making the invisible visible
GROUNDSWELL
why now
In a world of increasing volatility and complexity,
human relationships are the ultimate differentiator.
The organizations shaping our future understand how to live change. While culture, technology, and societal expectations shift at unprecedented speed, people's beliefs, behaviours, and relationship patterns change much more slowly. Groundswell clients become thought leaders because they understand both external forces and internal patterns, and use that intelligence to drive system change. Ruth Silver specializes in the space where futures, organizational intelligence and human wisdom intertwine, charting a path that builds on strengths, acknowledges what isn't working, and establishes practices for constant listening to system signals and actualize.
services
Strategic Advisory with Leadership Teams
Ruth works alongside senior leaders to identify and transform outdated systems that govern mindsets and organizational behaviour. She works with leaders individually and in teams.Recent advisory work includes guiding a healthcare foundation through a fundamental shift from transactional to relational strategy, and helping a municipality design a new governance model to bridge community wisdom with institutional decision-making.
When teams are stuck, sometimes you need to change the environment. Ruth designs transformative retreat experiences that help leadership teams let go and embrace new ways of being. These immersive sessions move beyond traditional team-building to help executives experience living systems thinking firsthand in a beautiful natural setting, creating breakthrough moments.
Case study: City of Toronto Climate Advisory Group
Co-designed a new governance model for civic participation and facilitated quarterly meetings connecting citizen advisors with city staff and co-chairs for climate action, adaptation and mitigation.
Large-Scale Strategy & Transformation
We believe at the root of if, strategy is about articulating a vision that represents all the people touched by an organization and using that to shape everyone's role, enabling alignment and prioritization. More often than not, strategy is about saying no and focusing an organization around a shared goal that is worth getting out bed for.
Case study: Hamilton Wentworth District School Board
After the pandemic, 55,000 students, 7,500 staff and their families were exhausted and let down by the education system. The board and leadership were seeking an approach to strategic planning that was inclusive for everyone in the board community, and considered experiences of racism, oppression and trauma. Groundswell led a process that engaged over 4,000 community members to contribute to a strategic plan, that brought disparate visions into one shared future. We partnered with I-Think who created a process for classrooms to create real ways to implement the strategy on a day to day level in every school.
Insights & Innovation
Rooted in ethnography, we uncover peoples' latent needs and explore the relationships and context that shape those needs. Our research reveals hidden patterns that traditional market research misses, providing teams with strategic intelligence about human behaviour in complex systems. Insights fuel real change when they are the guiding criteria for redesigning or creating new services, communications, and culture that reflect the people you serve.
Case study: Let's Talk Science
For Canada's largest participatory research project of it's kind we hired 100 high school student researchers across the country to interview their friends about climate action, knowing they could never share fully with adult researchers and creating an opportunity for knowledge work experience. From 848 interviews, findings revealed young people want freedom, identity forming, positive, social, ongoing, experiential, nature-based ways to participate in climate action that are aligned with their life stage and their educational and work goals.
Organizational Learning
Custom programs that help teams learn to see and work with the living systems they're part of. Through experiential approaches, we build capabilities for strategic listening, relational service design, and regenerative planning.
Case study: Casey House
Through a co-design approach with an HIV Hospital, we redesigned three healthcare services designed around client, staff and peer needs. By revealing underlying barriers to the care they wanted to give, we built trust and inspired transformation. We worked alongside the Knowledge & Strategy team, embedding design into their scope of practice with which they build a new internal Service Design department.
Service Design
Service design is a powerful way to embody change. We create the level of detail people need to change the way they work and embrace new mindsets by identifying the underlying causes of discontent in a participatory way, inviting the people in your organization to see everyone's perspective of a service. With that input we identify the problems to solve, gain consensus those are the right issues and use them to guide future services. Our deliverables painstakingly document all the roles and supporting technology behind an end to end journey along with piloting and evaluation recommendations.
