Amazon’s Lauren Stovall Talks AWS Nonprofit Programs, Enterprise AI and the Push for Unrestricted Funding
…I would advocate for nonprofit independence. By that, I mean providing access to far more unrestricted funding and supporting the development of earned revenue streams. This allows nonprofits to invest in their work in the ways they know will make the greatest difference. Many institutional funders dictate specific percentages for how an organization can spend the money they provide. They are investing in the project and the outcome, but they also dictate exactly how you get there. They give very specific constraints, such as only spending one percent of a ten-dollar grant on technology, two dollars on salaries, and the rest on specific predefined categories. Do not get me wrong; nonprofits are grateful for all the funding they receive. However, they need more flexibility and trust. These professionals are experts who have sacrificed quite a lot to do this work. The fact that we do not give them the full autonomy to make investments and choices that will yield the greatest impact is something I would love to see changed wholesale…
I had the pleasure of talking with Lauren Stovall. Right now, she holds the keys to one of the most powerful technological engines on the planet. As the Global Head of Nonprofit Programs at Amazon Web Services, or AWS, she directs the flow of cutting-edge cloud computing and artificial intelligence to organizations trying to save the world. But long before she was rubbing shoulders with tech executives or sharing a keynote stage with John Legend, Stovall was just a kid learning the quiet value of a hard day’s work.
Her story begins in the American South. Her entire family hails from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her parents were the classic hometown couple — her mother was an LSU cheerleader, and her father was a football player for the university. Eventually, her father’s work as a real estate developer took the family up the coast to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she grew up as a self-described beach babe. But the picturesque setting hid a tough reality. Her family had started with very little, and her parents worked relentlessly to pay their way through college and build a secure life. That grind instilled in her a deep respect for hard work and treating people right.
Then, reality hit hard. When Stovall was just seventeen years old, her father passed away from Burkitt’s lymphoma. The devastating loss happened on her own birthday. “It’s inextricably linked to me beyond the obvious,” she says of the timing. “From there, I realized you want to live a life of purpose. When things happen to you in your formative years, your perspective on what you want and how you want it to look changes.”
Armed with a degree from the University of Virginia and a natural adaptability forged by loss, she entered the workforce just as the financial crisis was forcing everyone to pivot. She landed at a startup called Agilex, working in marketing before jumping into mobile app development. Her team actually built the mobile app for Amtrak, managing the complex digital experience for both riders and conductors. When a massive consulting firm acquired Agilex, Stovall realized she craved the fast-paced, problem-solving culture of a startup. She reached out to some contacts at AWS who were quietly building a new team dedicated to nonprofits. They told her they needed help scaling the operation and offered her the gig. “They informed me I still had to interview, and I jokingly asked if I really had to,” she remembers.
Ten and a half years later, she is still there. Today, Stovall bridges the gap between massive corporate infrastructure and the charities desperately trying to fix society’s broken pieces. Most people think of Amazon as the cardboard box on their front porch, but the company’s cloud computing arm is what powers a massive chunk of the internet. Stovall’s philosophy is simple: the organizations fighting our toughest battles deserve the best gear. “Why shouldn’t nonprofits — who are solving the world’s hardest, most complex, dynamic, and urgent problems — have access to the same technology as Amazon uses for two-day deliveries?” she asks. “We want our technology to be applied to a higher purpose.”
She points to groups like Crisis Text Line, which uses enterprise-level generative AI to simulate intense text conversations. This creates a safe training ground for crisis counselors to practice their responses without the real-time risk of a human life hanging in the balance. In the medical field, she watches high-performance computing map the billions of synapses in the brain, paving the way to eventually understand complex diseases like Alzheimer’s. The impact is intensely personal, too. Stovall shared a quiet story of a colleague who recently suffered the unimaginable loss of a child. Using an AI chat tool built by nonprofits, that grieving parent was able to easily find local resources and grief books when they were too exhausted to search manually. “That is a beautiful, individual example of what nonprofits do,” she notes. “They make sure that when all else fails, there is someone to help carry you.”
