Impact, Design and Technology: Supporting the Lived Experience of the LGBTQ Community

What if you could access mental health support tailored specifically for LGBTQIA+ individuals, no matter where you are in the world - even in places where being LGBTQIA+ is criminalised? Jaron Soh, CEO of Voda, has created a groundbreaking mental health app for the queer community. Jaron opens up about his journey, incuding his personal experience growing up in conservative Singapore, along with the unique challenges Voda addresses, from coming out; dealing with gender dysphoria; and navigating queer relationships.

This episode also delves into Voda's ambitious mission to provide discreet, affordable, and tailored mental health support to millions globally. We explore Voda's commitment to activism, including efforts for marriage equality and fighting transphobia, while prioritising genuine social connections over AI-generated interactions. Jaron shares valuable insights on aligning business growth with company values, attracting like-minded investors, and the crucial role of feedback in fostering inclusivity. Whether you're passionate about mental health, LGBTQIA+ advocacy, or the intersection of design, impact, and technology, this conversation is a must-listen.

If you're enjoying this episode and looking to boost equity, inclusion, and diversity in your organisation, my team and I are here to help. Our team specialises in crafting data-driven strategies, developing inclusive leaders, designing fair recruitment processes, and enhancing disability confidence. With a blend of professional expertise and lived experience, we're ready to support you on your journey. Reach out to us through our website. 

If you want to build a more inclusive workplace that you can be proud of please visit our website to learn more.

Chapters

• 0:01 Creating an LGBT Mental Health App
• 14:20 Global LGBT Mental Health Advocacy
• 23:22 Building Inclusive Growth Through Company Values

Transcript

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Inclusive Growth Show with Toby Mildon, future-proofing your business by creating a diverse workplace.

Toby Mildon: Hey there, thank you ever so much for tuning into this episode of The Inclusive Growth podcast. Today, I'm really excited to be meeting Jaron. Jaron is the Chief Exec of an app called Voda, and Voda specialises in supporting LGBTQIA+ folk with their mental health. So we're gonna be learning about the app and mental health within the LGBTQIA+ community. So, Jaron, it's wonderful to see you. Thanks for joining us.

Jaron Soh: Thank you. Good morning everybody. Thanks for having me on the podcast, Toby. Really excited to be here.

Toby Mildon: You're welcome. So let's dive straight in. As the Chief Exec of Voda, can you just tell us a bit more about this innovative LGBTQIA+ mental health app, please? 

Jaron Soh: Yes. Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm Jaron. My pronouns are he/him and I'm cofounder pf Voda, the LGBT mental health app. So Voda is a mental health app that is designed by and for the LGBT community. So this means we do different things differently from other apps. We cover topics tailored to the LGBT lived experience. So this include things like coming out, gender dysphoria, dealing with shame, stigma and discrimination, but also everyday life from a queer lens. We have a series of guided therapy programs on, for example, queer relationships that other apps wouldn't have.

Jaron Soh: So we look at relationships through topics such as exploring jealousy in open relationships, exploring polyamorous relationships, or even a dating app series that explores the challenges of dating as a gay man or lesbian and bisexual women or as trans and gender nonconforming person, because we all face different issues when we're dating that's very different from cisnormative and heteronormative relationships. So yeah, that's what we do. We provide mental support for LGBT people, created by LGBT therapists. It's not therapy in a sense that on Voda, you don't get to book a therapist to speak to. And we also don't have an AI chatbot, but we have programs that teach your therapeutic skills that you would have learned in therapy otherwise. The reason for that is we don't aim to replace a professional therapeutic relationship, even though we use AI in the app to personalize the app to you. But all of our programs are evidence-based and they're also intersectional in nature.

Toby Mildon: That sounds really cool. So how did you arrive in this space and why did you choose to do this? 

Jaron Soh: I think I was really frustrated with the lack of options in the mental space for people like myself, so a little bit about my founding story for Voda. So my founding story for Voda is very much related to my coming out story and my background. So I've been in London now for the last 10 years, but I grew up in very sunny, very conservative Singapore for most of my younger life. I came to the UK at 21 for my undergrad. But I grew up in Singapore where I knew I was gay from a very young age, and was bullied in school as well, I think, for being quite feminine. And so struggled a lot with queer shame and with my identity. It was when I came to London that I had a first taste of kind of not having to look over my shoulder, of being worried about being found out as a I started going to queer venues and started stepping into who I was.