Case study: ServiceOntario
We led 56 ethnographic interviews with youth across Ontario, with diversities including LGBTQ2SIA, from the North, racialized and people with disabilities. Our work uncovered the need opportunity to develop a positive relationship between young people and government during formative experiences interacting with government through services. Using participatory methodology we reimagined high school curriculum, created a digital ID concept and articulated principals for ethical data consent with minors. Ultimately we designed a digital platform triggered by life events for youth and high fidelity services for getting a drivers license, applying for post-secondary education, and getting a health card.
Brand Strategy
Using human centred design to reveal the BIG IDEA makes it is reflective of the experiences of an organization's people, inspirational for them and creates alignment around a shared vision. Combined with deep market research and global trends, this approach to brand creates confidence and ease for a team responsible for storytelling.
Case study: Toronto Holocaust Museum
We partnered with Field Trip to help THM launch its new museum experience and name, grounding the brand in survivor testimony while connecting it to present-day relevance. Given the sensitivity of this work, we ran a trauma-informed, consent-forward research process with over 40 interviews and small group sessions across survivors, descendants, educators, interfaith families, and Jewish, Israeli, Russian-speaking, and Orthodox communities. Findings shaped a brand framework built on core traits like credibility, courage, and being diversely Canadian, giving THM a shared foundation for naming, programs, and communications. THM left with language guardrails, research assets, and a repeatable method to keep engaging communities safely as its programming grows.
clients
Government
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City of Toronto
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Council of Ontario Universities
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Ministry of Education
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Ministry of Government & Consumer Services
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Ministry of Public & Business Service Delivery
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ServiceOntario
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Waterfront Toronto
Not for profit
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Aboriginal Legal Services
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Actua
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Breakaway Community Services
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Carshare Vermont
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Commission for Environmental Cooperation
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Community Share Food Bank
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FoodReach
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FoodShare
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Greenest City
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Let’s Talk Science
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North York Harvest Food Bank
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Magnet
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National Engineering Month Ontario
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Sustain Ontario
Member organizations
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Autoshare
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Nuclear Waste Management Organization
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Ontario Council of Universities
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Ontario Physical and Health Education Association
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Ontario Society of Professional Engineers
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Professional Engineers of Ontario
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Community Food Centres Canada
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Ontario Association of Child & Youth Care
Education
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Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship
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Centennial College
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Chang School for Continuing Education
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Hamilton Wentworth District School Board
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OCADU University
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Toronto District School Board
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Toronto Metropolitan University
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University of Toronto Student Union
Health care
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Canadian Cancer Society
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Casey House
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OCADU Wellness Centre
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Baycrest Hospital
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Grand River Hospital
Foundations
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Areivim Philanthropic Group
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Foundation for Jewish Camp
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MasterCard Foundation
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McConnell Foundation
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Ontario Trillium Foundation
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Oakham Foundation
Corporate
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Bruce Mau Design
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CIBC Insurance
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Entro
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Hockly Valley Resort
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HOK
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Hydro One
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IKEA
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Kilmer-Mattamy
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Mimi & Hill
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Scotiabank - Digital Factory
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Stratus Vinyard
ruth's story
Ruth Silver is the founder of Groundswell; incorporated in 2014, three months after she gave birth to twins. In that magical moment of feminine power it made perfect sense to demonstrate to her daughters her dedication to tikkun olam; a Jewish concept that describes our responsibility to repair and bring harmony to the world.
Ruth has 20 years of experience in Design and Strategy, and brings a lifetime of insatiable curiosity and optimism. She holds a Masters in Design from Harvard, and before founding Groundswell, gratefully worked with mentors Annie Liebowitz and Bruce Mau.
groundswell credo
We are curious, open-minded and humble learners.
We are focused on how we can give over what we can take.
We are committed to making the invisible visible, the unsaid heard.
We ask hard questions, listen with two ears and go where others don’t.
We vision systems that promote justice, equity and longevity.
We bring our whole selves to these pursuits and welcome the whole selves of others.
If nothing else, let us have interesting and meaningful problems.
Let their solutions demand all of our creative reserves.
Let the destination be ambitious and the route unfamiliar.
Let our travelling companions be curious and courageous.
Let us be truly changed by the time we reach the place we’re headed to.