The race to help Venezuela

Note: Transcripts are automatically generated from episode audio, and are not fully corrected for spelling, grammar, and formatting.

BETTINA STIX: We’re going to bring help to Venezuela on a weekly basis. The death toll changes hourly because more and more people are being pulled from the rubble. There is need that needs to be taken care of immediately. If relief is delayed, recovery is delayed four times that much.

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Bettina Stix, the executive overseeing Amazon’s disaster relief efforts in Venezuela and around the world. As Venezuelans by the thousands remain missing in the aftermath of two deadly earthquakes, I wanted to talk to Bettina about how businesses in the U.S. and elsewhere can help meet the tragic needs in a country that, as she puts it, is structurally weak. Bettina helped create Amazon’s disaster relief system, which has been deployed in more than 200 global crises, from Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica to the LA wildfires. She shares how Amazon and its on-the-ground partners are trying to meet Venezuela’s needs with speed at this moment. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

[THEME MUSIC]

I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Bettina Stix, a global director of Amazon Community Impact. Bettina, thanks for joining us.

STIX: It’s my pleasure.

Copy LinkHow Amazon mobilized quickly after Venezuela’s earthquakes

SAFIAN: Your role includes overseeing disaster relief at Amazon. The recent earthquake in Venezuela has been devastating: more than 2,000 confirmed dead, 43,000 missing, towns reduced to rubble. Amazon has partnered with over a dozen nonprofits, from the Red Cross to World Central Kitchen, to provide help. You had an Amazon Air flight transport supplies. How do things look on the ground right now, and how did you first hear about it?

STIX: I learned about it from the news, and I immediately texted the team and said, “This is going to need our help.” When you hear there’s an earthquake in the middle of the capital of a country that’s already structurally weak, you know immediately this is not going to end well. Then more and more pictures surfaced, and more of the unbelievable effects of the double earthquakes came out, and we knew immediately this was going to need a lot of help, and help for a long time.

SAFIAN: The U.S. government is more directly involved in Venezuela after the ouster of Maduro. Does that political situation impact how Amazon thinks about its activities?

STIX: A couple of weeks ago, Venezuela was still an embargoed country by the United States.

SAFIAN: Yes.

STIX: So we can only, as a company, help in places where there isn’t an embargo. But luckily, in situations like that, the community comes together, the world comes together, and sanctions like these are lifted. The State Department lifted those sanctions immediately, and we could start having conversations with partners about how we help provide response and relief really fast. We also do this for connectivity, for example. One of the biggest problems is that the infrastructure for connectivity is mainly down. Power lines are down. It’s hard to connect with people. So one of the first things we did, on June 29, was send connectivity kits. That means batteries, routers, and satellite equipment so hospitals could be powered and relief operations could be powered.

Copy LinkWhy connectivity is one of the first essentials in a disaster

SAFIAN: These tech systems, my understanding is you first started using them with Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica, and this is a broader distribution of these kinds of resources.

STIX: In Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica, we for the first time used what we call a kit. A kit is basically, imagine a little bit of a suitcase-type setup, something that we can ship and the partners on the other side can flip open and use super easily. You don’t have to be an engineer. You don’t have to have a lot of education in how to set up a network for yourself. It’s very easy to operate, and we send it at no cost to the organization. At the end of a disaster, they’ll give it back to us, and it’s going to get reset for the next use case.

SAFIAN: It could sound like, well, this is standard Amazon activity. We are getting supplies together and logistically getting them from one place to the other. But it does have to be different when you’re dealing with a disaster like this.

STIX: It is and it isn’t. Our commitment is to speed. Our commitment is to be able to deliver whatever is needed, very similar to the promise we try to make to our customers. When they need something the next day, they go to the website, they order it. In this case, we have pre-positioned relief items. We have 16 of those around the world. We have one in Atlanta, especially for the Caribbean, Latin America, and the US area, to be ready to fly relief goods.

SAFIAN: It’s sort of like a special warehouse, or a separate part of a warehouse, that’s just for the disaster relief supplies.

STIX: That’s correct. We have 3 million items there. We usually pre-position what we know is needed in disasters, hurricanes, or earthquakes. Think tarps, think equipment to clean up, think first-day emergency items like diapers, medical items, and what have you. Our flight actually went out on July 3, and we delivered 663,000 items on one of our Amazon Air cargo planes as soon as the runways were clear.