Jaron Soh: But in my mid to late 20s, I started going to therapy because I was struggling a lot with dysfunctional relationships with work, in a romantic sense and also with myself. And when I was kind of wrapping up therapy and thinking, Okay, I'm gonna shift to a mental health app to use, I realized all the apps out there didn't understand who I was. I was using apps like Calm or Headspace, or even other. Those apps assumed you are cisnormative, heteronormative. The examples that they use in their guided meditations or in their cognitive generally exercises are often very much tailored for people not like myself, so I couldn't really resonate with it at all. And so I built something that I thought people in my community needed because I was seeing my friends struggle with the same things. I think a lot of us when we have unhealed trauma, like big T trauma or little T trauma, we tend to distract ourselves, so that could be through alcohol, substances, work, relationships, friendships, and so on. I wanted to build a more accessible alternative for people like me in the UK and beyond, actually.

Toby Mildon: That sounds very good. Yeah. Because I'm a gay man as well, so I wish the app was around when I came out. So I came out when I was 29, 30. So yeah, it would have been really helpful. And you're right. A lot of the kind off the mainstream therapies or the apps are not... They're not tailored to the experience of LGBTQ folk, so it's great that you can provide that tailored experience. I've heard you previously say that you're passionate for the point where design and impact meet technology. Could you just explain to us a bit about why design and impact and tech are so important to you? 

Jaron Soh: Yeah. I think they all need to come together, design, impact and tech. So I that as being related to also why I started Voda in a sense of, there's this Japanese concept of ikigai, which is, I think there's like four circles or four spheres of doing something that you love, that you're good at, that you can make money with, and something that the world needs. And that to me, is very much why I see Voda as not just being something that I think can help the world, but also something that really fulfills me, and I have the right experience to build it.

Jaron Soh: I come from a consumer design background, so this is my third company. My first company was an artisan goods company, so I used to design products with handcraft makers across the majority of the world. Across Middle East, across Southeast Asia. And so I have the design lens to build something, I think beautiful which people could identify with. I think with consumer apps, it's so important to build something that's not just powerful, but also aesthetically pleasing. And so then it really resonates with the users using it, and appeals to them to wanna start using it in the first place. But it's also very important to be intentional as well. So from impact sense or an inclusive sense, we've made a very careful approach in the way we design Voda, in that we're not just going to put rainbows everywhere on the app because it's an LGBT app.

Jaron Soh: I tap into my own experience growing up, 'cause I came up quite late as well to my family. I came out at 28 to my mom and dad, and I came out because I wanted to start this company, but that's another story. But with the design element, is so important for us to be discrete as well, because we want Voda to sit elegantly in your phone, but not raise eyebrows. If someone saw an app called Voda, they're not gonna be like, oh, are you LGBT, are you gay? Because I went through so much of that from my younger years where I was averting my eyes from looking at men. I was in my phone on Instagram or social media, very careful not to follow anyone that was LGBT. I remember when we used to use Facebook, I would be telling some of my LGBT friends, can you not wish me happy birthday, please, because I didn't want it on my profile.

Jaron Soh: So in a sense, when we combine all three angles of design, impact and tech can then build meaningful technology to understand the lived experienced of the people. Not that there should be any shame, of course, with being LGBT, but I wanted to be very careful because I knew that from speaking to users, a lot of people that use Voda, they are exploring who they are for the first time, and they're exploring issues that they might not even bring up in therapy in the first place because they might not think that they need therapy. Or they might not meet a good physician to go to therapy. They might not be able to afford therapy, but also many queer people still live at home with their families. And so you can't really do a Zoom call with a therapist to explore who you are because someone might overhear you. And so yeah, that's how all these different, I think the points come together and then that's how I think Voda is created.

