Our Work
We are problem solvers. Optimists. And we believe anything is possible.
Our Areas of Expertise
Strategy + Growth
Partnerships + Storytelling
Advocacy + Activism
Clients come to us with a vision. As trusted advisors, we bring our values, expertise and network to help accelerate and expand their ideas for maximum impact.
We proactively assess changing landscapes, consistently produce high-quality work, and incubate action-oriented projects and programs.
We believe starting with strategy is crucial and success only comes when combined with a plan to back it up. Big change is possible, necessary, and starts small.
Growth + Strategy
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In 2014, Lululemon’s CEO Laurent Potdevin, approached williamsworks with a desire to deepen the company’s social impact with their increasingly global community. We had worked closely with Laurent in a previous role when he was CEO of TOMS shoes, on their social impact strategy, and were pleased to have a chance to work with him again.
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Ultimately we landed on these four goals: improve the efficacy and coordination of the international Yoga Service movement; increase the accessibility of yoga and meditation resources for underserved communities; strengthen customer pride in the company; and highlight the achievements of new social impact programs.
Building on Lululemon’s deep community based work in prior years, and after conducting an extensive landscape analysis and 100’s of conversations with a diverse group of stakeholders and research into new findings on mental well-being, we identified an opportunity to develop a program focused on the role yoga and meditation can play in the lives of those living with chronic stressors, coping with trauma, and experiencing health challenges globally.
Working closely with CEO, leadership team and nonprofit partners we developed an approach to fund initiatives that create access to yoga service programs and build a community of practice among nonprofits, academics, and public sector institutions that are developing and applying yoga service programming.
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Our team got to work developing a strategic plan for the Here to Be initiative, which would distribute grants through Lululemon’s global network of 375+ stores, and invest in national and international partnerships that create access at scale.
Central to this work was the design of four key impact pillars for the program, which were designed to address and break down barriers to accessibility: collective learning; skill delivery; direct access; capacity building and overhead costs.
Between 2016 and 2018 these pillars helped guide Lululemon’s grant-making efforts and established the Here to Be program as a leader in the Yoga Service movement. williamsworks served as a key strategic partner throughout the implementation of the program and oversaw the successful delivery of: international network development; advancement of shared impact measurements; grant distributions; and the convening of an annual impact summit.
Alongside the strategic planning with the Here to Be program, our team provided: a power map of influencers and events; strategic counsel to the executive team; built new relationships with partners; strategic communications and positioning to the CEO; work plans for key initiatives; recruiting and staffing support for long-term team program sustainability.
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With over 19,000 employees, 506 stores in 17 countries, Lululemon has the scale to effect big change.
In 2016, the company committed over $25 million to nonprofit organizations that create equitable access to yoga, running, and meditation, built over 575 non-profit/supplier partnerships, donated 40,000 yoga mats, reached 500,000 people and hosted 3 change-maker summits. In response to the growing need for mental health resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lululemon donated another $6.4 million in 2020 to disrupt inequity in wellbeing and $4.1 million to the Ambassador Relief Fund).
Check out their 2020 impact agenda to read more.
We connect changemakers and inspire action.
By engaging our diverse network, we bring together unlikely partners with complementary cultural, political, and economic assets who share a commitment to change.
We believe culture is a fundamental driver of change. There is power in every story and justice in sharing them.
Partnerships + Storytelling
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Among the extensive philanthropic commitments from the Miranda family leading up to the run of Hamilton in Puerto Rico, williamsworks was honored to work with the Miranda family and host Google to learn more about art and culture. During a visit to the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP) National Art Collection, Luis A. Miranda, Jr. was showcasing the rich cultural history of the Island, and delegation was in awe of the collection's massive size, diverse content, and incalculable world heritage significance.
The Miranda family and the ICP wanted to make the work more accessible to the public. Believing there was an opportunity to leverage the power of technology to preserve and bring the cultural heritage of Puerto Rico to a broader audience Google XYZ
Working alongside the Miranda Family and Google Arts and Culture (GA&C), a non-profit initiative whose mission is to build technologies that make the world’s culture accessible, we developed and executed a plan to highlight Puerto Rican art, and strengthen understanding of the general public Puerto Rican culture.
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Every so often, the rippling effects of one action are invisible to the eye. On other occasions, they expand with optimistic perseverance generating a wave of meaningful and tangible results. One great example of this is the collaboration that sprung after the visit to the ICP between Google Arts and Culture (GA&C), the Miranda Family, and a selected group of Puerto Rico’s premiere arts institutions.
The visit to the ICP was the little pebble williamsworks threw to spark curiosity. GA&C wanted to learn more about Puerto Rican art and culture. williamsworks planned and managed a second visit to the island to showcase and connect the GAC&C team with other cultural institutions to identify potential narratives around Puerto Rico’s cultural heritage that could be highlighted worldwide on the platform.
The visits to Puerto Rico made clear to all partners the potential for expansion. It also ignited inspiration and collective action. Soon after, we co-created a plan to develop a Puerto Rico-specific page on the GA&C platform.
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In three years since the first visit, we brought together nine additional institutions with GA&C to increase the number of collections digitized as well as the diversity of cultural practices from Puerto Rico represented. All while pivoting and offering innovative solutions during the pandemic to continue digitization work and keeping top of mind client and partners' goals.
Our team helped co-developed the plan with the Miranda Family and GA&C, supported its execution, managed relationships between partners, served as a liaison between all actors, provided counsel, and co-created strategy to bring this effort into the world.
