Published - March 19, 2026

We've been using ChatGPT for over a year now. We built custom GPTs, invested hours training them, created workflows that made our small team more effective. When you're building a company with a big vision, that kind of leverage matters. The tool became our nth employee and was creating effortless ease throughout our days.

And then I read this article by my friend Rutger Bregman in The Guardian.

Rutger is a historian who has studied the major consumer boycotts of history. His piece made something clear that I couldn't ignore: our subscription fees were funding a company actively embedding itself in the Trump administration's infrastructure: funding MAGA Super PACs, lobbying against AI regulation, providing tools to ICE.

At the same time, Anthropic—the company behind Claude—refused the Pentagon's demand for unrestricted access to their AI for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. It cost them $200 million (never mind the administration's retaliatory actions that followed), and my heart swelled seeing a company live its values with such commitment.

By the end of the article my next move was clear. I quit my account and brought it to the team at our Monday meeting. Looking back, I led with the wrong frame. I came in saying we need to switch to Claude instead of leading with the story of why. So there was initial hesitation. There's the sunk cost of all those custom GPTs we'd built, and not everyone loves change as much as my neurospicy brain does. But once I walked the team through what I'd read, once they understood what their subscription fees were actually funding, the decision was unanimous. Convenience didn't matter as much as living our values.

Rutger compared this moment to Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on that bus. A small act of conviction that became a movement. He explicitly invites readers to do the same: try an alternative, and tell at least one person why. We’ve moved over to Claude, and while there has been a learning curve, it's validated the decision we made.

In times of complexity, people are looking for an invitation to make an impact. And when you make that choice easy, people act. Over 1.2 million people have joined the boycott not because they were forced to, but because a clear purpose gave them permission and direction. That's the power of leading with purpose. 

Warmly,

Claire, Chief Purpose Officer