Episode 34 – Not Even Covid Could Change Her Mindset with Lisa Thee

 In Uncategorized

Lisa Thee is a consultant to some of the world’s most innovative healthcare and global technology companies including Microsoft and UCSF’s Center for Digital Healthcare Innovation. She is the co-Founder of Minor Guard, an Artificial Intelligence software company focused on making people safer online and in real life. A staunch advocate for the protection of children Lisa is unstoppable in her efforts in protecting children, and in fact families, from online bullies and criminals.
 
You will get to hear this week about this incredible and unstoppable woman. We will get to share many of her experiences including how she has been forced to deal with the effects of Covid-19 and how she continues to move forward today. She will even tell us about how her registered emotional support dog helps her continue to do the work she began many years ago. You can’t help but be inspired and motivated by what Lisa does and how she lives her life.

About the Guest:
 
Lisa Thee is a Top 50 Global Thought Leader for AI, Privacy, and Safety with demonstrated experience in delivering revenue and solving complex business technology, governance, privacy and risk challenges at scale.
 
Ms. Thee is a consultant to some of the world’s most innovative healthcare, and global technology companies including Microsoft and UCSF’s Center for Digital Healthcare Innovation to accelerate FDA approval for AI use in clinical settings. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of Minor Guard, an Artificial Intelligence software company focused on making people safer online and in real life.  She is a keynote speaker including her TEDx talk “Bringing Light to Dark Places Online: Disrupting Human Trafficking Using AI.” She hosts the Navigating Forward Podcast. She has been named to the 2021 Top Health and Safety, Privacy, and AI Thought Leaders and Influencers and Women in Business you should follow by Thinkers 360. She was recently named to the 2022 “Top 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics” global list.  
https://lisathee.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisathee/
 
 
About the Host:
Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.
 
Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.
 
https://michaelhingson.com
https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/
https://twitter.com/mhingson
https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/
 
accessiBe Links
https://accessibe.com/
https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe
https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/
 
 
 
Thanks for listening!
Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!
 
Subscribe to the podcast
If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.
 
Leave us an Apple Podcasts review
Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.
 
 
Transcription Notes

Michael Hingson  00:00
Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I’m Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that’s a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we’re happy to meet you and to have you here with us.
 
Michael Hingson  01:22
Hi, and welcome once again to unstoppable mindset. We’re glad you’re here, wherever you are. And we hope that you will enjoy us this week, we have a kind of a really interesting person, kind of she absolutely is an interesting person and some good stories to tell. And I’m sure we’re going to have a lot of fun in our discussions. Today we’ll talk about AI, we’re going to talk about a lot of things related to health care and disabilities and other things. So I’d like you all to meet Lisa v. And I assume you want me to refer to you that way.
 
Lisa Thee  01:54
Yes, that’s great. Hi, everyone. My name is Lisa Thi and I am the data for good practice sector lead at launch Consulting Group.
 
Michael Hingson  02:04
And so why don’t you tell us a little bit about kind of you younger and bring us up to date and how you got where you are today.
 
Lisa Thee  02:14
Yeah, I grew up in the Midwest. And kind of what people might consider the dress, the Rust Belt these days of Detroit, and studied engineering in school, and came out west to California after graduation and worked in the tech industry for 18 years before I retired as a director at Intel, and their hybrid cloud group and went off to do my own company for as AI software startup, called minor guard and have been working in the entrepreneurship innovation space, in consulting, Keynote, speaking and advising for the past few years now.
 
Michael Hingson  02:53
So what did you exactly do it Intel?
 
Lisa Thee  02:56
Oh, goodness, and also one of those awesome places where you get to try a lot of things. So in the decade that I worked there, I worked in different groups, from supply chain planning, to marketing to it to business development, and ultimately leading their AI solution group working on new applications for AI to improve things in society.
 
Michael Hingson  03:18
So Intel being very much a chip manufacturer and so on. How does AI get into that in terms of why why did they do that?
 
Lisa Thee  03:29
Yeah. So when you have a chip manufacturing company, the way that you increase your available market is to increase increased consumption of compute. So that could be through cloud providers that could be through personal computers, it can be through gaming, lots of different applications. So one of the ways that AI really benefits Intel as a company is by increasing utilization and solving bigger and hear your problems. So whether you’re buying compute space in Google, or Amazon, or Microsoft, all of those, all those roads lead back to Intel, because they’re providing the chips for the cloud infrastructure.
 
Michael Hingson  04:07
So at some point, maybe we’ll find a significant amount of AI on chips. And of course, you’ve got people like Ray Kurzweil who talk about the singularity, and discuss the time when, well, what we’re calling AI or computer intelligence, and human intelligence, Mary and M become all part of the same brain.
 
Lisa Thee  04:28
Absolutely. And in fact, it was hard to wear enabled AI solutions that launched me from being a corporate citizen, to an entrepreneur in my 40s when the iPhone 10 launched, I got a call from a colleague of mine from Apple, and he shared with me that he was no longer under NDA. And he thought we could do a lot in terms of prevention of child abuse online by identifying issues on the chip itself on the phone before they got saved to the cloud. And so that’s what launched our company minor guard where we go Because on improving online safety for kids, online and in real life together by leveraging AI and nudity detection, to make sure that they weren’t making 30 site decisions that were ruining the rest of their lives.
 
Michael Hingson  05:15
So I’d love to learn more about that. What? What did you all create? And what how does it work? And what does it do?
 
Lisa Thee  05:22
Yeah, so today, our technology inspired some of the changes that Apple made and iOS, when we started our journey, it took 130 unique decisions to block your child from taking a nudey kitty photo, that is illegal content and technically a felony. Today, it only takes a single choice, if you have a family iOS account, and you identify your child is using that device. So we help them to see the opportunity to really focus on safety in a way that was frictionless and allowed kids to be kids and make mistakes, but hopefully not the kinds of mistakes that will follow them for decades to come.
 
Michael Hingson  06:04
How does AI enter into that? I mean, if you would think I can just push a button and my child won’t be able to access the site anymore. Where do they I get into that?
 
