Privacy Policy

Last updated January 30, 2026

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The Privacy and Security Polices apply to your access and use of all products and services that are made available by Slow Talk, PBC through our websites and mobile applications that link to these Policies (the "Services"). These policies explain how we collect, use, disclose, keep safe, and otherwise process personal information in connection with our Services. The Privacy and Security Policies are not a contract and does not create any legal rights or obligations.

Who We Are

We are Slow Talk, PBC, a public benefit corporation that facilitates structured conversations for organizations seeking to understand and engage their stakeholders. We work with healthcare systems, professional associations, foundations, government agencies, and other organizations to conduct small-group audio discussions that surface insights, build understanding, and inform decision-making. Our Services combine human facilitation with AI-powered analysis to transform participant contributions into actionable deliverables for the organizations that engage us ("Partners").

In this Privacy Policy, we use "Users" to refer to all individuals who access or use our Services. In Slow Talk's methodology, session participants are referred to as "Stakeholders," and the organizations sponsoring engagements are referred to as "Partners."

What is Personal Information?

When we use the term "personal information" in this Privacy Policy, we mean information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, to you. It does not include aggregated or deidentified information that is maintained in a form that is not reasonably capable of being associated with or linked to you.

Our Collection of Personal Information

From the first moment you interact with us, we are collecting personal information about you. Sometimes we collect personal information automatically when you interact with our Services and sometimes, we collect the personal information directly from you. At times, we may collect personal information about you from other sources and third parties, even before our first direct interaction.

Personal Information You Provide

We collect the following personal information you provide in connection with our Services:

Registration Information including first and last name, affiliation, and e-mail address.
Demographics Information including age, gender, race or ethnicity, and employment status.
User-Generated Content including post-session survey data and in-app session feedback.
Other Identifiable Information including videos, photographs and voice recordings where authorized by you.

Personal Information Automatically Collected

As is true of most digital platforms, we collect certain personal information automatically when you visit our Services, including:

Log File Information, including your internet protocol (IP) address, operating system, browser type, browser id, date/time of visit, and pages visited.
Analytics and Usage Information, including the electronic path you take to our Services, through our Services and when exiting our Services, as well as your usage and activity on our Services, such as the links and object you view, click or otherwise interact with (also known as "Clickstream Data").
Location Information, including your general geographic location based on your IP address or more precise location when accessing our Services through a mobile device.
For information about our and our third-party partners' use of cookies and related technologies to collect information automatically, and any choices you may have in relation to its collection, please visit our Privacy Policy

Personal Information from Other Sources and Third Parties

We also obtain personal information from other sources, which we often combine with personal information we collect either automatically or directly from you.

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We receive the same categories of personal information as described above from the following sources and third parties:

Other Users: Our users may provide information to us about other individuals on the platform, including contact information and information relating to the use of our Services or potential conflicts that need to be resolved.

Other Services: When you interact with our Services through other social media networks or services, such as when someone follows us or shares our content on other social networks, we may receive some information about you that you permit the social network to share with third parties. The data we receive is dependent upon your privacy settings with the social network. You should always review and, if necessary, adjust your privacy settings on third-party websites and platforms before sharing information and/or linking or connecting them to our Services.
Service Providers: Our service providers that perform services solely on our behalf, such as analytics and certain marketing providers, collect personal information and often share some or all of this information with us. For example, we receive personal information you submit in response to requests for feedback to our feedback providers.
Publicly Available Sources: We may collect personal information about you that we do not otherwise have, such as contact information, from publicly available sources. We may combine this information with the information we collect from you directly. We use this information to contact you, to send advertising or promotional materials, or to personalize our Services and to better understand the demographics of the individuals with whom we interact.