Copy LinkHow global coordination speeds response

SAFIAN: When the scale of a disaster is somewhat unknown, as is the case in Venezuela, and the numbers keep climbing, keep changing, how does that impact your resourcing decisions?

STIX: The international relief network system is actually one thing that the world gets right. A lot of players come together: states, governments, nonprofits, corporations like us. We have something like a common operating picture. We have incident command. As we speak, there are calls going on. Everybody has a piece of information that somebody else may not have, but we’ve now been in conversations through many hurricanes and disasters around the world.

In fact, we have helped in 200 disasters. We’ve delivered 26 million relief items since 2017, since we started doing this. And we’ve built a lot of trust in this community, so much so that starting on Thursday, July 9, we’re going to be part of an air bridge that will bring help to Venezuela on a weekly basis. The State Department has brought together a coalition of partners. Amazon Air Cargo is the provider of airlift. The World Food Program will distribute everything on the ground. And Airlink, which is a nonprofit known for distributing and helping coordinate, will do the operations in Miami, where the air bridge is starting.

SAFIAN: In Venezuela, and in the 200-plus other disasters that you’ve worked on, you focus on the most acute phase of disaster recovery rather than the long tail of recovery, because recovery, I mean, there are things that are needed all the way through.

STIX: The long-term recovery starts with the relief phase. You may have seen that search and rescue is ongoing. It’s horrible. The death toll changes hourly because more and more people are being pulled from the rubble. Meanwhile, there are children displaced. There are people displaced. There are people without a roof to live under. They’re completely traumatized. I was here in 2001 when we had an earthquake in Seattle that was not the big one, and it is traumatizing. My hands trembled for days. Now imagine that, and that was not even a bad one.

There is need that needs to be taken care of immediately. If you don’t meet that immediate need, all recovery is going to be slower. There are studies that say if relief is delayed, recovery is delayed four times that much. So it is important that a partner like ours can help in that phase with what we’re uniquely good at: the supply chain, the speed, the transportation capabilities, and the way we treat this really as a customer problem for our nonprofits. They’re our customers.

SAFIAN: I did notice some reports of security forces in Venezuela taking cash from buildings after the quakes. Do you worry about corruption, that the aid you’re sending might be siphoned off, or some portion of it?

STIX: First of all, I’ve not heard that. I think there are worries all the time. Our best bet is to work with partners that we know and that are known and vouched for. So we’re tucked in with the people who really are the professionals in these types of responses, from the tiny organization all the way up to the United Nations.

SAFIAN: When an earthquake like Venezuela’s hits, political and other differences can quickly become secondary. Still, not every business jumps into the fray. So how did Bettina convince Amazon to make disaster relief a core competency? And does it provide strategic benefits as well as humanitarian impact? We’ll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us.

[AD BREAK]

Before the break, Amazon’s Bettina Stix talked about the company’s ongoing disaster relief efforts in Venezuela following deadly earthquakes. Now she talks about the spark for Amazon’s disaster relief commitment, the strategic value it provides the business beyond humanitarian impact, and lessons for other businesses considering relief work. Plus, the personal encounter with Jeff Bezos that brought her to Amazon, and more. Let’s jump back in.

Copy LinkA simple donation tool sparked Amazon’s relief mission

You played a personal role in Amazon’s shift into disaster relief. You were working as a website editor, is that right? How do you get from that to disaster relief?

STIX: I worked as a website editor a long time ago in my career. That was one of my first jobs at Amazon. In 2004, I helped the company set up a website button where customers could donate to the Red Cross in countries around the world after the tsunami hit the Indian Ocean and killed 250,000 people. I worked for three days with other people on my team. We led our international website development at that time. I didn’t sleep much for three days, but we collected $15 million through our Amazon websites.

It gave me the feeling that there is way more you can do with the technology you have at hand, with what you have developed for a different use case, a legitimate use case, a business that you’re trying to grow, and yet you can do so much good in the world with it. That was in 2004. We started the program in 2017, but that was an experience that never left me. I had worked in our store retail business and Prime before I posed this question to the company: There’s got to be a better way to help in disasters. I thought, what if this was like Prime? What if we could bring what Amazon is good at directly to the people who need it most when a disaster strikes?

