How AI & "SimCity" Tech Are Solving Real World Problems

You don’t need a massive organization to make a massive difference. In this episode of Do Local Good, hosts Sean Singh and Brett Eigner sit down with Katelyn Petersen (former Chief Experience Officer) and Krista Davis (Director of People Operations) from RunWithIt Synthetics (RWI).

RWI is an Edmonton-based tech company that creates accurate, geospatial digital twins of cities—think SimCity, but for real-life decision-making. Instead of traditional volunteering, RWI partnered with United Way to apply their unique skills to the All In for Youth program.

By hosting an internal "hackathon," the RWI team used synthetic modeling to visualize the long-term, generational benefits of increasing high school graduation rates in Edmonton. This episode explores how skills-based volunteering can revolutionize corporate social responsibility (CSR), boost employee engagement through initiatives like "Give Back Bingo," and prove that small businesses can be powerful drivers of community resilience.

In this episode, we cover:

• How RunWithIt Synthetics uses digital modeling to predict future outcomes.
• The story behind their "All In for Youth" data hackathon.
• How to build a culture of giving in a small, remote-friendly team.
• Advice for small businesses looking to start their own CSR campaigns.

What is Do Local Good?

Do Local Good is a podcast created by United Way of the Alberta Capital Region and the team of volunteers on the GenNEXT Cabinet. We feature stories and people from the Edmonton region to inform, inspire, and invite others to join us in building resilient and thriving communities. Listen in to learn about some of the local good already happening, and how you can be a part of the force for good!

You don't need a massive organization to make a massive difference. Today we'll explore how United Way helps smaller businesses create lasting change. Welcome to Do Local Good, a podcast created by United Way of the Capital Region and the team of volunteers at GenNEXT Cabinet. We feature stories of people from the Edmonton region to inform, inspire, and invite you to join us in building resilient and thriving communities.

I'm Sean Singh, and I'm Brett Eigner. We've been talking to Katelyn Petersen and Krista Davis from RunWithIt Synthetics are all about the innovative ways United Way helped them make a difference. Let's jump back in. Krista, Katelyn, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. For someone who's never heard of RunWithIt Synthetics, can you tell us a little bit about RWI and your role there?

Yeah, absolutely. Probably the quickest and easiest way to convey what we do is an analogy to the game SimCity. So if you've ever played SimCity or know anyone that does, it's kind of like that, but for real. So we create geospatial, accurate, digital representations of cities and regions. And then we put in population and built environment and infrastructure and all kinds of different layers and play out scenarios.

So we allow decision makers to understand what their decisions can do in the future before they make them. So the idea is to provide people with information, with agency, to make the best choices that they can going forward. Yeah, that's really cool. So my role at the company is Chief Experience Officer.

And what that means really is to bring the client perspective into strategy and business decisions, which is really important because our clients are crucial to what we do. And they come to us with really important questions for the future of their organization, for the future of their communities. And we put a lot of value in that.

We respect that. And we really want it to be represented in how we build and grow our company. So that's my role. And I'm the Director of People Operations at RunWithIt. And so my role is similar to like a traditional human resources role. But adding in the operations piece.

So do our projects have the resources that they need to be successful? And then do our people have the skills and support that they need to be successful in their roles as well? Great. Thank you very much. Again, really, really interesting sounding company. I'm excited to dive into the conversation.

So I guess for those who may not know and you are a smaller organization, so I guess in saying that, what inspired you to start giving back and why did you choose the United Way as a partner? Well, we've always been an impact organization, so that's kind of baked into the DNA of our company.

We are impact focused, people focused. Our board is very impact and people focused. So that's always something that's kind of at the forefront of how we operate. And our getting together with United Way was a little bit by chance in that we were planning a team week and we wanted to spend one of our days doing something as a team that would allow us to give back to the community.

And I happened to meet a couple of United Way staff at a local networking event. And we just started talking and realizing that, you know, we're very different organizations in very different sectors, but we look at things in a very similar way. So then Krista and I got together with a couple of the United Way staff that we met and just brainstormed over lunch, what could we do together?

And so the United Way has a whole selection of wonderful volunteer opportunities. But what they actually suggested to us was, why don't you spend some time doing what you do in a way that can give back to the community? So we spent some time working together with United Way to really kind of flesh out what we could do with our tools and our skill sets in order to make some real difference.

