Bold Strides and Big Wins: A Sincere Thank You for 2022
By: Carol Kotacka
December is always a time for reflection. As I look back on the past year, I am reminded of Ryelle’s beginnings: how our firm was founded to support organizations, large and small, in strategy execution by providing the talent, tools and platform for connection, collaboration, and co-creation. In 2022, we celebrated five years since our launch, a major milestone in the life of a startup.
After another year in the field working with incredible leaders at all levels, the end of 2022 offers an opportunity to pause, assess and be grateful. As I write this, I’m feeling thankful for the “Ryelle family”—our team, clients and partners. I’m brimming with pride at how far we’ve come and excitement over the countless possibilities in store for 2023.
This season of reflection and hope for a better year ahead, I invite you to journey with me across some of the most defining moments of the past year at Ryelle. Let’s celebrate every success, lesson learned, and the people who made them possible—all of you.
Going Digital: New Service Offering
During the pandemic, the primary mandate of many client relationships was to figure out a way to evolve programming, change management, and stakeholder engagement to virtual platforms—fast. Working with leaders in frontline settings, we tested many applications through ideation, creation, and iteration, as well as staffing solutions to understand the most effective and efficient models for small and large organizations.
This learning allowed us to formally launch a new stream of digital services in February of 2022—one that offers expertise and support in digital governance, transformation and change management. Digital engagement has become an increasingly critical element to driving population health outcomes.
Building on our suite of digital services, we also launched a robust outsourced digital engagement service to further operationalize our clients’ diverse range of stakeholder engagement goals. We combined a suite of results-driven engagement strategies that includes brand strategy development, social media management, content creation, search engine optimization, and analytics reporting, and tailored these to the unique needs of frontline settings. In doing so, we empowered our clients with a distinct brand voice, value-added content, and results across their priority areas, from government relations and fund development to community engagement and profile development—all deliverable on tight budgets.
A Monumental Partnership: Joint Offering with Queen’s University
We often ask clients “what keeps you up at night?” Throughout 2022, a consistent theme across sectors was the internal capacity to deliver on strategy—nothing moves without the people that make up an organization. Challenges around recruitment, engagement, and union negotiations, as well as capacity building, were some of the most urgent concerns.
In response to these challenges, we announced the launch of our People, Culture and Capacity portfolio in September. Ryelle’s new service offering combines training, support, and turn-key strategies to address issues impacting organizational transformation and culture. This pillar marries our learnings in the field with significant academic and professional development education.
The crown jewel of our People, Culture and Capacity portfolio is a new partnership with Queen’s University’s Industrial Relations Centre (IRC). Their capacity building platform delivers foundational knowledge and practical skills to guide transformation and design. The university’s highly interactive Strategies for Workplace Conflicts program teaches managers and leaders practical and essential skills for approaching everyday workplace disputes in a constructive and effective way.
Combined, the IRC’s programming and our People, Culture, and Capacity services will empower leaders with strategic solutions that respond to evolving workplace trends and achieve innovative transformation.
Ryelle’s Global Impact
At this pivotal point in our growth, we took stock and examined our journey since our launch in 2017 for the first time. Thinking back to the first two jobs Ryelle landed (which were very small and I’m sure given out of pity—thank you friend, you know who you are) and our trajectory since, I’m gobsmacked to learn our small but mighty team has:
- Deployed over 100+ content experts world wide
- Engaged over 100,000+ client stakeholders on their behalf
- Identified over $100M in economic empowerment opportunities in markets around the world
I’m honoured to say that our commitment to collaboration with a view towards delivering better end-products for clients has been instrumental in expanding our reach. This has allowed us to deliver Canadian expertise in a variety of locales across sectors such as healthcare, public sector performance, and economic development as a vehicle to poverty reduction. In turn, we have also brought international expertise to Canada on key topics such as digital governance and implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Ryelle Client Resource Portal
The team has worked incredibly hard to transform our original website into an evolving client resource portal that, we hope, will provide growing value to our clients, stakeholders, and supporters. Building on the launch of our Digital Engagement offering, we started a blog series on digital engagement best practices for NGOs and social service organizations. Through these articles, we aim to equip key audiences with expert knowledge on improving their digital footprint and leveraging their digital presence to support broader organizational goals such as fundraising and stakeholder engagement.
In 2023, we aim to expand our library of high-quality, relevant, and on-trend resources to reflect the full breadth of our portfolio and the ever-changing demands our clients face. Learn more here.
Looking Forward to 2023 at Ryelle
Once again, thank you to the “Ryelle family” for this journey. I look forward to continuing our collaboration on driving collective positive impact in the spaces in which we work.
From all of us at Ryelle, we wish you a warm and wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year filled with joy and growth! For inquiries, you can reach me here. I look forward to connecting with you in the new year!
