Allie Amoroso

• The awakening that led Allie to quit her dream life of venture capital and startups (3:59)
• What toxic charity is, and what we can do instead (11:11)
• The incredible story of Grace, who went from house help to ROSE Women's Foundation operations manager (20:27)
• The life-changing business curriculum Allie is spreading through Kenya (25:40)
• What Allie wishes she had known to prepare for explosive growth (33:46)

FRANK BLAKE: It is such a treat, Allie, to have you here. Let me ask at the start, where are you now? You're in...

ALLIE AMOROSO: I'm in Washington, D.C., but I live in Bangkok in Thailand.

FRANK BLAKE: You live in Thailand.

ALLIE AMOROSO: And I spend a lot of time in Kenya.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow. I didn't realize you lived in Thailand. Why do you live in Thailand or what do you do in Thailand?

ALLIE AMOROSO: My husband, we were just recently married this year and he works with the United Nations for the World Food Program in Thailand.

And so we met in Kenya and then we decided to move together to Thailand.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow. And you've maintained your work in Kenya and Africa?

ALLIE AMOROSO: I have, and it's because of the incredible team that I have in Kenya.

FRANK BLAKE: That's fantastic. I want to start, maybe to after you graduated from college, my understanding is you went to Oracle and you led their startup accelerator in North America and you also worked for JP Morgan's private bank.

A lot of people might say, "That's phenomenal. I'm going to just keep doing that because I'm on a great track."

Was that your view at the time or did you always think, no, I'm going to be doing something different?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Yeah, definitely.

Well, it's a great question, Frank, and it's one people ask me all the time, because even for me at the time when I chose to go to San Francisco and work for Oracle, venture capital and startups were my dream and I was living the life.

I had the perfect apartment, I had a great life, great salary, loved my job, but I really had a spiritual experience that rocked my world.

I started going to church and I found Jesus and it just became so abundantly clear that I was supposed to go back to Kenya and start ROSE Women's Foundation.

So, I grew up always wanting to be a doctor.

I come from a line of doctors, my dad, dad's dad, and I wanted to live in Africa at some point and do Doctors Without Borders, be a surgeon.

And that was the dream for a long time.

And then when I got to Kenya, I had saved a couple thousand dollars and I was going to do something with women and children.

And as we were driving around Nairobi the first time I'm there, I couldn't help but wondering how so many women on the sides of the roads and in these massive slums, how they survived often less than $2 a day and they had a baby on their hip, a baby on their back, and a baby by their knee.

And I just couldn't understand the economics of how they survived.

FRANK BLAKE: Can I pause there? Because I'm always curious.

When we relate income in another country in U.S. dollars, I think sometimes we think, oh, that's sort of a currency issue.

And that actually if you were in Kenya, you could buy a McDonald's burger for 10 cents, so it's not really living on $2 a day, but it's actually really living on $2 a day, right?

ALLIE AMOROSO: That is another great question because, so for reference, when I was a student there, I was given a stipend of 500 shillings a day, which at the time with the exchange rate was roughly $5 a day.

And so I was given $5 a day for food and that was enough for me.

My host family would give me meals and stuff, but then we would eat at the street vendors and so we would eat and we lived very locally.

We were learning Swahili and buying a mango for lunch in Swahili and practicing that in the markets.

And so I learned that it is very possible and that people live on so much less in Kenya and that the average person can live on what would be unexplainable to my American mind.

But then I also, after living there on and off for seven years now, I've seen the different ways of living and economic value living in Kenya.

And I see that women living on $2 a day in the slums, they often have dirt floors, tin sheet walls, they're burning charcoal for meals or they're buying a meal for 50 cents and that's what their family eats for dinner and that could be tomatoes and rice or beans.

So $2 a day is absolutely extreme poverty in Kenya.

FRANK BLAKE: I mean, that's the point. And it's often $2 a day for yourself and a family -

ALLIE AMOROSO: A family of four.

FRANK BLAKE: I'm sorry, I interrupted the flow of your conversation.

So you see this enormous poverty and need and you're there on a six-month school program.

ALLIE AMOROSO: Exactly. And so I chose, we had to choose a research project and I chose to study entrepreneurship as poverty alleviation for women in low-income settlements.

And it was the best thing I ever did because I did a needs assessment for 150 women living in the Mathare slum where one of our field offices is today on the same street in the same neighborhood.

I spent time doing focus groups and interviews and 150 questionnaires under the support of my professors too.

So learning research methods and best practices for collecting this data. And I learned a lot.

