The Empathy
Project

Over six weeks, employees take part in four one-to-one intercultural conversations, guided reflection, and a team debrief. The experience asks for seven hours of employee time and gives people a structured way to listen, notice their assumptions, and decide what they want to carry forward.

RW Institute runs the project with Acquaint and Inqli. Each cohort gives employees, conversation partners, and champions a clear role in the experience, while the project continues to learn from what happens in practice.

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Debrief Stage

Fish & Richardson

As of August 20, 11 participants had completed at least four conversations, and the cohort was moving into debrief.

Sessions Underway

Dolby Labs

As of August 20, participant conversations were underway, with debrief and reporting support in preparation.

Growing Signal

More Cohorts in Setup

Additional company waves are being organized. These are operating updates, not a promise about future cohort timing.

How It Works

Six weeks to listen carefully, reflect, and decide what changes in practice.

Acquaint matches employees with conversation partners for four one-hour intercultural conversations. Prompts give both people a way into the conversation without scripting what they should discover.

Champions check in during the experience. Employees then use structured reflection, followed by a team debrief that brings the learning back to the cohort. The full arc runs six weeks and asks each employee for seven hours.

Corporate cohort participation costs $35 per employee seat. Community volunteers can participate through Acquaint at no cost. The project is being designed to protect individual responses and share only approved aggregate learning with participating companies.

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1:1 Conversations

Four one-hour conversations with someone from a different culture. Guided prompts move the dialogue past pleasantries into real exchange.

psychology

Guided Reflection

Structured reflection prompts and social learning help participants process what they experienced between conversations.

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Champion-Led Check-ins

Champions check in during the experience, helping participants connect the conversations to the wider cohort and notice what they are learning.

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Measurement Design

Each cohort is designed to contribute anonymized aggregate learning about empathy development, behavioral practice, and intergroup contact. The goal is to learn what shifts, for whom, and under what conditions.

The reciprocal equation

The employee is not the only person giving time.

The standard experience counts the hours on both sides of the conversation. Seven hours from the employee, mirrored by approximately four hours from conversation partners, creates about eleven hours of empathy work per completed seat.

That accounting matters because both sides contribute time. The conversation partner is also a volunteer, bringing their own time, stories, questions, and reasons for showing up.

7employee hoursBrief, Check-in, conversations, reflection, Debrief

4partner hoursFour one-hour conversations

11hours of empathy workper standard completed seat

A clear decision model

One price. A visible operating model.

The standard seat price is US$35. The allocation below is the canonical model for planning and transparency. It is not a promise that every future cohort will carry identical costs.

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Per participating employee

$35

USD / seat

Acquaint conversation platform$17.20

Inqli reflection environment$6.10

RWI delivery and oversight$4.00

Administration$3.85

Fiscal sponsor$2.45

Marketing$1.20

Surplus reserve$0.20

A useful nudge for planning

Start with a meaningful wave, not an impossible promise.

The canonical planning rule assumes that 25% of employees are realistically likely to opt into volunteering, then recommends seats for 10% of that pool. For a 40,000-person company, that means 1,000 seats rather than a vague invitation to “everyone.”

40,000

total employees

1,000

recommended seats

11,000

projected shared hours

The calculator and tier notes live in the complete picture.

Partners

Who makes it work.

hub

RW Institute

Overall design, theory of change, champion model, and research governance. RWI is responsible for holding those parts together.

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Acquaint

The conversation platform. Acquaint matches employees with conversation partners and supports the protocols for intercultural conversations.

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Inqli

The planned reflection and sense-making layer. Structured prompts, social learning, and qualitative learning designed to help participants process what shifts.

Current program partners

Current Ways In

Three ways to continue the conversation.

Whether you want to volunteer, partner on research, or explore a company cohort, we will point you to the current next step.

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Volunteers

Conversations That Bridge Worlds

New volunteer intake is limited while current corporate cohorts are supported. Priority is being given to conversation partners who can bring their own perspective and experience to the exchange.

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biotech

Researchers

Research Briefing for Academic Partners

A virtual briefing on the proposed research architecture: what data may be collected, how multiple timepoints could work, and where governance questions still need partner input. We are looking for collaborators who want to help shape the right questions.

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corporate_fare

Corporate Leaders

Corporate CSR Briefing

A virtual briefing for CSR and social impact leaders. We will walk through how the six-week experience works, what participation could involve, and what the current measurement design is intended to support.

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Research

The dataset that does not exist yet.

Most empathy research happens inside a single organization with a small sample and no control group. The Empathy Project is being designed to build a cross-company dataset at a scale the field has not had access to before. The current research questions are forming around three streams.

Complexity and Systems

How empathy signals may propagate through teams and organizations. Research conversations have included Dr. Kirsten Wright and the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation.

Behavioral Science

Enrollment nudges, drop-off mitigation, and what drives sustained prosocial behavior. In development with ideas42.

Volunteering Outcomes

Well-being, performance, retention, and volunteering identity. Academic partners in development.

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When Scheduled

Makerspace Salons

Empathy Project conversations may run as Salons when a session is confirmed. The Makerspace calendar is the source for upcoming dates.

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science

Makerspace Labs

Core Labs and Genome Labs

The structured working side of the Makerspace. Labs run on specific frameworks and produce real deliverables.

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Questions about the Empathy Project?

Whether you want to ask about future volunteer openings, partner on research, or bring the experience to your company, we would like to hear from you.

Get in Touch