BEYOND BUSINESS AS USUAL w/Michal Alter

At the crossroads of technology and social impact, Michal Alter has built a platform that redefines corporate social responsibility. As the co-founder and CEO of Visit.org, she’s turning corporate engagement into real-world change, connecting companies and their employees with meaningful social impact experiences. In this conversation, Michal shares the journey that led her from the tech world to global advocacy and explores the profound ripple effect of purpose-driven business.

ALLIÉ: You started your career in the high-paced world of Israeli tech startups before transitioning into the social impact space. Was there a defining moment or personal experience that made you realize your true calling was in social change, not just tech innovation?

MICHAL: Yeah, I was enjoying my career and the prospect of growing into leadership roles within the high-tech world. However, a few years into my career, I started to feel a bit of a lack of meaning and purpose in my day-to-day. So I thought, let me just add an after-hours volunteer opportunity to bring more purpose into my life.

I started volunteering with a small local nonprofit that worked with refugees and really enjoyed getting to know the community members. Around the same time, I had just gotten married and was about to have my first baby. When my daughter was born, we came back to our small apartment in the city. A couple of days later, my childhood friends came over to congratulate us on the new baby.

As we were all sitting in the living room—chatting, eating, and appreciating the moment and the new life we had brought into the world—there was a knock on the door. I went to open it, holding my daughter in my arms, and standing there was Gabriel, one of the refugee community leaders I had volunteered with. He had come with a couple of his friends and a teddy bear in hand.

I realized they were there to congratulate me, just like my childhood friends. Of course, I welcomed them in. They joined us in the living room, and we all continued to eat, talk, and enjoy a simple moment of human connection.

As I looked around—at my childhood friends and my refugee friends interacting—I realized it was a very special moment. This interaction wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t chosen to volunteer, found the right nonprofit, and spent that time after work building those connections.

And I started thinking: wait a minute, this is such a beautiful human interaction. We all live just five minutes away from each other, yet without intentional effort, moments like this don’t happen. Is there a way to help them happen more often—maybe with the help of technology? Is there a way to create more of these spark moments where we get to know each other as humans, rather than as the stereotypes or headlines we hear in the media?

ALLIÉ: That’s such a beautiful story. What an incredible beginning to inspire everything that you've done and everything you've created. Let’s take a step back for a moment. With degrees in Computer Science and East Asian Studies, and experience at both the UN and Women's World Banking, you’ve built a career at the intersection of technology, business, and global impact. How has your ability to navigate these different worlds shaped the way you lead Visit.org and the way you define success?

MICHAL: I think that my diverse background and in-depth understanding of both the technology world and the nonprofit world—as well as different cultures and cultural studies—have made me very aware that, in order to successfully create meaningful human interactions at scale, we must be uncompromising in the quality, attention to detail, and care we put into every aspect of our work.

So, what do I mean by that?

We are a multidisciplinary team, and we have to excel in multiple areas. We need to be exceptional at building and maintaining strong, trusting relationships with our nonprofit partners—otherwise, they wouldn’t choose to work with us. We also have to be great at content creation and curation to ensure that employees have the best possible experience when they volunteer with us. That way, they’re inspired to come back, explore new cause areas, and learn about more nonprofits.

We must also be highly skilled in engineering and user experience so that everything comes to life online in an engaging way—so people actually want to interact with the platform and continue booking their next social impact experience with us. And we have to be excellent at engaging with the world’s leading corporations and their employees, clearly communicating the positive impact this work will have on them as employers.

This uncompromising approach to quality across each of these areas is what makes us unique and enables us to deliver truly high-quality experiences—both to our nonprofit partners and to our corporate partners and their employees.

When we work with nonprofit partners, quality means that it's always going to be an ROI-positive experience for them. In other words, it has to be genuinely beneficial. We never want to put a nonprofit in a position where we ask them to facilitate a volunteer event that ends up being more of a burden than a benefit. That’s what quality looks like on the nonprofit side.

On the employee side, quality means creating an experience so impactful and enjoyable that they want to come back again and again.

I think my background as an engineer plays a big role in this. As an engineer, it was ingrained in me to always think about scale—but also to never compromise on quality. One small bug in a program can make the entire system fail. That principle applies to everything we do. Every part matters, and we make sure quality is always at the core.

