. We’re not a reporting tool. We don’t report to the police. We don’t report to Title IX. So there’s no worry about false reporting, even if somebody names you in the system because it’s all very much protected. But the other thing that’s more important is that men on college campuses are more likely to be sexually assaulted than they are to be falsely accused. So while we want to engage men and boys in ending violence against women, we will also want people to understand that so many of these men and boys are victims.“
Denver: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit more about that educational outreach because I know that’s one of the things that you do. And also I’d be curious as to whether you have any programs or initiatives or collaborate with anyone on the role of men and boys in ending violence against women.
Tracy: Yeah. Let me think about that. We don’t have any specific partnerships right now, but it is work that I have done for a long time. I’ve actually created a whole program in my past work life about engaging men. And I think that it’s really important. And one of the statistics that I say often is that a lot of people are really worried about false reporting and false accusations; particularly men are worried about that.
But one, the information in Callisto is private, and nobody is going to get to that. We’re not a reporting tool. We don’t report to the police. We don’t report to Title IX. So there’s no worry about false reporting, even if somebody names you in the system because it’s all very much protected.
But the other thing that’s more important is that men on college campuses are more likely to be sexually assaulted than they are to be falsely accused. So while we want to engage men and boys in ending violence against women, we will also want people to understand that so many of these men and boys are victims.
And we want them to have a place too, because a lot of times they don’t know where to go. All the resources are a lot the times geared towards women. And so we want to bring them into this conversation as survivors as well because we think that that is really, really important.
And so that is definitely something that we’re working through and that we make sure to partner with organizations who really understand that. And we are starting some conversations with fraternities and sororities as well, but definitely fraternities, because we need them on board.
Denver: Yeah.
Tracy: One, because there’s a lot of victims in fraternity houses. And two, they have the power to really stop this before it gets started, you know? And if they worry about one of their fraternity brothers being accused of something, we’ll tell people to report them in or to add them into the matching system.
Because then if there’s a pattern where there’s two, there’s three, there’s four people that that one fraternity brother has offended, then you know where to target the accountability for your house. And that can make a really significant impact, too.
Denver: Yeah, for sure. Let’s go back to funding. Do you have anything up your sleeve? Because I mean, this is huge work. This is a big endeavor, and it’s so important.
Tracy: It is.
Denver: I mean, what are you thinking about in terms of generating new sources of revenue… or just additional sources from your sources already?
Tracy: Yeah, we’re always looking for new partners and new funders. We have a peer-to-peer giving campaign where people, if they can’t afford to donate significant amounts but they are really interested in this cause, they can go to give.projectcallisto.org and set up their own fundraising, a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, which is really great.
We’re really trying to raise $1 per survivor to really get this off the ground in October so we can be a free resource. We’re also always looking at foundations that are interested in investing in really innovative tech, as well as corporate sponsorships.
We’re really starting to develop a corporate sponsorship program hopefully in the fall that we can work with these corporate sponsors… so we can use their clout and their outreach to really spread the word. And so if anybody is… any of your listeners are really interested in that, I would love to connect with them.
Denver: You can have a lot of impact. It’s an organization, just with the way you described it, you can have an awful lot of leverage for your dollars in terms of really reaching many people and bettering the lives of so many.
Talk a little bit about your organizational culture. And I’m always curious as to how the work you do and the mission of the organization influences or impacts the internal culture at Callisto in terms of the way you interact with each other, and the values that you have, and just your day-to-day.
Tracy: Yeah. We are a small and mighty team; we’re all remote, so none of us live together and many of us have never met in person, but we are really supportive. As a leader, I take a trauma-informed leadership approach to make sure that I understand this work is really hard, and a lot of our staff are survivors.
So it’s that double impact of being triggered and knowing that you’re giving back, but also having to listen and hear about sexual assault on a day-to-day basis can be a lot. And so really valuing not only self-care, because self-care has to be done within the organization.
And so making sure that there’s organizational care for each individual employee, and making sure that I encourage my staff to take time off. I make sure to take time off because I think that that’s important. And when there’s big instances in the news, we check in with each other.
We support each other and say, “Hey, I know that the anniversary of your assault is coming around. Are you okay? Do you need some time off?” Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April is always a really big time and so really checking in with each other like: Are we okay? What do people need?
The team is always checking; the team checks on me. I check on the team, and it’s really fantastic. And every couple of weeks, we do a Friyay where we just play games on Zoom to lighten it up because when we get a match, there’s a: Yes, we got a match! Oh…
Denver: We got a match.