Lisa Thee  06:15
Yeah, so most apps today are end to end encrypted. So there’s not a lot of visibility on the device, once you’re in App if you’re on a tic tac, or you’re on a Snapchat or any of those popular social apps. And so we knew we needed to do it at a device level. Because once it was in the app and software, there was no way to make sure what what was happening. So when Apple you got to the generation with the iPhone 10. And beyond, they had an AI accelerator chip in the phone that allowed for facial recognition to unlock the phone. And by having that AI accelerator on the device that opened up the window to be able to do some detection on the device before you saved, saved it to the cloud. To make sure that before it got into an encrypted vault, you can make sure that a child isn’t doing something that’s illegal, and will possibly honeypot them for perpetrators.
 
Michael Hingson  07:08
So what does so let’s say somebody takes a kiddie porn picture. What does ai do?
 
Lisa Thee  07:17
It identifies that the device is registered to a child through iOS, and identifies that image is explicit, and it blocks that image from ever being saved to the device. And secondly, to check what somebody sends them, it’s going to prevent your child from taking their own content, because we learned through the process of working through this challenge with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who is the nationwide clearinghouse for all reports of child sexual abuse material online. For tech companies, the public and law enforcement, that 40% of these images are actually taken by children themselves. They’re often groomed or influenced by others to make a bad choice. And they don’t really realize the stakes that they’re entering when they move from being a regular kid to being somebody that has now created and distributed Child Sexual Abuse material, which is a felony.
 
Michael Hingson  08:15
And we’re making any kind of progress on going the other way, which is people sending pictures to a child.
 
Lisa Thee  08:22
Yes, I think safety, that is harder. It is. So in my day job, I work with some of the leading thought leaders at the big tech companies in this space. I think there’s a very large desire to make sure that the policy groups and the legal teams that are setting the terms of service to align with all the regulations internationally, have better tools were the operators that are trying to moderate that content, to be able to identify it and get it off of platforms. It is definitely a threat to every business owner to be hosting illegal content. I don’t think anybody wants it there. It’s an industry wide challenge. But unfortunately, criminals don’t usually play by the rules, they intentionally find the places where they can break them. And so that’s where I think AI comes in as a great complement to the humans, where AI can do what it does particularly well with just pattern recognition, tactical reordering of things to make it easier to process extremely large volumes of data. And make sure that the right things are in front of the moderators at the right time to get the most egregious acts off of the internet as fast as possible.
 
Michael Hingson  09:30
So they’re they’re always pictures and things like that. But what about bullying and those sorts of things where it’s perhaps a lot more textual and so on, does aI have yet any real influence on dealing with that kind of situation bullying and such?
 
Lisa Thee  09:46
Absolutely as as much advancement as we saw on the video and photo side of AI. In the last 10 years, there’s a whole new renaissance around natural language processing speeds typically around being able to use AI to detect things in context. So one of the companies that I advice for that I’m really passionate about is spectrum labs, because they are taking over 40 international languages and being able to apply models that are uniquely trained to identify 40 Different abuse types. So whether that be cyber bullying, whether that be Daxing, whether that be human trafficking, they can pick up the signals in the noise, and help moderators to take action on accounts that are problematic and creating harm across the platforms. So I’m really excited about their tech because I’ve been under the hood of most of these solutions. And I do know that they’re able to do things in multi language that are unprecedented. And so that’s why I chose to back behind them. I also have some experience working at a business to consumer products called bark technologies. And bark is really focused on parents being able to moderate their own children’s communications on social media applications, I know that when mine get old enough, I will definitely be using their product. Because there is a big difference between somebody saying, I just tripped in front of that girl, I like I want to kill myself, and my life is meaningless. I want to kill myself, and having AI help bring the right alert at the right time can change the trajectory of a person’s life. And I’ve seen that many times over. Because it’s really connection and humans that help to intervene when things get dark. It’s not going to be technology, but sometimes you don’t know until you get an alert that they need special attention.
 
Michael Hingson  11:44
Course Gaia, somebody trips in front of a girl that he really likes, what we need to do is to send a message saying you got to call this guy he’s really embarrassed.
 
Lisa Thee  11:55
Yeah, that one is recoverable. But when you are mentioning things like time, and your conflict that we know that they’re significantly more likely to take action on that feeling, because they’ve been researching how to do it. And so you know, I am, I am definitely somebody who learned a lot of mistakes the hard way through hard knocks. And I’m grateful that I grew up in a generation where you could make a lot of mistakes, and it wasn’t in the public domain for the rest of your lives. But unfortunately, for this generation, that’s just not the case. And so they do a lot more typing than talking. And so when you can use technology to that, and especially AI to make sure that you can give them as much privacy as humanly possible. Well, getting the signal from the noise of something is really going from an affordable mistake to a life altering one. I’m really passionate about that. So I think Burke on the consumer side spectrum on the business side are really the leading folks that I see that can really help with this problem.
 
Michael Hingson  12:53
I think you bring up a really interesting issue, which is, as you said, there’s a lot more typing than talking today, and I go back generations before you. And I remember growing up, I’m sure I was an oddity, but I wasn’t really bullied, we didn’t have internet at all, in the time that I was growing up. And I don’t I don’t think that we had nearly as much bullying as is appeared later. Or at least if we did, it wasn’t talked about very much. And there was no social media. But But you are right people type today a whole lot more. How do we get people back to interacting with each other? I read an article, I think last year in the New York Times about the art of conversation has has died or is is not much in existence anymore. And that was all at that time discussing how politicians were treating things, but still, it also involved how they were treating and how other people started treating each other and not conversing, not talking and not sharing ideas and trying to find commonality. How do we deal with that?
 
Lisa Thee  14:11
It’s a really good question. I wish I I wish I knew the full answer, there’s a few things that come to mind. The first is that empathy is a very slow dobro skill that requires a lot of face to face communication. And in a lot of cases, this generation just isn’t having as much opportunity to see the impact of their words, and how they can affect other people. So I think it allows them under the veil of anonymity online to speak to people in ways they wouldn’t in real life. And I think that extends to adults as well. So I think a lot of it is really seeing the impact of your words and connecting back with that humanity piece. And the second piece I wanted to mention was really around the areas of cyber bullying and what does that like versus maybe what some of us who are in older generations experienced bullying is not new. No I do think that the 24 by seven never able to get away from it is. So you may 20 years ago, when I was graduating from college, you, you may have had a bad experience. And people may have been really mean to you when you’re at school, for example, but you could come back to your apartment and just be separated from it, and have a little bit of a break and a respite and to be around people that were maybe more positive in your life, maybe that’s your family, and maybe it’s your friends. But you could you could get a break from it. Today’s generations, they are scared to go to sleep, because they want to know what’s being said about them at two in the morning. And I can relate in a small way. I mean, when I made a mistake, when I make a mistake at work, for example. I know I’m looking for that email from my manager or my client saying that it’s okay. And we’ll be alright. And this is how we’re going to fix it. And when I have, I don’t have that reassurance or that connection that it’s going to be okay, and people are bombarding me with messages about what a problem this is. Now, I certainly feel anxious, I don’t think there’s any solution for that human condition. So I actually have a lot of empathy for growing up these days, they don’t have a lot of room to make mistakes and, and grow from them. And realistically, I don’t think humans are much different than computers, they learn much more from their mistakes on their successes. And that’s how we advance AI is all the failures. And I think that’s how humans learn as well.
 
