Meeting Minutes

QuinTashia had just come back from visiting her grandfather, who is 93.

Art urged her to record her grandfather's stories while she can.

Art shared his own family's history: his oldest living relative is 86 or 87 years old, from Lowndes County, Alabama, a historic place in the civil rights movement.

He is making a short independent film about his family history, and college students in a course are learning about their own history through it.

QuinTashia said her grandfather's mother was born in 1907 and passed away in 2009, living into her 100s, and that she gets a lot of footage of her grandfather, who is funny without trying.

Art offered to help her think about what to do with that history, because it can be used to empower others.

Art asked what she is working toward, and her answer was direct: she has always wanted to be employed with the CDC.

The CDC is not accepting applications right now.

There are fellowships posted through a service whose name is garbled in the recording [unclear in recording].

She has applied to several.

Some start in the summer, and she could start one as long as she has her master's by the summer.

The fellowships cover different areas, including epidemiology and environmental epidemiology.

The one she wants most covers maternal and child health.

Funding is the hard part.

She was accepted to a CDC fellowship once before, and then it lost its funding.

Art said federal funding has a big question mark around it right now, with a lot of uncertainty across the board.

Her plan B is work at the state level, with the Department of Public Health (DPH).

What she wants most is research experience, in infectious disease research, and she does not mind traveling.

She is a full-time student right now.

Before her master's, she took a gap year between her bachelor's and her master's and worked for a time as a licensed insurance agent.

Art said Voice Up is working with every student on AI skills, because the field is moving fast and people are falling behind without knowing it.

QuinTashia said she signed up for Base44, but she was honest about being skeptical of AI.

Her university had students agree, for academic integrity, that they would not use AI, especially with statistics, and the university treats it as seriously as plagiarism.

Art drew the line clearly: the university policy is about using AI to write papers or pass off work that is not yours, and that is a very small piece of what AI is.

Voice Up teaches AI as a working skill, how to tell AI tools what to do so real work gets built.

She said AI can make life easier, and that she would look over Base44 that night.

She called herself old school.

Art said it is not old school; people are simply comfortable with what they know.

Art gave her the size of the change in terms she would feel as a mathematician.

All the professional sports leagues put together are worth less than a fraction of one percent of the AI industry.

Add the whole entertainment and movie industries, and it is still less than a fraction of one percent of the AI economy.

A young person who only looks there is looking at less than 1 percent of the real job market.

Art said that because he knows how to think and how to talk to AI, the skill has multiplied his own income as a healthcare executive (his figure is transcribed as "345 times" [unclear in recording]).

He told her that with this skill she could have a part-time job right now paying at least $50 an hour, possibly $75, with or without the degree.

The only reason she does not have that work yet is that she has not started practicing the skill.

Companies are looking for people who bring knowledge and experience and who can use AI tools to get the work done.

Art compared Base44 to training wheels on a bicycle: a first, safe place to learn what AI does when you say one thing instead of another.

QuinTashia connected it to statistical computing, where you write code to tell the software what to do.

Art said explaining your ideas in clear words is a higher form of communication than coding, and it is the skill AI now rewards.

He gave a real example: Voice Up built a platform for Overcome UK worth about $100,000 by a conservative estimate, in about one hour and 12 minutes using AI.

The organization stress tested it with real people and called it one of the best platforms they have used.

What matters is whether the platform does what the organization needs.

QuinTashia said it does sound a little skeptical at first, because this generation sees a lot of scamming, but the work got done.

Art brought it back to her: add this skill set to her biostatistics, and the opportunities open up.

The CDC right now is outdated and underfunded, and students are going on hope.

A plan B is needed.

QuinTashia asked Art directly: if you were pursuing your MPH in epidemiology, with the CDC closed and underfunded, what other opportunities would you look into?

Art's answer was direct: if you do not have an AI skill set, you are going to be replaced.

The first people it will hit are health professionals such as doctors and nurses, and mathematicians and statisticians.

QuinTashia agreed from what she sees: cashiers are being replaced, and she described a robot-like machine in a Kroger store that startled her and her little cousin.

Then they walked through her university's rules.

AI is not to be used with statistics at all.

In coding, instructors can tell when a student uses code that was not covered in class, and that is a red flag.

Students have used Claude to clean up data sets and gotten in trouble, reported to student success.

For her statistical computing course, which she will take in the spring, she had to sign a form this semester saying she would not use AI such as ChatGPT.

Even code learned from YouTube videos draws questions, and students get 10 days to appeal.

Universities are now updating their handbooks to name AI as a form of academic dishonesty.

Art said two things.

First, she must always stay in compliance with her university's policies.

Second, he predicted the policy will change in less than 12 months, because the world outside the university is moving the other way.

His example: the State of Indiana has a contract with a global AI firm to audit all Medicaid expenses and recipients, to find waste, errors, and fraud, because that work is too complex for the state's current staff to do by hand.

States watch what other states do, so that thinking will spread.

And if the only way a university can judge what a student knows is a paper or a statistics assignment, that is a fault in the system, not a fault in the student.

Art asked her to send him the policy so he can read it.

She agreed to send it.

She gave one more example of how fast this is moving: in a class discussion post, a student had taken a resource from ChatGPT and left "Chat GPT" showing in the reference link at the end.

Art said the skills Voice Up builds with Base44 are not that kind of use.

Fetching answers is level zero.

Building real tools with AI is a different skill.

She also noted that in the meeting the day before, Dr.

Angee had spoken about zip codes and health rankings.

Art shared his screen and showed her a Medicaid resource site Voice Up built.

It has a "Find Help Near You" search: type in any zip code, and it brings up the resources in that area.

He used her zip code (the zip code she spoke is garbled in the recording [unclear in recording]).

She saw Jonesboro Road, Morrow, Atlanta, and Cascade on the results, and she recognized the Henry County nutrition program listing (the program name is transcribed as "Wick" [unclear in recording]) and confirmed the results were her area: "That's where I'm at." The site offers many languages.

Switching the language changed the page text into Spanish, but the names of the resources stayed in English.

Art wants the names and the headers in the reader's language too, because language is one of the biggest barriers in health care.

The aim is to reduce the barriers people run into when they look for health information.

QuinTashia said the information should be culturally sensitive, and that language access plays a role in health literacy.

The site is a national resource.

With big changes coming in Medicaid, anyone anywhere in the United States can enter a zip code and find where to get information.

Art also described what could come next on a site like this: user-friendly data and metrics on health and disease, with one version for the public and one version for statisticians.

While the screen was loading, QuinTashia asked about a loose end: whether Art had received the reference she emailed, which she was supposed to submit at the beginning.

Art said he thinks he may have received one, and that he would look into it that evening.

Art closed the demonstration with the competition point.

Having the AI skill set will first catch her up.

It will not by itself push her ahead, because so many people are being lapped without knowing it.

The change will arrive the way the store robot arrived: one day it is just there, and by then it is already too late.

Her skills are strong, but on their own they are not enough to be competitive.

Her competition is not only other biostatisticians.

It is experienced professionals who know how to do biostatistics-related work with AI.

Art said this is not meant to discourage her.

The field is really competitive, and the whole Voice Up program is designed to help people catch up and be as competitive as possible once they are out there.

Art said he will put together some videos about AI and biostatistics for her to look at, along with articles, and that he will redesign a little of what they are working on.

QuinTashia raised the problem she had already submitted a ticket about.

She shared her screen and walked Art through what happens on her end.

When she opens an item, such as the Saturday planning minutes, it tells her to sign in.

She signs in the same way she signs in to her dashboard, and it tells her her password is incorrect.

It does this with everything she tries to open.

When she tries to answer questions, it takes her to a different platform for everything she tries to do.

She once completed all of the Saturday Planning questions, and only then was told to sign in, so she lost her answers.

Her pulse shows poor, in red, which does not match the work she has done, because she has been going through the videos.

And when she tries to open her eight-week guide, it sends her to a whole different login on a whole different platform (one platform name here is garbled in the recording [unclear in recording]).

Art named the cause.

When she clicks one of those links, she is actually on another Voice Up platform.

At the start of her guide she was meant to create accounts on those platforms, but she does not have an account on that platform yet, so the sign-in fails.

The accounts were never created, which is why her work was not being tracked in one place.

Art said the site itself also needs a change so this is clear, and that the change would be made about 15 minutes after the call.

Underneath the login problem sits the hours problem.

Her coordinator has been asking for her timesheet.

QuinTashia completed the eight-week guide and submitted it, week by week.

She first logged her hours in the Georgia State log her coordinator provided for her APE course, and then transferred them, and her coordinator asked for the timesheet to be signed.

But on the platform it showed she had not completed much, and one hours figure on her screen read "1000 and something" [unclear in recording].

That mismatch is why she had been emailing, and why she asked for this meeting.

Art said there were two things to do, and then he was certain they could get it synced up.

First, which email.

Her dashboard is logged in with her Georgia State student email.

Voice Up emails sent to her student account get blocked by the university system because they are not from her organization, so she receives Voice Up email at her Gmail.

She first signed up for the internship with the student email.

Art's direction: stay with the Georgia State email, the same one she uses on VoiceUpLab.org, on every platform.

Site one, voiceuplearning.com.

Art walked her to My Progress and then My Dashboard.

She chose "Create free account," then "Need an account?

Sign up," and entered her Georgia State email and a password.

She verified the account through a code sent to her email.

She noted that sometimes the code does not even send.

Art answered, "We're getting it worked out like right now." That account was set up in the meeting.

The dashboard there showed her learning time as 1.64 hours.

Art said she most likely completed work while she was not logged in, so it did not record.

They can work around it.

He is not worried about it.

She asked how she can still get credit for August and September, which her coordinator is asking for.

Art said this setup is the first step, and then they will be able to reconcile.

Site two, voiceuplearning.life.

Art had her go to My Dashboard there and set up the same exact email.

She confirmed she was signed in.

She looked to see whether her eight-week guide would appear there.

Art explained that her guide on that platform is probably under her other email address, her Gmail (the address as spoken is garbled in the recording [unclear in recording]).

Art then asked her to confirm one thing: VoiceUpLab.org, and the two sites she had just set up, all hold the same email address.

She confirmed (her words at that point are garbled in the recording [unclear in recording]; Art's reply was "Great.").

With that confirmed, Art stated the plan: Voice Up will run a sync across all of those platforms, and it will also capture her Gmail account, bringing all of it together, so that moving forward she just logs in through the GSU email and it is synced up.

The order of the work, as Art stated it: do the sync first.

Then he reviews her logs.

Then, moving forward, the platforms track everything and the problem does not come back.

He also said he knows the updates he needs to make on the video pages, so it is clear how she can move along and do those things.

Her coordinator needs her hours from August, September, and October.

QuinTashia confirmed she has been doing the videos and the work consistently, but it is obviously not tracking it.

She described the pressure plainly.

Her semester is almost over and she needs signatures.

She had already done everything Art sent her in his earlier catch-up email: she resent the email to get the references, she did the eight-week guide, she did everything he listed.

It was under the Gmail address, so it was not tracking.

She has sent one or two logs so far.

Her coordinator gave the class until the end of the semester for the project, but wants the timesheet now.

She does not want to fail, and she is close to finishing in May.

Art answered that they will get the timesheets, and that the project part is really going to start taking off with Base44.

She confirmed her project: she is still building the program she wants to implement, an efficient public health program, and she will use Base44 for it.

The meeting closed with Art telling her to start on Base44 and to keep at it, and with her thanks.

She said she was glad they had this meeting and went over what the issue was.

Art explained Voice Up's personalized, non-cookie-cutter approach to helping students pursue their goals.

Students work through guided collaboration, digital platforms, and connections with peers, and the plan is built around the student rather than handed down as a fixed curriculum.

Haley shared that her graduation is expected around the first week of May.

She discussed potentially completing a practicum or preceptor experience with Voice Up.

The program is fully remote, though potential onsite activities may depend on her interests.

Art outlined the next step: Haley should visit voiceuplab.org, click Begin Here, and complete the five-step process.

Her responses will provide information about her goals, schedule, and required hours, which will be used to create a detailed practicum plan aligned with her program.

The plan comes together before the follow-up planning meeting.

Art explained that Voice Up offers a personalized program rather than a cookie-cutter curriculum.

The program has a formal partnership with Alliant University and aligns to LCSW practicum requirements, including approximately 300 hours.

It helps participants connect their purpose, talents, and career goals through individualized projects, conversations, peer interaction, and relevant AI skills.

Anette described her experience supporting children, teenagers, college students, English learners, Latinx communities, and individuals with autism or other disabilities.

She has a strong interest in mindfulness and youth services.

What she is looking for is a personalized practicum that aligns her passions, MSW and LCSW standards, and her experience with children, Latinx communities, and mindfulness.

Anette reported confusion due to the amount of information on the website, and difficulty finding focused information about Voice Up and MSW-relevant offerings.

She asked about the site steps, and whether the first step was the initial meeting.

Art directed her to the website's Begin Here process of five steps, and will send a follow-up email outlining them.

After she completes the steps, they will meet again.

The session opened informally, with Raymond Williams and Sy'Viceeaa Hall arriving first.

Then Dr.

Angee Gonzalez Rodriguez shared two pieces of news at once — one hard, one joyful.

Her petition has been challenged, and she is in court right now.

And she became a great-grandmother today: a baby boy, whose name is believed to be Ermel, a mixture of Isabella and Ernest.

Art congratulated her, and the session got underway.

Art opened the updates with Jose Rosiles, the first Alliant University student, who has created an app for LCSW students to use during their program — for note-taking, reflective activities, and class assignments.

The link goes out to all interns and students for testing and feedback, and the team will reach out to more schools with LCSW programs to pilot it; a roughly two-minute video about Jose and how he developed his app has also been created.

Georgia State University is expanding its outreach specifically to international students and wants to use Voice Up to scale the program, following two guest lectures and a spotlight feature; a follow-up is the next step.

Art then laid out the calendar: nineteen Doctor of Public Health students are working with Voice Up, with a doctoral-level product expected by the end of December focused on their assessment of the program; his dissertation defense is December 2; Voice Up's second anniversary is November 12, with major announcements planned; and the video channel, piloted about a month ago, is gaining over 100 subscribers a day.

