Playground of Empathy

Our non-profit partner organization brings our award-winning, experiential DEI training to your NGO

Why should empathy-based, experiential learning be the focus of your DEI strategy?

Playground of Empathy was established in 2018 in Charlottesville after seeing how a dearth of emotional education has led to xenophobia and polarization. From the beginning, our goal has been to create more inclusive communities. Working with world-renowned experts in science, technology, and art, we’ve learned that to actually achieve inclusivity, members of a community need some conceptual understanding but—most importantly—they must also have opportunities to match that understanding with real experience.

Many DEI training programs fail to create a measurable difference because they lack opportunities for learners to internalize and apply their knowledge. Immersive, point-of-view media is shifting that paradigm and can help your team engage in deeper learning.

A robust body of research has shown that one of the best ways to gain empathy is to take a walk in someone else’s shoes.

Playground of Empathy was co-designed with the President of the Association for Psychological Sciences and was a winner of the 2020 Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund Grant. Our program has been piloted by Ford, Deloitte and Cisco, and we’ve helped 10,000 people walk in someone else’s shoes–including a 1,000+ person audience at the Boston Museum of Science.

Our board of advisors include Lulu Miller, host of Radiolab on NPR, Joel Mier, former Netflix marketing director, and Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, who is in the top 1% of the most cited scientists in the world.

At our core, we’re here to help humans live more fulfilling lives through empathy, by embracing the joy of our differences.