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For the museums and institutions, this project means they can continue developing new digital exhibits that expand their educational and cultural offering to their own communities. For researchers worldwide, it means they can easily integrate Puerto Rican culture into their efforts to write a more inclusive history of art, giving Puerto Rico a place in artistic academia. For the art world as a whole, it adds a powerful tool to connect with other institutions that are on the platform. For Puerto Rico, it creates a positive narrative about Puerto Rican culture, using cutting-edge technology to celebrate and share their unique heritage.
As a result of our collaboration:
The project grew from a potential collaboration with ICP. Between 2019 and 2022, we have steered 12 partnerships between GA&C and Puerto Rican/Latinx-focused organizations in Puerto Rico and the diaspora.
Google Arts & Culture has digitized more than 850 art pieces using the most advanced digital technology in partnership with local cultural institutions.
Successfully strengthened the partnership between Google and the Miranda family.
Google Arts and Culture project created a publicly accessible virtual display of Puerto Rican art and cultural heritage. By doing so, this project opens the doors for people everywhere to access and appreciate the impact and beauty of Puerto Rican art — both on the island and around the world.
Museums and institutions could maintain their offering during the pandemic through digital format.
Supported innovation within our partners. The Puerto Rico project is the first at Google Arts and Culture, where they digitized multiple institutions consecutively in one region or country.
Our partnership management allowed us to strengthen commitments from GA&C for continued work in Puerto Rico.
Increased museum and local photography capacity on the island. The local photographer hired on the island for digitization, developed a curriculum on art digitization for others and submitted additional grant proposals to provide workshops on the topic.
Enjoy the stunning 857 Puerto Rican pieces that have been digitized so far and the Latino Cultures in US page. Making it GAC single largest online collection.
Change happens at unconventional intersections. Anything is possible and we build strategies that are actionable, ambitious, creative, dynamic, and inclusive.
We believe all people are resilient and have purpose. You can find a genius on every corner.
Advocacy + Activism
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The driving desire to give back can come from surprising places. For Ben Affleck, a former client and the founder of Eastern Congo Initiative, it was a footnote, buried in a book on the history of violence in western Sudan. The note casually mentioned that the notorious violence of the Darfur region was only eclipsed by that of its neighbor to the south, site of the deadliest conflict since WWII–the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Given the scale of the challenges in eastern Congo, Ben engaged williamsworks to partner with him to develop a strategy and define a plan for creating real, lasting change in the hope filled and war torn region. In 2007, we began working with Ben to shape a first-of-its-kind grant-making and advocacy organization by and for the people of eastern Congo—an impactful and sustainable way to make a difference.
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There’s an African saying we love —you have to go there to know there. We started by designing a series of learning tours to east Africa that helped Ben gain deep, first-hand knowledge of the issues facing the region, bringing into stark relief the realities that facts and figures can’t. Together we went to displacement camps and met with families whose lives were directly impacted by conflict. We initiated meetings with government officials, heads of state, military and the militias, police captains and prison inmates, international NGOs and local organizations.
Over time, the most impactful conversations were those with the heroic individuals working toward solutions for the region’s most pressing challenges. These were the local voices of leaders with an unrelenting desire to realize the full potential of their country.
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After conducting an extensive landscape analysis of community-based organizations in the region, we co-developed a strategy with Ben that focused on building infrastructure, developing networks of engaged investors and advocacy initiatives that would bring both long-term change and awareness to the region. We established a seed fund that would provide operational and grant-making support for the first three years of the organization’s existence.
By drawing together the interdisciplinary interests of a range of impact-oriented philanthropists, williamsworks was able to convene the right set of people around the table to launch this fund and support ECI’s ambitious grant-making and advocacy initiatives. In less than a year, williamsworks raised commitments from this core set of supporters and with the confidence of having a committed group of high-profile funders and board members, sourced a team of expert staff and consultants (both paid and pro-bono) to lend their expertise and horsepower to the work.
As ECI continued to grow, we helped support the development of an Executive Committee and leadership team; managed the day-to-day U.S. operations of grant-making; oversaw the advocacy and communications staff; and led partnership cultivation and relationship management.
Additionally, we built an Executive Committee and an expert Board of Directors and eventually partnered with another organization to pioneer a business model that put water infrastructure ownership back in the hands of the Congolese people.
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Over the past 10 years, ECI has become one of the leading voices on behalf of the people of DRC. From a powerful advocacy campaign to reform the Congolese security sector, to committed partnerships with Nespresso, Theo Chocolate and Starbucks, williamsworks has remained committed to providing strategic support to ensure ECI remains a powerful force for social change.
williamsworks’ creative approach, strategic design, expert staffing and extensive networks, has helped ECI to:
Granted over $10 million to 44 Congolese organizations and partners in North Kivu, South Kivu, and Orientale provinces
Pioneered a business model that put water infrastructure ownership back in the hands of the Congolese people.
Conducted a scholarly landscape analysis of the most effective community-based organizations (CBO) and produced a free first-of-its-kind online CBO database
Championed US and European advocacy efforts focused on security sector reform, maternal health, and the creation of economic opportunities
Conveyed the inspiring stories of the Congolese to global audiences through a media strategy that included appearances in smart national and international broadcast and print media reaching well over 500 million
You can watch Ben tell the story of ECI in this beautiful and brief animated history: https://youtu.be/uVpiD-wbXmE