Despite the heavy nature of the problems she helps tackle, Stovall refuses to let the darkness win. She operates on a strict diet of what she calls whimsy. When she isn’t managing the AWS Imagine Grant — which provides unrestricted funding to charities — she is chasing joy. She takes surf trips around the world, works outside on her patio with a space heater, and leads a team that proudly calls itself the zestiest and most whimsical in the business. “A lot of people believe that either good or bad things happen to you — that you are happy or sad based entirely on external factors,” she explains. “However, the creation of joy exists within us. To me, that is a powerful, everyday tool to remain grounded.”
To protect that joy for others, she fights fiercely for how charities are treated by their donors. “I would advocate for nonprofit independence,” she says. “By that, I mean providing access to far more unrestricted funding.” Too often, donors force charities to spend money only on highly specific projects, suffocating their ability to buy the very technology that would make them more efficient. “These professionals are experts who have sacrificed quite a lot to do this work. The fact that we do not give them the full autonomy to make investments and choices that will yield the greatest impact is something I would love to see changed.”
As she looks toward her own future, her ultimate goal is remarkably clear. When asked about the legacy she hopes to leave behind, she doesn’t mention servers, software, or corporate growth. Instead, her vision is purely human. “I would love to be able to say that we helped more people live safe lives of dignity on a healthy planet,” she says. For Stovall, dignity means giving people the agency to just breathe, relax, and step out of a constant state of survival. By demanding that the tech world give nonprofits the tools and the freedom they need to operate, she is fighting to make that vision a reality.
Yitzi: Lauren, it’s such a delight to meet you. Welcome to our neighborhood. Before we dive deep, our readers would love to learn about your personal origin story. Can you share the story of your childhood, how you grew up, and the seeds for all the amazing work that has come since then?
Lauren: Happy to be here. My family is Southern. My whole family is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My parents actually went to high school and college together. She was an LSU cheerleader, and he was an LSU football player. My whole family still lives there. I started my life down there and in Texas. Ultimately, my dad was a real estate developer, and we moved around a bit, ending up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I became a beach babe. In the process, everyone in my family grew up really, really poor. My parents paid their way through college and worked exceptionally hard to build the life they did for us. That instilled in me a number of values regarding working hard and building the life you want, but also treating people with respect in the process. Another formative experience was when my dad passed away from Burkitt’s lymphoma when I was 17, interestingly enough, on my birthday. It’s inextricably linked to me beyond the obvious. From there, I realized you want to live a life of purpose. When things happen to you in your formative years, your perspective on what you want and how you want it to look changes. For me, all of those things coalesced. At the same time, thanks to my parents, I’m also very adaptable. Many things in my career changed at times, such as the financial crisis, and you have to pivot. I have a strong upbringing that gave me the tools to figure things out.
Yitzi: Tell us the story of how you landed this job at Amazon.
Lauren: Just before I was at Amazon, I was with a startup called Agilex, a mix of agility and expertise. I did not name the company, by the way, but I loved it and was very happy there. Our main focus was innovation in government. We concentrated heavily on mobile app development and how that could be applied to citizen services. Our claim to fame is the Amtrak mobile app, encompassing both the user and conductor experiences. Many people don’t realize the conductor’s primary job is actually safety, not driving the train. Nevertheless, that was our big claim to fame. I started in marketing and then shifted into mobile business development, focusing on mobile apps. Then the cloud was born, and continuous integration and DevOps became the way of the world. I became very knowledgeable about that and stepped up as our head of cloud business development. Then, we got what every startup wants: we were acquired by Accenture Federal Services. While I hear it’s a great company to work for, it’s a large consulting firm. I truly enjoy the startup culture — building, solving problems, and having a lot of autonomy and agency. Once we were acquired, I decided to look around and reached out to my friends at AWS, as I had worked with them during my time at Agilex. They mentioned they were building a new team focused on nonprofits and needed to figure out how to scale it. I told them I was in; they had said enough, and I was hired. They informed me I still had to interview, and I jokingly asked if I really had to.
Yitzi: Apparently, you did well in the interview.