Our Use of Personal Information

We use personal information we collect to:

Communicate with you, including via email, phone, text message, or push notification.
Conduct research and analytics.
Request that you provide us feedback about our Services.
Address inquiries or complaints made by or about an individual in connection with our Services.
Market our Services to you, including through email, phone, text message, social media.
Administer, improve, and personalize our Services, including by recognizing you and remembering your information when you return to our platforms.
Develop, operate, improve, maintain, protect, and provide the features and functionality of our Services, including machine learning models which we may develop based on session recordings or otherwise.
Create and maintain user accounts.
Identify and analyze how you use our Services, including through analysis of session recordings and transcripts.
Test, enhance, update, and monitor the Services, or diagnose or fix technology problems.
Help maintain and enhance the safety, security and integrity of our property, platform, Services, technology assets and business.
Defend, protect, or enforce our rights or applicable contracts and agreements.
Prevent, investigate, or provide notice of fraud or unlawful or criminal activity.
Comply with legal obligations.

If you choose to contact us, we may need additional information to fulfill your request or respond to your inquiry. We may provide additional privacy disclosures where the scope of the inquiry/request and/or personal information we require fall outside the scope of this Privacy Policy. In that case, the additional privacy disclosures will govern how we may process the information you provide at that time.

Reports and Deliverables

As part of our Services, we synthesize contributions from conversation sessions into reports and other deliverables for the organizations that engage us ("Partners"). These deliverables may include:

Aggregated themes and insights derived from multiple participant contributions
Quantitative analysis of participant feedback and survey responses
Voice-masked audio clips ("Voxes") that preserve emotional texture while protecting speaker identity
Recommendations based on analysis of session content

Individual participants are not identified by name in deliverables. Voice masking technology is applied to any audio clips shared with Partners. In that case, the additional privacy disclosures will govern how we may process the information you provide at that time.

Our Disclosure of Personal Information

We disclose personal information in the following ways:

To Other Users: We may share your information with other Slow Talk users. For example, we may share program creators' video and audio recordings or users' voice recordings with other discussion participants and discussion facilitators.
To Our Affiliates: We may share personal information with other companies owned or controlled by Slow Talk, PBC., and other companies under common ownership with Slow Talk, PBC. which include subsidiaries (any organization we own or control) or parent companies (any organization that owns or controls us) and any subsidiaries they own, particularly when we collaborate in providing Services.
To Marketing Partners: We coordinate and share personal information with our marketing partners in order to advertise and communicate with you about our Services we make available.
To Service Providers: We engage other third parties to perform certain functions on our behalf in connection with the uses of personal information described in the Our Use of Personal Information section above. Depending on the function the third party serves, the service provider may process personal information on our behalf or have access to personal information while performing functions on our behalf.

Third-Party AI Processing Services.

We use third-party artificial intelligence and machine learning services to process User Content, including voice recordings, transcripts, and session data. These services include:

Transcription providers that convert audio recordings to text
AI language model providers that assist with session analysis, theme identification, and report generation
Speech processing services that enable voice masking and audio manipulation

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When we share personal information with these providers, your data may be processed on servers located in the United States or other jurisdictions. We configure these services to prevent the use of your data for training their AI models. We require these providers to maintain appropriate security measures and to use your information only for the purposes of providing services to Slow Talk.

To Other Businesses as Needed to Provide Services: We may share personal information with third parties that you engage with through our Services or as needed to fulfill a request or transaction including, for example, payment processing services, financing providers.
Business Transaction or Reorganization: We may take part in or be involved with a corporate business transaction, such as a merger, acquisition, joint venture, or financing or sale of company assets. We may disclose personal information to a third-party during negotiation of, in connection with or as an asset in such a corporate business transaction. Personal information may also be disclosed in the event of insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership.
Legal Obligations and Rights: We may disclose personal information to third parties, such as legal advisors and law enforcement:
in connection with the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims;
to comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process;
to protect the rights and property of us, our agents, customers, and others, including to enforce our agreements, policies, and terms of use;
to detect, suppress, or prevent fraud;
to reduce credit risk and collect debts owed to us;
to protect the health and safety of us, our customers, or any person; or
as otherwise required by applicable law.
Consent: We may disclose personal information about you to certain other third parties with your consent.

Data Retention

We retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

Voice Recordings. We retain voice recordings for three (3) years from your last interaction with our Services. This retention period aligns with requirements under biometric data protection laws. For additional information, see our Biometric Data Disclosure section below.