He framed the benefit plainly: showing up, submitting weekly logs, completing case studies, and sharing ideas — and then put the session's question to each student: how is your app coming along, and have you gotten feedback from at least one more person?

Diana began with her lifeline: "I would like to help children of immigrants that have faced family separation explore their emotions." Since Monday she has been closing the loop on the app — working with Muse to never prompt children into trauma feelings, keeping the activities calm, like coloring, since the app provides no clinical services.

She had Muse run an independent evaluation of the app, caught a few things, and fixed them the night before.

Her second reviewer, planned for Sunday, is her younger sister, who experienced family separation as a child; Diana will invite her sister to share her side of the story for the app, and hopes more family members will take part, because different perspectives would be powerful.

Art's answer: "We'll take all the stories you can get" — it is her story, and she can leverage it however she would like; the team is here to support her.

The feedback was specific.

Jeff Cheeks suggested the lifeline start with "connect" or "bridge" rather than "I would like to help" — what she is doing is connecting and bridging for young children — and Diana accepted the change on the spot.

Dr.

Angee praised Diana's careful approach to keeping the app calm and non-clinical, and asked about a pause or stop option so users do not feel pressured to finish; Diana said nothing in the app forces a user to move on, and she will look at making the pause an explicit option.

Diana had also watched the first draft of her story video the night before, and opened the case study built from her app — imagining someone going through case studies curated from her app and her story struck her as "really great." Art connected the pieces for the whole room: story, app, videos, and case studies, joined at an institutional level over 16 to 20 weeks — she is a trailblazer, and her story will blaze the way.

Jeff asked whether some children are still separated from their parents.

Diana answered from her family's own experience — the first time, only one parent was taken because the children were underage; the second time, they took both parents — and said she believes many children now are without their parents for a while, and some people are disappearing.

Jeff suggested a resource page: how to locate separated parents through the ORR website, reaching parents through Messenger where a child is old enough, and adding the 988 suicide prevention number.

Diana agreed and took notes.

Adawna Danly was sick and listening only, so her update came by chat, read aloud by Raymond.

She has added a feature that lets her app's users develop their resume and post what they want to add — certificates earned, for example — and she is adding employer job postings for a fee, still to be finalized.

She has shared the app with a few people, who found it worked well.

Raymond liked the earning potential: fees could support the app.

Jeff saw the shape of it: the app is almost like a LinkedIn for her audience — it gives incarcerated applicants a way to showcase skills learned inside, like building trades, HVAC, and welding, along with hours and certificates — and it could reach out to construction sites hiring for welding, HVAC, and plumbing in California.

Art's word to her was simple: get healthy first — and the resume builder is a great addition, specifically for her target audience.

Sy'Viceeaa's lifeline is building confidence to maintain health, and she is building two apps: a wellness check-in, and PEW, a personalized emotional wellness companion.

She ran the wellness check-in with her brother, her first tester — she explained the questions and how they connect, and asked whether anything was confusing or unhelpful; he found them all clear.

The companion app is where the trouble is: Base44's voices are computerized and choppy, and a test conversation that morning stalled after the greeting questions.

She has asked for more realistic voices in the next build — describing the women's voices as pleasing to the ear, soft, and clear rather than actor-like — and she believes she has run out of credits.

Art's guidance covered all three problems.

If a Base44 voice sounds robotic, go back and tell it so: Base44 can produce very realistic voices.

Or ask Muse how to get realistic voices on a Base44 app, and it will lead her step by step.

And if she is out of credits, let the team know — increasing them takes less than a second.

Quintashia's lifeline is to improve health outcomes for everyday people.

Her project prioritizes the social determinants of health — the conditions in which people are born, grow, and live — and zip codes, because health outcomes are heavily driven by zip codes.

She focuses on Henry County, Georgia, where she lives, and is studying the main drivers of food insecurity there: the barriers preventing access to healthcare and to food.

Her goal is to implement a program that serves as an additional resource for people, outside of health departments — and it starts with collaboration: a coalition, communicating with community leaders, focused on the targeted population.

Art asked what tools she is using.

She has worked with Healthy People 2030, peer-reviewed articles, Georgia Department of Health rankings, and OASIS for underlying-condition statistics — but acknowledged she needs to start taking Base44 more seriously.

Then Dr.

Angee demonstrated her own Base44 app: users enter their zip code to find healing circles and resources near them.

Art stopped her mid-demonstration: one of Quintashia's peers, in this very group, has been experimenting with exactly this kind of thought.

Dr.

Angee's point: a zip-code focus is concrete, and then the app has to give a next step — for Quintashia, where to find local food access by zip code.

Locally, Dr.

Angee has tapped churches and food pantries and worked with the USDA on food packages, and Base44 can hold all of that in the app.

Jeff added Georgia Department of Health statistics, including WIC and SNAP participation by county and the healthy foods available on those programs.

Art then took the long way around — through dance, Debbie Allen, Fame, and A Different World — to land his point.

Quintashia is strong and confident in biostatistics.

The team is opening another door for her, and once she sees it and walks through it, she will discover she is just as good on the other side of that door as she is in the stats.

She said yes — she is going to give it a try.

Raymond added the practical half: stress-test what the tools return, and a couple of weeks of that builds confidence on the platforms.

Art will send her a Base44 invitation to test her ideas, and if she runs out of credits, she should let him know.

Art also apologized to Carah Ann, who was on the call but did not get a turn.

The close was simple: keep working, and questions are welcome.

Alabi Omotola came prepared: before the meeting she drew out her physical map — not a digital one — toward reaching primary 4–5 children in Nigeria with her book, through a friend whose mother owns a school.

The barrier is access: the book is digital, and most children in primary school there do not have access to digital devices.

Devices are expensive, and many parents see them as distractions rather than investments.

Raymond then shared his purpose video — 2 minutes 22 seconds — which tells the story of his 12-minute near-death experience from blood clots and presents purpose as a blueprint encoded in DNA; shorter versions of 60 and 90 seconds are planned.

Art liked the story arc, and asked for two things: music underneath the narration, and the source video uploaded to Google Drive with the link shared, so he can download and edit it directly — traffic comes mostly through the Shorts, so breaking the themes into Shorts shows which messages resonate.

Alabi's feedback on the video was the sharpest of the day: the narration line about people who never find their purpose because they just don't know where to look has become a generic statement in most AI videos — the moment she heard it, it sounded like something she had heard somewhere before.

Art's direction settled it: make sure the narration is fully aligned with the language Raymond uses in his book, and there will be no issues with it.

Then back to Alabi's book.

Art asked whether making it into a full YouTube video would help.

Yes and no, she said: with school owners' permission she could play the video in schools as educational material, and a video would hold children's attention — and she is already planning to circulate the digital copy through her personal circle, as she did with "Dim Lady." Art's interest is reactions first: see the reactions of different types of people to the story, and if there is enough of a reaction, move toward printed copies.

Reactions can be recorded as voices or short videos, and Art can also create a page with the video where feedback can be recorded — even something as simple as thumbs up or thumbs down.

Alabi asked where the documentation goes — the conversations, the shares, the reading sessions, the feedback — and Art clarified: the weekly log; upload any document created, or type it in.

She also asked about a weekly work limit, and Art set one: four to six hours.

Raymond closed the loop on her project: the platform flow is updated, with adult and child comprehension modes on the kids' side; he will send her the updated links and schedule a follow-up call, and she should run it again from the initial intake to feel the difference in flow.

Alabi noted she is in an electricity blackout — her devices are dead and her phone is near 15 percent — so if she cannot reply to email within 24 hours, she will do so on Monday.

Art has created a video about her that he will send after the call.

The session closed with thanks and goodbyes at 1:34:38.

The meeting focused on students reporting feedback from someone unfamiliar with their app or site, beginning with each project's Lifeline.

The wider agenda also named reflection on the Saturday meeting minutes and the case studies reviewed during the week.

Raymond Williams opened the session and set the agenda while Art was on his way from his son's basketball game.

Dr.

Nestor asked whether Adawna Danly was joining; no one had heard from her, and she did not attend.

Carla Grant introduced herself: "I'm in my first trimester of masters of social work, and I'm really excited to hear your projects...

I would love to join all of you as a cohort for this mission." Art explained that outside reviewers reveal chances to improve a product, and that an emailed feedback form was available.

He encouraged students to volunteer their contributions, connecting initiative to professional opportunities: in real life, people who step up are the ones who get the opportunities.

Diana opened with her Lifeline: she wants to help children of immigrants whose families have faced deportation and family separation explore their emotions.

A colleague unfamiliar with the app found navigation satisfactory but suggested artwork as an alternative to journaling, drawing on her experience with her own young son, who expressed himself through art.

Children will not just sit down and write; drawing gives them another way to explore what they feel.

Diana valued this lived-experience contribution because it introduced an idea she had not considered, and it raised her confidence in seeking further feedback: the reviewer was honest with her, and it opened her eyes to something she was not even thinking about.

Carla suggested drawing or coloring could also support children during crises, distracting them while something is going on.

Dr.

Angee endorsed art's expressive potential — sometimes kids cannot express themselves in words, and art shows you a lot more about what is going on with them — and encouraged continued outside review.

Dr.

Nestor returned to the question she had raised two weeks earlier: what is the desired outcome for the people using the app?

Additions are great, but why is a user coming to the app, what are they getting out of it, and why would they continue to use it?

Diana acknowledged the artwork idea had not been implemented, that she did not yet have the answer on its outcome, and that its fit with school systems was unclear.

Dr.

Nestor cautioned that helping immigrant children explore the traumas of that journey brings clinical responsibility with it: how are you managing, how are you mitigating, how are you assessing — the loops have to close.

She suggested a more directed experience than an open space to write: reflective questions tied to particular tasks connected to the question, the way a daily reflection leads the day in the apps she uses.

Raymond reinforced that the app should offer help with identified concerns, not merely a journal-like space.

Diana agreed to work on clarifying outcomes and to try to get feedback from another person before the following week.

Sabrena presented her Lifeline: she is creating an educational tool for families with family members who have disabilities, centered on the California regional centers, one of the first stops families should take when they are trying to obtain services.

Her mother tested the app and understood how to navigate it, but she is not familiar with disability services or its terms, so her most useful feedback was a pointer: test it with a relative whose grandson has a disability, someone familiar with needing help, who knows what to ask for.

Dr.

Nestor agreed a knowledgeable prospective user could better assess the complete journey — going through the app from beginning to end and seeing what they get once they have answered all the questions.

Sabrena also wants bilingual colleagues to verify the translated content, since she cannot tell whether a translation reads correctly in a language she does not speak; Diana offered to review the Spanish.

Carla, who has a disability herself, offered to check the app out as a user, and Sabrena clarified it is not just for children: early intervention ages 0 to 3, early start 3 to 6, children 6 to 18, and an adult section.

She will send Carla the working link.

On the IPP summary Dr.

Nestor is waiting to see, Sabrena explained a phone screen recording exceeded her email limits; she will pull the app up on her computer, screenshot the final summary — five or six pictures — and email those.

Dr.

Nestor confirmed she only wants to see the end result, not a recording of the questionnaire being answered.

Jeff noted the app could also help users and reviewers identify services they were not already accessing.

Art framed individual feedback conversations as both product work and relationship building.

Diana's experience showed how taking in a reviewer's suggestion could encourage that person to try the finished app and recommend it: they are going to try it out, and they are going to talk to other people about it.

Art said Voice Up had grown through such conversations on a very small marketing budget — "our marketing budget is really small, it's teeny tiny" — and he read Sabrena's mother's recommendation as a referral to a relevant user, even though her mother never called it one.

A real person-to-person referral carries an authenticity money cannot buy, the way candidates outspent by millions still win elections on referrals.

Dr.

Nestor agreed referrals are powerful, and part of the social work job itself.

Sabrena said this changed her thinking about whom she could approach — she had been focused on people immediately around her — and she agreed to speak with another person before the next week.

Art emphasized openness, because a conversation may produce an unexpected connection rather than a feature idea.

Carah opened with her Lifeline: "To provide teen girls with education and advocacy tools for their health." Her mentor, a public-health professional, recommended greater interactivity and consulting a fertility specialist who works specifically with adolescent girls, to guide the information in the app and the direction it goes; she advised reaching out to a specialist in her community or joining fertility associations, noting that students who explain what they are working on are rarely turned away.

Carah's mother, an experienced educator — principal, teacher, and parent educator — saw potential for health classes and parent education, and offered school introductions in the Dallas area and Garland; Carah had also shared the cohort's other apps with her mother, so the connections may help the whole group.

Diana congratulated her on the network she is building.

Dr.

Nestor emphasized Carah's thoughtfulness toward her peers: opportunities are not always about what you know, but who you know.

Jeff added that one conversation at a time opens doors not only for yourself but for other people.

Art committed to reaching out this week to Dr.

Sahitya Kommuru, the author of Living with PCOS, and inviting Sabrena into that conversation too — clarifying that he is certain she knows a fertility specialist, rather than confirming she is one herself.

Carah agreed to another feedback conversation before the following week.

Art announced website case studies for every student who created an app — Sabrena had already spotted hers on the site during the meeting — designed to help each student think more deeply about how their app connects to the program they are in, the skills they are developing, and where they want to go.

He encouraged using Muse for app introduction videos of different lengths and in any language, and for independent evaluations framed from different user perspectives: "You could say, 'I want this evaluated from the perspective of the blank,' and it will give you that evaluation." Diana had connected Muse with Base44 after Saturday's meeting and planned to try a perspective-based evaluation.

Art named three resources for the week ahead: one more outside feedback conversation; review the case study for your own app; and read the AI in Social Work page, a national analysis of all 50 states — the laws, policies, and rules each state has in place now or in the pipeline on AI and social work — which Art will email after the meeting.

He gave the group a heads-up that basketball season may make him a little late again next Monday, and instructed them to start the next meeting without him if necessary.

The group said their goodbyes and the session ended.

Art opened with Halloween greetings as people arrived — Dr.

Angee wished everyone a happy Halloween, Diana checked in doing good, Raymond and Jeff said hello.

Art spotted a new face, Carla, and promised introductions to come.

First, a word about the week: get your vote in.

Art has voted early, and he noted that Dr.

Angee is on the ballot in Chicago for one of her roles — her election, she clarified, is not until February.

Then he turned to the updates, starting with the network.

Art framed where Voice Up stands: every week, the momentum keeps building.

