November was a busy month for the Profound Impact team as we released our annual Social Impact Report, participated in industry conferences and met with venture capitalists in the US in preparation for the company’s next funding round.
The Profound Impact Social Impact Report highlights strategies we’ve undertaken over the last twelve months to maintain and improve a positive environment for our employees. These initiatives have included monthly in-person team meetings, team-building activities, virtual social events (including group cooking sessions), group volunteering, professional skills and growth support education programs, a team-wide book club and the matching of charitable contributions to community organizations. I’m proud to report that Profound Impact has achieved an employee retention rate of 100% (with 0% attrition) while growing the team by 33%. This employee retention rate is in stark contrast with tech companies globally, where the average attrition rate sits at 13.2%.
Conference attendance and presentations took Profound Impact employees across North America to learn more about key technologies and to meet current and potential customers.
Our Technical Program Manager, Sohail Ramzan, attended AWS Reinvent in Las Vegas to meet with AWS experts and to learn about the latest cloud industry innovations and how generative AI is revolutionizing the workplace.
Sherryl Petricevic, Director of Strategic Alliances and Partnerships was joined by Mike Folinas, Director of Research Administration at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto to present a case study on the use of Profound Impact’s Research Impact tool at the Canadian Association of Research Administrators (CARA) East in London, Ontario.
Jacqueline Watty from our Business Development team represented Profound Impact at qConnect 2023 in Calgary to connect with researchers and industry representatives discussing Canada’s role as a leader in quantum research and development, and how and why quantum is going to affect, change and benefit businesses.
Karl Burger, Director of Sales, attended the VentureLAB HardTech Summit, Canada’s premiere technology and innovation-focused summit that brought together global industry leaders, Canadian founders, investors, and innovators to explore the necessary ingredients to build a strong, connected hardware and semiconductor ecosystem in Canada.
Dr. Deborah Rosati, the chair of Profound Impact’s board of directors, and I took part in Pathways to Silicon Valley, where 24 female founders from across Canada participated in a curated immersion program designed for women founders of start-ups on their path to global business growth. We joined this program to establish relationships with US venture capital firms to prepare for our next fundraising round and our launch into the US in 2024.
December is the season of giving and the team at Profound Impact is demonstrating the power of small acts of kindness through our annual 12 Days of Impact, a program that encourages generosity. Our 12 Days of Impact campaign provides great examples of easy and inexpensive ways to be kind and generous and has also helped members of the Profound Impact team create a meaningful sense of contribution to their community while increasing bonds of collegiality on the job. We encourage you to download the 12 Days of Impact calendar and challenge your team to participate through small acts of kindness that have great big impacts.
I wish you all the best for 2024 and look forward to working with you in the new year.
Sherry Shannon-Vanstone