Michael Hingson  16:34
Well, I think that’s right. It’s not just you learn from your failures in ai, ai, you learn from your challenges, your failures, as you said, much more than your successes in real life, just because the mistakes and the frustrations stay with your consciousness longer. Oh, I did that really? Well. Great. And then you move on, oh, my gosh, I screwed up. What? What is that going to do to me, and it’s not anything new to have those kinds of feelings. But we do have today, such a much easier advice environment, on the parts of so many of us to ignore dealing with it, like you said, you wait for that email, and somebody doesn’t take the time to say it to you to send you the email because they’re off now doing other things. Whereas in the past, things were done much more face to face.
 
Lisa Thee  17:28
Yeah, you have much more real time feedback. And yet, you didn’t have an eyes on culture, like work ended at a certain time. And I think there’s been a lot of studies post pandemic that as we’ve shifted to a more virtual work environment, people aren’t really having a hard time guarding their time at both ends of the day. Now in a way that wasn’t as big of a problem when we had commutes. And when we had a lot more face time.
 
Michael Hingson  17:52
I have heard many times the joke about people, kids in the back of of cars, parents are driving in two kids sitting next to each other. And they’re texting back and forth rather than talking. And I’ve actually seen that I’ve been in vehicles where they do that. And to me, it’s just hard to fathom. Why don’t you just talk to each other?
 
Lisa Thee  18:15
Privacy? They don’t want the adults to hear it. Right? Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. When you, when you put yourselves in the shoes of a digital native, they just they’ve had so much more access to information than we did so much younger, they have a lot more complexities to manage through in terms of social structures and growing up, and everything’s public. So I can understand wanting to keep something between a couple of people because it’s not so easy to do anywhere else in their lives.
 
Michael Hingson  18:47
Right. The other side of it is that I think to some degree in the past, when a family was in a car, and people were sort of forced to talk to each other, it did help invoke a better and higher level of trust than just keeping things private. Oh, I don’t want them to know, because I can’t trust them. So we’ve we’ve lost some of that trust that we used to have, it seems to me, I may be misinterpreting. But that’s kind of what it seems.
 
Lisa Thee  19:16
Yeah. For me, what I’ve observed is we’re making trust a problem for families and consumers and individuals versus looking at it at a societal and platform level. And I’m really hopeful as we come out of 2022 that we start to get more regulation around was expected from platforms to keep kids and families safer. I don’t think this should be a consumer problem. I think this is a legacy of, you know, the growth of social and mobile and cloud that we’ve seen over the last 20 years. When we looked at regulating this industry 20 years ago. We just couldn’t have envisioned the law So we live today. And you know, going into this whole Metaverse of web app three dot O generation, I think we have a lot more people online, we have a lot more opportunities for harm, as they’re interacting with each other as building community has gotten so much easier. And it’s time for us to be thinking through policies like we do with cybersecurity. On the digital safety side, that’s where I’d like to see trust grow by having a level playing field for all the innovative startups all the way through to the large, multinational corporations. What we all agree is just off limits. I think today, there’s just too much gray zone,
 
Michael Hingson  20:39
it seems to me that a lot of that is going to have to be done within the industry, because the politicians are so divided. They won’t agree or do anything with it you had for four years, one party in power, who was just from their political stance against regulation doesn’t matter what it is. And now we have a different party in power. But still, the people who don’t want regulation or who say they don’t want regulation, that’s part of the interesting thing. It seems to be part of the time, what we’re seeing are people just oppose each other just to oppose each other, rather than dealing with doing the right thing.
 
Lisa Thee  21:20
Yeah, for me, what I can say about this is I don’t usually get the call until it got pretty bad. And trust me, the things that I get involved in, these are not tweener situations, right when the victim is six, or under which by the way, 56% of victims of child sexual abuse material are whose privacy is more important, the adult that’s trying to consume that for entertainment value, or the crime scene victim who’s having their images consumed for the pleasure of adults, I think the privacy in the regulation needs to fall a lot more on protecting our legacy and our next generations and protecting people’s rights. And if people really understood the level of severity of what’s being searched for and how an invasive the technology has to do it, it’s very lightweight, just like a spam filter, I think there would be a lot less opposed to regulations. I think I wish that we could get better at helping people understand that if you really want privacy fully, you need to make sure that you turn off all of your spam filters to right like we’re willing to make trade offs for privacy to not get attacked by criminals. Why would children not deserve the right to be able to use very labor? Wait hash matching technology that is not invasive? It’s not going through your emails, personally, it’s looking for picture matches for reported crimes, things like that. without even opening your stuff. I think if people really understood what we were talking about at that level, there would be a lot less gerrymandering happening in politics.
 
Michael Hingson  22:56
How do we deal with that? How do we make that happen? How do we get people to understand? And I guess that’s really getting back to the whole issue of we’re so polarized today. How do we break this logjam?
 
Lisa Thee  23:09
I would love to say that I have an answer. In 2021, I did a TED talk on the topic and started a petition to try to get some of the Department of Justice recommendations into the regulatory bodies for communication Decency Act 230 revisions, they, they did interviews with industry leaders and advocates for victims and the NGOs that do best in breed and came up with some very comprehensive and very rational guardrails that we could be adhering to. And I really hope that as Europe and the US are looking at some of these new bills, we don’t get pulled to the to either side of all the things we disagree about, but we’ve had something we can all come together on. Unfortunately, I don’t think that that helps people get reelected by being agreeable. So we’d love to see more pressure from people writing to their local representatives that they expect movement on this. And if you want to learn more about the bill that the petition and support that it’s on my website, Lisa v.com/ted. Talk.
 