Toby Mildon: Yeah. I really like how you've been really sensitive in the design of the app and you're taking into account how people are using it, their privacy. Like you say, if somebody is exploring their sexuality and their identity, it can be a really tricky time for them and like you say, you don't want somebody flicking through your phone and then sort of questioning why you've got this app that's covered in the LGBTQ+ colors, because that could out you in a very uncomfortable way. But what's some of the impacts that you're noticing that Voda is having? 

Jaron Soh: So I think both qualitatively and quantitatively. So right now, we serve, I think now close to 13,000 LGBT people around the world who use Voda regularly. And the impact we've seen most are in the UK and the US, and I think... And we get a lot of qualitative feedback from users. And after you do a program on Voda, you can send feedback to us and that comes straight to our company communications platform. We just got Slack. And so it's really been heartening to hear from users on how Voda has helped them feel better, navigate heartbreak, navigate difficult headlines, especially for trans and gender nonconforming people, it's such a difficult climate. 'Cause I think a lot of us in the queer community, we try to brush things off when things happen to us. Like we're on the street, holding hands with a date and then some young lads could shout at us or make offhand comments, most of us try to brush it off. Or if you're trans, non-binary and you're reading all these different news headlines and think like, Oh yeah, they're just being transphobic. It really affects us so much, and if we don't, I think proactively work on our mental health, it can really get us down into a very low mood without us realizing over time. And so for Voda to be able to be that sort of support for our community has been really great to see.

Jaron Soh: And yeah, but apart from the qualitative feedback, we've also had good results from the initial small study. So we have some users opt in to a small study where after they user Voda regularly over four weeks, we also ask them every week, different questions, and these questions are based on the clinical indicators for depression and anxiety, which is called the GAD-7 and PHQ-9. And what we saw was a really clear downward trend in the reduction of symptoms of anxiety and depression. So yeah, that's an impact we've had on the user side. But also equally heartening is that we've closed our first investment round just last month. I announced it and it was, the funding news was picked up by a lot of the LGBT press like Attitude Magazine and PinkNews wants to write something about us as well. And I'm also really glad that our investors are representative of our community. So we have, I think, 16 investors in our recent round, and they are gay, lesbian, bi, asexual with a trans investor on board and with people who are neurodivergent on board as well, so that everything really really makes me happy to see that the community is supporting the community.

Jaron Soh: And I think it helps set up for success in the long term as well, because I think the company can continue to be impact-focused because our backers have an alignment with the mission of what we're trying to do in the first place. And that's why beyond recognizing that there is a massive need for something like Voda in the market to provide affordable mental health care, a lot of our investors like ourselves have grew up with shame and felt so alone and lonely at times, and that's why they came on board with Voda.

Toby Mildon: It's really great that you've got that round of funding, which is quite a nice link to my next question, which is, what is your aspirations and objectives for the future for Voda? 

Jaron Soh: So the main goal we say is we want to reach 7 million queer people in the next five years, and provide them with tailored mental health support that understands who they are, but in a way that is discrete and affordable. Our hope is to reach all our audience, but also being very mindful of safety and privacy concerns in regions where being LGBT is criminalized. So now most of our users are based in, say, the US, in the UK, and also in some of the English-speaking countries. We want to be... But we're also quite mindful that there's a lot of people here that require mental health support, even though things are supposedly better in our cities, in the States, but I think the greatest need for Voda often are in places where being LGBT is criminalized. So for us is understanding how can we have a version of the app or how can we invest in the mental well-being of people in those regions while being very mindful of safety, privacy and human rights concerns. And alongside our aim of reaching queer people in the next five years, 7 million in the next five years, we also want to invest our profits in activism, to legalize homosexuality, to invest in activists that are pushing for marriage equality and also to support, joint the fight against transphobia.

Jaron Soh: I think that now there is a rising tide of transphobia, and for some reason, there's a lot of the funding coming from Christian fundamentalism organizations that are making lives for our trans communities and siblings really bad. So, Voda, we want to be the opposing force to that because I think one thing that I found really unfair with Voda and the whole ecosystem of mental health and capitalism is that, first of all, the mental health industry makes more money the more unwell you are. That to me, it just doesn't really seat well, right? And secondly, why are we always making queer people and women in general self-regulate and heal, and practice self-care. Can we reduce and remove the sources of trauma and stigma that are causing us to self-regulate in the first place? That to me is something that we want to balance, and I think it's very much in line with the impact we want to have. So yeah, for Voda, we are starting to do more community-based events, we want to start investing in activists across the globe that are fighting for marriage equality, fighting to legalize the freedom to love, to be who we are. Yeah. And lastly, also, I think conducting more studies on Voda's impact.