The Voice Up Media Network has begun a small ramp-up — more videos, short films, songs, and profiles on the way — and over the last two weeks the channel has settled onto a pace of about 200 new subscribers a day discovering the content on YouTube.

He was careful about what that number means: this is testing and piloting.

The strongest work has not been released yet.

He gave the room an example close to home: Jose, an Alliant University student many of them know, has built an app for LCSW students, from a student's perspective, and Voice Up is about to do some nice things with it.

The reason any of this matters to the people in this meeting, Art said, is that the platform exists to take their work — the apps, the stories, the concepts — and give it a place to take off.

Voice Up's two-year anniversary is November 12, and Art announced what is coming: in-depth profiles, at least two and probably three, released that day.

Before he could finish, Sabrena Marie stopped him — somebody has to say it, she said: two years is a huge accomplishment, and the room should take a second to congratulate the people who built it.

Art laughed, thanked her, and joked that Jeff and Raymond need to add Sabrena as the Voice Up cheerleader immediately, because she has the energy for it.

Then the profiles.

One is Maryam, on this call from Nigeria, whose powerful story Art praised while noting her humility about it.

The other is Elizabeth, a student in Pakistan who has built, with Voice Up, a platform in English and in Urdu focused on the importance of oral health — going to the dentist, your teeth, all of it.

And there may be one more: Art asked Dr.

Angee, live, whether she would be up for a profile of her story.

She said absolutely, and he will follow up.

The purpose of the network, Art said, is to elevate and share the real stories of real people — what is important to them, what they have accomplished, and what they intend to accomplish — and once the profiles start releasing, he expects the subscriber pace to keep climbing.

Art gave the room a preview of what is on his own horizon.

He is finishing his doctorate, and his official completion date is December 2 — here before we know it.

From the dissertation, he expects a minimum of two or three scientific articles to be published in scientific journals, and much of the work connects directly to what this group does: connecting people to purpose.

That led him to Raymond, and to a word Raymond dropped into the room — theory.

Raymond's book is now titled Step Into Self Theory, tied to his Step Into Success platform for identifying and aligning yourself, finding purpose that leads to fulfillment.

Put the two together, Art said, and Voice Up will be laying the groundwork for a theory focused on helping people connect to purpose.

A theory matters because it impacts everybody: with enough evidence behind it, it changes how people understand the way things are.

The benefit lands on the students: as they release and refine their own work, they will be able to show how it connects to science, and that adds credibility to everything they publish.

Year three, Art said, is going to be really nice.

Art likes to share the fun things too, so he asked Jeff what he did this past week.

Jeffrey Cheeks — Chief Fiscal Officer, with Voice Up for almost two years — went to the Sixers and Pacers game.

Raymond, a Philadelphia fan, called out "Go Sixers" before Jeff could start.

Jeff got to see LeBron James play; some Pacers players were out, but it was a close game and Philadelphia came out with the victory by about five points.

He sat seven or eight rows from the court and sent the group a picture.

Being that close to the athleticism, he said, and doing something different than he normally does, made it a great opportunity.

Art agreed: those things are important too.

Before Carla shared her own story, the room went around — short, quick, to the point.

Raymond Williams: Chief Program Officer, all about purpose; his book and his Step Into Success platform are about identifying and aligning yourself to find purpose that leads to fulfillment; he lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and, in his words, "I live in purpose.

I am purpose." Diana Cisneros: an Alliant MSW student working on an app to help children of immigrants explore their emotions.

Jeff Cheeks: Chief Fiscal Officer, and the creator of Julius and the Squad, a children's series on YouTube about fear — about seven episodes, with children's books built from them — helping kids navigate their fears by talking with friends and breathing through them.

Sy'Viceeaa Hall: a University of Arkansas at Little Rock student living in Texas, interning with Voice Up, building a personalized emotional wellness companion in Base44 for people who do not have anyone available for emotional support.

Dr.

Angee: a teenage, uneducated mother who went on to earn three degrees, the last a doctorate in human services; a published children's book author; all about purpose.

Erik Armas: a second-year intern, working on a research paper with Art, applying to doctoral programs in clinical psychology — applications submitted this week.

Sabrena Marie: an Alliant student in her first year with Voice Up, building an app that explains support for developmental disabilities in your own language.

Maryam Alabi: from Nigeria, a recent graduate of the Department of Communication and Language Arts, who joined Voice Up to find her footing in behavioral health as she pivots toward neuropsychiatry.

Carah Brown: a third-year student at the University of Texas at Arlington, in her first year with Voice Up, building an app that connects teenage girls to health resources and advocacy tools.

Art closed the round with the welcome underneath all of it: lots of different types of people, all welcome, all working on something for their future to help make the world better — and Voice Up brings it together for one common good.

Then it was Carla's turn.

She introduced herself as Carla Angel — her screen name reads Carla Grant, and the name change is in motion this week.

She is from Alliant University, in the first trimester of her master's program.

She graduated from the University of California, Davis in 1998, so school took some getting used to again — a little rusty, she said, but loving it: it is a calling.

She is a member of the National Association of Social Workers' student representative group, AARP, Rock the Vote, and the League of Women Voters in Yolo County, whose nonpartisan stance she especially likes.

Her focus came out of her own life.

She has been in crisis mode in the past and lived the harm of a wrong determination — someone deciding a person was not taking their medication, or had a psychiatric issue, when that was not the real problem.

What she wants to build is crisis intervention, starting in Yolo County and expanding across the United States and broader: police stations and other departments that do not have a social worker or an MFT there could use her app to guide them in talking to someone who is in crisis — and, on the app, a number that reaches someone on standby, an LCSW, who can answer the phone and help them.

It is an idea so far, and she asked the room for input.

Art's answer was the welcome itself: this is what Voice Up loves, people coming in with ideas, because collaboration takes an idea further than working alone ever does — and her idea may connect with others already in the room.

While Carla was talking, another new student had joined.

Quintashia Jackson will formally join in January; she sat in on this Saturday meeting to get a sense of how they run.

She attends Georgia State University, where she is in a master of public health program concentrating in epidemiology, and she is from Middle Georgia.

She is working to implement a program called Moments That Matter — a comprehensive maternal and child health initiative.

Art then set the shape for the rest of the meeting: open floor for updates, each beginning with your Lifeline, that one statement that drills down what you are working on, who you are, and what you are about — then the work itself, with feedback from the group.

Sabrena went first, from her car, still polishing a Lifeline that is not too wordy: her app makes disability support easy to understand in your own language.

Her week's big work: she is adding Early Start and Early Intervention to the app, after realizing how important and useful that support is for families of children with disabilities.

From the age of zero to six, there is help even when you do not yet know whether your child has a disability — guidance that connects families with their primary care and toward a diagnosis.

Families do not have to wait for a formal diagnosis to get started with services through their state, at least in California; many parents simply do not know where to start, or that they can act on what they notice — a milestone not met, words not coming, eye contact not there.

Then Sabrena shared something personal.

She has recently been diagnosed with PCOS, and she has been using the PCOS case studies on the Voice Up platform to understand what is happening in her own life and her own body — doing real research into peer-reviewed papers rather than answering with basic AI help, because this one is personal, and she wants to put her all into it.

Art thanked her for trusting the room with it, and told her what sits behind those case studies: Voice Up has the medical doctor who works on this — Dr.

Sahitya Kommuru, who wrote the book, Living with PCOS — and he will connect Sabrena with her today, immediately after this meeting; a copy of the book should be available to her for free.

Carah Brown's ears perked up: she did the PCOS case study too, and read the book as well.

She really enjoyed Dr.

Sahitya's story, and it influenced her decision to create the app she is working on.

Art's plan widened on the spot: Dr.

Sahitya is going to be jumping out of her chair — he will connect them all, today.

Sy'Viceeaa found her notes and gave her Lifeline: building confidence to maintain health.

Her eight-week guide is finished and she is on Base44 now, still in planning mode rather than building mode.

She had been torn between two directions — continuing her wellness check-in, or an emotional wellness companion — and she has decided: the companion.

The check-in is targeted, narrow; the companion is broader, because everybody could benefit from help with their emotional wellness.

It could prevent suicide, she said, just by having someone there to talk to.

She is working out the interface now: what people will see, the interactions, what goes inside, then the outside.

Art raised two things.

First, a partner she needs to see: Overcome UK, with whom Voice Up has a formal partnership, has real people available to support people — all across the world, at world scale — and that could shape what she is developing.

Sy'Viceeaa answered with her own design: the companion will have a help mode, with hotlines to call for the moments the companion is not working and a person still feels they have no one to talk to.

Second, Art asked what the wellness check-in itself was, and she explained its roots in her health and wellness coaching: a consultation that starts from whatever concern a person came in with — questions about the concern, how they have been feeling, what they have been doing — helping them understand where the concern might have come from, then a next process with routines to focus on.

The feedback round was warm.

Sabrena told her that two weeks ago she seemed unsure, and now the tables are turning: "It sounds like you're just way more confident... things are starting to roll downhill instead of, you know, just staying second.

So kudos to you." Maryam added a coaching idea from her own practice: as a coach, she was assigned a well-being coach to check on her — so follow-ups could be offered after a session, checking on a client a couple of times afterward, with reminders, asking how everything is going.

Sy'Viceeaa took it in: those check-ins will definitely be offered, especially if needed — if the person wants them; some people will say stop bothering me, and that choice stays theirs.

Art closed the update by asking the plain question — are you using Muse?

"Of course," she said.

There is no way around it.

Maryam spoke next, plainly: she has not been attending as she usually does, and she is in the middle of a move.

She completed her three weeks in the National Youth Service camp — exhausting, testing her in ways she had never seen, and she survived.

While in camp, she joined the guidance and counseling committee and somehow became its committee leader.

Her hope for her service year had always been a placement in a neuropsychiatric hospital, and the department called: they had been seeing her good work, and asked where she wanted to be.

She named the hospital she wanted — the best in West Africa, in her words — and it worked: she was posted there.

At first she expected rejection and was already looking for alternatives; instead she got the placement, and now she is moving cities and adjusting.

Art named it for what it is: fantastic news — she is where she said she wanted to be in the future, beginning to be there now.

Jeff Cheeks spoke from his own years of new assignments and relocations: God puts you in positions to be where you are needed, so be steadfast, be thankful, and let God lead.

Sy'Viceeaa congratulated her for standing her ground on work she has a real interest in.

Art closed by reminding the room why her profile leads the November 12 anniversary release: when people see it, they will understand.

Diana began, as asked, with her Lifeline: she would like to have children of immigrants whose families have faced deportation or family separation explore their emotions.

Her app update has been dominated by one problem.

Two weeks ago, Art put in a daily security check; Diana went to look at it under her dashboard's security area and found it was inactive for 14 days — and when she tried to activate it, Base44 kept saying it was failing.

She has no idea how to fix it on her own, so she has been going back and forth with Muse, and got pulled into that work yesterday and today.

She has also started adding a screening tool to the app — not fully complete — and, taking a cue from Carah's app, she wants hers more interactive for the children who will use it.

Art stopped her to make the room hear how she is working: explain how Muse helped.

Diana did.

She told Muse what was going on; it asked her questions back — check this, look here, send a screenshot of what it says.

It breaks the errors down into simple language she can understand, tells her what she can do about them, and gives her suggestions for prompts she can literally copy and paste into Base44 — including the parts, like secrets, she would otherwise be stuck on.

Was the process helpful?

"Absolutely, absolutely.

Very helpful." Art then gave her the next step as a challenge he is sure she will meet: ask Muse to sync with Base44.

Once synced, instead of going back and forth between the two, she will be able to say what she would like to happen, and it will do it in Base44.

He pointed the room to last week's minutes, which carry the link to sign up for Muse — a tool that, for a busy person, can save hours every day.

And he widened the security point for everyone: a senior Bank of America leader said the bank is hiring thousands of consultants to beef up security; at Art's own job, a federal security patch forced their website down for 24 hours.

Anything the group can do to help an app get as secure as it can get, they should do — and ask for help.

Sy'Viceeaa closed the topic with the sync story in her own words: she told Muse she wanted to sync to Base44, it said it could not — until she said Art Fuller said it could.

What Muse was describing was logging in: it opens its own browser, she logged into her Base44, and that is how it synced.

"This is so easy," she said.

It is resolved; it just needed the question clarified.

Art kept the close short, mindful of everyone's time, and left the floor open: he always hangs out after to answer any questions of any kind.

For the Alliant University students, one reminder.

They meet Monday at 8:30 PM, and this week's task stands: you were to send your app out to get feedback from at least one person who knows nothing about your app.

Art will resend the email for anyone who needs the reminder.

Carla asked whether he wanted her to sit in on the 8:30 meeting as well.

His answer: if she has the time, the group would love to have her — but it is optional, a chance to check it out, and he will send her the link.

The meeting closed with good wishes for the weekend all around.

Maryam, Jeff, and Raymond stayed on.

Art congratulated her again on the placement — it began last week — and gave her a piece of news: he is sending her an update to her web page today, for her to look over.

As she reviews and confirms the details, they will keep updating it, so it is where it needs to be by November 12.

Maryam then named her own worry honestly: she has been inconsistent, she feels rusty, and when she checked her activity Pulse last week it was red — of course it was red.

Art asked the question that matters first: how is your schedule right now?

Her answer surprised the room.

She is not resuming hospital work until January; until then she has a lot of free time, and when she resumes it will be nine to four.

So Art will resend her a personal update showing what she needs to do — really, he said, it is just a matter of activity and staying engaged — and he sketched what is coming her way.

Voice Up is picking back up the Miracle Has a Monster outreach where she is, in her community in Nigeria: on Monday he will send her the outreach plan, because he wants more feedback from kids and students on the book.

She will have the books and little teaser videos to work with.

When she asked, candidly, whether there are paid projects she can take on — the move has wrecked her financially, and she needs to work — Art was direct: this is a real project.

The outreach itself is her project, with the fellowship around it.

Her thanks ran long, and she said what it means: this is the first time she is coming out of her shell in terms of sharing her story.

Art answered the way he had answered her absence too: he knew she had been plugged out for a bit, and he was just waiting, because he said to himself, she will be back.

And she is.

When the profile releases, he told her, she will get a turbo boost of momentum.