Michael Hingson  24:27
th, Lisa v th e,
 
Lisa Thee  24:30
right. Yes. And I I’ve been working with my California representatives to try to get some legislation brought forward because this is far overdue. We’re gambling with things that are just the stakes are too high for kids.
 
Michael Hingson  24:47
Is the industry moving toward doing more to truly and not only intellectually but emotionally regulating itself on this It doesn’t have to be left to the politics to do it and the politicians to do it.
 
Lisa Thee  25:04
I think that anytime you need to clean up technical debt and be looking for criminals abusing your systems, there has to be some kind of incentive or policy in place to make sure that you get the appropriate amount of funding. I have never met anybody that works in the industry, whether it be at Google or Microsoft, or all the other places that doesn’t do this work, because they care. There’s a lot easier ways to make a paycheck with a data science background, trust me. But unfortunately, a lot of times the boards in the C suite executives don’t fully understand what it takes to do this, right. And it’s grossly underfunded. So I think regulation will be the place where it allows them to make better trade offs for shareholders and better trade offs for their leadership to understand why the investment is absolutely mandated. And I think the other challenge you get into so you get a lot of hero complexes here and you get people that will just work themselves to the absolute core like to the bone. And it’s because how do you ever measure someone else’s suffering against your own? I gave myself PTSD, in 2017, from working every night, every weekend, on morphine drips in the hospital after injuries, because I had a really hard time turning it off, when you know, what’s really going on. And I think that’s why regulation really matters. We need to make this everyone’s priority, that actually gets done. And I think we wouldn’t see privacy and cybersecurity come to the forefront for a long time until regulation GDPR allowed people to make those investments, I think we’re gonna have to see something similar in the digital safety front to help companies come along. I don’t think there’s a lack of talented smart people that can innovate and do what needs to be done. But there needs to be an impetus to act. And that’s going to come from regulatory bodies.
 
Michael Hingson  27:08
We live in an era where it’s not new, but people say, Well, we’ve got to do what we do. And we’re all about just getting money for the shareholders. And personally, I understand why people say that. But companies were also originally formed many times from an entrepreneurial standpoint, to do something good. But we lose that along the way. And we get to the point of well, we’re just all about making money for our stockholders.
 
Lisa Thee  27:39
I think this one is a little bit trickier. I think there’s a lot of unintended consequences going on. When you build a platform to connect the world and have all these visions and wonderful ways it can happen, you’re probably not thinking about the creepy guy in Estonia, that’s going to start targeting sixth grade girls and Columbus, Ohio. When the nefarious actors typically are, innovate faster than these companies can keep up with. In terms of the ways they’re misapplying their technology. So I think a lot of it’s going to always be a balance of pushing a ball. I do think that the same way that privacy has really gotten much more regulated, I think we’re gonna see online safety going that direction as well. And looking forward to that day, I don’t anticipate by the time that Gen Z is parenting, that they’re going to have the same struggles that I do with a nine year old and a 10 year old in the world. And I look forward to that, because they’ve grown up with this stuff. And they know how people use it. And they’re not naive. I think right now we have a huge education gap, with our lawmakers, with our citizens, on really the ways that people are taking advantage of access to young people.
 
Michael Hingson  28:59
The kinds of things you’re saying, to me, it seems, are things I’ve heard before. So what I’m saying is, I don’t think they’re necessarily new. So I think there’s a little bit more to it, then people are just totally uneducated or uneducated. We’re also not seeing the will to change and you’re right with the Gen Z environment. hopefully over time, the these kids growing up, will recognize that we’ve got to change the world. But I hope that it happens before then because it’s not like the concepts are new. It’s more that we’re not yet emotionally accepting it as such a reality in all of our lives unless we’re specifically hit by it with a with a specific or concrete example for our child.
 
Lisa Thee  29:53
I have to have some tough talks with friends and family at least a couple of times a year and it’s usually the somebody comes to me because something’s happening in their family with one of their kids on safety. And I tell them what I know and what they can do. And then oftentimes, they don’t want to do that, because it’s a lot of work and who the heck has extra time for anything right now, or they don’t want to make their child feel like their privacy is being invaded or a whole host of reasons. And then I get a call six to nine months later with law enforcement involved when people are missing when you know, things have gotten really off the rails. And I got to the place where I had to tell people look, I am happy to help you. If you are willing to take multiple hours to get things set up properly. And if you’re not willing to commit that in the next 48 hours, I can’t help you. Because I can’t sit here and just wait to watch the train wreck. And I think that that’s where the policy piece comes in where platforms have to design in safety by design. And parents don’t need to be investing hours and hours and hours to set things up properly. Because frankly, I have an engineering degree, I founded an AI startup, I consult for some of the biggest thought leaders in this area. I don’t know how to set their crap up. I don’t I don’t think this should be a consumer problem.
 
Michael Hingson  31:16
Oh, I hear you. And that’s what I’m getting at. It’s not like this information is new. And it’s not like these people don’t have the the industry doesn’t have access to the information, and probably has heard it. But they under strict
 
Lisa Thee  31:32
chair, they don’t lose market share. If they don’t do it. That’s the problem. We vote with our feet.
 
Michael Hingson  31:37
Yeah, that’s that’s the problem, we’re still back to. It doesn’t matter how important it is to do. From a reality standpoint, emotionally and intellectually. We’re not there yet.
 
Lisa Thee  31:50
I mean, I tried to hold myself to a different standard, because I do have more access to information. And frankly, nothing the Facebook whistleblower service is new to me, but it to her being, you know, testifying to Congress before it kicked my Facebook habit, again, for like the fourth or fifth time. It’s hard to stay away from some of these platforms, because they are a way for us to connect. They are a way for us to educate ourselves. They’re fun. And I think if adults have a hard time staying away from things that aren’t necessarily good for them, I think we have no right to expect the next generation to do better.
 
Michael Hingson  32:28
Not until they get older and hopefully become wiser.
 
Lisa Thee  32:31
I mean, your brain doesn’t develop to anticipate long term impacts of your decisions fully until you’re 24 years old. What are we expecting out of 1415 year olds? It’s nonsense.
 
Michael Hingson  32:42
Yeah, much less six year olds?
 
Lisa Thee  32:44
Absolutely. No question. The age of my first phone, globally is estimated to be 10 years old these days. first smartphone,
 
Michael Hingson  32:52
I like actually, I got my first iPhone in 2009. It was the iPhone three, three, 3g. And so we’ve been using them ever since. And they’re a wonderful tool. That’s also part of it is that we’ve got to recognize it’s a tool. But we also need to develop in our own minds much less in a regulatory way. What it really means to be able to positively use the tool and cut out some of the negative stuff. And it is just so easy to do that today to have all the negative stuff. It’s so frustrating.
 