Lauren: Yes, I’ve been here building the team ever since, and that has been ten and a half years.
Yitzi: I think most people who read this associate Amazon with Amazon Prime and packages at their door. They don’t realize that a major part of Amazon’s business is AWS and the cloud — things they don’t always see. Tell us exactly what you do and how you help people.
Lauren: I am part of Amazon Web Services, formerly known as AWS, which is the cloud technology arm of Amazon. A good anecdote to understand the formation of AWS is to look at Amazon.com. Amazon.com is a huge retail platform. At certain points in the year, like Christmas, demand surges. Many more people visit the site and access its features. We had to build massive capacity in our data centers to handle those specific moments, but afterward, that infrastructure just sat unused. Someone had the bright idea — among the founders of Amazon — that we could share this excess capacity. From there, the cloud was born. Over the last ten years, we have been helping nonprofits harness the latest and greatest technology that large commercial companies use. We love that, but beyond that, why shouldn’t nonprofits — who are solving the world’s hardest, most complex, dynamic, and urgent problems — have access to the same technology as Amazon uses for two-day deliveries? We want to have both; they are not mutually exclusive. We want our technology to be applied to a higher purpose.
Yitzi: Unbelievable. Can you give us an example of Amazon’s technology in action? I am thinking of using drones to deliver medicines, but maybe it is something else. Share an example of how you use your technology to help nonprofits.
Lauren: There are a number of different examples. When we say nonprofits, we mean organizations of any size across various mission areas. This includes traditional charities and environmental organizations, but also health research, credit unions, and nonprofit finance. Even public utility co-ops are nonprofits. The organizations we support are very diverse. A really cool example is Crisis Text Line. There is a mental health crisis in this country and around the world. They operate a text platform to help people in times of crisis, dealing with very urgent situations. Not only do they run their platform on AWS, but in today’s world of generative AI, they also utilize our tools in a specific way. Let me be clear about what they do not do: they do not use Gen AI to respond directly to people. They want that to remain a human interaction. Instead, because these are challenging and complex situations, they use generative AI to simulate conversations. This trains their crisis counselors so they feel confident responding correctly in almost any situation, as the job is incredibly stressful and taxing. It gives them confidence and comfort, knowing they are doing the right thing for the person on the other end. That is a really powerful tool — not having to guess and check in real time. They already had training, but this creates a simulated environment where they can feel strong and comfortable supporting people in crisis.
Yitzi: I assume your platforms are more customized and robust than regular consumer AI like ChatGPT?
Lauren: That is correct. Tools like ChatGPT represent consumer generative AI. There are fun things you can do with that, but just like anything on the internet, whatever you put into that platform is added to the permanent record. Everyone can make that choice for themselves. What we provide is enterprise AI and enterprise cloud solutions. That means your data, your security, your context, your responsible AI policies, and your goals are all interwoven into how you leverage our services. Therefore, you can feel very confident in how they operate on your behalf and within your organization, especially when it touches beneficiaries.
Yitzi: That is an amazing example. Can you share another type of example?
Lauren: Certainly. Another example involves big AI — machine learning algorithms. The Allen Institute for Brain Science has done something truly remarkable. They utilized high-performance computing to process an unimaginable amount of data, something that was never possible until now. They are actually mapping the human brain. First, using AI, machine learning, the cloud, and high-performance computing, they mapped the complete adult mouse brain. This involved simulating 10 million neurons and 26 billion synapses, which then helped them create the first-ever draft map of the human brain. By applying a variety of AI capabilities, they are supporting researchers in making inferences that humans simply cannot make alone due to our limited processing power. We are essentially on the verge of some of the greatest medical and health research discoveries of our time. Soon, we will know exactly what goes wrong in conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, allowing us to precisely target interventions and treatments. Ultimately, this gives people the gift of time, which is a beautiful thing.
Yitzi: Can you share a more personal story of how somebody’s life was changed by the work you are doing, without sharing any names?
