EngageFirst
Committed To Your Success In Every Engagement
Committed To Your Success In Every Engagement
It is our mission to serve in the best interest of society. We work on projects that have intrinsic social value. It is for this reason that we have focused our energy towards serving Indigenous causes and programs that support children, youth, families, seniors, and people with disabilities.
We have a team of highly motivated professionals who are committed to consulting for social impact. We have unmatched credentials in the family and social services sector, with industry-leading change makers and practitioners working hand in hand on our team. We have gained the trust and respect of our clients from First Nations by supporting them through their journey for self-jurisdiction in Child and Family Services. We understand the barriers and disadvantages faced by First Nations and other Indigenous people. We have a team that understands the values and beliefs that regulate Indigenous life and families, and we incorporate these teachings in how we work with them to build sustainable models for their communities. Most importantly, our approach supports capacity development through intentional approaches like coaching and empowerment so that the organizations become resilient and sustainable.
Our leading-edge Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning capability is empowering public sector organizations. We are creating new value by leveraging data for operational efficiency and decision support. Our mission is to unlock the hidden potential of data to drive innovation, productivity and better decision making in the public sector, particularly in health and human services.
With our innovative thinking and leading-edge methods and tools, we can uncover the root of your problems, bringing clarity. We have the ability to see through complexity, enabling us to design solutions that are effective and practical, seamlessly addressing your needs. This is why we have an enviable record of repeat clients and an ever-increasing portfolio of successful assignments
EngageFirst is emerging as a leader in Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning for applications in the public sector. We offer a full range of services to meet the needs of public sector organizations, especially in health and human Services. We are leveraging technologies to extract intelligence using hyper-dimensional statistics and machine learning, resulting in improved decision-making, resource utilization and operational efficiency. We also have some of the finest skills in natural language processing and predictive analytics
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EngageFirst challenges 'traditional’ consulting approaches by offering a distinctive business transformation and change management strategy that recognizes the differences between transformational and transactional change. We have experience and expertise in a range of services where we employ truly transformative concepts like human centered design, organic systems thinking and iterative evolution
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EngageFirst has created the Work Assessment Methodology (WAM)©, specifically designed for service and process improvement in government and human services. It provides tools for process analysis, workload benchmarking, complexity assessment, and service performance measurement, enabling our clients to optimize services, allocate resources objectively, and generate a wealth of information assets for process improvement, organizational restructuring and funding decisions
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At EngageFirst, we help executive level management in achieving organizational excellence by fostering a culture of continuous improvement and change. We believe that an organization's success relies on its people. By investing in their development and cultivating a culture of creativity and innovation, we drive sustainable transformations that enhance business performance
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EngageFirst employs a multi-dimensional framework to tailor stakeholder engagement strategies based on the stakeholders' degree of ownership and interest in the issue. We conduct various forms of stakeholder consultations, including interviews, online surveys, community town halls, and workshops, ensuring effective communication, interaction, and feedback to foster positive relationships
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EngageFirst offers comprehensive expertise and standards-based methods to address the "knowing-doing gap" in organizations. We provide effective project, change and risk management. We have performed reviews of PM practices, and our findings have helped our clients to overcome challenges and organizational inertia
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At EngageFirst, we believe in collaborative problem-solving, value driven engagements, and proactive relationship management. Our consulting methodology is built on 360o discovery and purposeful analysis, creative solutioning, and knowledge transfer to the client organization, while applying effective methods and tools. Our approach results in the client not only receiving a solution for the problem but also gaining knowledge and capacity to deliver similar results internally. Our goal is to add value to our clients with every engagement and to become trusted partners in their success. We invite you to experience the difference with EngageFirst, where our success is in your success
President and Principal Consultant
Hemant’s 25-year consulting journey, starting from a top global firm, has transformed into a passionate career. As a trusted advisor to senior executives in the public sector, he is known for his unique knowledge, creativity, and ability to deliver beyond expectations. With a Master's in computing science and an MBA, Hemant continues to innovate, create and lead. He created the WAM© methodology for service optimization, and he now focuses on leveraging Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning for productivity and decision support
