We have been sheltering-in-place for a couple of months now, living with the fear of contracting a dangerous virus.

In the midst of all this, another virus has had a resurgence—the continuing injustice perpetrated against people of color in this country.

The saddest thing you can do today, and we encourage you to do it, is type “Death of George Floyd,” “Death of Ahmaud Arbery,” “Death of Breonna Taylor,” etc. into Google and then click the “People Also Searched For” link. You end up scrolling through a long list of faces pushed out of this life against their will. Many were household names for a news cycle or three, then forgotten, replaced by newer victims. Google does a fine job at bearing witness.

As a company—not just a business but a company of people—our vision is one where we enable richer communication, engagement, and understanding between individuals and communities. This vision should and will guide our support for marginalized communities and condemnation of anti-Black and all forms of racism. Why are we lifting “anti-Black” out of the collective “all”? Because when you scroll through the list of those who unwillingly gave their lives on a sidewalk, in their homes, in the back of a police van, walking or jogging down the street—it is primarily Black faces looking back. That is the moment we are facing right now.

It is also a moment in which to ask, what action can I take today to help prevent senseless deaths tomorrow? With that in mind, Vyond is making a donation to the Center for Policing Equity, and will also match employee donations to this organization, dollar for dollar. 

This page on President Obama’s site has other good resources for information, contribution, and engagement. 

Stay safe,
Gary Lipkowitz, Vyond CEO

No Black community has ever taken to the streets demanding that White people would just love us more. Communities march to stop the killing. Racism is about behaviors, not feelings.

– Phillip Atiba Goff, PhD
Co-Founder and President of CPE

It is up to men to stick up for women, straight people to stick up for gay people, and white people to stick up for people of color. This is not an issue for black people to solve. It is an issue for the rest of us to work on because we are the ones perpetuating it.

– Dr. Valerie Williams Goss

Updates

• Vyond will also match employee donations to Black Lives Matter and Causa Justa, an organization local to our Bay Area office.
• Juneteenth is a company-wide holiday.
• Pride month and intersectionality.

As preventative measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 accelerate around the world, we expect you’ll have questions regarding the continuity of our service and the safety of our employees. You may also want to learn more about how you can best use video to engage remote employees and customers you can no longer meet and serve face-to-face.

Continuity of our Service

The Vyond platform will be unaffected, continually operating 24 x 7 x 365.  Our customer service hours will remain unchanged at midnight to 5:30 pm Pacific, Monday through Friday, excluding Vyond holidays. Our customer success teams will provide the same outstanding service to their accounts as they do now, and our product team will continue to develop new features, characters, templates, and other assets. Should there be a technical issue affecting the site, our engineering team will respond as rapidly as ever.

Safety of our Employees

We have been proactively rolling out precautionary measures for our team over the past couple of weeks, including restrictions on travel. Since late January, the Vyond Hong Kong office has been on a voluntary work from home schedule. This morning (March 12), the State of California issued a ban on gatherings of more than 250 people. Although our group in San Mateo is smaller than that, and regular workplaces are exempt, we are using this as the trigger to begin voluntary work from home as well. We are well-prepared to transition to remote work, and it will not affect the continuity of our service in any way.

Using Video to Educate and Engage

We recently released a video template that our community can use to communicate to their teams about precautionary measures for COVID-19. In a distributed work environment, video can be an especially powerful way to engage and educate your workforce. We hope to produce more topical content in the coming weeks that addresses this unusual time.

In the interim, you can find additional templates to customize and an extensive library of resources on how to use video on Vyond.com and our help center.

Our greatest hope is that you, your employees, and your loved ones follow the precautionary measures shared by public health authorities and stay safe until this pandemic has passed. To the extent we can support you during this time, we will strive to do so.