How do we build a world that aligns with our core values?
What can we contribute to sustain a planet we want to live on?
When does one person’s contribution impact a whole community?
Meet Marina Borisova, COO of CIC resident company Dialogos and a self-ascribed lifetime learner, always open to new ideas. While taking a leadership seminar, Marina was asked to design a community-based project that aligned with her core values. Marina decided to investigate the impact plastic usage has on the environment. She didn’t realize that she would inspire her whole workplace community to learn more about the 5 Rs of sustainability: reduce, refuse, reuse, recycle, and remove, and that by sharing her vision, she could inspire others to take action in their own lives.
Marina and Shakti Rowan Lena of the CIC Wellness team partnered with Wellable, a startup based out of CIC partner space Impact Hub Boston that helps organizations build wellness into their work cultures. In turn, the Wellable team created a pilot, four-week sustainability challenge. Combining fitness aspect with an educational component, the challenge brought all of the CIC global locations together in a healthy competition.
With over 200 active participations, the CIC community traveled 32,974 miles over four weeks. This is the equivalent of making more than one full walking trip across the circumference of the earth or walking across the United States 11 times. CIC also completed 4,677 sustainability activities through the Wellable app.
Here’s what a few participants had to say about their experience:
“I am very competitive as a sport amateur, and this challenge has given me extra satisfaction while competing with my colleagues and clients. My monthly average of steps jumped from 14,503 to 16,423 per day!”
“I was surprised by how motivated I was to complete the sustainability activities and hit my step goal on a daily basis.”
“Once I realized how many points I would get for running, I decided to run every morning. Before the challenge, if I didn’t wake up early enough to do a long run, I’d just sleep in. The challenge motivated me to run anyway, whether it was one mile or six miles.”
In a survey, 60 percent of participants said the program helped them feel more connected to the CIC community. Meanwhile, 57 percent of participants reported that they will continue to use technology to track their activity, and 80 percent of participants reported being motivated to increase their physical activity and live a healthier lifestyle.
Inspired by Marina’s vision, the sustainability challenge was Wellable’s first sustainability-focused program, and since it has been made available as one of their themed challenges, CIC along with other Wellable clients have chosen to take advantage of this unique and educational offering. The challenge created an opportunity for people to work with their individual CIC community, stay physically active, and engage in daily lifestyle choices that support personal and global ecological balance.
Interested in experiencing a workplace that incorporates wellness into your day-to-day? Click below to come see the space for yourself.