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Lori Cooper possesses extensive executive experience in both provincial and municipal governments, showcasing strong leadership skills within complex business and service delivery environments. With unique perspectives on public sector challenges, she serves as a valuable executive advisor and consultant, having successfully led transformative changes in human services and corporate functions during her career of over twenty-five years with the Government of Alberta
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Mark Hattori has 32 years of experience in children, youth, and family services, from frontline work to Assistant Deputy Minister in the Alberta Government. His expertise lies in successfully transitioning policy to practice, and he has played a significant role in transforming the Child Intervention program. With unique insights in social program design and implementation, Mark’s experience brings strategic and operational values to leaders facing similar challenges
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We do not pretend to know your problems better than you do, but we have the methods and tools that help us analyze your problem and develop a holistic and unique understanding
Phone: 780-752-0493
Email: hello@engagefirst.ca
Address:
Suite 1540, 10117-Jasper Ave. Edmonton, AB, T5J 1W8
Sharon Long brings to her consulting career more than thirty-five years of experience in the social welfare sector. She has held progressively responsible positions starting from a social worker to Acting CEO in the Human Services department of Government of Alberta and its predecessor organizations. Sharon has thorough and deep knowledge of child and family welfare policies, practices and case management in Alberta and other provincial jurisdictions. Sharon has participated in leadership capacity and as a change catalyst in many transformational projects in government. Sharon is an excellent facilitator, business analyst, problem solver, and a resourceful project manager. She has developed and delivered many training programs related to social welfare and human resources and has also mentored management resources in various roles. She is known for her friendly and well considered approach towards clients as well as towards peers and is really well liked as a mentor and coach. Sharon has a BA in Social Work from McGill University and is also a certified coach from the Internal Coach Federation. Sharon is a registered social worker and has delivered several training and coaching assignments for programs such as Strengths Deployment Inventory and Colours Spectrum.
Di Meng is an experienced analyst and developer in the EngageFirst team. Di is currently focusing on interactive data visualization techniques for operational management in human services. Di has a Bachelor of Computing Science from the University of Alberta and is certified with a PMP and PMI-BA. Di also has extensive experience in web development, online survey tools, statistical modeling and mobile applications which he has applied to many client assignments.
Di is a trained guitar player and can be seen in several karaoki bars and concert stages.
Jessica Li is a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta in the Computational Psychiatry Group at the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry. Jessica works with big data to create decision support tools in healthcare and has acquired superior skills with her many years of experience in Python, R, ggplot2, and Scikit-Learn.
Her interest is in developing predictive models for mental health outcomes. Her work has two branches, individual-level predictions and population-level predictions using ML. In the first direction, Jessica used electronic health records (EHR) and longitudinal population data to make individualized predictions for all age groups on mental health outcomes using ML. In her second research direction, Jessica explores how to leverage EHR to make population-level predictions and trends in mental health and addiction. Earlier in her career, Jessica was a neuroscience stem cell researcher specializing in treatments for Multiple Sclerosis. Jessica has 25 publications from this experience. During her undergrad studies, Jessica and her team created a misinformation detection tool using Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing which won 1st place for the U of A in the Hoffmann La Roche Innovation Prize among 100 other teams from various Canadian universities. Jessica is an excellent communicator, a natural leader, and a collaborator. She has been a student leader and a passionate volunteer throughout her life and is currently the Grants Coordinator for STEM Fellowship awards. Before this, she volunteered at the Edmonton General Continuing Care Centre and the Stollery Children’s Hospital.
Talgat is a valuable addition to the EngageFirst team, bringing talent in applied Data Science, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. Talgat is interested in applying his skills in advanced analytics and NLP in the health and human services sector. He has applied a Cox Proportional Hazard model to predict the adoption of children from foster care in a US jurisdiction. As a Data Scientist Intern at a bank, he developed a recommendation system for an e-commerce application. Additionally, during his time as a Data Engineer Intern at a data brokerage company, Talgat was responsible for maintaining the data warehouse and managing data extraction, transformation, and loading processes. He also excelled in creating high-quality visualizations and optimizing data workflows.
Talgat has conducted research and acquired superior skills and experience in NLP and computational semantics. While working as part of a research team at the University of Alberta, he developed an idiomaticity detection and lexical substitution system, which he successfully published in reputable NLP conferences. Furthermore, Talgat trained a generative language model to generate debating topics and built a web application, which was subsequently deployed in the cloud. He is interested in developing business applications using large language models and NLP to create operational efficiencies in organizations where human interactions are at the core of their service delivery.