I learned that 60% of the women I interviewed were single moms.

What was remarkable is that 90% of these women when asked, "How do you see poverty alleviation in your community and in your family?"

They said, "I need to grow a business. I need to grow my business and that is how poverty will be alleviated in my community."

And so the culmination of this research project led to me using the $3,000 that I had saved to help these women kickstart 10 small businesses.

And those were the first 10 small businesses of what became ROSE Women's Foundation years later.

And so it was an incredible journey of unexpected experiences.

Even the first ROSE business, I started a fish leather business with a woman in the slums.

FRANK BLAKE: What kind of leather?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Fish leather, taking discarded fish materials and turning it into leather and then sandals or greeting cards.

And I was so inspired by the grit and the tenacity of the entrepreneurial spirit in these women.

I mean, they had such a drive to provide for their families using this inherent just passion to create that I feel like, I met these women and I had this experience and it just changed the rest of my life.

FRANK BLAKE: And what was your recognition of how you could help?

Because one thing might be just to observe it and say, "These are amazing people. Boy, I've been inspired." And go back to the U.S. using that inspiration.

What was the sense that you could help?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Yeah, so that has been a learning journey because I think that early on I was on my knees praying to God, "God help me because I don't know what to do. Help me help these people because I love these people and how do I help?"

And I thank God for bringing in people directly into my path and into my life at just the right time.

Like reading books like When Helping Hurts from Brian Fickert about how to do economic Christ-centered poverty alleviation without hurting people and learning, opening Pandora's box of what toxic charity is and how we can help people and also consider our own poverty and our own needs for restoration along the way.

FRANK BLAKE: Every sentence of words, creates so many questions. That's great.

What's the realization on toxic charity?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Absolutely.

Well, I mean, I always have a stack of books with me and one of the books I'm carrying around right now, I've read years ago, and I have sticky notes all in it, and it's Dependence to Dignity.

It's also by Brian Fickert.

The Chalmers Center has been a big inspiration of mine from the very beginning. And it's about this concept that when we give people money and we don't build relationship or when we don't invest in the long-term dream or sustainability of realizing that goal for that money, that we're just giving a handout and it often can be eaten away.

I mean, we teach our women in our program, don't eat your business, because so many women will get a loan or get even a small grant or even just managing their cash flow day to day and they'll eat it all, literally pay for food for their families sometimes and then they have nothing to reinvest in the future.

And so it's all about long-term sustainability and investment in the future growth of whatever you're doing.

In our case, it's small business, so that you can profit from that and reinvest and reinvest and it's a generational income.

FRANK BLAKE: And was there somebody, an example, something that you interacted with that brought this home to you?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Yeah, I think that actually early on in the first two years of starting ROSE, I really didn't know what I was doing.

And I still think that I don't know what I'm doing all the time, certainly not.

But in the first two years I made the mistake, but it was a wonderful learning mistake that we had a school feeding program, we had a school fees program where we would pay half of the school fees of the women in our program and we would do business education for women.

And I realized by God's grace and the amazing mentors that have spoken into my life, that I was at the risk of mission drift and that by paying school fees for the mothers in our program and feeding children, it's great work, but that was not our focus, that was not our niche and we were spreading our small, small budget and staff at the time too thin and not doing anything super, super well.

And so I realized also that by investing in the small businesses of the women, we were able to put so many more kids in school than by paying school fees directly.

That our investment into the livelihoods and generational poverty alleviation for a family was going to save children's lives for generations to come and not just keep them full and in class today.

FRANK BLAKE: So let me take this back again. Sorry, I'm-

ALLIE AMOROSO: That's okay.

FRANK BLAKE: Following threads of your discussion.

But back to, so you're in school, you're going through learning, doing a paper, what, but at some point it sounds like you're reaching into your own pocket and saying, "I'm going to help these women and stuff."

Talk a little bit about that while you're still in school and then why you decide to go back after you have these amazing jobs at Oracle and JP Morgan?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Yeah, I was very blessed by the internship at JP Morgan and then my first job out of college at Oracle.

All of the experiences, work experiences I had leading up to founding ROSE uniquely prepared me for this path.

I was a biology major and I did a marketing and sales internship with a startup and then worked in finance for JP Morgan and then technology and sales and then startup development.

And so I had this crazy hodgepodge of business experience and also the network that came along with those contacts that uniquely positioned me to start this organization at the time that I did.

FRANK BLAKE: Why start the organization?

I mean, my curiosity is, okay, you've done your research, you were there for six months, now you got a big job.