Lauren: This is actually happening right now. Someone on our team recently lost their son, which is the epitome of suffering; there is nothing worse. They have been able to work with a variety of nonprofits and engage with their chat capabilities to find resources. They received recommendations for grief books and learned about available resources in their area at a time when they are desperately seeking hope and help. That is a beautiful, individual example of what nonprofits do: they make sure that when all else fails, there is someone to help carry you. It is an ongoing process, but I know it has been a tremendous help.
Yitzi: Can you share what your day-to-day work life looks like? What does it look like to be at Amazon?
Lauren: That depends entirely on the day; it is very dynamic. I spend a lot of time working with our programs. The AWS Imagine Grant is a major one, where we provide unrestricted funding to nonprofits to invest in technology. As you might know, many grants are restricted, limiting how nonprofits can invest in themselves, which I find problematic. We do not restrict our funding because we want nonprofits to innovate. We receive thousands of proposals, and we vet them to understand which ones hold the most promise, not just for the individual organization, but in terms of replicability for the broader sector. At the same time, we are exploring how to use our own services and Gen AI for grant workflows. We used to process everything manually, reading every single application. Now, we are building and evaluating our own Gen AI grant app to handle that, which may eventually become a product we offer. We are also heavily involved in events and thought leadership. I am currently at our Imagine Conference and will be delivering the keynote shortly. I often collaborate with other nonprofit leaders on how we will present at events like the Social Innovation Summit, Net Hope, or AWS re:Invent. We want to ensure we are using every platform available to advocate for nonprofits, innovation, and the funding required to support that work.
Yitzi: Can you give us a sneak peek of what you will talk about tomorrow during your keynote?
Lauren: The theme of our keynote tomorrow centers around our 10-year anniversary. Because it is a significant milestone, we are going to focus heavily on the concept of legacy. We will discuss what we do now, how that helps us leave a legacy behind, and how we can ensure that the mission work is protected, safe, and ready for the next generation. We will talk about both our future legacy and our living legacy — the impact we can have while we are still here. We will also explore what is next in terms of technology and how we can take it to the next level. We will share some excellent customer examples and make a few announcements. We have a special guest joining us: John Legend. He will be in the keynote discussing collaboration and creativity in changing the world. Of course, we are going to celebrate everything nonprofits have accomplished over the last ten years — and over a hundred years for some — while looking forward to the next decade.
Yitzi: Talking about legacy, if we were meeting 50 years from now, what would you like to look back and say you have done? To quote Steve Jobs, what is the “ding” you put into the universe?
Lauren: You will find these words elsewhere, but I wrote them because I truly mean them: I would love to be able to say that we helped more people live safe lives of dignity on a healthy planet. I know we cannot achieve it entirely — it would be impossible to reach every single person — but I would love to see a significant change in the number of people who have that opportunity.
Yitzi: I love that. I think that really encompasses so many things — to live safe lives on a healthy planet, lives of dignity. What do you have in mind when you talk about dignity? What does that mean to you?
Lauren: I am thinking about poverty, for example. The systemic issues of poverty are extremely complex. The struggle to live your life in a state of poverty can make you feel less than human and completely disconnected, just focused on surviving. To me, dignity is the opportunity to feel like you have agency over your life. It is the chance to relax, breathe, and not constantly be in a state of struggle.
Yitzi: This brings us to our signature “five things” question. You have been blessed with a lot of success, and you must have learned a lot from your experiences. Looking back to when you first started your career in technology, can you share five things you have learned over the years that would have been nice to know at the beginning?
Lauren:
- First, how fast everything was going to change.
- Second, how to translate technology into plain language to make it easier to understand, adopt, and accelerate progress. The opportunity technology provides is immense, but it has taken a long time to learn how to adapt and meet people where they are.
- Third, I would say how excited this community is to support nonprofits. In the beginning, we thought we were building this scrappy initiative that no one would really understand, so we just kept our heads down. The reality is, we should have been shouting it from the rooftops from day one. People care about this; they want to know about it and lend a hand.
