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Case Study · Speakers & Conferences

A hand-scored survey, reborn as a live empowerment experience

DEI keynote speaker and author Ashley T. Brundage measured audiences with a survey she scored and wrote up by hand. Island Pitch rebuilt it on NextWave as an automated survey-to-report platform — and put it live on stage. It debuted at real events through spring 2026.

See LIVE ExperiencesFor Speakers & Conferences
Empowering Differences personalized report — overall empowerment score wheel

Client

Empowering Differences

Built by

Island Pitch · on NextWave

Survey → Report

10 questions → 9-page report

Used live at

GFOA · MIQ USA · Forum on Workplace Inclusion

“Thank you so much; this is working great.”
— Ashley T. Brundage, President & CEO, Empowering DifferencesEmail to Island Pitch, June 2026
The Challenge

The method worked. The manual work didn’t scale.

  • Ashley’s empowerment survey, scoring, and personalized reports were produced by hand — one attendee at a time.
  • Big rooms meant real-time results were impossible; reports landed days later, if at all.
  • No way to run the survey live, on a screen, as part of the keynote.
  • No group view — an association or company couldn’t see its own aggregate after an event.
The Build

A survey-to-report engine, plus a live stage experience.

  • A mobile-first 10-question survey that finishes in about 90 seconds — no login required.
  • Ashley’s scoring algorithm, automated and verified against her historical reports.
  • A branded 9-page personalized report, viewable on the web and printable to PDF.
  • A dual-screen live experience: audience phones via QR + a fullscreen presenter display.
  • Group sessions with live stats, QR codes, CSV export, and a full group report.

From phone to stage to report

Every screen below is the real product — the same survey, live display, and report used at events.

Empowering Differences survey question with a 0–100 slider that shifts color as the score rises
The mobile-first survey — one question per screen, a color-shifting slider, finished in about 90 seconds.
Empowering Differences personalized report showing the overall empowerment score wheel
The personalized report closes on an overall Empowerment Score wheel across all ten differences.
Report page listing a respondent’s top three differences with scores
Each report ranks every difference and surfaces the top areas — with matched, recommended actions.
Fullscreen live presenter display with a live response counter, empowerment meter ring, and ranking bars
On stage: a fullscreen presenter display with a live counter, an animated meter ring, and live-ranking bars.
Empowering Differences running as a native experience inside the NextWave Emcee Controller
Empowering Differences runs as a native experience inside NextWave’s Emcee Controller.
Group session admin detail with a QR code, live response stats, and aggregate ranking
Group sessions: a shareable QR code, live aggregate stats, and a one-click CSV export.
“Okay, this is really cool. Also neat that you sent me a video walk through. I just did a client event for GFOA which is an association and I think I used a few of those.”
— Ashley T. Brundage, President & CEO, Empowering DifferencesEmail to Island Pitch, May 2026, after a live client event for GFOA
In the wild

Tested where it counts — in front of live audiences

The platform ran with real groups through spring 2026, including:

  • GFOA — Government Finance Officers Association (live client event)
  • MIQ USA — group empowerment survey
  • Forum on Workplace Inclusion, Minneapolis — two live groups
Shipped on feedback

She asked for a group report. It shipped that day.

After running the group survey at MIQ USA and GFOA, Ashley asked whether she could pull a single report for the whole room. Within the same conversation, the group report — a group-level version of the individual report, down to a final page listing every respondent — went live. A later request to re-order the growth areas so the lowest-scoring difference leads was turned around the same day.

Her IP stays hers. The empowerment algorithm and report logic live in Ashley’s own plugin and repo — NextWave is the platform it rides on, not the owner of the method.

Build your own bespoke experience

Have a method worth putting on stage?

Empowering Differences runs on the same NextWave platform you can start with today — live audience experiences, QR campaigns, member management, and a bespoke experience layer for the parts that are uniquely yours.

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