And we settled on a program called All In for Youth, which provides wraparound services. Yeah, let me tell you about your programs. It provides wraparound supports for youth with a goal of increasing graduation rates. So what we did was we ended up making a video asset for United Way about this program that shows not only the benefits that it has currently, but pushing those benefits forward into the future.

Kind of a "what if" scenario. So if we were able to increase graduation rates across the city by a certain amount, what would those long term benefits look like? And we had great fun. It was a good time. We enjoyed our hackathon. We enjoyed our new friends at the United Way. But then we realized maybe we're onto something here.

Both in terms of looking forward in order to inspire philanthropy and giving as well as, you know, our two organizations worked so well together. So we've gone on to do subsequent hackathons. Krista and I are both volunteer cabinet members now. A number of our other colleagues have volunteered with United Way. I'm missing things.

There's so much that we do now together. It's just really a lovely relationship where we always think about, well, how could United Way be involved? And they're thinking, well how could RunWithIt be involved? And we just kind of bring each other along for opportunities and it's great. And we actually presented together at the United Way National Conference last June, which was a fantastic opportunity for us.

So what you're saying is you fell in love with the United Way and decided to "run with it." Yeah, that's exactly what happened. I think the team over at United Way were very familiar with All In for Youth, but it would be useful to kind of give a short description for the audience and the guests to understand what All In for Youth was and what it accomplished.

And then also, additionally, what kind of impact did having that sort of campaign within your organization have in your organization? I can speak to the impact it had within our organization from an employee engagement perspective. So we intentionally hosted this during our team week. It's a week that we bring our whole team from across Canada into Edmonton.

And we plan a week of events, and we wanted to have, as Katelyn said, a piece of that week be centred around giving back to our community. That's where the hackathon came into play, and it was the best day. Like, we still talk about it all the time. It was basically our entire team, regardless of your position, whether you were a technical person or not.

Participating in modelling this future scenario where these students are supported and it was just wonderful to see the team working together towards a common goal to get a feel for what other people do in their roles. And then going forward from that, we've just made a point to make United Way part of every team week.

So we either do a coat sorting or yeah, we did the hackathon. We did a second hackathon as well where we produced some one-pagers for various United Way programs. And it's just something that we've really ingrained into our team culture is giving back to our community. With being from Edmonton and seeing the All In for Youth program and seeing what the data looks like 10, 15, 20 years from now...

I thought that was really cool. And for me, it made a big impact on why we do what we do here at United Way. Yeah, it's remarkable what a difference that high school graduation marker makes in a person's life and how it can really kind of progress outcomes for people on a generational basis.

Yeah. And I think too on the workplace culture of it, like it feels so good to be able to give back while you're working in your day to day. I know I just started at a company and that's one of the things that everybody's like, ooh, I really want to go to that.

Not that the other work isn't interesting, but knowing that you get to do good and give back in your day to day, it makes you just feel so good. And especially seeing the impacts that we're modelling are neighbourhoods that you recognize. It's like, oh I grew up in that neighbourhood or oh so-and-so lives in that neighbourhood.

It's not just this make-believe scenario. It's literally in our backyard and it's our neighbours and our friends. So yeah. Very cool. I think your team takes a very unique approach to other United Way campaigns, like leveraging synthetic modelling, using AI for the All In for Youth program, hackathons, which is crazy.

What inspired you guys to apply those specific strengths to the United Way campaign and how do they help you collaborate? Does it experience the way that you guys give back differently than before? Yeah, I think so. One of the things that I found really empowering was the way that United Way actually encouraged us to do what we do.

And that's one of the things that I would really like to put out into the world to other organizations that might be interested in giving back or making a mark in their community. Holding a workplace campaign, is you don't have to be a specific sector. You don't have to be a specific size.

You can actually do what you do on a daily basis, as you pointed out, in a really impactful way for your community. And I was so impressed by how closely United Way was willing to work with us in order to figure out how we could do just that. Yeah. Cool. It's like, you can do packing bags or collect jackets, which is great.

But if there's something specific that you can get your team in together and use as a team building thing, it's a great way to do it. Yeah, absolutely. So drawing on your experience of planning and running campaigns, what advice would you give to other small businesses if they wanted to start their own?

Whether it's a unique thing like a hackathon or something like a pack bag or collecting donations for Coats for Kids. Honestly, just do it. Just get started. Just start small if you need to, and utilize the resources that are at the United Way. We have had such amazing support from the team there with designing what our employee campaign looks like.