I could see how it would help you, what makes you jump a track?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Honestly, Frank, it was God. I was a seeking Christian.

I started praying and meditating on the Bible, which was super foreign and new to me, even though I grew up Catholic.

But at 22 years old, I remember being in my apartment in San Francisco and asking, "God, how can I serve you and serve people right here in San Francisco?"

I was asking God for San Francisco and I thought I was going to go help the homeless through my church, and I felt an overwhelming presence that God was telling me to go back to Kenya.

And it felt just so powerfully compelling. There was no question in this instruction.

And the next day I decided I was going to go to Kenya and I booked a flight and I went and threw a conference over my Christmas break that year.

So that was the beginning of 2018, New Year's 2018.

Around that time, I threw a conference for the women that I had originally worked with in my research as a student, and then I brought in 10 NGOs, organizations doing women's empowerment work, reached out to some of the funds from the government and got the news station to cover it.

And we had what I called a resource summit for women starting small businesses living in the slums in Nairobi.

And it was so successful and I felt like I raised $10,000 overnight just to kickstart this.

And it was such a beautiful, impactful, experience that I went back to San Francisco and I was actually just starting my startup job with Oracle and I just felt like, man, I can do this, God can do this.

And that's when I registered the 501(c)(3), which took a very long time, but started the process and started rallying a team, started building a board of directors and talking about it.

I did a little fundraiser in my favorite boutique in San Francisco and raised the money and just kind of got it started, built the first website on the weekends, and within six to eight months, I felt I really gave my life to Jesus.

And I felt just the overwhelming power of God to say, it's okay that I don't have the perfect business plan or a ton of funding behind me to get this going, I just got to go.

And so I quit my job and I moved to Kenya and I had a little bit of savings in my bank account, but I had no funding. I had three donors, myself included, and I just got started.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow, that's amazing.

And give a little bit of background to the name of what does ROSE Women's Foundation mean and what does it mean to you?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Yeah, I mean, I remember the moment when I'm writing the 501(c)(3) paperwork and I was like, "What am I going to call this thing?"

And just wrote down ROSE Women's Foundation.

And there was no question because when I had done my research in 2016, the women that I was working with, they called my project Restoration of Sisters in the Extreme.

And restoration, that's what we do.

And I look at it now, it's restoring relationship, it's restoring right relationship with God, with ourselves, with others, and it's restoration of sisters in extreme conditions.

And so I think God knew exactly what he was doing, I didn't.

And so now the acronym, it sits close to my heart, but it's not about the name, even.

The name is just a name. It's about the women, it's about glorifying God with our work in our lives.

FRANK BLAKE: And were there some women initially who were particularly the focal point for you or stood for what you were trying to help do?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Absolutely. Even as you asked the question, I think 10 faces just pop into my heart and my head.

But I think specifically now about two of my employees that are still my employees and Phoebe specifically, I remember when I met her, she was a ROSE woman in the beginning, and she was so timid and so shy, and she was shaking when she met me.

She couldn't look me in the eye and tell me her name.

She could hardly speak English, but she really could speak English, which I found out later.

And today, Phoebe was actually the trainer and now the leader of trainers who launched our first city-wide expansion in Kenya.

And she is overseeing five employees and she's led hundreds of women out of poverty.

And then Grace. Grace is an extraordinary story.

She grew up in the slums and she had to stop going to school for a while because she was taking care of her siblings, which is very common among women that we work with and women in poverty in Africa.

And eventually Grace was working as a house help, and she was working for a house help for my landlord.

And so Grace became my house help at some point and would come in and help me with laundry once a week.

And Grace and I got to talking and praying and sitting at the table having tea together, and she started volunteering as a trainer.

She was our first volunteer trainer at ROSE.

And then over the last five years, Grace has climbed the ladder and she is now leading our office in Kenya as the operations manager.

FRANK BLAKE: So a couple of questions.

First off, how does somebody like Phoebe come to meet you? How old is Phoebe?

What's the sort of backstory?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Yeah, so Phoebe met me through, in the very beginning we were working through a primary school, a very, very poor primary school.

And so I would go and meet with the teachers and the headmaster, and then I'd meet the parents and the moms, and even some dads.

We've always had a couple of men in the program, so we don't just work with women, but it's 99% women.

And then now the main way we meet women like Phoebe is actually through the local church or through the local chief of the community where we work.

So the chief usually refers us to many disabled women in the communities, and then the churches, we do announcements in churches and women hear about us, and then it spreads.