Jaron Soh: So our aim is to be your digital mental health companion such that everyone thinks of, anyone LGBT thinks of Voda whenever they feel like they need some support, but our aim is not to replace social connections. So we're not trying to be like some apps, what they're doing is they're trying to replace social connection, they're trying to give you like a fake therapist or a fake boyfriend, girlfriend or they friend or whatever they call it. And trying to make you stick to the app by having this forced loving or trusting relationship with an AI, and that's not what we're doing at all. So we do use AI in the app, but we use it in very, very controlled ways. It's a one in, one out system in a sense that you enter what you're going through and you get a therapeutic exercise only. You don't get to have a chitchat with Vod. And I think you can have your chitchats with your friends, because I think social connections are so important for our mental health. But we don't want to emulate a social connection within the app itself because I think that could improve the bottom line in the sense that some apps are doing that because people stick to the app and become dependent on the app, that's not what we want to do at all. We want to give you the tools and the skills so you can engage in community, in the communities of your choice.

Toby Mildon: That's really cool. Have you got any plans to form partnerships with companies and employers, because I was thinking that the vast majority of people that listen to this podcast work in HR or they're diversity and inclusion practitioners. And a lot of employers have LGBTQ+ employee resource groups or they provide support to employees through employee assistance programs, and so it just struck me that actually you've got a great tool to support LGBTQ folk within businesses.

Jaron Soh: Yes, that is very much in our short-term aims actually. We have not yet started working on a business to business side, but we have had quite a few inbounds. So Ogilvy, Ogilvy I think they are a PR marketing, one of their leads reached out asking to buy some codes for their employees, what about purchase. We had City last year reached out after we did a party event with them as well. So definitely we're very keen to collaborate with corporates and employers so they can better support their employees. We have a private work series, which is about helping people cope with stress at work, so a lot of things about the overthinking at work and so on, but also to find that alignment between your identity and the workspace.

Jaron Soh: Meaning a lot of people will go back in the closet after they start work. Not necessarily because he has a homophobic culture or a queerphobic culture, but then there's so much like... People were like, Well, if this could hurt my career, then I maybe don't talk about it at work at all. But I think it's so important to show up as our true selves at work, and that's why we have a therapeutic series that explores that. But ultimately, I found that the decision to come out, whether you wish to or not, is yours? But I've been there myself in the sense that I've been in my previous funded company when people mis-assumed that I had a partner, a girlfriend or a wife or... Because I wore a shirt that says dad to work as a joke, like, funny, Shrek's dad. And they started asking me about my kids and my wife. And I just didn't really correct people for a while and just went on for a while, it was so awkward for some time when they found out I was actually gay. Anyway, yeah, so I think there is, we're keen to collaborate with the corporates and employees.

Jaron Soh: We're also starting to do a lot of collaborations with charities, so we want to make the brand and Voda feel more intersectional. And so, what we're doing is we are scaling by now, apart from just being a digital app, doing in-person events that give back to the communities, but in sectional communities. So we're announcing actually this week or next week, we're doing free monthly group therapy at Queer Britain, which is the UK national LGBT Museum. And we're doing it for different communities, so we're starting with East, Southeast Asian communities like myself, but we wanna start working with the Black community, people from working class backgrounds, migrant communities, people who are neurodivergent, people who are differently abled and so on. So we can find, we can hold reflective spaces and intersectional spaces, because even though a lot of us in the LGBT community are linked by the common trap of shame, we still experience very different experiences within our respective spheres or the intersecting spheres of identities. And that's what we want to do to collaborate with organizations.

Toby Mildon: I think that's really powerful. Now, the penultimate question that I ask everybody is what does inclusive growth mean to you? 