Other Session Data. We retain transcripts, survey responses, session feedback, and other non-audio session data for five (5) years from your last interaction with our Services.

Account Information. We retain account information for the duration of your account plus three (3) years following account closure or your last interaction with our Services.

Aggregated and De-Identified Data. We may retain aggregated or de-identified data that can no longer reasonably identify you indefinitely for research, analytics, and service improvement purposes.

Following the applicable retention period, we will delete or de-identify your personal information within a reasonable timeframe, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

You may request deletion of your personal information at any time by contacting us at hello@slowtalk.us. Please note that we may be required or permitted to retain certain information for legal, regulatory, or legitimate business purposes.

Your California Privacy Rights

This section applies to California residents and supplements the information in our Privacy Policy. It describes how we collect, use, and disclose personal information of California residents, and explains rights available under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (collectively, "CCPA").

Categories of Personal Information We Collect

Category	Examples	Sources	Purposes	Disclosed To
Identifiers	Name, email address, IP address, account ID	Directly from you; automatically collected; organizational partners	Provide Services; communicate with you; research and analytics	Service providers; other users; marketing partners
Audio and Voice Recordings	Session recordings, voice clips	Directly from you during sessions	Provide Services; develop machine learning models; research and analytics	Service providers; other users; organizational partners
Professional or Employment Information	Employer, job title, professional affiliation	Directly from you; organizational partners	Provide Services; research and analytics	Service providers; organizational partners
Internet or Network Activity	Browsing history, clickstream data, interactions with Services	Automatically collected	Improve Services; analytics; security	Service providers
Geolocation Data	General location derived from IP address	Automatically collected	Provide Services; analytics	Service providers
Inferences	Preferences, characteristics, trends derived from other data	Derived from information above	Research and analytics; improve Services	Service providers; organizational partners
Demographic Information	Age, gender, race or ethnicity, employment status	Directly from you	Research and analytics	Service providers; organizational partners

Sale and Sharing of Personal Information

Slow Talk does not sell your personal information as "sell" is defined under the CCPA. Slow Talk does not share your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising purposes as "share" is defined under the CCPA.

Sensitive Personal Information

Under the CCPA, certain categories of personal information are considered "sensitive personal information" and receive additional protections. Voice recordings collected through our Services may qualify as sensitive personal information to the extent they constitute biometric information capable of identifying you.

We collect and use voice recordings solely for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including providing our Services, research and analytics, and developing machine learning models. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes other than those permitted under the CCPA.

For additional information about our collection and use of biometric data, including disclosures required under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), please see our Biometric Data Disclosure section below.

Your CCPA Rights

As a California resident, you have the following rights regarding your personal information:

Right to Know. You have the right to request that we disclose to you the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, the categories of sources from which we collected the information, our purposes for collecting the information, and the categories of third parties with whom we have shared the information.

Right to Delete. You have the right to request that we delete the personal information we have collected from you, subject to certain exceptions permitted by law.

Right to Correct. You have the right to request that we correct inaccurate personal information we maintain about you.

Right to Opt-Out of Sale or Sharing. You have the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information. Because Slow Talk does not sell or share personal information as defined under the CCPA, this right does not apply to our processing activities.

Right to Limit Use of Sensitive Personal Information. You have the right to limit the use and disclosure of your sensitive personal information to purposes necessary to provide the Services. Because we use sensitive personal information only for purposes permitted under the CCPA, this right does not require additional limitations on our processing.

Right to Non-Discrimination. You have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your CCPA rights. We will not deny you services, charge different prices, provide a different quality of service, or retaliate against you for exercising your rights.

How to Exercise Your Rights

To submit a request to know, delete, or correct your personal information, please contact us at hello@slowtalk.us.

Verification. To protect your privacy and security, we must verify your identity before responding to your request. To verify your identity, you must submit your request from the email address associated with your Slow Talk account. If we cannot verify your identity, we may deny your request.

Authorized Agents. You may designate an authorized agent to submit a request on your behalf. To do so, you must provide the authorized agent with signed, written permission to act on your behalf, and we may require you to verify your identity directly with us and confirm that you authorized the agent to submit the request.

