Coffee No Cream Ep. 71 - Racism at Work in Paris: She Built an App to Fight Back

What do you say when someone insults you politely? Pamela Gelie was born in France to Afro-Caribbean parents, built her career in the UK, and came back to Paris after being headhunted for a role reporting directly to the board.

She was the only person at her level in a company of more than 5,000, and she felt the “why her?” from day one. Then a peer, while recommending where to buy a suit, made a point of telling her nothing was on sale.

She froze. She didn’t know what to say.

That moment, plus years of therapy and an MBA, led her to build URISE, an AI app that helps Black people decode microaggressions and figure out how to respond. We talk about how microaggressions show up differently in the UK and France, why staying silent and speaking up can both cost you, and what therapy did for her.

She explains how she built URISE from dozens of interviews with Black professionals in France, the UK and the US instead of pulling from the open internet. Then she walks me through the app: the chat assistant Ayana, incident reports that build themselves as you talk and export as a PDF, SOS scripts based on who you’re dealing with (peer, manager, executive or HR), and where the app draws the line on legal and mental health support.

If you’ve ever walked away from a comment asking yourself “am I crazy, or was that what I think it was?”, this one is for you. And to everyone who keeps telling me this is only an American problem: watch this.

Connect with Pamela Gelie URISE App LinkedIn Connect with Coffee No Cream Coffee No Cream Facebook group Follow us on TikTok Follow us on Instagram Free educational resource database (almost 2,000 free resources) Like, share and subscribe. Then tell me in the comments: what’s a comment you didn’t know how to answer in the moment? ⏰ TIMESTAMPS (0:00) Cold open (3:19) Meet Pamela from Paris (4:27) Growing up Black in France (6:36) The big job and the “why her?” energy (11:12) The suit story (13:25) Say too much or say nothing (22:27) How URISE was built (31:34) App walkthrough (39:41) Microaggression vs discrimination (41:10) Incident reports and documentation (50:52) Privacy (53:16) Pricing and access (55:50) Just start