Lisa Thee  33:28
It is I think we’ll continue to improve and innovate. I think there’s too much more awareness of what really can happen. I think that some some of the places where I’m seeing a lot of innovation in terms of regulation and safety by design are coming out of places like Australia, huge superfan of the Safety Commissioner over there. Julie and Julie came from the tech industry and kind of knows where some of the popples are, and is starting to bring regulation that really can bring us forward in terms of hate speech in terms of cyber bullying in terms of protecting children. So I I feel like we will get there. I just wish we have gotten there already. I’m impatient at this point. I’ve been working in this field since 2015. And I’m ready to see some real movement
 
Michael Hingson  34:21
Yeah, it’s it’s got to be very frustrating for you because you’re very close to it and you have children of your own and all you can do is do your best to bring them up and teach them how to make the right decisions and hopefully they’ll do that but it is easy to to make a mistake and there’s such a fine line today.
 
Lisa Thee  34:38
And it’s not the parents negligence, it’s we’re not You’re not set up to win. And even if you keep your kid off of it, they go to school and totally on unsupervised and have older siblings that you know it. We need. We need help. We need help.
 
Michael Hingson  35:03
Personally, I’m gonna start to worry when I get an email from someone that says that your dog just complained on Facebook that you weren’t giving him enough bones, then I’m gonna worry.
 
Lisa Thee  35:14
There you go. I think AI to translate animal language would be a very interesting application, I only has to say about me,
 
Michael Hingson  35:25
it would be a whale out but not too many negative things. I think that there’s a lot more positivity going on than we think. But they’re very strategic. Some of these dogs are very intelligent. We had we had a dog. She was a breeder for Guide Dogs for the Blind. One day she was on the bed chewing on a bone but the bone kept slipping. Do you know what do you know what a doughnut is? I’m not sure I do. It’s a it’s a rubber doughnut. Very tough. It’s really hard to to chew up. And in fact, I think they come with a warranty that if your dog happens to do it, which is very rare. They’ll replace it for free. But it’s it looks like a doughnut. Well, anyway, so our dog Fantasia was chewing on this bone and kept slipping away. She just deliberately left the bone on the bed, jumped down, went and grabbed a doughnut brought it back up on the bed. But she then picked up the bone, put the bone in the hole of the go nuts, so she could chew it and it wouldn’t slide around. tool users tool users all the way
 
Lisa Thee  36:30
up. Absolutely. I also love their attunement. I feel like my dog knows the emotions and feelings of everybody in the family and knows who needs to snuggle and who needs a lick and who needs cuddle. At all times. They’re they’re really wonderful complements to our lives.
 
Michael Hingson  36:46
My fourth guide dog was named Linnaeus, she was a yellow lab. We were at a party and I, I took the harness off because everyone knew Lynnie. And so we let Lynnae wander around and visit people. And our pastor was there. She came up and she said, You know, it’s interesting, Lynnae clearly is empathic and intuitive. She goes to the first person who’s the most in pain, and then she’ll visit the rest of the crowd. And you know, she said I don’t mean physical pain. And when we started observing Lynnie that was absolutely true. And because Sheree had seen her at several parties, and so new Lynnie well, but it’s absolutely true. They do have a lot of empathy and they know what’s going on. You know, I’ve talked about that with me and the World Trade Center. The decisions that I made on September 11 came in large part because of what I saw Roselle doing and not doing. Because I’ve been working with dogs so long, Roselle there was a colleague who started shouting, there was fire and smoke above us. And there were millions of pieces of paper falling outside the window, and I could hear the stuff falling by the window, but I didn’t know what it was at the time. But you know, David said millions of pieces of burning paper, I believed him. But with all of that Roselle is just sitting next to me wagging your tail going woke me up. i What are we doing here? And so that told me that whatever was going on wasn’t such an imminent issue for her that she was even the slightest bit nervous.
 
Lisa Thee  38:22
Interesting, and then forgive my lack of awareness. How did you proceed out of that building with her guidance
 
Michael Hingson  38:30
downstairs. I mean, that was the only way to go. I was the Mid Atlantic region Sales Manager for Quantum. So I ran that office, and I spent a lot of time learning about emergency preparedness, what to do in emergencies and so on. And part of that actually led to why we’re calling the podcast unstoppable mindset, because what I actually develop that day was a mindset. Well, not that day, but before that day of what to do if there’s an emergency. And I really got to the point of knowing that whatever happened, if there were ever an emergency, I was as prepared as I could be, to deal with it. Now, of course, there are things that could have happened, that would have changed all of that, like the building just collapsed, and in which case, we wouldn’t be here. But it was truly all about developing a mindset. And I think that gets back to what you’re talking about here. We’ve got to change our mindset. And that’s what what I did on the days before in the months before September 11th was develop that mindset. So I always observe what my guide dogs are doing anyway. And so it was a natural part of things to go oh Roselle is not acting nervous at all. So I believed everything that David said about what he was seeing paper falling burning paper falling fire above us and so on. But whatever was happening was in such an imminent issue, that we had to panic and just run out of the office, which wouldn’t have done any good anyway.
 
Lisa Thee  39:58
Wow. Wow. Yeah, and I think that’s exactly a great lead in to some of the things that I learned about in digital safety for the other folks that are maybe listening to this and a little bit nervous about what their kids are doing online, after hearing me, and that is, you know, teach your kids to do emergency drills, we teach them for tornadoes, we teach them for fires, we teach them for all sorts of natural disasters, that oftentimes will never happen in their lifetime. But coming across something on the internet, that’s inappropriate, or makes you uncomfortable, is probably going to happen to 99.99% of kids, before they turn 18. And so I think one of the tricks that I’ve learned through being in the industry is really, you know, teaching your kids what to do when they do have that moment. So it’s the stop, walk and talk method. And I’m sure my kids are sick of hearing it from me, but it’s when you see something that makes you feel uncomfortable, you need to stop what you’re doing, walk away from your computer, and come talk to a trusted adult, and know that I’m not going to freak out, I am here to support you. And that secrets can’t live in the dark.
 