I mean, it is a word of mouth spreading program.

I mean, the alumni often will refer their auntie, their cousin, their niece, and then the average age is about 36 of a ROSE woman, but it spans from 18 to 80.

FRANK BLAKE: And do they tend to come with, they are doing something, they're selling fruit by the roadside, but they're just not organized?

Where does the entrepreneurial part of this come from?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Sure. Most of the women in our program have a business idea.

We've actually struggled with women that don't have a business already.

And when I say business, I mean, we even on our intake form, say business activity, because they don't have to have any idea what their cashflow is in the beginning.

They don't have to have any permanent location. They don't even have to have a place where they put their money, they just have to have some kind of activity where they're buying and selling tomatoes or making a food and selling it to three people.

It can be the smallest activity possible, but they have to have the will for entrepreneurship.

And we've found that that is a big, there's a huge difference in training a woman on business skills that wants to run a business or a woman that comes because she thinks she's going to get a handout and doesn't really do anything at all.

And we find that there's a lot of complexities why a woman wouldn't be doing a business of some sort.

And I personally think that it's often not even the money that limits them because it only costs a couple shillings to go buy a couple tomatoes and get started.

I think often issues of trauma, gender-based violence, abuse, those things are what stops a woman from having the will to work.

That's also why we've integrated a biblically based trauma healing curriculum into our business curriculum so that every woman that goes through ROSE now has had some element of trauma counseling and healing in her journey because with trauma and the violence, the abuse that these women face, it's such a barricade to success, to growth.

And so it's sad, but it's so important that we are looking at the women and the entrepreneurs that we work with as a whole person and not just someone doing business day in, day out.

FRANK BLAKE: So you started, and you'll correct me if I have these numbers wrong, but you started with, as you said, 10 businesses that you were helping in what, 2016?

When you were still in college and now you have over-

ALLIE AMOROSO: Over 3,500 businesses.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow, over 3,500 businesses. A couple of questions.

What is the characteristic, what's the, what are the ingredients that you think you're adding that make this so special for the participants in ROSE?

And then second, are there some examples of success that to this day just stun you for the miracle that they represent?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Absolutely. So our curriculum is a 12-module curriculum that comes from various sources.

So we've taken proven curriculums, research curriculums and contextualized them and mushed them together and taken feedback from the field and really made this 12 module course that goes from business ideation all the way to how to pitch your business.

And really the pitch was my little sparkle on the end, because I took a very Silicon Valley style pitch and distilled it down into its simplest form for a micro enterprise in Kenya and it's so fun.

And we give prizes and we have partners and sponsors, and it's just such an incredible opportunity to share with the community, the growth and success of the women.

But in that pitch, and even all throughout the curriculum, the very beginning is having a God-sized vision and to come to peace with your identity as a daughter or son of God, and to find peace in what God has called you and equipped you to do using a SWOT analysis broken down into its simplest components of your life and of yourself and of your skillset to define, what can I do to add value to my community, to add value to myself and to glorify the kingdom of God?

And so that's where we begin is really setting the foundation in a biblical foundation, but also in really owning my identity and having self-confidence that I can do this.

And then we form groups, support groups, so the women are really leaning on each other, and it's amazing.

Their ingenuity solves each other's problems. One woman might have a marketing problem.

I saw this with women making soap. One woman didn't have a label and thought it was too expensive to ever have a label.

The other woman had a chemical problem and was burning her hands by not wearing gloves.

They got into the same group in training class, and they solved each other's problems, and then they even team up and make the business bigger.

And so by creating, fostering this Christ-centered entrepreneurial community of women striving to do better in their businesses, they're able to lift each other up even greater than we do as the organization.

And so they go through finance-

FRANK BLAKE: That's an amazing energy generator.

ALLIE AMOROSO: It is. It is. The Holy Spirit is very active in our classrooms.

And so they go through finance, bookkeeping.

We've created incredible digital tools also for our bookkeeping. And we gather data on a monthly basis of their cash in, cash out, savings, access to loans.

We've even developed a credit score for marginalized women in extreme poverty that we are rolling out in Kenya, but that's still in research and development, but it's providing access to capital for thousands of women already.

And so we're a very technology forward, data-driven organization.

And so we're constantly collecting and gathering feedback and creating feedback loops to make it better.

But then the women go through sales, marketing, customer centrism.

They learn about what lean startup means and why that's important.

And then it all kind of cumulates in their business pitch.

But Frank, to answer your question, I think that really the uniqueness and defining factor, it's kind of what you picked up on.