She closed by congratulating him in advance on the dissertation — she can't wait until there is a doctor to his name — and by offering the community's help in return: if there is any way Voice Up can help, she is on board.

Raymond stayed on too, and first there was music.

At his workplace's annual celebration he finally did the karaoke he usually skips: he started the night with one song, drew a crowd from around the corners of a big bowling alley, then did a second — Luther Vandross — and an executive ran up afterward to hug him and fell.

People who typically would not open up, opened up; they will be talking about it for a while.

He will be back at bowling next week, he said, and next week everything should be clearer for him on the work he owes Art.

The working topic was his: for the last couple of days he has been researching how to connect Muse to Base44 properly.

His route: create a token inside Secrets, so Muse gets admin rights to work without handing over a full Base44 API key — the most secure way, his research says, because Base44's human check stops the sign-in when it reads an AI.

But the attempts hit errors, including a Cloudflare error 1010 and timeouts.

Art answered with his own road, step by step.

He did not use the Secrets route at all.

For one week he simply let Muse deal with all his different email addresses — complicated stuff — and did not log into a single email himself; everything still got done, and it passed his bar.

Then he gave it his Base44 admin login, across his twenty or thirty sites, for another week — including the Overcome UK update work — and that convinced him completely.

The mechanism is single sign-on: his most active email, info@ellingtonbooks.com, is his anchor, and on any platform he clicks the Google button, selects that email, and he is in — no password.

Raymond's blocker is the opposite setup: his Base44 administrator account signs in with an email and a password, and once an account is created that way it keeps defaulting back to the password.

Art's fallback for him: use another Gmail account — Raymond has one through his artist work — and invite that account in as an administrator on his platform.

When the invite asks him to sign up, sign up only using Google, with no password.

Give that account the same admin access, and use it as the admin sign-in moving forward.

And in the middle of the troubleshooting, the error cleared on its own: it told Raymond what the issue was, worked itself out, and now it is going.

That, Art said, is the thing he has found — Muse figures it out; if it makes mistakes, it corrects them.

Raymond will try the run, and if it does not hold, he will go the single sign-on route.

The recording ends the way the day asks it to: farewells, a joyous day wished all around, and Art heading out to take Joshua trick-or-treating.

Each student presents in the same order: start with your Lifeline, in plain words anyone can understand; show what you have on your site; the group gives feedback.

Before next week, every student also takes the feedback out of the room: share your app with at least one person outside this group and get their feedback.

The goal of that step: your app has to work for the people it serves, not only for this group.

A person outside the room uses it fresh, without our context, and shows you what is clear, what is missing, and what does not work.

Bring their feedback back next week, and use it in your next build.

Art opened with two updates.

The polls are open in every state; if you are not registered, this is a good time — he voted early over the weekend.

And the follow-up email that went out after Saturday's meeting gives everyone more help and a clear structure on the platform, with more resources now aligned to the LCSW program standards and to other programs.

Adawna presented her app for people leaving incarceration in California, built on CalAIM and InmateAid information.

People released after long sentences have to start over on nearly everything.

The roadmap puts the steps in order: first a driver's license or ID, then a Social Security card — both are needed for CalFresh or general assistance — with sections for older adults and a workforce section.

Find Resources gives locations for the county the person is in, with a PDF guide to what each program requires.

A community area lets people talk with others in the same spot, and an action-plan checklist keeps the steps in order.

Her Lifeline: "Getting resources to the newly released incarcerated." Raymond suggested tightening it to two words: "Re-entry resources." Feedback: Art will move the app into the Voice Up platform and invite her to it there, because on public Base44 anyone can open "Edit with Base44" and clone it.

Dr.

Nestor asked her to simulate using it as a client would, end to end; her two CalAIM colleagues will test it on a real case.

Dr.

Nestor also raised a revenue path — charge organizations to post and market on the app — and Jeff suggested a hiring layer matching people released with trade skills to businesses looking for them.

Diana reworked her Lifeline from navigation to emotions: she wants to help children of immigrants whose families have faced deportation and family separation explore their emotions.

Work since Saturday: safety parameters with four views — admin; children under 13, who have no account but can still read content; teenagers 14 to 17; and adults.

The site tour covered the workbook (journaling on coping with emotions, cultural pride, and setting goals, with a goal coach), the community area (curated stories only, filtered by what is on the reader's mind, with resources connected right after the stories), the resources map (shelters, schools, newcomer centers, legal aid, mental health clinics), the binational guide for moving in both directions, and a Baja California healthcare section covering IMSS, the CURP number, and enrollment.

She signed up for Muse during Saturday's planning meeting and used it to turn her questions into prompts for Base44; the homepage picture was generated for her.

Feedback: Dr.

Nestor praised the work and asked whether she has simulated it as a client — she has not yet.

Raymond suggested a screening step at the start that routes each visitor to what they need, ending in a step-by-step page they can pull up.

Art celebrated her leap with Muse and said that when the site is done, Voice Up will collaborate to get it into a lot of school districts, because it addresses an issue schools do not know how to talk about.

Carah showed a new logo and about seven health tools added since last week, following feedback from Dr.

Nestor and Raymond.

The Appointment Advocate is a sheet to fill out before an appointment, with an AI helper that turns a user's questions into medical terms they can explain to a health professional.

The Care Navigator takes symptoms and finds which kind of doctor, and which area, to see.

The Health Knowledge Library holds resources and articles, each with an AI summary in simple terms.

The learning modules (Sprouts, Blossoms, Bloom) are still in place.

Profiles are personal only for users over 13; no information is saved for children under 13, and a parent must sign off before anyone under 18 uses it.

Her Lifeline: "To connect teen girls to education, resources and advocacy tools." Feedback: Raymond loves the updates and the safe place it gives girls to research, with one stipulation — make clear these are suggestions, and users should reach out to their own providers and doctors.

He also noted its value where there are few doctors nearby, and that it teaches users to do their homework so they can question a doctor, who does not know everything.

Dr.

Angee said the page shows she took her time and put her heart into it, and Dr.

Nestor agreed the app will be very useful.

Carah sees it used in schools, in health classes, or for personal use.

Sabrena told Dr.

Nestor she completed the IPP summary she had promised for the app, so Dr.

Nestor can preview it — the item requested in last week's feedback.

She could not upload her screenshots to the chat, so she will email them to Dr.

Nestor and Art instead.

Art closed with where Voice Up stands.

The platform has jumped ahead: Voice Up can now do what he thought would take two or three years, so the plan is to do it now.

Voice Up knows people, organizations, and platforms looking for solutions to the very problems these students are solving, and the invitation stands: Voice Up will help each student take their idea further than they thought they could.

In Dr.

Nestor's words, if you are not invited to the table, create your own table — that is what Voice Up is doing.

New pages sent out today focus on AI and social workers, with a state-by-state breakdown of how social workers are using AI; they are the main topic at the next meeting.

Art encouraged everyone to use the Muse platform and to reflect on the meeting minutes there — the key is knowing how to talk to it, and Diana is already seeing what that unlocks.

The group also celebrated Dr.

Angee Gonzalez Rodriguez, who is running for public office as a candidate for alderman in Chicago's 26th Ward.

The session adjourned at about 9:29 PM ET.

Art opened as participants joined.

Raymond Williams was recovering from stuffed-up ears.

Diana Cisneros reported a lighter week than the busy one before — definitely better.

Sy'Viceeaa Hall joined on her lunch break on a pretty day.

Sabrena Marie checked in doing okay, and Carah Brown said hello.

Art noted Halloween is next Saturday and that time is flying, then moved into updates with a question for the whole room.

Art's first question laid the ground for everything after it: has anyone signed up for Muse yet?

By show of hands, one person.

Then he explained why he is asking.

Three months ago, he said, he held a picture of where Voice Up could be in two to three years — and Voice Up is beginning this week where he thought it could be then.

Effective today, not tomorrow.

Raymond, who has been with Voice Up since before it had the name — eight or nine years — said he was not surprised: the key is the open mind to see where things are going, to shift and jump on the wave, to get ahead of it rather than sit on it while it passes.

The reason for Muse: Voice Up could simply make things for students, Art said, but that is not what Voice Up is.

Students learn to do it themselves.

Sy'Viceeaa named the advantage — when you venture off and do something yourself, you learn a lot more and may find things you never expected — and Art added the stakes: skills like these make you more employable and competitive in a marketplace that will not slow down for anyone.

Next week, the group will start creating its own real, high-quality videos with Muse.

The early numbers say the platform is ready for them: in the last two weeks, just playing around, people watched over 500 hours of Voice Up content; the channel adds at least 250 new subscribers a day; comments arrive in over 15 different languages (some Art cannot read); and out of that watching, people spent over 50 additional hours on the platform working on things tied to their own purpose.

It is not a watch-and-scroll platform, he said — see a story that resonates, and you can act on it.

Over 260 videos are now identified and connected to the things students are working on.

Carah said she is excited to see what happens and has been trying to sign up; Art told her help is there for anyone who needs it.

Three updates followed.

First, Georgia State: on Tuesday of this week, Georgia State University featured Voice Up for a full hour (a public health power hour), talking with students — and the outreach will now expand to international students all throughout Georgia State, who come from all over the world.

They knew the name, Art said, but not what Voice Up does; now they do.

Second, the Activity Pulse: everyone should have received the email about the color-coded rating — red, yellow, green — which shows how you are doing against what you said you wanted to do: the goals, the hours, all of it.

It is all within the platform, with tutorial videos on how to interpret it and how to improve your rating; it is meant to build positive momentum toward your goal.

Third, the weekly logs: immediately after this meeting, Art is sending an email to all the students with the results of an audit — what you reported, what was in the platform, and how well they align.

Read every piece of it, he said.

From today, that alignment is the standard: not backwards-looking blame, but a clean slate beginning today, so the log matches the activity already on the platform.

Sabrena asked whether the standard covers only the Voice Up platform or also her time on Base44.

It includes everything, Art said — every Voice Up platform, in one spot.

Updates like this will keep coming each week; the weekly calls will go out on Fridays.

Art turned the floor over one student at a time, with the same format for each: your Lifeline first, then what you have been working on.

The Lifeline, he explained, is one clean statement describing your purpose and how it relates to your project.

His own, for Voice Up: we connect people to purpose, one conversation at a time.

Raymond's, for his Step into Success program: helping people define their best self.

The Lifeline sets the stage; the details come after.

Sy'Viceeaa, on her lunch break, went first — hesitantly, then clean: building confidence to maintain human life.

Art showed her why it works by playing a foundation board member hearing it: building confidence catches his attention, human life holds it, because the words are easy for anyone to gravitate to.

Then her update: she has finished her eight-week guide and is working on her pilot — a wellness check-in she wants to perfect in Base44.

But something else is tugging at her: she has started coding an AI assistant for emotional support — an always-available companion.

She knows the objections (AI does not have feelings, and many say such a companion is not good for people), and she finds the challenge part of the draw.

Art's answer: whatever the idea, Voice Up is willing to help her think it through — they may know things in that area she has not considered — and he offered another conversation about it.

Raymond added the rule for everyone: the idea has to come from you, from your passion; write it down or voice-note it when it comes, and the group will help build on it.

Voice Up supports; the student leads.

Sabrena has been working on her Lifeline all week, hoping it sounds less wordy.

Her first version: her app helps individuals and their advocates navigate California Regional Center services through easy-to-understand education and community shared support.

Art's coaching was gentle and exact: the Lifeline does not need the specifics — no California, no system names — because you may say it to people who know nothing about your system but would care about the concept.

Big picture first.

Sabrena heard it instantly and produced the line herself: my app turns confusion into confidence by making services easier to understand.

Art stopped the room: how does that feel compared to the first one?

Better, she said — people who do not know what a regional center is would understand her goal.

She will spend more time this week broadening the Lifeline instead of narrowing it to exactly what the app does.

Raymond added a practical tool: take your first statement, put it in Claude, and ask it to simplify it into a one-sentence purpose statement a person outside your field can get — you do not have to take its wording, but it shows you the shape in about five minutes.

Her week: she decided she needed a break from her app — not all the way; she still worked on it some — after a stretch of fog where she knew she wanted to improve it but not how.

She worked on case studies to regroup, and by Thursday and Friday she was collaborating again: her app covers kids and adults, but the regional center also runs early intervention and Early Start for toddlers and young kids, which her app says nothing about — so she reviewed the app with early start service coordinators, took their view of where to add what they do, and read the documents they sent.

She also owned a gap: she has not looked into Muse, because she does not think of herself as a tech person.

She will put time aside today or tomorrow to explore it.

Sy'Viceeaa reassured her from experience: Muse is like ChatGPT — same format, type what you want and it responds.

Art closed the loop with a cooking example: tell Muse you cannot cook but want to learn, and it assembles what you need — even five videos customized to how you learn.

If you can think and talk, he said, you can do many things in today's world.

Before Quintashia's Lifeline, Art asked about her 93-year-old grandfather — her grandfather, she corrected, and yes, she visited him this week; she talks with him every single day, and loves hearing his stories: he was born in 1933.

Then Art gave her what he called a gift.

Growing up, he was very close with his grandmother, born in 1920, who was allowed only three months of school a year — imagine that.

Before she passed, about twenty years ago, he sat down with her over a couple of days and simply recorded her talking.

Now he is turning that recording into a real-life video of her story; this Christmas, that film is his gift to his family, especially his brother and sister, who did not get to know her as he did.

You have the same chance, he told Quintashia: a 93-year-old relative, at your fingertips, and a way to capture something that was not previously available.

He will send her a link to one portion of his grandmother's story, and he is interested in helping her in any way.

Quintashia answered from her own family: her grandfather holds a first-grade education because he had to participate in child labor, which is exactly why education is so important in her family — and why earning this master's degree matters to her.

She plans to pass his stories on to her future kids.

Then the Lifeline.

Hers: to implement solutions that can improve health outcomes for underserved and vulnerable populations.

Art's reaction was the same as with the others: he gets every word, but parts of it are education-ese — get the jargon out, because the board member, the everyday listener, has to resonate with it.

Raymond: use the simplest words possible; a twenty-year-old and a fifty-year-old alike should comprehend it on first hearing.

Quintashia worked it live: improve health and well-being for... populations?

Too academic.

Art offered the swap: instead of population, just say everyday people.

Raymond: or just say everyone.

