The Story
When Sylvain Dufour began serving as a mentor and coach for employees at Peepul, an education-focused nonprofit in India, the experience drove home a valuable lesson in his own professional journey.
“You go into this type of engagement to give of your knowledge, but you also have to be ready to receive their feedback,” said Sylvain, founder and CEO of Edgius and a skills-based volunteer through the Alteryx for Good program since early 2021. “The real power comes when you go in with an open mind, asking questions together and finding the answers together.”
Sylvain spends between 1-4 hours a week in online sessions with assorted groups of Peepul employees and one-to-one discussions targeting specific organizational challenges or goals. In addition to helping expand the nonprofit’s Alteryx know-how, he draws upon 25 years of experience building more effective employee networks and analytics-driven decision-making within organizations.
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Sharing knowledge and education is my main focus. It's why I started to do more and more coaching in my career as well. And I think that's something that is undervalued or underestimated. — Sylvain Dufour, Alteryx for Good pro bono coach and mentor
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“We thank our lucky stars that we met Sylvain when we did,” said Girish Ananthanarayanan, Chief Operating Officer at Peepul, which works closely with India’s national, state, and local governments to foster more meaningful student-teacher engagement and improved educational outcomes.
From “helping our team build their muscle” on Peepul’s newly deployed Alteryx platform to providing guidance on other capacity-building projects, Girish said Sylvain’s pro bono contributions have “opened up new vistas of possibility” for Peepul.
With his coaching, the data analytics team built an automated workflow that transformed four hours of number-crunching effort each week into a one-minute job. More broadly, Girish said Sylvain has helped Peepul navigate challenges tied to its rapid growth over the past 18 months.
“The organizational network analysis we conducted was an eye-opener” in terms of opportunities for the nonprofit’s leaders to better support various individuals and teams, he said. “I realized I was not as connected to certain sub-teams as I wanted to be, and am consciously trying to build those bridges.”
A native of Toronto, Sylvain launched Edgius in 2020 with the mission of helping organizations become more innovative, productive, and adaptive by improving their analytics and decision making. Since much of Edgius’ work incorporates Alteryx software—which Sylvain also used in his previous role as Advanced Analytics senior program manager at TELUS—volunteering through Alteryx for Good felt like a natural path to take.
“When I started my own company, I always wanted a portion of the business to help nonprofits,” he said. His experiences working with Peepul have only stoked his enthusiasm.
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By combining Alteryx for Good plus the type of coaching that I do, I can help people in an organization with much more than just learning the technology—I help them use Alteryx to become more efficient. — Sylvain Dufour
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“We clicked instantly,” he said. “Things got more and more interesting as our focus evolved from the technology itself to how Peepul could use Alteryx to solve specific business problems or answer specific questions about their organization.”
Beyond helping employees get up to speed on basic and advanced Alteryx capabilities, Sylvain also uses the software to support coaching activities centered on optimizing Peepul’s workplace culture. This includes analyzing how various networks of employees interact, communicate, and collaborate.
“We’ve been able to uncover a lot of new insights about who is working with whom and where there might be gaps in communication,” he said. “As we build out our coaching program and look at the map of employees across the organization, one of the things we can do is choose which people we want to put together so that we can help them form more effective networks.”
The Impact
Based on his experiences at Peepul, Sylvain said he hopes many more professionals will consider joining the skills-based volunteer ranks.
“It’s easy for anyone to say they’re already so busy with other responsibilities,” he acknowledged. “But if they’re able to invest just an hour or two, and it doesn't even need to be every week, that’s worth so much to a nonprofit organization.”
Sylvain also urged prospective volunteers, especially those who are early in their careers, to trust in the value of what they can offer.
“You don't have to be an expert; you just need a little more experience than the people you’re there to help,” he said. “It could be even better if you're not too advanced — because then you will be able to relate to their challenges.”
Learn more about Alteryx for Good.