It's the community, and it's not just a community of entrepreneurs, it's Christ-centered.

It's women that are praying with each other in the trenches and that when their businesses get burnt down or get stolen from, or all these horrible things that happen in a poverty-stricken community, they have community and they have sisters to lift them up or to give them a loan or to pray with them that keeps them going and makes their businesses resilient.

FRANK BLAKE: So what's an example of a business that you just say, wow, look at this, and this was a seed of a seed of a seed, and now it's this immense tree?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Absolutely.

So my dear sister Rahab, I first met her when she was in the contestants that were getting ready for their pitch competition.

And at that time, I was still coaching my team on how to facilitate pitch competitions.

And we were sitting as a panel and judging her pitch and from the very beginning I said, "Wow, this woman, she has what it takes. This business can grow."

And it was so beautiful to see her wig business.

So she was making and selling wigs, and originally she had a box, a cardboard box of hair products, hair materials and wigs, and she would just sell them on the street.

And they call that, it's like, hawking.

So they walk around the street just handing them out kind of.

And long story short, she learned about business-to-business sales and training and she started selling wigs to businesses, to salons instead of selling to customers on the street.

So she hired an employee, started making them in bulk, started selling tens of wigs at a time.

And Rahab increased her income, because we track income growth monthly all throughout the program, she increased her income 3,000% in a year, and she was making over $2,000 at the pitch when she was pitching her business.

And she had a couple of employees, she had all these business customers, she had marketing, she had advertising, and Frank, she had confidence.

She stood on the stage and she pitched her business with extraordinary confidence in front of 500 people.

And this is a woman that doesn't even have a full high school education.

And now I think that the best part of the story is that now Rahab took that success and she's actually volunteering with ROSE-

FRANK BLAKE: That's just what I was going to ask, do they stay involved? Do they stay helping?

ALLIE AMOROSO: She's what we would call an alumni trainer, so a very part-time trainer that comes in and helps deliver trainings.

And soon, I think Rahab is one of our alumni trainers that will be able to do more trainings just on her in her own community and share it with small groups of women anywhere because she is the perfect living example of what our program can do, what a woman can do.

And then she gives it back because she believes in it, she's experienced the transformation.

FRANK BLAKE: So looking at the arc of the success and growth of ROSE, what would you do differently now in the beginning from what you've learned?

ALLIE AMOROSO: It's a good question. It's one that I think about a lot.

I generally do a lot of annual reflection on how did this last year go and what am I going to focus on now?

And we had such a fast growth curve over the last six, seven years.

I mean, our team went from me and Phoebe in the slums, just the two of us, neither one of us making a salary for almost a year and a half to now, we have over 50 people on staff.

We have a team in the US, we have a fast-growing team in Kenya. Most of our employees are in Kenya, we only have two full-time in the US.

And the growth curve was fast.

And I think looking back, I wish that we had actually taken the time to learn what policies, procedures, and structures we needed to prepare for this kind of growth.

Because I think Frank, I just didn't know, I didn't know how important an HR policy was until we had big HR problems.

And you know this, I mean, big corporations have to have these things because just of the risk and the people.

And I've learned just how nothing happens without happy people.

And I think my greatest accomplishment through all of this has been the people, the people that I've just loved and poured into and that have poured into me, the relationships that have made this mission happen.

And I realize now-

FRANK BLAKE: And by the way, for our listeners who when go to your website, what I love about your website is all the stories, all the people, and you just click on the people and you see the stories.

It's incredible.

ALLIE AMOROSO: That's wonderful. I'm glad to hear that.

FRANK BLAKE: So an incredibly inspiring story, I mean, an amazingly inspiring story.

Who inspires you?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Yeah, it changes. It changes depending on the season.

Definitely, the ROSE women inspire me.

Every time I'm in Kenya, I just love being in the field ever since I first founded the organization, just walking those dirt streets and praying with women in their homes and businesses.

And even I help out sell tomatoes sometimes because I love it.

And just being with those women is the most inspiring thing in the world.

But then I think on a more, what my future I hope can look like even, I'm inspired by people like John Piper and theologians that write and talk boldly about the gospel and about scripture.

And I think that my personal passion is where does bold scripture interpretation intersect with the work that we do every day?

And how can we apply this bold interpretation into our work and our lives and not just let it sit in the books?

So I constantly am reading and referring to John Piper, and I hope that one day I can maybe write and speak like him.

FRANK BLAKE: And so where, five years from now, do you think ROSE Foundation will be, you will be?