She landed it: my lifeline is to improve health and well-being for everyday people.

Her week: she has completed her eight-week guide, and she has been reviewing Healthy People 2030 to build health initiatives for her program, exploring the health equity challenges and barriers that keep individuals and communities from a fair opportunity at their highest level of health.

Asked to explain Healthy People 2030 for the room, she did: a data-driven, measurable set of objectives from the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services to improve health and well-being nationwide, first launched in 2020 — and yes, it connects to the social determinants of health: access to healthcare, food, housing, and the everyday things around them.

Diana was, she joked, the last one — and then delivered her Lifeline twice, the second time with the conviction Art asked for: I would like to help children of immigrants whose families have faced deportation and family separation navigate their experience.

Art pressed on one phrase — navigate their experience — and Diana explained what sits underneath it: many children never develop the skill of expressing what they are going through, which is why her app carries journaling — exploring emotions, learning to cope with them, being able to express them at all.

That answer landed: when you said exploring emotions, Art said, now I know.

Raymond asked the next question: is the app only a place to house these thoughts, or are there supporting resources to help a young person move forward?

Honestly, Diana said, the resources she has are aimed more at families; for the child herself, she has not connected much beyond clinics they could call.

Raymond: from your perspective, what does the journaling accomplish?

Her answer was the heart of her project: being able to name their emotions — having the words — because so often, in her own experience, you just sat in silence and did not explore it, so you didn't have the words for it.

Raymond did not discount that; he pressed for the support mechanism beside it — links, resources, something that helps the next family member not go through the same thing — substance added to a real foundation.

Diana agreed: make it more comprehensive, more complete.

And she is already building one piece of it: the community part, started last weekend, where people share their stories on the app — curated stories, including what helped them through those specific emotions — alongside journaling and recognizing emotions.

Her week on the app: she completed the trilogy on the learning site and the meeting minutes work, and just this morning started on what the group discussed Monday — safety parameters for the app.

Her first real question there: how to address a different age group, specifically children under 13, because more laws exist to protect them.

That is where the app work stands.

Carah's Lifeline: to connect adolescent females to health resources and advocacy tools.

Art told her what he told Quintashia — it is very clear, and the jargon needs softening so the statement gets even more powerful.

Then he coached the word swap live.

Instead of adolescent girls: young?

Getting close.

Simpler?

Teenage.

Teens.

There you go.

Most people, he said, hear teens and get it; plenty hear adolescent girl and quietly don't.

It is no fault of any student: academic spaces train the fancy words, and a significant gap sits between what happens in science and what everyday people can understand — the Lifeline exists to close that gap.

Raymond agreed from the clinical side: adolescent is a word for people in the clinical, medical, educated room.

For everyday people — and especially for the teens the app is for — keep it simple, so a teenager can read your opening statement and relate to it.

Carah took the feedback plainly: it helps, and she will simplify her Lifeline.

Her week: she has been applying the advice Raymond and Dr.

Nestor gave her on Monday — adding more interactive features to her app, making sure the advocacy part is highlighted, and working to really understand what the app's main purpose is.

Art praised the app and asked her to tell the group its name.

Rose.

Art wrapped up.

He knows some people are hesitant — I don't use technology — but the ask is small: take a look at Muse.

We are using Muse next week; that is laid out plainly.

Just sign up; it is free.

Sabrena asked whether sign-up runs through a link from Art, like Base44 did, or her own email: your own email, any email, anything you want — though Art is happy to send a link and will include one.

With Muse, the group will work through the kinds of videos it wants to create in support of each project, and students will learn to create them themselves — Voice Up could do it right now, but that is not the purpose; the purpose is that you learn how.

The videos are taking off, and this is how students get empowered to make their own.

Then the reminder: about 30 minutes after this meeting, the detailed email arrives — weekly logs, expectations, alignment, all the resources.

Voice Up is building great progress every day; who knows where it will be this time next week.

And remember, the minutes get posted, and you need to reflect on the minutes — that is part of the work.

Art wished everyone a great rest of the weekend and stayed on for anyone with questions of any kind.

Quintashia stayed on with questions about her dashboard, and named the problem plainly.

Art had set things up using her personal email, but she is still unable to log in to that one.

When she goes to Voice Up, she is already logged in with her student email — but her eight-week guide is not on there.

That account shows her activity log (she read a figure of 1,043 hours off it, stated here as she reported it), and she does not know what the other account — the J Quintashia one — shows, because she cannot get into it.

Art heard her: we did have some issues with the two different emails, and he will spend time this afternoon getting it cleaned up and synced.

She added that she has finished transferring her GSU timesheet over to the Voice Up log, and emailed Art about it; he will look at it this weekend.

PLATFORM UPDATE (made October 24, 2026, after the meeting): Quintashia's updated eight-week guide — the Purpose, Planning & Readiness Pathway guide for October 26 – December 20 — is now in place under her student email, qjackson23@student.gsu.edu, as well as under jquintashia@gmail.com.

The two records carry identical content and list each other as her secondary email, so her guide now sits on the account she logs in with, beside her activity.

Her activity itself was never lost: her 49 Voice Up Lab sessions from October 5–23 were recorded under her student email all along.

Carah had one question: is Muse the correct website for signing up?

Yes, Art believes that is it.

And then the real problem: with signing up, the problem was age.

Art remembered — that's right — and answered on the spot: we're gonna work out something special, Carah.

I will make an exception for you on that platform.

No other questions from Carah; the workaround itself is Art's to arrange (see open matters).

Sy'Viceeaa's question was practical: she is coding her AI emotional-health assistant on her laptop, off every Voice Up platform — how would she log that time?

Art's answer turned the problem into a method.

That work can be done in Base44, and Muse can help with it too.

No, she said — it would not mean finishing what she started; it would mean creating something new based on it.

Art stopped her: hold it.

Whatever you have started — is it in a document?

It is in a terminal.

Does the terminal have a screen?

Yes.

Just take a picture of the screen: once you take a picture of that screen, it becomes a document, and you can work from it from there — you're off to the races.

Upload the screenshots, tell it what the code is for, ask for feedback on whatever you name, and it will help guide your thinking.

Her aim for the assistant came out in this exchange: it began as support for her own emotional health; if she can make it a great emotional companion for herself, she can duplicate it so it is available for everybody — customized to everybody, with the concept down.

Raymond demystified the tools: in Base44, use discuss mode — talk to it the way you talk to ChatGPT, the way you talk to us — and tell it when you don't understand: break it down in fifth-grade language.

Keep it on build mode to start; the platform can even choose among AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) based on what you are doing.

Art then shared his screen and walked her through it live: start with Plan instead of Build when you are not ready to build; add the screenshots; leave the model on Auto.

Then he showed her Muse itself — and, mid-meeting, asked it to summarize in outline bullet points what it had been working on that morning: morning start and emails, student record standards and audits, guide videos (the Lifeline video, already on version four from his feedback during this very meeting), films, sites.

It is very rare, he said, that he even checks his own email anymore.

Sy'Viceeaa knows the feeling — she uses Muse as an assistant too, and is considering a separate Muse under a different email for the project so personal reminders don't clutter it, because she gets distracted easily.

Art showed her the connections: his Muse is synced to Base44 and Calendly through his Google single sign-on, and even to Otter — he could tell it right now to review this meeting's transcript and create a two-minute summary video for the students, and it would do it.

Her earlier attempt had hit the login step — it pulled up the browser and she logged in herself — and Art confirmed the fix: tell it you want to sync the account, and it leads you step by step.

His closing charge to her was the session's thesis: if you can think and talk, you can now do things that only people with very specialized skills could do before — the most valuable skill today is organizing your thoughts and clearly communicating what you want to achieve.

Sy'Viceeaa's plan: start with the pictures — documenting — today if she can, or Sunday/Monday (she works Sunday, is off Monday), aiming for at least 10 hours this week to move her hour log closer to 200.

She is looking forward to next week.

These minutes end here, at the close of this conversation; a closing one-to-one conversation after this point is not part of these minutes.

The practicum focused on reviewing participants' Base44 applications and practicing how to present project goals and receive feedback.

Participants shared progress on their Base44 projects to receive professional feedback and guidance on implementation.

The session delivered the two-week challenge set on October 5: every participant presented their application to the group.

Aasha presented a sports psychology group-counseling app for college athletes.

Feedback emphasized translating her proposal into an engaging, practical platform with implementation and progress tracking.

Her action items from the session: enter the written group counseling plan into Base44, specifying the intended college-athlete audience and the desired website or application, then review the generated result tonight or tomorrow; and ask Base44 to independently review the site and identify additional ways it could be used.

Carah demonstrated Rose, a women's health and fertility education app.

Suggestions included age-appropriate interactive features, gamification, guided questions, and specialist validation.

Her action item from the session: add an interactive, question-driven user flow that guides adolescents from symptoms to relevant information and recommended next steps.

Diana presented an immigrant-support app with bilingual tools, storytelling, resources, and community features.

Feedback addressed outreach, privacy, HIPAA, and safety parameters, the considerations that govern an app serving immigrant families.

Sabrena presented a regional-center services navigation app.

Feedback supported its organization and requested an example of the completed IPP summary, so the group can see the finished product the app helps families prepare for.

All participants were asked to request an independent Base44 review this week and demonstrate implemented feedback next week.

The expectation set for the next session is demonstration, not description: each participant shows what changed in their app because of the feedback they received.

Art Fuller opened the meeting, shared that Dr.

Angee Gonzalez Rodriguez is considering a run for elected office in Chicago (offering Voice Up marketing support), and welcomed Danica Nestor.

Housekeeping for credit-enrolled students: do not fall behind on weekly logs — “lock it in on Mondays.” Between meetings, students should dig into the Voice Up site (case studies, videos) and be ready to connect it to their studies.

The evening's ritual: state your work in one sentence, report the week's progress, receive feedback.

Adawna reported county-level research for older returning citizens — and how little her county actually offers — plus a Base44 roadmap starting with ID, Social Security card, and birth certificate.

Raymond Williams reframed her language from “incarcerated” to “reentry.” Danica Nestor proposed a pivot: a peer platform where formerly incarcerated people share what worked (Yelp/Reddit-style) instead of one builder chasing scarce listings.

Dr.

Angee Gonzalez Rodriguez added that condensed-area resources hide — reach small nonprofits and churches.

Jeff Cheeks (23 years federal, 3 as associate warden) pointed her to California county reentry program research and named the starter trio: ID, Social Security card, birth certificate, Medicaid.

Danica added the broker framing: bridge people to what exists (the Medi-Cal bridge) rather than answering everything.

Art paired Adawna with Jeff for a 1:1 and will introduce her to a contact who does weekly in-prison reentry prep.

Aasha added a National Basketball Players Association career-counseling link (the retired-player union) and a Base44 link to her traditional website, then screen-shared the full site: psychology history (NBA mandated clinical mental health services in 2019), her educator-to-sports-psychology transition, and specializations (rehabilitation therapy, art therapy, career counseling, telehealth).

Danica's push: use Base44 to build what real client work looks like — intake forms, measurement scales, mock clients — so the site becomes a practice, not a brochure.

Art scheduled a weekend Base44 working session with her.

The student, back after missing meetings, showed three mock cases (ages 20, 67, 16) built from VoiceUp scenarios.

Her plan: six-month note histories per case, then generate court-report drafts — with confidentiality engineered in from the start.

Her one sentence: streamlining the documentation process for social workers.

Danica advised specificity: court documentation differs from case notes, so use templates and selections plus free text.

The student shared her full Base44 prompt; Art affirmed the iterative process — “it learns” as you build.

She will also schedule a 1:1 with Dr.

Nestor (weekdays, 12:00–1:00 PM ET).

Three weeks into her platform, Carah reported that Base44 demands specificity — vague prompts get unwanted extras — and named legal/compliance as her next frontier.

Her one sentence: connecting middle-to-late adolescent females to fertility, women's, and sexual health education.

Art: legal questions don't have to be figured out alone; bring them to the group.

Diana narrowed to a toolkit for youth crossing the Tijuana–San Diego border for school, inspired by an article on children who cross daily — and by her own youth crossing to see her mother.

Her Base44 app has a map (not yet displaying) and a journaling section.

Her one sentence: connecting students to resources on both sides of the border.

Danica challenged her to be the resource, not just link to resources: create what doesn't exist.

Art was visibly moved: “what you are doing right now is like a really courageous thing” — building for children on a controversial topic, children who are so often forgotten.

Sabrena demoed a week of refinements: calendar option (Diana's suggestion), a printable pre-IPP path for non-tech-savvy parents, AI help for answering pre-IPP questions, and multilingual translation throughout.

She's reading Dr.

Nestor's LCSW case studies and exploring the PCOS eight-week guide (personal connection).

Her one sentence: an educational tool for regional-center families preparing for IPP assessments.

She's considering a community tab so families can connect with each other.

Danica wants to see the app visually next time.

Art issued the challenge: on October 19, everyone screen-shares their app and presents for five minutes, then takes feedback.

October 12 offers optional early previews (Sabrena volunteered) plus a look at 1–3 example apps.

Dr.

Nestor confirmed she'll attend October 12, then leave for a dissertation-celebration getaway; she's available weekdays 12:00–1:00 PM ET for 1:1s.

Raymond closed with the evening's throughline: the one-sentence lifeline is the foundation of everything.

Raymond demoed a Muse-generated short film (his “step to self” theory as a one-minute movie) and discussed building his book scene by scene into a motion picture.

Art framed the paradigm shift: Muse works at the code level, not the chatbot level — “people that are turned on to this, they almost become like wizards.” Raymond shared community-policing connections that could become a VoiceUp community umbrella; Art offered to score the soundtrack for Raymond's film.

Art opened with check-ins as participants joined.

Diana Cisneros was candid: a rough week of deadlines, and she was just starting on Base44 that day — better next week, for sure.

Erik Armas reported his literature review finished.

Jeff Cheeks joined from the road, fresh from the Ohio State–Indiana game (Indiana driving, up perhaps 14–3).

Dr.

Angee Gonzalez Rodriguez said she might not be able to stay for the whole meeting but would do her best.

Carah Brown checked in well.

Sy'Viceeaa Hall had swapped her Saturday shift for the previous Sunday and joined on her lunch break.

Mariam Omotola Alabi's connection dropped at the start; Art promised to loop everyone in as they arrived.