Michael Hingson  41:10
That is, of course, the other part of it, which is that you have to react appropriately and help even stronger, encourage and emphasize and enhance the trust, which is what you’re really implying. And it’s important that kids understand that parents really mostly do want to have that trusting relationship, there are some who give up those responsibilities, which is unfortunate. But that’s not generally what happens.
 
Lisa Thee  41:41
And that’s why I don’t say talk to a parent, maybe it’s talk to a trusted adult, maybe it’s his uncle, maybe it’s a teacher, maybe it’s my market research was the majority of times that kids come in contact with the adult world online. It has come into being pushed towards them. And it’s not something they’re actively seeking out. And shame is a huge deterrent from getting help. And kids are not equipped to be able to handle the coordinated behavior and malicious adults is just not a fair fight. So I, I tried to remind that myself and them that I have the mindset that I’m here to be a resource for you and not to make this about my shame triggers not to freak out and overreact. I’m teaching you how to be in the world. And the world sometimes can be a little messy. And I know that criminals are looking for easy targets. They’re looking for the people that don’t have somebody that has their back. Yeah. And I don’t ever want to put my kids in the position of not having somebody behind them.
 
Michael Hingson  42:48
Did you have any of these kinds of experiences growing up bullying or those sorts of things?
 
Lisa Thee  42:53
Nope. Um, my drought of this came mostly from my travels in my 20s as a global IT manager and until I hit 36 countries before the age of 30. Seeing in the business hotels, I was often mistaken for a flight attendant. So people acted really comfortable in their own environment. And I saw a lot of the business travelers taking advantage of human trafficking victims, it was very blatant. And it was something that really cemented in me that when I was in a position where I could have the authority to do something about this crime that I would, and that came later in my 30s. But it was my it was the fuel and AI engine, so to speak, to say, what’s the point of being a woman with any kind of power in the world, if you’re not advocating for marginalized women and children, I, there’s, that’s the only reason to keep doing what I do every day.
 
Michael Hingson  43:53
I think I said earlier was fortunate and not having any real bullying or anything like that. Now I faced discrimination as a blind person. I’ve had a number of examples of people who discriminated or treated me inappropriately because of being blind. And I think the first example of that was when a high school superintendent in our district decided that my guide dog wouldn’t be allowed to ride on the school bus because there was a rule in the district that said, no live animals allowed on the bus, which was well, which it was contrary, contrary to state law, also at the time, and he was a bully. And so he was really trying to just make his position, the only one that mattered to them and disregarded everything else. And it actually took getting the governor of California involved to fix it. But the Governor did. As I tell people I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the superintendent was summoned to say perminova over it. But the next week I was back on the bus.
 
Lisa Thee  45:05
I love that. It’s awesome. It is so nice to see people that are abusing positions of power and authority to have some kind of accountability. I’m glad you didn’t just advocate for yourself, you advocate for everyone that comes after you, right?
 
Michael Hingson  45:20
Sure. The The interesting thing about it is we first took it to the school board. And the board voted, even though we pointed out the state law, we pointed out case law my father did that demonstrated that the penal code in California took precedence over a rule in the school district, the board voted three to two to support the superintendent. That’s how cowed several of the people were, or just took the position. Well, the superintendents, the boss, and we got to go along with what he says. And that’s why it eventually went to the governor. But it was my first lesson in the fact that because I happen to not be able to see, I would be treated differently than than other people.
 
Lisa Thee  46:02
Wow, that’s really powerful.
 
Michael Hingson  46:07
But it happens. And, you know,
 
Lisa Thee  46:09
I’m glad that you have a family that supports you, not everybody has the luxury of a functional family, to advocate for them. And that’s why I do what I do. I’m not really worried about this happening to my kids to be honest, I they have a lot of advantages. But there’s a lot of kids in foster care, there’s a lot of kids that are maybe from families that maybe the LGBT community or other reasons are not under the protections that are. And I want to make sure that we we rise as a society for our most vulnerable, not only the privileged,
 
Michael Hingson  46:48
well, and you are taking the steps that you need to take with your children so that they grow up aware they grew up, hopefully wiser for it. And they grew up trusting their mom,
 
Lisa Thee  47:02
we’ll see the jury’s out time will tell the talks about Stranger Danger online and drives him nuts. Who knows?
 
Michael Hingson  47:13
That’s right. I mean, you know, who knows what will happen, but all you can do is your best. And ultimately, you’ve got to live with that, that you can only do your best. And, and so you just kind of move forward as best you can. I’d like to read because you brought it up, you’ve experienced COVID, and so on, and which brings up the whole issue of, of disabilities, which is, of course another whole subject about people and how they treat people and so on. So I’d love to learn a little bit more about kind of, if you will, what happened to you and where you feel you fit now on the spectrum of people with disabilities and what where you feel society isn’t all
 
Lisa Thee  47:52
that great question. So I was early to being exposed to COVID. I got sick in June of 2020. Well, before testing was readily available. And we knew what the possible long term effects of this disease were. My husband got it at the same time, unfortunately. And thank goodness my kids didn’t. So very interesting all living in the same environment. But the adults were susceptible and the children weren’t. I didn’t have a lot of the classic symptoms they were looking for at the time, I never had a fever from COVID. I had pretty mild symptoms, according to the classifications, but unfortunately, it awoke at something in my immune system, that it’s still having a hard time turning off. So since having COVID, and being diagnosed with long COVID with neurologic mild neurological impairment, I’ve lost half my hearing in my left ear, I have the hearing of a 60 something in my 40s I have a lot of Gi challenges that take a lot of medication to keep under control. And I get a lot of brain fog and insomnia because sleep apnea, so I have to be treated for that. And now I’m in the process of physical therapy and occupational therapy to recover some of my processing time and my brain when I’m trying to use my executive functioning skills. So as somebody that was labeled gifted before I started kindergarten, it is really, really hard to manage through the world. At the bottom 2% of the population, it’s very foreign from what I’ve known before now, and I get lost picking my kids up from school. I sometimes am in a room and I don’t know why I’m there. It is really hard for me to learn new things. Fortunately, I have a lot of things I learned before I got sick, but I still have a lot of access to. But new things are really, really tough for me, logistics names, things that I would just do without ever thinking about it. And I’m on disability from work right now I’m on a reduced schedule, I have been for a year and a half. I don’t want to be put out to pasture I want to be part of the world. But unfortunately, that’s as much as my body can handle at this point in time.
 
