We had the good fortune of connecting with Cody Merrill and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Cody, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
At Socialwyze, we connect people experiencing homelessness, transition, and/or recovery, to immediate income opportunities to work alongside environmental nonprofits to perform public benefit work including tree plantings, park and beach cleanups, community gardening, and food distributions. We believe that by providing barrier free, immediate income opportunities to those most in need to perform the work that most needs to be completed in our neighborhoods that we are helping people on their path to recovery while improving the health of our communities.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I came up with the idea for Socialwyze after realizing I wanted to spend my life helping others. I had worked at various medical technology startups and other health and tech related firms for a number of years before realizing that what I found most deeply concerning in society is how we treat our most vulnerable neighbors. I knew there had to be ways to better help people in troubled times to get back on their feet. And I realized that with barrier free work, that we could help a ton of people who are willing to work but just need the right opportunity. It’s been an amazing journey over the last few years and I’m truly inspired by all of the people I’ve encountered along the way and by all the change we’ve already been able to take part in. I can’t wait to see where we can take it from here!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Dallas is such a vibrant, great city! I’m a huge fan of going for a bike ride or stand up paddle on White Rock Lake and dropping in to White Rock Lake Brewery afterwards for dinner and some of the best beers around. I’d also strongly recommend visiting our great museums including the Perot Museum and the Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art. And for night life, you can’t beat going out in historic Deep Ellum!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
We would be remiss to not give a great deal of thanks and gratitude to Mark Cuban, Cortado Ventures, and all of our other private investors and donors for making our vision possible. In addition to our funders, we also can’t be grateful enough to Trammell S. Crow, Lynn McBee, and the rest of the staff at EarthX which hosts our Community Fund through which we pay our workers. EarthX is a leading global nonprofit that aims to create a more sustainable future through direct action as well as through its media arm – EarthxTV – which provides a platform for environmental storytelling for the world’s leading environmental activists. But truly, at the end of the day, our thanks go most powerfully to our nonprofit partners and the workers themselves for making all of this such incredibly great work possible.

Website: www.socialwyze.com

Instagram: social.wyze

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/socialwyzegigs

Twitter: @SocialwyzeGigs

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Socialwyze

Image Credits
Alfonso Medeiros

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