Art began with the week's headline events.

This Tuesday, October 20, Georgia State University will feature Voice Up for a full hour as one of its featured applied practicum experience partners, and Art will speak with Georgia State students.

Then the follow-through on last week's film announcement: Voice Up can make movies now, and that brings a whole new level of reaching people with the message of connecting people to purpose.

This weekend, Art is putting out an open call for more: people with ideas connected to purpose, based on real-life experience, who want to go on the Voice Up journey of making their story into a short film or movie.

At least three releases a year, on a schedule — and on release day, each one will be in multiple languages on day zero, with no waiting for translation afterward.

Erik, who is fluent in Spanish, is part of how that happens for real.

Art shared what the last seven days of short teaser videos — posted, he said, while just dabbling — have already done: an average of about 270 people a day signing up and subscribing, about 100,000 views in seven days, and more than 300 hours watched.

The stories themselves will go far deeper than teasers.

Then he turned the open call inward and asked the room, one person at a time, whether they believe they have a powerful story.

Dr.

Angee: absolutely — a lot of people will relate.

Carah, whose story the group has kept under wraps: some people view it as powerful and inspiring, and she uses it with the students she tutors.

Mariam: I think I do.

I know you do, Art told her.

Over the next couple of weeks and months, he will be reaching out to many people individually with the same first question — and if the answer is yes, Voice Up will go all out.

He closed the updates with a resource: a conversation between Neil deGrasse Tyson and three other thinkers about AI, which he will send to the whole group to watch as a case study in how we need to be thinking about AI in our world.

Erik reported that the literature review for the research paper he is developing with Art — on how AI could help improve rural healthcare settings — is complete: he now has a full understanding of where the science stands and how to proceed with the paper and with further implementation.

Art put the paper in its real-world frame.

He is directly involved in this work in his day job, on a grant of about $207 million for his state — and that is just one state: every state in the country has received rural health transformation grants of this magnitude.

That is why the paper matters, and why it will be done properly.

When an article is published in a scientific journal, expert scientists all over the world read it with the most critical eye possible, intentionally trying to pick it apart; if they cannot, the idea gains credibility in the field.

Erik's work will be read the same way before it ever goes out: by Art, by Dr.

Angee, by Dr.

Nestor, and possibly by some of the 17 Doctor of Public Health students now collaborating with Voice Up.

For Erik's graduate school applications, this is no small thing: he will be able to say he is currently working in collaboration with Voice Up on a real publication.

Erik will talk further with Art about the review, and he is also on board to help make sure the Spanish in Voice Up's film translations is the real thing.

Dr.

Angee reported two main threads of work.

First, she got back on Base44 and added more to the Healing Circle website: there are pictures on it now, and actual mental-health specialist information, and it looks a lot better than it did before.

Second — and she nearly skipped past it — she is working on getting on the ballot.

Art stopped her there: that is not a small thing.

She described the ground work honestly: walking the neighborhoods for hours, going up and down stairs, talking to everybody who will listen about why she believes she is the best candidate for the job.

Her ward consists of four different communities and is large, so there is a lot of walking and talking.

The signature requirement is a minimum in the mid-400s, but a candidate needs two to three times that amount so they do not get kicked off when signatures are reviewed.

One complication: someone in the race is collecting electronic signatures, and an election-law lawyer told her those do not appear to be legal — a candidate with only electronic signatures will not get on the ballot at all.

Dr.

Angee and her team are collecting paper petitions with actual signatures.

Art reminded her that his earlier offer of help still stands, and she said she will take him up on it as soon as she is on the ballot.

Sy'Viceeaa reported a lot more progress than the week before.

She finally got Muse working and put it straight to work on her own life: come up with financial strategies to get rid of some debt.

She is also testing whether it can log into her Walmart and Amazon apps and order for her.

On the Voice Up side, she is in week eight of her guide and focused on her pilot: a wellness check-in she created — a general initiation of a consultation, asking questions when people come in — which she wants to perfect and then continue past the initiation, giving advice and doing research on whatever problems people bring, whether skin, physical, or mental.

Then Art asked the question he said he knew the answer to: who have you been collaborating with across Voice Up as you think about these things?

No one, she said.

It has all been her.

That opened the floor.

Raymond Williams encouraged her directly: these people and these tools are here to make it easier.

Reach out — to him, to Jeff — and someone working in the same space can help her think it through; even a rough thought thrown on the wall can be talked through and narrowed down together.

Her Base44 invitation had expired, he noted, so she should reach back out to Art to have it resent.

Art underlined the point for everyone: if you have a link that has expired, just let us know — he cannot know unless you say so.

Voice Up is here to help you.

You do not have to do it alone.

You do not have to do anything alone.

Quintashia reported she is putting everything together — all the research and documentation she has conducted over the previous weeks — to finish her final project in maternal and child health.

Art used her update to return to the word of the last few weeks: Lifeline.

Voice Up's own Lifeline, he reminded the group, is one line: we connect people to purpose, one conversation at a time.

Boom, that is it.

A Lifeline can change and evolve, but it is what points you in your direction — in this setting and beyond it, through careers and courses.

Asked to say hers again, Quintashia did: her project aims to reduce maternal and child morbidity and improve health equity — and her hesitation, she explained, was because she also wants mobile clinics in there somewhere, for marginalized communities.

Her project works to identify health risks and targeted preventive interventions and establish the intervention first.

Sy'Viceeaa offered feedback: everything Quintashia has going on is purposeful, and she supports the mobile clinics — she had the same idea for her own nonprofit — and the statistics underneath it matter.

Then Quintashia told the group where she was calling from: visiting her 93-year-old grandfather near Macon, Georgia, in Laurens County — a man who juices beetroot daily and, to her loving worry, is still driving.

As soon as she arrived, she saw something she had never seen in that area: a mobile clinic.

Is that a sign?

Art's counsel was simpler and just as warm: she visits at least once a week — soak up all of that wisdom.

Longevity, she agreed, is in the bloodline. (The group paused in the middle of this conversation to hear Diana's update, which follows in the next section, then returned to Quintashia.)

Diana's update came in two parts.

Midway through the meeting, she reported honestly: a rough week meant she had not spent much time on Base44, and she had just gotten started that morning.

Asked whether she is feeling more comfortable with the platform, she said yes — gradual, but yes.

What she did add this morning matters: on her app's journaling and coping tab, there is now a short coping video — a guided breathing exercise — that will walk a young person through breathing when they need it, help them make a quick relief plan, and let them pin the strategies that work for them.

She also restated the Lifeline she finished last week, the sentence her whole app is built on: to create a tool that can help children of immigrants whose families have faced deportation navigate their experience.

Art noted that sounds like a movie in the works.

Later, after Sabrena's update, the group returned to Diana, because her segment the week before had been cut short: what she is really looking for right now is ideas.

What else can she add?

Any suggestions anybody might have for her app.

Art answered with a commitment the whole group heard: Voice Up sends out minutes at the end of every meeting, and in these minutes he will include a link to Diana's app, with a quick form, so anyone who takes the time to look at the app and thinks of ideas can share them, and the group can collect all of it in one place.

Diana said that sounds great.

One practical note, stated plainly: Diana's published app link was not available when these minutes were prepared, so it could not be included yet.

The moment she shares the link, it will be added to this section of the minutes.

Until then, please bring your ideas for Diana's app to the Planning Conversations section at the bottom of this page — she will see every one.

Sabrena began with the truth of her week: she has been really sick — bronchitis, asthma treatments and breathing treatments just to be able to breathe and talk — and she is finally pulling through.

Even so, she worked on Base44 and collaborated with coworkers over Zoom, and her pre-IPP family app grew in three ways.

She added another section to her services, on vendors, that her manager suggested she include.

She took Dr.

Nestor's advice and added a community tab, so participants using the app can communicate with each other on a platform of their own.

And she did deep research: watching hours of recorded hearing-committee videos — some two hours long — in which parents, families, and clients name their complaints about the regional center, so she can see exactly where families hit barriers and improve the app there.

Art then returned to last week's standard: protecting what she is creating.

Sabrena had already raised it with her manager in their weekly collaboration, and her manager agrees: it would be smart to have some type of ownership or protection in place for her, especially if she takes Diana's suggestion of bringing the app to California's Department of Developmental Services once it is ready and established — protection that still lets her benefit from her work without making things harder for families.

Art made it a requirement, warmly and plainly: Sabrena, Art, Jeff, and Raymond will meet this week — in the evening, around her work hours — because she is developing something that is going to be valuable, and Voice Up has to get her in the right spot.

Then the Lifeline work: Raymond coached her to turn the explanation she gives of her app into one or two sentences — the explanation is the material; the Lifeline is what it narrows to — and Jeff drew out the clean version with two questions: it is for California residents, connecting people with disabilities through 21 regional centers (she thinks 21) to services, preparing them before they meet their coordinator.

That, Jeff told her, is how the conversation should go: ask me what the application is about.

Carah's week ran on three tracks.

She has been working on a lot of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor — the African British composer who took up the violin at about fourteen and composed alongside names the world still knows, like Mozart and Mahler; when he died young, much of his music was never played again after his death, and only now are people finding it and playing it again.

That rediscovery is what her research keeps elevating.

She has also been working in Base44 two ways this week, in a busy stretch — the start of the second eight weeks of her semester — and will put in a lot of Base44 time this weekend so it is together by Monday, alongside her classes and this internship.

And then, almost as an aside: she is running for student government.

She had signed up, they emailed her back, and now she is campaigning until November 8.

Art was not surprised at all: in a conversation he, Raymond, and Jeff had on Wednesday about inspiration versus desperation, he said, Carah is definitely in the inspiration camp.

Mariam joined from Nigeria, later in her day, through a connection that kept dropping — and Art apologized for calling on her late.

Her news was worth the wait.

She has been sharing the Voice Up book Miracle Has a Monster with more young readers: beyond her cousin, she sent it to her cousin's best friend — the girls are ten and eleven — through the friend's mother.

The young reader read it and explained what the book meant very well, and somehow tied it back to anxiety — even though the book does not originate from Nigeria and comes from another country and culture, it was no barrier to her understanding.

Mariam said she felt so proud and hopeful: this book will go places over here.

Art shared his screen to show the group one of the short teaser videos Voice Up has made from the book — two or three are out, with shorts gaining traction — and Mariam could see it clearly even where the sound did not carry.

He will credit the young reviewer by name on the video; her name is to be sent to him by chat or email so he gets it right.

That is how this grows, he said: it literally started with one student Mariam showed the book to — one conversation at a time.

Art closed the group session the way the session had run all afternoon: we are moving and grooving.

He reminded Sabrena that the meeting about her work will be arranged, told the group he would see some of them on Monday and the rest during the week, and wished everyone a great week.

He stayed on afterward for anyone with questions of any kind; individual follow-up conversations held after the group close are not part of these minutes.

Art opened with casual check-ins as participants joined.

Diana described weekends spent on the computer finishing hours and homework.

Art recommended the Whisper voice-transcription app (W-I-S-P-R) — a voice transcription tool that learns how you talk and types it out cleanly, working across phone, laptop, and tablet, keeping all prompts in one searchable place.

Diana said she would try it for schoolwork, where typing takes a toll on her hands.

Erik reported progress on graduate school applications and a statistics final exam the following week.

Art shared that he used to teach middle and high school math — not because it came naturally, but because he had to work hard at it, which made him good at explaining it in a simple way while keeping the big picture in view.

Marielle Munakwa was welcomed as a new student previewing the session: a junior at Emory University, pre-med, interested in narrative medicine and advocacy for International Medical Graduates (IMGs) seeking to practice in the U.S.

Sabrena joined while caring for her dog (stung by a bee); Sy'Viceeaa reported a slow but progressing week.

Art opened the updates with a direct recommendation of Muse, Meta's AI personal assistant app.

He has used it for two weeks and says it has saved him at least 12 hours every week — a personal assistant that follows through, follows up, and does what you ask of it.

He addressed AI skepticism head-on, then explained the business model: it costs users nothing because Muse works directly with the companies and agencies the user already spends money with, taking a percentage from them.

He urged everyone to explore it, using Erik as the example: imagine having an assistant that does whatever you have in mind.

With the roughly ten scattered technology tools he used to juggle weekly, he said, he no longer has to visit any of them — everything comes to one spot, prioritized, with check-ins on his schedule.

Then came the headline announcement.

Art said he had always imagined Voice Up one day releasing full-length feature films focused on a person's journey and life story — following three people through their lives, showing how their interests helped them connect to purpose — but assumed it was years away, waiting on resources.

That changed this week: Voice Up can now create, craft, and produce full-length feature films right now.

And because Voice Up already pays for the platforms involved, the net cost is effectively zero.

He proved the point live with Diana's story.

He asked Diana to summarize her lived experience for the newcomers: a child of immigrants, both parents deported, crossing borders to visit her mother, taking her little sister along, carrying the caretaker role — and building from it a youth resource and journaling app for young people navigating the same disorientation she knew.

Art then painted the picture: a full feature film just on Diana's story, in whatever language, with characters aligned with the community she grew up in.

Diana was stunned.

Sy'Viceeaa saw the reach immediately — Mexican viewers who lived through it, or fear it, would connect, and so would everyone beyond that background.

Art pressed the larger point: this capability is at every participant's fingertips, today, and Voice Up knows how to help them get there.

Omar, asked to describe his app for the newcomers, explained his healthcare-industry background and his recovery and performance app: helping people connect more deeply with their clinical providers and stay accountable, so nobody feels alone on a health journey.

Then he gave the session its thesis: people buy the story, not the product — they buy into the community and belonging a story creates.

Art closed the segment by saying he will reach out to participants individually this week: the story behind each person's app is just as powerful as the app itself.

Momentum notes: 17 Doctor of Public Health students are now collaborating with Voice Up; Georgia State University will feature Voice Up on October 20 during their APE Preceptor feature; and Art teased upcoming news from Overcome UK.

Marielle introduced herself as a junior at Emory University, pre-med, interested in International Medical Graduates — immigrants who trained as doctors abroad and are trying to find occupation in the U.S. — and in narrative medicine.