ALLIÉ: As the co-founder and CEO of an organization that facilitates global social impact, do you ever feel the burden of expectations—both from the corporate world and from the communities you serve? How do you personally process the emotional weight of the work you do?

MICHAL: The answer is yes—I definitely do feel the weight. You know, it comes and goes. We have highs and we have lows. But I definitely experience the challenging moments—there are a lot of expectations from our various stakeholders, and a lot of times, it feels like fires are burning everywhere.

And sometimes, nothing even needs to be burning for me to feel the weight.

So I do my best. Really, at the end of the day, I just ask myself, Am I doing my best? And if the answer is yes, then I’m good to go. I’ll wake up the next morning and keep going. That, for me, is the secret.

Behind the scenes, I have an amazing community of family and friends who are always there for me. That community saves me—and it's also the kind of community we hope to build for our nonprofit partners, our corporate partners, and their employees.

Another thing that always saves me—and I share this with my team often—is the fact that I truly have the best team in the world. I have a team where, if I’m upset about something, I can speak honestly and vulnerably. I can share what I care about, what’s bothering me, or feedback we received that didn’t sit well. And we’re able to have real, honest conversations about it.

I know that we all care deeply about what we do, and I trust that we’ll figure things out together. I can always count on those conversations and that sense of shared ownership.

And by the way, that’s another reason I love how multidisciplinary we are as a team. We come from different backgrounds and areas of expertise, and we bring all of that together to make things work. It’s the same when we’re solving problems—we each bring a unique perspective.

That shared passion is something that helps me a lot. When I’m in front of external stakeholders, I always know my team has my back. And that keeps me going, for sure.

So… it’s a journey.

ALLIÉ: Well, it sounds like it's a beautiful journey. And I just love the authenticity that's there, everything from the vulnerability to the passion, and that as a team you're all in this to figure it out together.

Visit.org partners with corporations to create social impact experiences for their workforce. Can you share a moment or story where you saw this work truly transform not just communities, but the employees themselves? How does this shift the way corporations think about their role in making the world better?

MICHAL: The most memorable moments for me are when I see transformation happen not only on the nonprofit and community member side, but also on the employee side.

One particularly memorable experience I participated in was a virtual volunteer opportunity. We had a group of employees engaging with a community of children with special needs during a one-hour session. Toward the end of the experience, I noticed one of the employees posting a comment in the virtual chat. She shared that she had been raising a child with special needs for over 18 years and had been working at the company for more than 20 years—but had never felt safe talking about the challenges she faced as a parent in the workplace.

This was the first time she felt safe enough to share her story with her colleagues. Seeing how we were able to create a space where she could open up—and watching how her colleagues responded with support and empathy in the chat—was incredibly powerful. Conversations began to unfold, and I knew that the connection they built would continue beyond that virtual moment. It was both heartbreaking and heartwarming to witness.

Knowing we had created that spark moment—for her and for her team—was deeply meaningful.

For our corporate partners, being able to offer their employees the opportunity to be seen, to feel safe, and to show up as their whole selves—both in terms of their professional roles and their personal experiences—is invaluable. That sense of belonging, that ability to bring your full identity into the workplace, is what keeps employees engaged, connected, and coming back. It’s what makes a workplace truly feel like a community.

ALLIÉ: If you could fast-forward 20 years, beyond the numbers and metrics of success, what’s the one thing you hope Visit.org has changed in the world? And on a personal level, how do you hope this journey has changed you?

MICHAL: I hope that nonprofits and the community members they serve will become an integral part of the global economy—bringing their unique expertise, the deep trust they’ve built with their communities, and their valuable understanding of local culture into the day-to-day workings of the world economy, rather than remaining separate as they often are now.

This integration shouldn't just be about giving; it should be about creating mutually beneficial interactions—learning from one another, engaging with new communities, and fostering meaningful connections across different cultures and experiences.

That’s the kind of ecosystem I envision for the future—a more inclusive, interconnected world that I hope Visit.org will continue to help shape as it grows.

On a personal level, my hope is to keep feeling confident in pursuing the change I want to see in the world. I want to continue believing in that vision, surrounding myself with the right people to bring it to life, and trusting that what we’re doing is truly needed—and that together, we will make it happen. ∎

​Learn more: Visit.org