Michael Hingson  50:33
I have a friend who has brain cancer, and she’s had it for several years, and she has gone through several brain surgeries and has had to work totally from home and not able to an infant back home is right now across country from where she works and so on. So it’s it’s a challenge. But the fact is that sometimes things occur, and she’s, she’s going through it pretty well. And she is able to, to move forward, although sometimes there are setbacks, and then those occur, but but she’s really, she’s really learned to be as strong as she can be at addressing it. So for you, what are they what are you doing, or what what can be done to kind of help some of the issues of the brain fog or the mental activities and so on?
 
Lisa Thee  51:26
No, I’m the results of my full diagnosis are only about a week old. So I’m sitting with a lot of acceptance right now, that’s a big part of the game is just accepting that this is medical, it’s not something I will be able to will myself thought of, or practice crossword puzzles and be done with. So I think part of it is reducing my stress around expecting more for myself and what I’m capable of today. I think secondarily is learning to how to have boundaries with friends, family and employers, what is possible for me, my doctor has been a really great partner in all these believing me and helping me get the right resources, make sure that I can, you know, keep my hours down, because I function very well, when I’m not fatigued, I just get fatigued much quicker than most people do post post injury. And I think also, you know, we’ve seen the impacts of the pandemic, disproportionately pushing women out of the workplace, or back to the 1980s levels of representation. So I feel really grateful that I have an entrepreneurial background to fall back on. I don’t think I could keep up in a full corporate environment today. And I’m really grateful for advocates that I have within Funch consulting, that allow me to work and do what I do particularly well, in the times that I can do it so that I can still be part of society and make those accommodations. I’m really grateful for that. But I must admit, it’s so really painful. When people clearly are expecting me to do things that I’m just not capable of, because I don’t look disabled examples. So Girl Scout cookies for the last five years, totally not a big deal. I couldn’t reconcile the number of boxes and what we ordered this year, I just simply couldn’t do it. Or, you know, my kid forgot to I drop my kid off late to school this week. And they’re like, Okay, you just need to go here into the attendance person and write this email and do this and do that. And I had to be like, I’m sorry, I have brain damage. I am not going to have the wherewithal to do that. On top of everything else I’m doing today, like, Can this be enough? You’re seeing me right now seeing that my kid is here with me? Can you make an exception? And I found that unless I’m more vulnerable and actually say I have a disability, can you please? People are really kind of condescending, to be honest. And so I’m still tinkering with it. I haven’t really come up with the way to protect my dignity and get the accommodations I need. Do you have any suggestions? Because honestly, I’m a little newer to this.
 
Michael Hingson  54:24
What did the attendance person do with a fine with that?
 
Lisa Thee  54:27
They argued with me three times until I said I have brain damage and then they stopped.
 
Michael Hingson  54:33
Yeah. The The problem is we haven’t taught each other how to be inclusive and we haven’t taught ourselves to address difference. So you’re right people expect you just because you look quote normal and have quotation to be normal, even though in fact you might not be dyslexic. He is a perfect example of that kind of thing where it’s an invisible disability, but it affects many people. And people have learned ways to address the issue, and sometimes hide the issue. But they’ve, they’ve learned to be able to be successful. And I think the biggest thing is, is what you’re saying and doing right now you accept it, you accept the fact that there is this, this change in your life, which classifies you as a person with a disability. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you can address some of the issues medically or, or in some way, and your physical and occupational therapists and others can help you address some of that. And it may be creating new neural paths and of some sort, or it may just be that some things won’t totally go back the way they were. But if you accept that, and figure out how to deal with it, that’s the best that you can do.
 
Lisa Thee  56:04
Yeah, I think I’m early in that journey. But I know that that’s where I need to go next. And it’s funny, I’ve technically been on disability, because I’ve worked part time instead of full time for almost a year and a half. But it wasn’t until I got that final doctor’s diagnosis, that I able to accept that that it’s real. And even though I’m living with it, like they didn’t say anything in that report that I couldn’t tell you what’s happening all the time, seeing it validated in writing, with specific tests that they don’t know anything about me, and they can detect, it really helped me come to at least say, Okay, I don’t need to blame myself anymore for this. And I don’t need to hide all the places that are hard for me. And maybe this is as good as I’ll be. Or maybe I’ll improve over time with new learning new ways. Like you mentioned with dyslexic people. I mean, how CEOs are dyslexic Creative Learning. Well,
 
Michael Hingson  57:06
that’s exactly right. You know, Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book, David and Goliath, and he talks in there about CEOs who are dyslexic, they didn’t say anything, but they learned to deal with it. And the fact is, I still take the position that there is not one person on this earth who doesn’t have a disability. For most people. It’s you depend on light. And I sometimes say that facetiously. But it is absolutely true. You don’t have access to electric lights, or candles, or whatever power goes out, and you’re not in a room with a window, you’re most likely in a world of hurt. We’ve developed accommodations for that, because we’ve invented the electric lights, they, yes, Thomas Edison and others invented the electric light. And, and we have done a number of things to allow light to be around whenever we want it. It doesn’t change the fact that in reality, physically speaking, most of us still have that same disability.
 
Lisa Thee  58:12
I mean, at the end of the day, 2021 was tough, I was getting scanned for brain tumors, I was getting many, many medical tests, I probably didn’t go two weeks without some kind of doctor’s appointment the entire calendar year. And I still had to deliver a TED talk that I get selected for before I got disabled. And when it’s really hard for you to learn new things, it’s really hard to memorize, even if you wrote the speech. And I mean, until the week I was on that stage, I really wasn’t sure, really until the morning of if I was going to stand up there like a deer in headlights and not be able to deliver it because they don’t allow any visual aids in the TED family.
 
Michael Hingson  58:58
And he’s they’re smart. They’re smart. Who needs visual aids? That’s what I say,
 
Lisa Thee  59:03
You know what, you know, who needs them? People with neurological damage?
 
Michael Hingson  59:07
Yeah, no, I understand. Yeah.
 
Lisa Thee  59:11
You know, I don’t think many people that would follow me on social media on LinkedIn or such would envision that I have a disability. And so I just encourage everyone to be generous with their kindness for people you never really know what people are managing through. Most of 2021 Even though I was named a top 50, global thought leader in AI, privacy and health and safety and they did a TED talk. I was in bed by two o’clock because I couldn’t physically hold my head up. Yeah. So
 
Michael Hingson  59:47
and, and the reality is we we don’t need to and shouldn’t pity ourselves. Sometimes. Yeah, you have to have a little pity. But ultimately, what we have to recognize is We are who we are, with whatever gifts we have, sometimes those gifts change, but we we have the gifts that we have. And what we need to do is to maximize our ability to use them. And sometimes that also helps us grow and improve our ability to use gifts. But it is ultimately a mindset. And it is a mindset that we need to adopt to basically get ourselves to recognize that we can probably be better than we think we are.
 