In her words, narrative medicine is "understanding the whole story behind the patient, being their cultural background, their religion or environment or social economic background, and understanding how all those factors play into either their symptoms or how they will become healthy and be cured from such symptoms." She noted how costly and confusing re-certification is: many immigrants do not know the resources available, and requirements vary by state — her father faced Pennsylvania, where a doctor must redo residency completely, while in Georgia, where the family now lives, that is not required.

Art connected her interests directly to the new film capability: new formats for getting the message out about resources immigrant physicians desperately need.

Marielle agreed the setting was welcoming, not intimidating.

Sy'Viceeaa reported she had downloaded Muse but, as someone used to doing everything herself — researching MA programs, universities, prerequisites like Gen Chem I and II, electives — she could not think of what to ask it to do: "I did everything." Art coached her to start simple rather than complicated: pick one or two everyday technology tasks, like email or the stream of text messages, and ask Muse how it can help, treating it like a digital assistant and seeing what it suggests.

He described his own before-and-after: roughly ten scattered tools a week, now consolidated into one place that prioritizes messages, surfaces calls, and offers lunchtime rundowns of the morning.

Sy'Viceeaa said she would try it with her overflowing MacBook tabs and daily email.

Sabrena reported this week's work on her app: an educational tool for families connecting with California regional centers, so they walk into the initial meeting with their service coordinator already familiar with the terms and what they can ask for.

She has been narrowing the pre-IPP section — keeping it tight and specific rather than as long as a regular IPP — and folding in coworker feedback aimed at keeping families from feeling overwhelmed.

Art then raised the ownership question directly and at length.

Sabrena created something of value to her organization; Voice Up will make sure her idea is protected — first, with proper documentation (an official memorandum of understanding or agreement) before anything is piloted anywhere.

He walked her through the logic: if the pilot succeeds, other organizations will be interested, and since she created it, she should be positioned to benefit.

Sabrena was clear about her terms: she wants the app completely free for families — "most of these families are using the regional center because they need some kind of help, so they wouldn't even be able to buy the app" — but if a company wants to use or promote it, the company could purchase usage.

Art affirmed the choice is entirely hers, noting the organizations he works with pay significant money for tools that serve their clients.

Diana — who is also a regional-center service coordinator — then widened the lens: anything used across regional centers goes through California's Department of Developmental Services (DDS), which is working toward having all regional centers on one shared platform.

Sabrena's app, which effectively has families pre-fill the IPP and streamlines the family-to-coordinator handoff, could be picked up by DDS for every regional center in the state.

Sabrena called that the big-picture goal, and said she will keep collaborating with fellow service coordinators, including Diana, as she recovers from being sick this week.

Quintashia described her project, "Moments That Matter": a maternal and child health initiative to improve health equity and prevent child morbidity and mortality — improving access to healthcare and allocating resources to keep child mortality rates from increasing.

An epidemiology student focused on Henry County, Georgia (the McDonough area, about 30 to 40 miles from Atlanta), she has been conducting research on what resources the area actually has available, pulling county-level statistics from CDC data and health rankings.

She flagged transportation as a key determinant: it plays a real role in whether people can obtain access to care.

Her goal is to develop a public-health intervention she can pitch to professors with CDC backgrounds to test whether it would be effective.

Art committed to sending her the Base44 platform link so the platform can help her work through the intervention design.

Erik's upcoming statistics final then opened one of the most candid conversations the group has had.

Erik admitted straight math terrifies him: "My heart's racing just thinking about it.

I hate stats, but I got to do it." Quintashia — who earned an A in biostatistics I and II and is now in statistical computing — pushed back on the assumption that she always knew it: statistics is not something she woke up knowing; it took precision and repetition, and one wrong character turns everything red.

Dr.

Angee confessed she cried through her statistics class.

Diana said simply, "I don't like them." Sy'Viceeaa shook her head and frowned.

Art, who used to teach middle and high school math precisely because he had to work hard to understand it, proposed a new idea: a Voice Up course to help people get comfortable with math, built from multiple perspectives — Quintashia who mastered it, Erik grinding through it because his degree requires it, Dr.

Angee and the others who feared it.

He will think on it for a week and report back.

He also said he will send the group a video from a leading neurologist on how the brain learns: the brain is always predicting what comes next, and real learning begins when something unexpected happens — which is exactly what the group had just experienced.

Omar reported his app concept has reached a conclusive point; this week's work was his website.

In his words, he wants it to look "sporty, clinical, and attract people who work in clinics or own clinics" — and generally anyone looking to improve their recovery or performance.

That is what he wants the website to attract.

Art reminded everyone about the Lifeline email sent just before the meeting: a short form asking each person to describe, in one or two sentences, what they want to do and why.

The group will have some fun with those responses next week.

Art closed the group session and wished everyone a good weekend.

Individual follow-up conversations held after the close are not part of these minutes.

Art Fuller opened the meeting, welcomed attendees, and noted it was his birthday weekend.

Alliant students were reminded to submit weekly logs and time tracking promptly — no reconstructing at the end of the semester.

Two activities for the week: (1) join and experiment with the Base44 platform, and (2) watch at least one standards video.

Art strongly encouraged exploring Muse, which consolidates work across many platforms, confirms actions before sending, and can operate his 20+ VoiceUp Base44 apps on instruction.

Raymond Williams is still researching how Muse connects to work systems; Art endorsed the research and said he is "tripling down" on it.

Sabrena is working on the Services tab educating families before assessments; she previously built a pre-IPP tab with plain-language intake questions (families can save responses as PDF).

Feedback: Danica asked how families are routed to the app; Jeff asked whether responses flow to the social worker; Diana suggested calendar reminders ahead of IPPs; Jeff suggested user accounts for appointments.

Homework: connect multilingual work to the Bill Gates five-year AI-languages initiative.

Aasha built a traditional website (career counseling, rehabilitation therapy) as a starting reference instead of Base44.

Art affirmed it as a valid point of reference; assigned mentors Jeff Cheeks and Raymond Williams.

Adawna laid out a resource-app concept (transitional housing, jobs, medical, driver's license/ID) for people upon release.

Jeff noted federal prisons have social workers and suggested QR-code posters linking to location-based resources; Aasha suggested workforce-office partnerships; Danica advised starting from existing reentry data and defining high-level categories first; Sabrena shared a Folsom prison social-worker contact.

Art's guidance: start small — get it right for one person, then grow.

Jose added an AI recap feature and built a "Caseload Copilot" agent that retrieves dated notes; he plans more agents.

Art asked permission to share Haven Clinician with the full group; Jose agreed; feedback session next week.

Diana, new to the group and "really lost" on Base44, was undecided between website and app.

Her one-sentence statement: "I would like to connect immigrant families to mental health services." Raymond advised narrowing to a specific population and identifying top five needs/barriers; Danica pressed on mechanism and payment; Sabrena suggested a confidentiality/anonymity feature and shared her ChatGPT-to-Base44 workflow; Jeff suggested Diana ask her own family about barriers directly.

Art called her lived experience "irreplaceable."

Carah met her UTA lab director for a public-health assignment; discussed undiagnosed adolescent conditions (endometriosis, PCOS); uploaded an existing application file into Base44 and iterated on its suggestions.

Art will connect her with Dr.

Sahibia, author of a book on living with PCOS.

Standing requirement announced: everyone opens next week stating their project in one or two clear sentences.

Guidance: start small, take all feedback, align work with passion. 17 Doctor of Public Health students joined VoiceUp this week as a resource.

Art Fuller opened by acknowledging the shifted start time and his off-camera participation while traveling in Indiana.

He framed the session as a follow-up to the previous week's fall kickoff: a round of one-at-a-time updates so each person could report where their project stands.

Shammah, who completed her MPH at Mercer University, summarized her project: how young adults use AI and social media when lonely, and whether AI helps with loneliness or replaces human connection.

Findings so far (listening conversations and a small pilot survey): nobody she spoke with described AI as fully replacing people; most used AI for school, work, studying, or business; a few turned to AI during emotional distress, most commonly because it is readily available and they don't feel like a burden the way they do repeating the same issue to a person — but AI lacks the sense of human connection.

Her research question is shifting from "does AI replace human connection" to what happens after people turn to AI when lonely or distressed — whether people use AI as a supplement, a bridge, or a substitute.

Next steps: refine the survey, expand the sample, and work with Overcome (the UK company) to develop a human connection bridge framework showing how AI can support people emotionally without replacing meaningful human connection.

Art praised the question as leading-edge and said he would send her a recent national study of youth and young-adult AI use.

Raymond asked what tools she uses to measure the pros and cons and what she does with the data; Shammah said she used a Google Form (with auto-generated pie charts, tables, and histograms) and has not yet decided on the next-phase analysis.

Raymond asked for a copy of the form itself — the questions, and what would make people more comfortable reaching out to a human (he cited the 988 crisis line).

Shammah said she uploaded the form to her Voice Up portal and could send it; Art confirmed they can share it with anyone interested, with her consent.

Jose reported he is making sure everything in the app works ahead of the next group review meeting, and is building a guided tour that showcases all features.

Current features: client tracking with daily notifications for client-related tasks and organization of clients (notes, meeting dates, important pre- and post-meeting context); note-taking guidance; supervisor views for keeping track of students; and self-care features for students who feel overwhelmed.

Art noted a deeper brainstorming session on the app is coming, covering additional uses and pilot areas.

Dr.

Angee, a Voice Up consultant who joined a few weeks earlier, described her Base44 exploration for her Chicago domestic-violence nonprofit: sign-up templates so survivors can find the healing circle nearest them and discreetly share their history for intake, plus a new website for the nonprofit built in under 15 minutes (versus several days for her previous two websites).

She plans to go live with the website and embed the registration template so survivors can register for the nearest healing circle — "and everything is very discreet." She described Base44 as one of the easiest AI platforms she has used.

Carah Ann explored Base44 via the link Art sent, testing how far she could go with building a platform for the internship discussed.

She found the process simple — change what you want, use templates, write specific detailed prompts — and said the AI "really goes above and beyond with it than what I ask them to do." Diana Cisneros, new to the group, reported working through the modules and case studies.

She chose the Naming Gap trilogy case study and resonates a lot with it; she takes her time with them and finds them challenging.

Art welcomed her, said she is at exactly the right spot, and promised to send her the Base44 platform link so she can see how the pieces connect.

Erik confirmed he speaks Spanish fluently (plus English and some French).

Art said he did not know that and will follow up, because "we are about to do some neat things in Spanish." Erik has finished all his writing pieces but has not been able to submit them, citing occasional website issues and his full-time work schedule.

Art said the next step is peer review and feedback involving himself, Dr.

Angee, and Dr.

Nestor (Dr.

Danica Nestor), with the goal of placing several items in peer-reviewed journals, timed alongside the scientific articles coming from his own dissertation (defense expected December 2026).

He said they will work through Erik's platform troubles.

Mariam reported completing her mental-health coaching with Overcome (UK) that week, alongside her behavioral-health internship with Voice Up.

Her reflection on Miracle Has a Monster (written by a former Voice Up student, identified by Art as Emmanuel Matheny), a book that teaches children about anxiety and how to curb it: anxiety is described subtly (appropriate to a child audience), with grounding and psychological techniques including the 5-4-3-2-1 technique and relaxation breathing.

From her clinical view, the book is "clinically safe" — a child won't be harmed by reading it.

She reviewed how it could be improved with additional techniques, and values that it tackles anxiety from a young age; she herself did not have that kind of information for her own social anxiety, stage fright, or nervousness.

She confirmed she already uses at least one of the book's grounding techniques with her Overcome UK clients, and that it coincided with Overcome's own materials.

Raymond publicly thanked Mariam for reviewing the Voice Up platform and app, giving feedback and flagging issues: "the great thing about Base44, we can make those changes or corrections pretty quickly." He noted the program is deliberately robust and comprehension-based — learners must pass certain percentages to earn badges/completions and unlock modules.

Mariam encouraged everyone else who received the review link to review the platform too.

Sabrena, an Alliant MSW student and working service coordinator, described the app she is building on Base44.

Problem: in IPP (individualized program plan) meetings, families often don't understand the language or know what they can ask for, so they stay silent.

Solution: a family-facing app with educational resources and a pre-IPP form, so service coordinators arrive knowing what the client may need.

She hit a Base44 workflow snag: editing in preview takes long, so she sometimes deletes and rebuilds the app from scratch with her copied prompts to save time.

She also reported running out of credits and having to wait hours unless she paid for a better plan.

Art clarified that anyone who signed up through the Voice Up link uses Voice Up's credits and should not run out — they will double-check her account.

In response, Art announced an open Base44 Q&A session (planned for that Wednesday or Thursday), where he and Raymond will share tips.

Raymond added he will create a tips document for everyone.

Art's immediate tip: when a change goes wrong, specify in the prompt exactly what must stay the same, because Base44 is a creative tool that otherwise changes everything with each pass.

Art set the end-of-semester goal: every participant will have created something valuable to other people, already heavily reviewed.

He said he, Raymond, Jeff Cheeks, and Dr.

Nestor know people who run organizations, and it is "not unfeasible" to ask a contact to pilot a student-built app — so the semester's fine-tuning and feedback rounds are preparation for real-world reach.

He praised Sabrena's idea as originating from a real problem she sees at work: "that's where great solutions start."

After the group close, Art stayed on for program-specific questions.

Sy'Viceeaa Hall asked about the reflection her academic advisor (her previous internship-course instructor) needs from her supervisor.

She had emailed everything to Art; he confirmed receipt — nothing is due until around October 20 (mid-course, before Thanksgiving), "so we have time." Sabrena Marie asked about an assignment due Sunday, September 20: review safety questions assigned by her professor (Sarah), then review her answers with a supervisor and submit with a supervisor's signature.

She had sent it to Dr.

Nestor on Tuesday, heard nothing back, and re-sent including the info@ email.

Art confirmed: in the Alliant structure Dr.

Nestor is the clinical supervisor and Art is the task supervisor — Sabrena should send things like this to him directly (which she had), and "it'll get done... no worries." Diana Cisneros had the same safety-questions assignment plus scheduling a 30-minute virtual meeting with Dr.

Strayer (rendered name).

Art said both are familiar processes and the fastest path is including info@ellingtonbooks.com, since he coordinates scheduling.

Diana also asked whether to keep working on case studies given she submitted hours for that work, and how the guide's activity options work.

Art confirmed her hours should balance Base44 building and case studies; case studies will become more personalized over time as they are built from participants' own reflections.

