EqualReach is built on a simple constraint — the platform only makes money when refugee talent gets paid. In this episode, founder and CEO Giselle Gonzales and product lead Olena Voloshyna trace how a decade of research and one Bubble Immerse cohort became a functioning B2B marketplace, and what that model means when building a business where your incentives are genuinely aligned with the people you serve.
About Giselle Gonzales
Giselle Gonzales is the founder and CEO of EqualReach, a freelancing marketplace connecting businesses with vetted teams of refugee and displaced talent. She spent years researching digital work among displaced communities before running a quiet pilot inside a major tech firm that sent commercial work to refugee camps in East Africa. When demand grew and there was nowhere to refer people, she built the bridge herself. This episode gets into how she turned that into a commercial model.
About Olena Voloshyna
Olena Voloshyna is the Product Lead at EqualReach. After being displaced by the war in Ukraine and relocating to the UK, she rebuilt her career in tech and now builds products that help displaced professionals be seen beyond rigid filters and access dignified work. She's also a mother of three, motorcycle enthusiast, and cat lover.
About EqualReach
EqualReach is a B2B freelancing marketplace that matches companies with pre-vetted teams of refugee and displaced talent for project-based digital work, spanning web development, digital marketing, graphic design, and more.
The platform handles contracting, international payment terms, compliance, and impact reporting so that clients can focus on the deliverable rather than the process. It has been featured and validated by the International Labour Organization, the World Bank, and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
What you'll learn in this episode
This conversation is for anyone who has wondered whether a business can genuinely do good without treating impact as a side project. It covers the decisions behind EqualReach from the ground up, like how to build a marketplace when the mission and the revenue have to move together, and what that forces you to get right early.
Giselle talks through how she removed compliance as a barrier for clients without making it their problem to think about, while Olena shares what it was like to arrive in the UK as a refugee and end up leading the product. You'll also hear how Giselle thinks about building a team — specifically why she hires for character over credentials and uses trust as the primary currency for unlocking what people are actually capable of. And both of them make the case that the founders who build something lasting tend to start with a problem they've lived with, not just technology they want to use.
Episode timestamps
[00:01:41] Giselle introduces EqualReach and the ten-year journey that led to founding it
[00:04:27] Olena's background as a UX/UI designer and her path to becoming product lead at EqualReach
[00:05:43] How Bubble's Immerse Program was the catalyst that brought Giselle and Olena together
[00:11:56] What "dignified work" actually means — and why exploitation is its direct opposite
[00:14:02] The aha moment that convinced Giselle to build EqualReach rather than just advocate for it
[00:17:54] Olena on experiencing the search for dignified work as a refugee herself
[00:21:06] How EqualReach works: delivery partners, vetting, the comparison platform, and smart payment terms
[00:27:11] Building legal protections into the platform so teams are never left without contracts or payment
[00:29:33] Compliance and perceived risk: why businesses hesitate and how EqualReach removes the barrier entirely
[00:34:10] EqualReach's 2026 scaling plans and why AI integration is now a priority
[00:35:16] The impact reporting feature: tracking KPIs, jobs created, and team stories in every project report
[00:38:27] The One Young World traction moment: a main stage ask that got 70–80% of the room to raise their hands
[00:42:40] The playbook for building a mission-driven business where doing good and growing commercially are the same move
[00:47:28] How to hire for a team that has never built anything like this before: character over credentials
[00:49:34] Rapid-fire: childhood ambitions, what they need to work, Bubble as creative vs. technical tool, hot takes on AI, and the most memorable feedback they've ever received
Key insights from this episode
Start with a problem you have lived with, not the tech you want to use
Giselle's frustration with the way businesses think about outsourcing came from years of watching what happened when displaced talent got access to real commercial work — and what happened when they didn't. By the time she built EqualReach, she already knew exactly what the market was missing, and that context is what made the product decisions obvious. Building from genuine familiarity with a problem is a different starting point than building from a tool or trend, and the difference tends to show up in how clearly a founder can explain what they're actually solving.
Build the compliance answer into the product so clients never have to ask
EqualReach found that compliance concerns came up again and again, even among businesses that already work with freelancers regularly. Giselle's response was to build the answer into the platform rather than address it in messaging. Legal checks, sanction screening, VAT calculation and smart contracts all run in the background so that neither side has to think about them. For founders working in unfamiliar or regulated territory, the same logic applies: If users never have to think about the hard part, they rarely think to push back on it.
Hire for character when nobody has done the job before
Olena had never been a product lead when EqualReach brought her on. Giselle looks for people whose values and drive are already there and gives them real ownership from the start, rather than waiting for someone who has already done the exact role elsewhere. Both guests credit this as the reason a small team can take on a complex, multi-sided platform and keep building it forward without losing momentum.
Resources
- EqualReach — A freelancing marketplace connecting businesses with vetted teams of refugee and displaced talent
- EqualReach Research Toolkit — Research on building the business and social impact case for sending work to displaced communities
- One Young World — Annual summit of leaders from over 190 countries where Giselle spoke and introduced a 10% pledge
- Robert Bosch Stiftung — Funded the development of EqualReach's impact reporting feature
- Bubble Immerse — A free 8–10 week program equipping underrepresented founders to build their MVP on Bubble
Listen and subscribe
The New Build is a bi-weekly podcast exploring how solo founders and small teams are building products that reach millions of users. New episodes drop every other week.
Have a story to share? We're always looking for founders building something real. Submit your story.
Build for as long as you want on the Free plan. Only upgrade when you're ready to launch.
Join Bubble