Response Timing

We will respond to verifiable requests within 45 days of receipt. If we require additional time, we will inform you of the reason and the extension period in writing. We may take up to an additional 45 days to respond, for a maximum total of 90 days from the date we receive your request.

Notice of Financial Incentive

Slow Talk may offer compensation to certain individuals who participate in our structured conversation sessions. Participation requires providing personal information, including voice recordings and session feedback, as described in this Privacy Policy and in the participation agreement provided at the time of enrollment.

How to Opt-In. You may opt in to this program by signing the participation agreement provided by Slow Talk or the organizational partner facilitating the session.

How to Withdraw. You may withdraw from the program at any time by contacting us at hello@slowtalk.us. Please note that withdrawal from the program will result in the termination of your participation in the compensated session.

Valuation. We offer compensation because we value participants' time and contributions to our research and services. In good faith, we estimate the value of the personal information collected is reasonably related to the overall value provided to our business by participants' engagement, insights, and contributions to our Services.

Contact Us

If you have questions about your California privacy rights or this section of our Privacy Policy, please contact us at hello@slowtalk.us.

Your European Privacy Rights (GDPR)

This section applies to individuals located in the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom, or Switzerland and supplements the information in our Privacy Policy. It describes how we collect, use, and disclose your personal data and explains your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and equivalent UK and Swiss data protection laws.

Data Controller

Slow Talk, PBC is the data controller responsible for your personal data. You can contact us at hello@slowtalk.us.

Legal Bases for Processing

We process your personal data only when we have a valid legal basis to do so. Depending on the purpose, we rely on:

Consent. We process voice recordings and other biometric data based on your explicit consent, obtained at the time of registration. You may withdraw consent at any time by contacting us at hello@slowtalk.us, though withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing conducted prior to withdrawal.

Contract Performance. We process registration information, session data, and account information as necessary to provide you with our Services and fulfill our contractual obligations to you and the organization sponsoring your participation.

Legitimate Interests. We process certain data for our legitimate business interests, including improving our Services, conducting research and analytics, developing machine learning models, and ensuring the security of our platform. We balance these interests against your rights and do not process data where your interests override ours.

Legal Obligations. We may process personal data as necessary to comply with applicable laws, regulations, or legal proceedings.

Your Rights Under GDPR

As an individual in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, you have the following rights regarding your personal data:

Right of Access. You have the right to request confirmation of whether we process your personal data and, if so, to request a copy of that data along with information about how we use it.

Right to Rectification. You have the right to request that we correct inaccurate personal data or complete incomplete personal data.

Right to Erasure. You have the right to request that we delete your personal data in certain circumstances, such as when the data is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected or when you withdraw consent.

Right to Restrict Processing. You have the right to request that we restrict processing of your personal data in certain circumstances, such as when you contest the accuracy of the data or object to our processing.

Right to Data Portability. You have the right to receive your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format and to transmit that data to another controller, where technically feasible.

Right to Object. You have the right to object to processing of your personal data based on our legitimate interests. We will cease processing unless we demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds that override your interests, rights, and freedoms.

Rights Related to Automated Decision-Making. You have the right not to be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing that produce legal or similarly significant effects. Our AI-assisted analysis is used to generate insights and reports but does not make automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects on individual participants.

How to Exercise Your Rights

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at hello@slowtalk.us. We will respond to your request within one month. If your request is complex or we receive numerous requests, we may extend this period by an additional two months, in which case we will notify you of the extension and the reasons for it.

We may request information necessary to verify your identity before responding to your request.

International Data Transfers

Slow Talk is based in the United States, and your personal data will be transferred to and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those in your country.

We implement appropriate safeguards for international data transfers as required by applicable law, which may include Standard Contractual Clauses, contractual protections with service providers, and other mechanisms recognized under GDPR. For information about the specific safeguards applicable to your data, please contact us at hello@slowtalk.us.

Data Retention

We retain your personal data as described in our Data Retention section above. Voice recordings are retained for three (3) years; other session data for five (5) years; account information for the duration of your account plus three (3) years following account closure or your last interaction. Following these periods, we delete or anonymize your data unless retention is required by law.