On activities: it is specialized per person — her first step is attending the Monday session with Dr.

Nestor (she had not attended), which puts her on the pathway for the rest.

Art confirmed the Base44 link is coming to Diana, tying the platform to the "do you have that fire" cause each student submitted at the start.

Raymond explained the brainstorming format: open-minded, forward-thinking input on what is in front of the group, building toward consensus and then building something from the conversation.

Art posed the best-case scenario question for Jose's app.

Jose: practicum students and people working toward the LCSW would use it to stay organized and gain knowledge (note-taking, general guidance) — client profiles from assessments, session notes, dates, and important pre- and post-meeting context.

On what makes the app successful beyond distribution: Jose said he needs someone to actually use it and validate it, since he lacks face-to-face client experience himself.

Only he, Dr.

Nestor, and Art have used it so far.

Diana (an LCSW-track student) suggested testing it once she begins seeing clients with Dr.

Nestor.

Raymond's core suggestion: the app should prepare the clinician for the next session — not just record and remind, but generate suggested questions, engagement prompts, and meeting formats based on the entered context.

Jose confirmed the app currently reminds but does not generate prep questions.

Raymond argued this AI-assisted prep — with the clinician always signing off — could save meaningful clinician time.

Jose agreed and added his own idea along the same lines: recommending therapies or treatment plans from one session to the next.

Jose asked how Base44 "agents" work.

Art said a dedicated FAQ/tutorial session is coming and pointed to the built-in agents tutorial: an agent can be a dedicated workforce for one job — e.g., one agent whose only task is the post-meeting workflow that prepares the clinician for the next session.

Raymond added that in discuss mode, Jose can simply ask how to build an AI agent for a given task and it will give step-by-step instructions.

Art committed to adding Jose to the Voice Up Calendly account so Calendly can be seamlessly integrated into the app — useful for session recording, since Base44 itself isn't built for long meetings while Calendly records meetings with notes.

Art closed the brainstorming with a checkpoint: Jose will experiment with Raymond's prep-agent suggestion and report progress next week.

Remaining confirmations: the Monday session (Alliant, with Dr.

Nestor); Art's Thursday meeting with Carah; Diana confirmed she can make the Monday 8:30 PM EDT session; Jose's remaining internship hours — Art had approved them that morning and Jose planned to submit the rest.

The call opened informally as attendees joined one by one with brief personal check-ins.

Art Fuller then led a structured round-robin of introductions, welcoming new student Shammah Emmanuel first.

Erik Armas (00:00): Checked in from France — 'Right now I'm in France, and I missed last week's meeting because I was in Spain, and the signal is not so good.' Shammah Emmanuel (03:19): 'My name is Shammah, and I'm a master's in public health student at Mercer University in Georgia... my interest spans mainly a lot across mental health... conversations on the mental health of African immigrant youth in the U.S.' Jeff Cheeks (07:42): 'My name is Jeff Cheeks.

I'm located in Indiana.

I've been with Voice Up over a year.

The fiscal officer.

My interests are finance and leadership and mental health.' Raymond Williams (08:06): 'Nashville, Chief Program Officer here...

I'm about purpose, about streamlining processes, and I'm about helping people define their best self.' Misbah Shafi (08:38–08:50): 'I am from Pakistan...

I am working on breast cancer women awareness... an awareness organization to provide education about how to prevent breast cancer...

I visited my mentor, Dr.

Asif Iqbal, to discuss a breast cancer awareness camp.' Emelia Q (09:49): 'I've been researching on supporting students before crisis and recognizing burnout before it becomes a crisis... a student wellness digital hub.' Sophia Philipp (10:52): 'I'm a rising senior at the University of Miami, where I'm also on the women's rowing team... doing a lot of research on human resources and team wellness.' Jose Rosiles (11:18): 'I'm an MSW student for Alliant University.

I'm working with Danica, the LCSW...

I'm designing an app for clinicians.

It's called Haven Clinician.' Erik Armas (11:41): 'Originally from California, living now on the East Coast...

I study trauma... a general emphasis in clinical psychology.

And I'm preparing to apply to doctoral programs this upcoming fall.'

During introductions, Art Fuller paused to highlight a sharp increase in inquiries and participation from Nigeria over the past three months — now represented by three students and contacts within the Voice Up community.

Art Fuller (04:32): 'In the last three months, I cannot tell you, we have many, many inquiries from Nigeria.

I mean, it's not even funny.

And in fact, one of our students here, Mariam, she's in Nigeria.' Art Fuller (05:03): 'Yes, and then we have another student... her name is Abiola, and she is also from Nigeria... this is a season of overflow for Voice Up, just in terms of our partnerships.'

Art Fuller introduced the Purpose Health Lab demo (https://explorepurpose.life/) with three stated goals: gather feedback, illustrate what each participant has the capacity to build, and show how far a clear idea can go with the right support.

A screen-share attempt with audio encountered technical difficulties, so Art shared the direct link in chat and walked the group through the platform step by step.

Features demonstrated: • Character selection — child-facing entry point • Global Neighborhood section • Age-tiered content: 'Little Explorers' (ages 2–4) • Downloadable coloring pages • Multilingual toggle (multiple languages visible in the bottom-left corner) Art Fuller (11:58): 'The reason that I'm showing this site to you, there are three reasons.

One, I want you to get your feedback on the site...

Two, I am presenting this to you because this is an example of what you literally have the capacity to do, whether you know it or not.' Raymond Williams (17:19): 'Art, I can walk you through how to get the audio to play from your share.' Art Fuller (22:11): 'So ultimately, there are going to be a lot of different interfaces... do you see how many different languages this is in?'

Once the group explored the platform, Art opened the floor for reactions.

Feedback centered on how children would access the tool, the value of embedding it into existing platforms like YouTube, and its potential as a curriculum resource for teachers and caregivers of young children.

Erik Armas (21:58): 'I like it.

I just have a question: Will people only be able to access it through that specific website, or is there another interface that I guess kids could access this through?' Jeff Cheeks (22:46): 'If you're going to reach kids, YouTube is probably one of the biggest platforms that are utilized by kids in the age of two to ten... if you're a content person and you want to make money, biggest thing you get into is YouTube children's content under that age.' Emelia Q (23:48): 'I think this is really good for just teaching kids about their individuality and loving themselves... purpose really does have meaning, and I think that's really important early on.' Sophia Philipp (24:56): 'I see a lot of kids because I coach a kids camp and I'm babysitting a lot, and I think there's just so many lessons... that a lot of parents either aren't teaching the kids or are just missing with their kids.' Shammah Emmanuel (25:33): 'I haven't really worked with kids... but turning this into a more interactive video, YouTube — I think that would help to reach the kids more because that's what they're into a lot these days.' Jeff Cheeks (27:23): 'I think it provides a curriculum for preschool... you are giving the babysitter or that type of person a curriculum that they can go through to teach kids certain aspects about their own life.'

Art Fuller turned the conversation into a teaching moment by asking the group to guess how long the Purpose Health Lab took to build.

Guesses ranged from a few weeks to one full year.

Shammah Emmanuel (32:57): 'Two months.' Raymond Williams (32:58): 'Three months.' Erik Armas (33:16): 'Three months.' Misbah Shafi (33:22): 'I think one year.' Emelia Q (33:33): 'I say three months as well.' Sophia Philipp (33:45): 'I think four months.' Jose Rosiles (33:58): 'Did you use Base 44?' Jose Rosiles (34:19): 'A few weeks at most, maybe.' Art Fuller (34:21): 'This site... it took me two times during my lunch break.

I was walking and I was getting exercise, and then I was just describing what I wanted in the site.

So it was less than two hours.' Erik Armas (36:53): 'Well, I'm gonna take a big leap here — you used AI a bit, at least a bit.' Jose Rosiles (36:59): 'Yes.' Erik Armas (37:02): 'I'm assuming you gave it really specific prompts, and it sort of engineered this website.

I like it.'

Building on the build-time reveal, Art challenged individual students to consider whether they could build something similarly powerful — which led into practical guidance from Raymond Williams and Jeff Cheeks on maximizing AI tools through specificity in prompting and treating AI as an amplifier rather than a replacement.

Art Fuller (39:54): 'Emelia, do you think you could create something just as powerful?' Emelia Q (40:06): 'I think so.

Yeah.

I mean, if you can do it in two lunch breaks, yeah.' Art Fuller (40:23): 'You all really do have the ability to create some phenomenal things based on ideas you might have on how you can help people... we can help you get that in front of organizations.' Sophia Philipp (41:44): 'I'm literally thinking as you're talking.

I'm trying to apply it to my own thing...

I'm definitely going to see how I can apply some of this stuff to what I'm doing.' Jose Rosiles (42:31): 'And you took only two lunch breaks, and just imagine how it's gonna get even better from there.' Raymond Williams (43:23): 'AI is only as strong as you are, right?

Like you control what it says and what it does and how it looks... the foundation of whatever you want to do, you have to birth that yourself.' Jeff Cheeks (46:38): 'It's just another tool to add to your toolbox... don't shy away from the tools that you have, just make sure you utilize them because it gives you an opportunity.'

Art Fuller closed the substantive portion of the meeting by recognizing student Mariam (based in Nigeria) for her role in connecting Voice Up with Overcome UK — a UK-based mental health nonprofit that provides free, live mental health counseling sessions and is described as one of the fastest-growing organizations of its kind in the UK.

Art Fuller (48:24): 'Mariam, who lives in Nigeria... what she has done is really phenomenal.

There's a nonprofit in the UK called Overcome UK... she applied, she got accepted into the organization as one of the trainers, and she also got us a conversation with the founder.'

Art invited Jose Rosiles to present the Haven Clinician app at next Saturday's session, then closed by reiterating that Voice Up leadership is available to support any student who wants to bring their project idea forward.

Art Fuller (42:38): 'Next Saturday, would you be willing to share your site and kind of just talk through with the group so they can see what you've been working on?' Jose Rosiles (43:08): 'Yeah, that'd be great.' Art Fuller (48:24): 'Any other comments, thoughts, or feedback?

All right.

Well, we'll see you all next week.

And between now and then, if you need help in any way, just reach out.

Let us know.

Have a good one.'

Art opened the call with informal greetings and checked in on team members individually.

Alabi Omotola reported feeling unwell: 'Yeah, not too good though.

I'm not feeling too well, but I'm okay.' She chose to stay on the call: 'I just want to be present in the meeting.

I don't have to like do a lot.' Art modeled a supportive, low-pressure leadership tone — checking in personally and later excusing Alabi from giving her own update so she could rest.

Sophia reported drafting her first mockup for a wellness initiative centered on an InBody-style body composition scanner.

She personally tested the technology at Birdsong, a newly launched wellness center in South Carolina, through a personal connection (a rowing teammate's parents — the mother a wellness coach, the father a doctor who runs the technology).

She described the tech: 'It literally takes five minutes… it detects… breaks it down by left arm, right arm, your trunk, and then your two legs, and it literally breaks down your visceral fat, like lean tissue.' She also had a follow-up community conversation with the doctor.

On the Voice Up guide: 'It's all been really great.

I like the online guide a lot.' Art asked that photos and documentation from the visit be included in her program logs, noting they 'can inspire other people too.'

Emelia (dialing in from an airport lounge en route to Arizona) reported advancing her research on student burnout recognition and early-intervention mental health accessibility.

She connected with CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services) at the University of Arizona and the Pima County Health Department.

CAPS 'really enjoyed' the conversation guide concept, while Pima County was 'interested, but not overly' and wanted a more polished production.

Her core thesis: low-friction check-ins (e.g., a simple text response) drive more student engagement than higher-effort options like scheduling an appointment: 'A student is not going to go through an email setting up an appointment just to say… I'm overwhelmed.' Art connected Emelia's and Sophia's work to a larger opportunity — Voice Up is in active conversations with SLAHEC about being 'fully adopted' for programming across all age groups, from birth through medical school students.

Temi presented findings from six qualitative interviews with Nigerian immigrant students on mental health stigma.

Key reframe: her initial hypothesis was that stigma is primarily shame-driven (people know help exists but are embarrassed to seek it).

Interviews revealed something more foundational — for many participants, professional mental health support was never an existing concept 'back home.' It was not something rejected, but something that was never introduced as an option.

Support instead came from parents, personal resilience, or the expectation not to 'be going through it in the first place.' A second major theme: reliance on community trust — church communities and friendship circles — as the primary outlet for discussing mental health, valued specifically because those people 'have the same experience as you.' Temi combined Weeks 6 and 7 of her guide and plans to record a Week 8 presentation to upload alongside a written paper.

Misbah (Pakistan) reported difficulty navigating the Voice Up website and has made no progress on her assigned work since the prior meeting.

She stated: 'I do not know how to.

What are the steps to start a new project or a new organization?… I face trouble on there.' Art noted this was a surprise and committed to connecting with Misbah individually later in the week to walk through site navigation and clarify next steps.

Jose provided an update on Haven Clinician, the case management app he is building on Base44.

Following a prior meeting with Danica (LCSW), he incorporated new feature ideas, including integrated meeting notes — a tool to log and retain notes from every clinician–client meeting within the system.

He described the project's organic growth: 'When I first started Haven Clinician, I didn't put too much thought into it.

It was just like a small idea, and then… it just snowballed into a bigger thing.' Art used Jose's experience as a model for the whole group, encouraging any team member with an idea to consider whether a digital platform or tool could strengthen it: 'If you think that some type of digital platform or tool would help their ideas become even bigger and better, please let us know.'

Despite being unwell, Alabi received significant recognition: she was selected in the top 10 out of over 1,000 applicants to Overcome UK, a mental health/wellness-focused organization.

Art highlighted the selectivity: 'If you're in the top 10 out of 1,000… that's like a fraction of a fraction of a percent.' Voice Up will formally collaborate with Overcome UK, following a conversation with one of its co-founders.

The collaboration will use Base44 to help Overcome UK address two organizational challenges.

Alabi will continue her involvement with both Overcome UK and Voice Up simultaneously.

Art reminded all participants to complete the reflection questions attached to meeting minutes — completion is tied to the $25–$50 gift card raffle.

Meeting was intentionally shorter than usual due to Art's schedule.

Art closed by reiterating interest in Sophia's wellness center visit and encouraging all team members to reach out for support during the week.