Welcome to The Empathy Institute
the empathy institute’s logo.
It is with some sadness that I say goodbye to Growth Myndset, but It is with immense excitement that I am able to welcome you to our new home. Welcome to The Empathy Institute!
Back when I started Growth Myndset in January 2017, I couldn’t have expected all of the incredible experiences to follow, the brilliant people I’ve gotten to work with, or the unbelievable level of support I’ve received along the way. It has been the most special time in my life, and it has given me the greatest gift: the knowledge of what job I’d like to do for the rest of my life.
Educating, providing counsel and advice on social issues, and speaking to groups of people about the world we share is the greatest professional privilege I’ve ever known. It has produced in me a bold and ambitious vision where my work is shared with other people, programs on social issues are run by folks with lived experience within the scope of those issues, and my professional home becomes a source of pride, safety, community, and comfort for a team of people beyond myself. This work has already given me so much, and I’m feeling driven to facilitate that experience for more people. I am fully committed to making this dream a reality.
So, you might be wondering: why the rebrand? Why pivot from the beautiful, lively greens of Growth Myndset to the blues of The Empathy Institute? What gives?!
All great questions! I’ll start by breaking down the reasons for this big change, and I’ll finish by giving you a glimpse into what I hope the coming years will look like.
Growth Myndset + Mixed Messages = Challenges!
Growth Myndset was always such a clever little nugget in my life - it was a way for me to throw my initials into my organization such that I could feel it as an extension of myself while simultaneously putting focus on the work rather than the person. That said, the name didn’t come without its challenges.
For starters, and I say this seriously, upon seeing the name and logo side-by-side with no additional context, countless folks over the past few years have asked me directly if I run a cannabis start-up. Oops! Nope, I certainly don’t do that! That isn’t to say that this isn’t a massively growing space with a plethora of wonderful and innovative companies, but rather it’s to say that a social justice educational consulting firm being confused for a marijuana company isn’t exactly my ideal outcome.
Furthermore, due simply to the flower logo and beautiful leafy-green, Growth Myndset was often misidentified as an environmental advocacy group. This, of course, is less of a departure from the actual reality, as environmental justice is a core component of any equity, diversity, and inclusion intervention in today’s world, but again, it helped me realize that the name and brand were often serving to confuse the work I was doing rather than directly supporting it.
Lastly, and most prominently, the biggest mixed message of all came from the ever-growing field of “growth mindset” practitioners. Having spent 4 years in teacher’s college and hearing how much buzz was surrounding growth mindset philosophies within that space, in addition to every organization seeking to instil a growth mindset framework into the fabric of their teams, I was often misidentified as a specific specialist of Dr. Carol Dweck’s revolutionary research on the subject. While her work and the underlying philosophies were the lens that I used to delve into every issue, I am not a psychologist, and there are countless folks more qualified to implement a nuanced training plan within that arena than I.
So as much as I have loved associating what I do with the name and the flower, over time it became clear that it couldn’t be the forever home for this work. While a sad and sobering realization, what came to follow made all of the reflection well worth it.
A conversation in the fall —> A change in the winter
At this point in the story, we enter into the exhibit a pivotal conversation with Kingston business giant A.J. Keilty. I met with A.J. back in the fall of 2019 to talk to him about some programs I was building and to ask for his advice on building out a business based in Kingston. As we started to talk, I started to see the confusion that my current brand was causing, and he eventually identified it outright.
At that time, I was talking to as many folks as I could reach about my vision for a robust online learning platform (that is still happening and set to launch in March 2020), and in this particular conversation, A.J. very kindly suggested that it might not make perfect sense to utilize the Growth Myndset name; that I’d need to pick something else for it to have the potential for take-off.
He then asked me to tell him about the values embedded into the material I was building, why I was doing what I was doing, and what I wanted it all to accomplish. After I was finished, he said something that stuck with me for weeks: “All of what you just described to me can just be called ‘empathy’. You are empathy. That’s your brand."
We talked a little longer about how words like “academy" and “institute” would be a good fit for an online learning community like the one I was building, and I left that day baffled and a little off-balance. I was so entranced by the idea of empathy as a brand, seeing as it is the driving force behind why I do this work, that I couldn’t stop thinking about what that change might mean beyond the learning centre itself.
Over the coming weeks, it became clearer and clearer: empathy was my brand, and a change of name and look was going to happen in the new year. So I got to work.
Introducing the new brand
Working closely with my good friend and old colleague Steve Janssens, hours and hours were spent honing in on what “The Empathy Institute” would look and feel like. We ended up falling in love with the personality and charm of our chosen logo, and I am the most excited about all of the opportunities it affords this work.
On the logo itself: Empathy is intentionally positioned, from the “tei” logo to the full “The Empathy Institute” word-mark, as the only thing lighter than the rest. It is the thing that brings the “t” (made to look like a person) and the “i” (also, of course, a person) together, connecting characters with different shapes and sounds, consistent with my belief that empathy can act as our collective binding agent if we work to harness it.
The “t” character in the logo is replicated in the words “the” and “institute", once again positioning empathy as the entity between them that can bridge gaps between people. It is further meant to serve as a reminder that this work will always be driven by and for people, built on the foundation of human experience, and situated in the belief in human resilience and capacity for growth.
All of the lettering in our logo and brand are lowercase, and within our font family (Acherus Grotesque), there are no corners or sharp edges — everything is rounded. Combining the lowercase letters and round edges with the use of the period (mimicking the human heads from the “tei” logo), what we are left with is a deeply human, inviting, accessible, comfortable, and calming brand identity that is specially designed to mirror the way we have always approached our work.
As far as colours are concerned, the palette consists of a calming, misty, greyish blue and a darker navy, producing an overall look and feel that I hope is easy to read, soothing to look at, and if I do say so myself, remarkably aesthetically pleasing!
Lastly, the tagline “humane growth” is something I feel particularly proud of. When written within the context of the logo and brand, the “e” in “humane” is light blue while the rest is dark. In other words, empathy literally puts the “e” in humane, transforming human growth and ensuring it is compassionate, power-conscious, and kind to our world and the people in it.
A vision for the future
So, what does this mean for the work Growth Myndset had been doing? To put it simply: very, very little!
Core service offerings of training, workshops, keynotes, consulting, advising, panels, and facilitation remain unchanged. They have been simplified and better organized on our website for ease of use, but this rebrand does not in any way represent a change in focus or service offerings.
That said, there is a planned expansion of one particular service - online learning - scheduled to launch in the spring. More on this in the coming weeks and months, but The Empathy Institute will soon become not just a brand where services live, but a virtual home where organizations and individuals can seek out new educational materials and training. Stay tuned!
Looking long-term, TEI will also look to drive change and discourse through more immersive research commitments and projects, as well as being a house for public policy investigations and longer-form essays.
The vision for the next 10-15 years is to have The Empathy Institute positioned as the leader in equity, diversity, and inclusion-focused online learning and in-person training, embedded into community organizations working for social justice in Canada, and helping to shape conversations and policy at the municipal, provincial, and federal level via an immersive research portfolio that is focused on supporting marginalized communities and amplifying their voices in finding innovative solutions to problems.
As always, I want to thank you for being here and sharing in the tremendous excitement I feel as this next chapter starts. It’s going to be a busy year filled with lots of hard work, and I couldn’t be more grateful that you’re along for the ride.
I hope you’ll peruse this new virtual space, take a look around, and of course, get in touch with any and all questions, comments, and feedback.
Sincerely and empathetically yours,
Mike Young
Executive Director