What changes, what stays the same over five years?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Sure.

I think that what stays the same is the mission and the vision.

I think that our mission and vision are as much, are focused on the gospel and as much spiritual poverty alleviation as it is physical poverty alleviation.

And that without Jesus, our whole mission breaks down.

And that's not to say we work with women of all faiths. We have partners of all faiths, but our model is, the cornerstone, is Christ.

And so that will hopefully always stay the same at ROSE Women's Foundation.

In the next five years, the big changes I foresee are so exciting because I have a global vision for this organization, and I believe that what we're doing in Kenya is model one, that what comes next is growth and scale.

I think right now we're in a year where we're preparing for that, where we're actually going back over those structures and policies and procedures so that as we go into the scaling season, we're ready.

And we're building a scale model.

FRANK BLAKE: For people who are listening to this and are, wow, that's inspiring and amazing, where should they go to learn more?

ALLIE AMOROSO: Definitely our website and our website.

Hopefully this year we'll have a big revamp and get even more exciting. So please visit our website at rosewomensfoundation.org.

You can reach out to me directly. Email me, [email protected] or our Instagram, we post on Instagram regularly and our newsletter, I would definitely encourage people to follow our newsletter.

We send an email once a month with stories to encourage and inspire straight from the field.

So it's called the ROSE Garden, and you can subscribe on our website.

FRANK BLAKE: And just going back to your comment on John Piper, whose work I'm not familiar with, how does that inspiration, how do you see that actualized in your life?

ALLIE AMOROSO: It's the grace of God and I think that that is the one thing that I think I would share with even my younger self is that don't be afraid because the grace of God, and I know 100% that ROSE was not my idea, that it was the Lord's, that God put this in my heart and revealed this to me and revealed himself to me in the process.

And of course, starting an organization, there were fears, there were trials, there have been unimaginable trials along the way, but the grace of God.

And I know that God said, "My grace is sufficient for you." And it has been every step of the way.

And when I remember what God did in the, and then what God has done in my life, I realize, "Oh, okay, what's sitting in front of me isn't so scary. I can do this with God."

FRANK BLAKE: So I always ask this question of everyone who's on the podcast because we want to celebrate and recognize people who do crazy good things for others who's done a crazy good thing for you in your life.

ALLIE AMOROSO: Yes. I love that you asked this question, Frank.

As I reflected on this, so many people come to mind. I could pick a person from every season of life, but specifically I think the first person that came to my mind is David Denmark, a friend of yours who introduced me to you.

And when I met David, I was asked to share the story of ROSE with the Maclellan Foundation on a prayer call.

And afterwards he sent me a handwritten thank you note with a couple of Rwandan francs inside and he wrote, "Allie, this is your seed money for when you expand to Rwanda."

And Frank, I personally, anyone that knows me knows that I most value a handwritten note.

I don't want things for Christmas, I just want a letter about what's going on with you or what you love about me or anything.

And I think that just the fact that he took the time to do that and had that such a generous thought, it meant so much to me and it gave me the confidence and the motivation to keep going that day.

I'm such a believer of just the little things that make a big difference.

FRANK BLAKE: That's awesome.

This has been unbelievably powerful and inspiring, and sometimes I wish our podcast, we did videos because if people were watching you, they'd just be ready to go take the ramparts.

I think you got a great energy and spirit, so really thank you very much and congratulations.

ALLIE AMOROSO: Thank you.

FRANK BLAKE: Every once in a while, you must be stunned.

ALLIE AMOROSO: Sometimes.

I mean, definitely, humility is also, I think it's right next to the grace of God, and humility just leads to such great abundant blessing.

Thank you so much. This was such an honor.

I mean, you inspire me that you take the time out of your day with all the things you've accomplished and all the things you have to do to talk to people like me and to put a podcast together.

FRANK BLAKE: I don't know, that's pretty thin beer compared to, no, seriously, compared to, I just think of your life and the risks you've taken and the discomforts you've taken on to help other people, and you just go, wow.

Everybody ought to know about you. Everybody ought to know about you.

That's my reaction on our discussion. So thank you.

ALLIE AMOROSO: That's very kind. That's very kind, Frank. Thank you.

FRANK BLAKE: Thank you. All right, have a great new year.

I hope whatever you're doing in Washington goes well, and congratulations on, I don't know your husband's name, but congratulations to him on the marriage and hope everything works out in Thailand.

ALLIE AMOROSO: Thank you. Thank you so much, Frank. God bless you.