Lisa Thee  1:00:31
And that’s actually what’s inspired me now to write my book, the 90 day career cleanse, how to go from burnout to sustainability, sustainable living, because I had to learn a new way, it wasn’t an option. And I see a lot of people suffering right now with feeling like they can’t keep up. And they can’t keep doing this. And I want to give some lived experience and some hope and some frameworks to people to be able to make that transition more gracefully. Because it’s a lonely road when you’re in the middle of it.
 
Michael Hingson  1:01:01
Well, how is your puppy dog helped you in terms of dealing with all the things that have happened to you.
 
Lisa Thee  1:01:09
Um, I think one of the strongest ways he helps me as accountability. He doesn’t care how I feeling he expects a walk every day. And that gets me out in the sunshine and helps me see the tops of the trees and the blue skies of California and be reminded at how little anything I’m doing matters in the scheme of the world and not to be so hard on myself or others. I think the other ways that he helps is, you know, the, the cuddles and snuggles and the attunement. I mean, you can’t be in your head and not be present in the moment when the warm cuddly puppy in your lap, that you’re heading, it just brings you back into your body. And I find so much of what needs to happen to get through the stressors of life and mental health, whether that be mental health or medical, or, you know, just the the wear and tear of adulting is getting out of your brain and into your body. And I think that’s where animals really help.
 
Michael Hingson  1:02:11
We have been talking for some time about writing a book, of course, I wrote thunder dog, which has been a number one New York Times bestseller, and it’s actually called Thunder dog the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. And if you out there who are listening to this have read it hope you will. Alamo says that it would be really great Elmo being my guide dog. It’d be great if you buy books, because we need to get money for kibbles. So you know, just keep that in mind.
 
Lisa Thee  1:02:38
More of those donut toys, right?
 
Michael Hingson  1:02:40
And go nuts. Yeah, well, he’s got a couple of he plays with them. But, but the thing about it is that in there, of course, I talked about being in the World Trade Center. And we talked earlier about the mindset that I developed, that kept me from being afraid or allowed me or helped me use the fear, if you will, that I had to help me focus. But I’ve never taught people how to do that. So we’re actually writing a new book, The working title right now is a guide dogs Guide to Being brave, awesome. And we’re going to we’re talking with people about fear and the things that that they have accomplished and overcoming fears and so on. And of course, we’re emphasizing a lot with animals. So if you don’t mind, we’re going to probably see if we can draft you to be interviewed for the book.
 
Lisa Thee  1:03:26
Oh, it will be an absolute honor. Thank you.
 
Michael Hingson  1:03:30
And, you know, we’re really excited about it. Because there’s so many things that and we’ve talked about it here that we talked about in our lives, that are creating so much fear, we’ve got to be able to move beyond the fear. Because if we allow fear to just overtake us, then we are no longer in a good position to make decisions and think the way we ought to about how to deal with whatever problems we’re facing.
 
Lisa Thee  1:03:57
I can’t say that I bring my dog most places because I do still have a lot of triggers for my PTSD. I was in a school when they went into lockdown for an active shooter in 2016. And I came out okay, but we didn’t know that for those three hours, we were hiding in the dark under a desk, wondering if I would ever see my family again. And then going into Child Safety Online. I I know what can go wrong and a level of detail that most people will never ever have to deal with. And so I get a lot of judgment a lot of times when I bring my dog because he’s he isn’t an emotional support animal. He has been registered as one but a lot of people think that’s a joke and not a real thing. And, you know, I just hope that people can remain a little bit more open that not not everything on the surface is all the story and he really does help me and I’m sure there’s other people that maybe take advantage of that system and you know, have fun do all sorts of crazy animals are traveling with or whatnot, but I just, I just encourage people to judge less than accept more.
 
Michael Hingson  1:05:09
Well, the the issue with emotional support animals in part is even ones that are registered are not necessarily trained to deal with the public and so on. And of course, a service dog or assistance dog is an animal that’s been trained to provide a service. And so one of the things I’m immediately thinking of is that you ought to explore the scene, what else you could do or how someone could help you even better train him to help you with PTSD, because that is recognized as a service.
 
Lisa Thee  1:05:43
Oh, that’s wonderful. I’ll, I’ll talk to you after this. Learn a bit more. I would not put myself it’s an amazing drug dog trainer that is not in my skill set of things that I can
 
Michael Hingson  1:05:54
use. Okay. That’s okay. Well, listen, we’ve been doing this a while. So we should we should end I think, unless you’ve got something else you want to talk about?
 
Lisa Thee  1:06:03
No, this was, this was wonderful. Thank you, Michael. How can how can people
 
Michael Hingson  1:06:07
reach out to you and get in touch with you and talk with you and learn more about what you do?
 
Lisa Thee  1:06:12
Sure. I think the easiest way is to go to Lisa thi.com. That’s li s a th e.com. All one word. Or you can find me on LinkedIn. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn as well. And I welcome any questions or ideas or ways to connect.
 
Michael Hingson  1:06:30
We found you on LinkedIn. Yes. Well, that would be great. Lisa, and I want to thank you for being on unstoppable mindset and all of you out there listening. Thanks for joining us. We’d love to hear your comments. Please feel free to write me at or email me, I guess. I’m still going to use right what the heck. So it’s an older generation. You can reach me at Michael h i mi ch AE l h i addicts SV ACCE SSI B e.com. Michael h i addicts smb.com. Or you can visit our podcast page, Michael hingson.com/podcast. And I hope that you’ll give us a five star rating wherever you got this podcast from. We do want to hear your thoughts. If you know others who should be on the podcast, please let us know. But thank you for listening. Thank you for being here today. And Lisa, thank you for being with us as well. Appreciate
 
Lisa Thee  1:07:25
it, Michael, thank you.
 
Michael Hingson  1:07:31
You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you’ll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you’re on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you’re there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Recent Posts
Contact Us

We're not around right now. But you can send us an email and we'll get back to you, asap.

Not readable? Change text. captcha txt