Tracy: …we got a match. It’s really bittersweet because we know we’re helping survivors, and we also know that there’s a serial perpetrator out there who is harming a lot of people.
Denver: It’s tough work. It really is. You do have to take care of yourself.
Finally, Tracy, what do you see as the critical steps that need to be taken at a societal level to end violence against women? Or at least greatly reduce it?
Tracy: Oh, we need to talk about the culture. The culture really needs to shift, and I’ve seen it shift a lot. Me Too was a watershed moment, and I didn’t even realize how much at the time, but I had been doing this work for 15 plus years at the time of Me Too, and realizing that my work changed.
I didn’t have to convince people that it was a problem anymore. Before that, I really had to like convince people, particularly men, that it was a significant problem. And now, that has changed where I think people are talking about it more… survivors are talking about it more. Then it also kind of gets into the false accusations, as I’ve already mentioned.
But I think that the locker room talk has to change. Like I said before, I did a lot of work with engaging men and really changing the way people talk about this. Not only men, definitely women as well, but the little jokes that we tell and how they’re connected to that.
I mean, Bill Cosby did a set in the late ’60s about drugging women to have sex with them, and people laughed. And they thought it was funny, and the people who criticized it were told, Take a joke!
Denver: Yeah. Lighten up.
Tracy: And then 20, 30 year… Yeah. Lighten up. And 20, 30 years later, we see that that’s exactly what he did. And you can see that with Louis C.K. as well… and other comedians.
And we really need to evaluate what our art is and what our culture is and what we’re allowing people to say, because when you’re saying that you don’t know who… you’re in the presence of a survivor who’s listening, who has been thinking about telling you that they’ve been sexually assaulted, and now you’ve just become an unsafe person.
And so I think that as we can continue to change the culture and the words we use and the songs and the media, and have the media report differently on these issues… where when I hear about a professional athlete sexually assaulting or somebody, or engaging in domestic violence, I don’t want to know the statistics of how good of an athlete they are.
That doesn’t mean anything to me. I want them to be held accountable, and I want to focus on accountability and start by believing survivors, and that’s really important.
Denver: Yeah, no, that’s a sad statement on society because I think the seriousness of the charge depends upon how good you are. And the better you are…
Tracy: Absolutely.
Denver: ….the more we overlook it. But if you’re a marginal player, we’re going to make an example of you. It makes no sense.
Tracy: Exactly.
“…we have a tool that we’re trying to get out in the world that nobody ever wants to have to use, and that is a challenging, challenging feat. But I know that we’re going to do it, and we already are. We already have some success, and that’s really important. And I think that in all the years that I’ve done this work, I think that the technology that we’ve really created at Callisto has the potential to make a significant impact.”
Denver: I mean, it’s… but you’re absolutely right. I think people have always asked me, What do you do to change the culture? And the one thing you do to change the culture is change the language. It really starts with that, and to try to do anything fancy around it: just start with the language. Change the language; the culture will change as a result.
For listeners who want to learn more about Callisto or financially support this organization, tell us about your website, the information they’d find there, and how they can maybe send you a few bucks.
Tracy: Yeah, projectcallisto.org is our website. And you can go and donate there. You can learn more about what we do. You can download the Allies’ Guide. So if you happen to know somebody who’s sexually assaulted, who’s been sexually assaulted and you want to know how to help them better, you can download that guide.
We also have a Survivor’s Guide for navigating sexual assault on college campuses that kind of walks through some of the Title IX options as well as different options for that. There’s a lot of resources on that. You can also follow us on Instagram at callisto; Twitter @callisto; Facebook, which is at callistoorg. And definitely connect.
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. Would love to hear more about your interest in supporting our organization because it takes all of us. It absolutely takes all of us. Nobody wants… we have a tool that we’re trying to get out in the world that nobody ever wants to have to use, and that is a challenging, challenging feat.
But I know that we’re going to do it, and we already are. We already have some success, and that’s really important. And I think that in all the years that I’ve done this work, I think that the technology that we’ve really created at Callisto has the potential to make a significant impact. And that’s what I’m really excited about.
Denver: Absolutely. Well, thanks, Tracy, for being here today. It was a real delight to have you on the show.
Tracy: Thank you so much.
Denver Frederick, Host of The Business of Giving serves as a Trusted Advisor and Executive Coach to Nonprofit Leaders. His Book, The Business of Giving: New Best Practices for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Leaders in an Uncertain World, is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.