Bob Safian: Is there a strategic business purpose behind Amazon operating in disaster relief? Does it flow the other way also?

STIX: If you tell somebody Amazon does disaster relief, they say, “Yeah, who else should do that?” It is almost a given. Employees reach out to us. That may be one of the reasons I would say it’s a good business reason. We have a lot of people who work at Amazon around the world, for example in Spain, who are from Venezuela. Try to be in a leadership position where you have to tell somebody from that country that you can’t help.

Bob Safian: For companies and businesspeople who want to do relief work well rather than just for the press release, are there things you’ve learned? Is there a mindset shift? Are there things you’ve learned about public-private coordination or effectiveness or your role that you would encourage people to keep in mind?

STIX: My best advice to anybody is: Do not deliver any help that has not been asked for. There’s a phenomenon called a second disaster. It’s when people, with the best intentions, send what they think is needed, and that may actually not be what’s needed. Sometimes we need to wait to hear what’s needed. That just leads to more work on every end where that aid needs to go. Don’t send anything that has not been requested.

Copy LinkThe biggest mistake companies make when trying to help

Bob Safian: Before you came to Amazon, you were a journalist, and you had a meeting with Jeff Bezos that inspired you to join the company. Is that right?

STIX: You know everything about me already. I was fortunate enough to work here in Seattle as a foreign correspondent and freelancer. I had the opportunity to interview Jeff in the same year Barbara Walters did “60 Minutes.” Mine was also 60 minutes. I learned about this concept that you could sell books online. You could get every book you needed in English within a day or a couple of days. It changed my worldview. I have a Ph.D. in comparative literature, and I specialized in American literature, and I could not get a book in under six months to read and study. Personally, I thought this was the greatest mission on Earth, and I felt an immediate urge to join and be part of that history.

Bob Safian: And the inspiration around books that spoke to you personally, was Jeff already clear that books were just the starting point and it was going to be much broader than that? Or was that not quite clear yet?

STIX: He called it the Kitty Hawk stage of e-commerce in my interview, which in retrospect, you could say, “Ah, there was more behind that.” So my thinking was probably smaller than the underlying message he wanted to convey, but there was something in what he said that made me think that was just the beginning.

Bob Safian: You’re from Germany. You were born and raised in Germany. Your family experienced displacement after World War II. Are you comfortable sharing that story and how it impacts your work?

STIX: I finally learned about my parents’ family history decades later because my parents would not share much of it. It’s trauma. My father was born and hidden in Sicily by the Americans while World War II was still raging. They grew up in a world that was entirely destroyed. That is something that never leaves people. I think you grow a different type of empathy when you’ve seen it in your own family, when you see what generational trauma does. So I could always relate to these cases. I could always relate to people not having a home.

Copy LinkWhat people can do right now to support Venezuela

Bob Safian: So for folks listening to this, what does Venezuela need most right now? If they want to help, what can they do?

STIX: If you feel the urge to help with money, make sure that you donate through an organization that is on the ground: the International Red Cross, World Central Kitchen, the World Food Programme. If you want to help children, there are organizations that help children. Otherwise, keep the story alive as long as Venezuela needs help. Help your friends and neighbors, and give them a hug. If they’re from Venezuela, they’ll need you as a friend.

Bob Safian: Don’t be shy about sharing hugs.

STIX: No, never be shy about sharing hugs.

SAFIAN: Well, Bettina, this was great. Thanks so much for doing it.

STIX: Thank you for having me.

SAFIAN: The news cycle moves so fast these days, it’s easy to get distracted by the next headline. But the tragedy in Venezuela deserves attention, as do so many ongoing crises around the world. I’m struck by how organized and professional Bettina’s approach to disaster relief is. She can sound almost dispassionate about putting together kits and organizing air transport, and yet behind it all is plenty of feeling, as we could hear in her cracking voice talking about her own family history. It might seem calculated to put a sliver of corporate resources toward helping others, but that doesn’t matter to the folks in need on the other end. Plus, sharing a hug enriches the giver as well as the recipient. That goes for businesses and for all of us. Our show notes include links to the organizations helping in Venezuela that Bettina mentioned.

I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.