- Fourth, how important everything surrounding the work is. It is crucial to bring fun and whimsy into the everyday, whether in technology or any other space. Working with nonprofits is deeply rewarding, but you also confront some hard realities. Over time, I realized the importance of celebrating the whole picture. We can bring joy into our work, laugh, and build relationships that go beyond just being colleagues getting things done.
- Finally, I would have loved to know from the start that I was going to be able to do this and be really good at it. That is not how I began my career; I originally wanted to be in advertising writing jingles, so I went far afield from that.
Yitzi: We are wrapping up now. Can you share some of the self-care routines you practice to help your body, mind, and heart thrive?
Lauren: Again, I would emphasize being whimsical with my friends and family. The art of feeling joy for joy’s sake and leaning into that whenever possible is absolutely a form of self-care. I also love traveling; that is a huge part of my self-care. It has been a while, but I used to go on a surf trip somewhere in the world every year. The water is everything to me, so being near it, in it, or on it is wonderful. Lastly, just being outdoors in any capacity. I work outside almost every day. I even have heaters out there. Being in nature is rejuvenating for me. Even if I have a screen in front of me for most of the day, my surroundings transcend that, and that is really important.
Yitzi: You used the word “whimsy,” which is not a word we hear often, and I love it. Why is that word important, and what exactly do you mean by it?
Lauren: It is important because many people do not consider the agency we have over creating our own joy. A lot of people believe that either good or bad things happen to you — that you are happy or sad based entirely on external factors. However, the creation of joy exists within us. To me, that is a powerful, everyday tool to remain grounded, connected, and avoid being pulled down by the weight of things.
Yitzi: That is amazing. I once interviewed one of the principals at Zappos, which I believe Amazon owns. He mentioned that their CFO is the Chief Fun Officer, and it is his actual job to make sure everyone is having fun.
Lauren: Yes! I love that. My team and I actually call ourselves the world’s zestiest and most whimsical team.
Yitzi: This brings us to our final, aspirational question. It is a more serious question, but it certainly comes with whimsy and zest. Because of the platform you have helped build and the position you embody, it is not an exaggeration to say that you are a person of enormous influence. If you could spread an idea or inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can inspire.
Lauren: I would advocate for nonprofit independence. By that, I mean providing access to far more unrestricted funding and supporting the development of earned revenue streams. This allows nonprofits to invest in their work in the ways they know will make the greatest difference.
Yitzi: For those who are unaware, can you give an example of what it means for funding to be restricted?
Lauren: Many institutional funders dictate specific percentages for how an organization can spend the money they provide. They are investing in the project and the outcome, but they also dictate exactly how you get there. They give very specific constraints, such as only spending one percent of a ten-dollar grant on technology, two dollars on salaries, and the rest on specific predefined categories. Do not get me wrong; nonprofits are grateful for all the funding they receive. However, they need more flexibility and trust. These professionals are experts who have sacrificed quite a lot to do this work. The fact that we do not give them the full autonomy to make investments and choices that will yield the greatest impact is something I would love to see changed wholesale.
Yitzi: Lauren, how can our readers continue to follow your work? How can an organization that wants to get involved get in touch with your team, and how can our readers support your work?
Lauren: Many people have friends who work at nonprofits, serve on nonprofit boards, or volunteer. I encourage talking to them about how their organizations are using technology and approaching innovation. You can then share that AWS has a dedicated nonprofit team, unrestricted Imagine Grants, and amazing communities we are building through the Imagine Conference. We are a publicly accessible team. I am on LinkedIn, and our team has a website where you can easily get in touch with us. We are very visible, but I primarily urge people to leverage their personal connections to nonprofits and explore how those organizations can be elevated through technology.
Yitzi: Lauren, I love the work that you are doing. I wish you continued success, good health, and a lot of whimsy. I hope we can do this again next year.
Lauren: Awesome, I would love to. Thank you so much.
Yitzi: It is a privilege and a joy. It really has been very zesty.
Lauren: Yes, good, that is what I love to hear. That is what I aim to do — zest for all.
Amazon’s Lauren Stovall Talks AWS Nonprofit Programs, Enterprise AI and the Push for Unrestricted… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.