And the other piece I would say is look at who makes up your team when you're designing your campaign. For example, we have a team that's across Canada. We have a team that are quite young, a lot of new grads. And so, what we did this year was we put together a Give Back Bingo.

So there were various opportunities to give back, whether it was donating your time through sorting coats or sharing a social media post or donating period products, we just basically had this board where people could check things off. It just made it really accessible to various income levels and the entire team, whether they were in Edmonton or not.

And that was like a homegrown, you guys came up with that yourself sort of thing. I like that. I like the idea to gamify it. Especially if you got people that are competitive. Yeah, I was just going to say there's a couple of people on our team with a notable competitive streak.

And so you can make that fun. Totally. And make it accessible to everyone at the same time I think is really important. To close off the interview, could you guys share a little bit about what's next for RunWithIt Synthetics? What's in the pipeline for maybe future United Way campaigns?

And what do you guys have for community involvement going forward? Well, as I said, all of our projects really have that human element to it, regardless of whether we're working for a utility company or a municipality. We're always focused on what will this decision mean for the people in the region? So going forward this summer, we've got some exciting disaster scenario plans.

But of course, the attending piece to that is what does it mean for resilience and what does it mean for communities? We've recently wrapped up some work around social infrastructure planning, which was really exciting. And yeah, we've just always got stuff in the hopper in terms of our workplace campaign for this year.

I don't know that we've designed it yet, but we were nominated for a couple of Red Tie Awards this year. We had a wonderful time at the gala, but we didn't win, so the ante has been upped. Take it up a notch. Yeah, we're going to have to take it up a notch.

So whatever we come up with will hopefully be exciting. Cool. Cool. Is there anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up, in terms of your campaigns with the impact, you know, how you've been able to make it unique or how you started? Yeah, I think just honestly, a huge thank you to the staff at United Way.

They've been so supportive of us and they continue to be very collaborative and encouraging to us. Like Katelyn said, we're always thinking of them, but they're always thinking of us. We ran into a staff member at the gala, and she's like, oh, I'm trying to find this new opportunity for you. And if there are other small companies that are wondering how to get started, just know that the United Way staff will support you endlessly.

You will not be left behind. Yeah, and there's such a variety of programs. So whether you're particularly interested in youth or financial literacy, there's just a huge array of places to find your spot to make a really meaningful contribution. Yeah, yeah. Find that thing that really gets you excited that you're really passionate about.

Yeah. And it's that much easier to want to do those campaigns if you know you're making an impact on something that you're particularly excited about. Yeah. I feel like there's so many small businesses across the city, that if they all kind of had that community impact mindset, we could do so much good across the city or even across the country or the world.

Yeah. But yeah, it's definitely we want to encourage small businesses to reach out and I think you guys are a perfect example of what type of magic happens when United Way and small businesses come together. And don't be scared. If your first campaign raises $500 that's $500 that wasn't there before.

So I know that was one of our fears when we were signing up. We're like but we're just tiny. Like what if our impact is small? And it's like a small impact is still an impact. So yeah. And then next year you'll just be motivated to get it to be something even bigger than the year before.

Yeah, yeah yeah. And you can't always put a price on it either because like the All In for Youth putting your expertise to it. Like I think there's a bigger dollar value that it's not necessarily just a money donation, but the impact that you're making is huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And along those lines there's an All In for Youth open house coming up.

So we'll be there again at that open house sharing the video and sort of spreading the story of our partnership, and particularly with a view to supporting that program because that's something that's near and dear to all of our hearts. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for coming out. And, and that's the show.

I'm super excited with the conversation. And I could talk about this for hours with you. The work that I've been able to do as this organization is inspirational. Big thank you to you, Katelyn and Krista for sharing your insights and your experiences for the work that you do.

But to also for helping build that resilient, connected and thriving community. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you for having us. Thanks. Doing local good starts with you. To find out how you can help, head to myunitedway.ca Or check out the links in the show notes. Together we can all make sure that no one is left behind.

And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to like, share, and subscribe! Do Local Good is a production of the United Way of Alberta Capital Region, recorded here in Edmonton. We're grateful to have this conversation on Treaty Six territory, and the M�tis homelands and the M�tis Nation of Alberta. Thank you to the United Way for helping us have this conversation.

On behalf of myself, my hosts, my guests, the whole GenNEXT cabinet. Thank you for listening to Do Local Good. Til next time. Thanks.