Jaron Soh: I think inclusive growth means growth that aligns with your company values, and I think it's very important in early on to identify what your company values are. For our end, when we started, we knew we wanted to be a company that gives back to the community, that are based on intersectionality, that is based on impact. And so that then guides all our decision-making process, even from raising investments. We have stopped conversations with investors early on would have, well, who we can see are just purely profit-focused. So they would be like, Well, yeah, you can collect all this data and then sell this data and do this and that. And so it's like, we're not in the business of running ads on Voda. We're not in the business of trying to get user data and sell them.

Jaron Soh: We're in the business of creating mental health support that people want to pay for, and then they pay for that mental health support that's been created by people like them. But I think it's so important to have that value schema early on, so you know what you can say no to. And I think a lot of organizations in the pursuit of just pure profit during growth, forget what the values of the company might be or what mission it's supposed to have. Because when you have your values out and proud, you then attract the right kind of investors on board as well. So our investors include an impact investor, Ultra, and also a trust that invest in the companies that improve the health and well-being of people in the UK, but also improve education outcomes in the UK.

Jaron Soh: There are a lot of... I think if you live for investors to fuel your growth, there are investors out there that will be aligned with what you wanna do. So you don't have to just get money from wherever and whichever sources, you can be a bit more selective, though it does take more time. Yeah, so I think inclusive growth, to me means growth that aligns with your company values and for us it's the founding team's values, and that's because all three of us in the founding team are queer. We all had different experiences growing up queer. I grew up in Singapore, my cofounder is Scottish and grew up under Section 28. Our lead therapist is trans non-binary and had to come out twice, but then when he as trans while working at NHS as a therapist, it was the big decision to leave and start a practice, so that he could improve the entire system. And so yeah, I think growth that aligns with your company values, but also finding, if you're just starting out, finding cofounders that have similar values and ending aspirations for the company.

Toby Mildon: That's really cool. I love how you're linking it back to the core values and how you're actually growing your own business in line with your own values. So if an investor doesn't align, then that's not a good partnership for you. Now, the final question is, if the person listening to us right now would like to use the app or maybe they would like to recommend it to a friend, family or a colleague, what should they do? 

Jaron Soh: Yes, so if you're listening in and you're part of the LGBT community, or if you know someone part of the LGBT community, we'd love for you to try Voda. So you can download Voda at V-O-D-A.co, voda.co. We're available on both iOS and Android. We are a freemium app, so we've got a bunch of features for free, but we do charge a small fee for all the features that helps a very small team, but we always provide free. We never want cost to be a reason why someone can't afford mental health support. So if you cannot afford Voda, you can always write in to us at hello@voda.co and we'll turn it on for you. We also reply to every single piece of feedback. So if you write a short email, I will get back to you. This is part of the reason why we've been able to grow quite quickly, but also introduce things in the app that make us more and more inclusive. So our app recently started catering for different neuro types, because of users writing in and says that, Hey, I can't visualize things in my head. Aphantasia, which is, I think you basically, if you close your eyes and trying to think of something, like a red apple, you can actually see a red apple in your mind's eye.

Jaron Soh: So this user was very frustrated that we kept recommending them to visualize something, they're like, Well, I can't do that. And so we, to gain their account, we added it in within a week and very happy. So I think, yeah, my call to action is download the app, we'll love to hear from you. If you can pay, please do. You help to subsidize our free users. If you can't, write in and we'll turn it on for you.

Toby Mildon: Brilliant. Thanks, Jaron. It's been really great to catch up with you, and I'm so thankful that you've developed an app to support the mental health and well-being of our LGBTQ+ community. So thanks for doing all that hard work.

Jaron Soh: Thank you, thanks for having me Toby. I'm also glad to be on the podcast, and thank you for the invitation.

Toby Mildon: You're very welcome, and thank you for choosing to tune into this episode of the podcast with Jaron and myself. Hopefully you've learned something about the mental health and well-being of the LGBTQ+ community, and have taken away some hints and tips on how to support people's mental health and well-being. And obviously, the first thing to do is to go and download the app from voda.co, if you feel that the app could help you or help somebody in your life. Until the next time, thanks ever so much for tuning in, and I look forward to seeing you on the next episodes, which will be coming up very soon. Take care. Bye-by.

Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Inclusive Growth Show. For further information and resources from Toby and his team, head on over to our website at mildon.co.uk.