Complaints

If you believe we have violated your data protection rights, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority. However, we encourage you to contact us first at hello@slowtalk.us so we can address your concerns directly.

Biometric Data Disclosure

This section provides disclosures required under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) and similar state laws regarding our collection and use of biometric data.

What Biometric Data We Collect

Slow Talk collects voice recordings during structured conversation sessions facilitated through our Services. Voice recordings may constitute biometric identifiers or biometric information under applicable state laws, including voiceprints and other unique biological characteristics that can be used to identify an individual.

Purpose of Collection

We collect and use voice recordings for the following purposes:

Providing our structured conversation services
Transcribing session content for analysis and reporting
Developing AI-powered insights and deliverables for organizational partners
Creating voice-masked audio clips ("Voxes") that preserve emotional texture while obscuring speaker identity for use in reports and presentations
Conducting research and analytics to improve our Services
Developing and training machine learning models

Retention and Destruction

We retain voice recordings for a period of three (3) years from your last interaction with our Services. Following this retention period, we will permanently destroy all biometric data in our possession within a reasonable timeframe, unless a valid legal reason requires longer retention. Destruction will be accomplished through secure deletion methods appropriate to the storage medium.

Third-Party Disclosure

We may disclose voice recordings to the following categories of third-party service providers who assist us in delivering our Services:

Transcription services
AI analysis providers
Cloud hosting and storage providers

We require these service providers to maintain the confidentiality of your biometric data and to use it only for the purposes of providing services to Slow Talk.

We do not sell, lease, or trade biometric data for profit.

Voice-Masked Audio Clips (Voxes)

As part of our Services, we create voice-masked audio clips derived from session recordings. These clips are processed to obscure speaker identity while preserving emotional texture, and may be shared with organizational partners and included in deliverables such as reports and presentations. Voice masking is designed to prevent identification of individual speakers.

Your Rights

If you have questions about our biometric data practices or wish to request information about the biometric data we have collected about you, please contact us at hello@slowtalk.us.

Consent

By participating in Slow Talk sessions, you acknowledge that you have received this written notice regarding our collection, use, and storage of biometric data. Your explicit consent to our collection and use of biometric data is obtained through a separate consent mechanism at the time of registration, as required by applicable law.

Children's Personal Information

Our Services are not directed to, and we do not intend to, or knowingly, collect or solicit personal information from individuals under the age of 18. If you are under the age of 18, please do not use our Services or otherwise provide us with any personal information either directly or by other means. If an individual under the age of 18 has provided personal information to us, we encourage that individual's parent or guardian to contact us to request that we remove the personal information from our systems. If we learn that any personal information we collect has been provided by an individual under the age of 18, we will promptly delete that personal information.

Third-Party Websites

Our Services may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Except where we post, link to or expressly adopt or refer to this Privacy Policy, this Privacy Policy does not apply to, and we are not responsible for, any personal information practices of third-party websites and online services or the practices of other third parties. To learn about the personal information practices of third parties, please visit their respective privacy policies.

Updates to This Privacy Policy

We will update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make changes to this Privacy Policy, we will change the "Last Updated" date at the beginning of this Privacy Policy. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by email to your registered email address, by prominent posting on our Services, or through other appropriate communication channels. All changes shall be effective from the date of publication unless otherwise provided.

Our Security Statement

Slow Talk's most important concern is the protection and reliability of participant data. Access to systems is restricted to specific individuals and are bound by confidentiality obligations. Access is monitored and audited for compliance. We are committed to the highest standards and leading industry practices for protecting your data.

Data Breach Notification

In the event of a security breach that results in unauthorized access to, or acquisition of, personal information that compromises the security, confidentiality, or integrity of your data, Slow Talk will notify affected individuals in accordance with applicable law. Where legally required, we will provide notification within the timeframes mandated by state or federal law. Notification may be provided via email to the address associated with your account, through the Services, or by other means as required by law.

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Contact Us

If you have any questions or requests in connection with this Privacy Policy or other privacy-related matters, please send an email to hello@slowtalk.us.

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