LinkedIn Spotlights: Ralf Alwani

Ralf Alwani, CEO, Polyloop.?

As I work with organizations helping them navigate their?digital transformation journeys, I'm fortunate to have interaction with a broad spectrum of people and organizations delivering a variety of civic and business solutions. Polyloop is one such company. Led by their charismatic CEO, Ralf Alwani, Polyloop is focused on building a simple and intuitive, yet powerfully dynamic solution for monitoring outcomes and impacts of initiatives that may not have clear or traditional metrics attached to them.?

In the U.S., initiatives like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), is just one example where Polyloop could be an invaluable resource for helping states and cities track and evaluate programmatic and societal impacts of vast sums of funding. It's already meeting with tremendous success for similar programs in the UK. An incredible tool giving us a new way to determine just how well we're succeeding. Get to know more about Ralf in the Q&A below.

Welcome to the Spotlight? Ralf Alwani !

#digitaltransformation?#publicpolicy #societalimpact #urbanpractice #smartcities #IIJA

Ralf Alani, CEO/Founder, Polyloop

MG: Where do you work and what do you do?

RA: I’m co-founder and CEO of Polyloop.?Polyloop.io?is a first of its kind digital twin for strategic plans and goals, supporting cities and public organizations to deliver outcomes and societal impact. It normalizes strategic plans and KPI monitoring, improving the evidence base and capturing shared outcomes for evaluation and funding decision making.

My day-to-day right now consists of working with government departments, policy makers, and civil servants to effectively design a suite of policy and strategy tools to transform public spend and maximize program impact.?

Our goal is to become the most intuitive and inclusive data lake for public outcomes and best practice, enabling public servants to drive transformation and learn from one another on how to tackle a complex web of problems at scale--from neighborhood to national levels.?

MG: How long have you been doing that kind of work??

RA: We began developing a multi-disciplinary consultancy service for public bodies (?https://urbanscaleinterventions.com/) and government departments in 2019. From our research, we quickly noted the breakpoints within the lifecycle of strategy, design, and policy as we scaled, this lead us to develop Polyloop, which is celebrating its one-year anniversary this month! We've done a lot in a short period of time, Since 2019, we’ve designed banana museums in Ireland, developed COVID recovery plans, enhanced tourism offerings, created suicide prevention plans, secured major funds and partnerships for cities, and launched our first product (digital twin for strategy design, outcomes mapping, and evaluation) in the US and UK.?

MG: What drew you to that line of work (or to start your company)?

RA: I actually started my professional career as an architect and, during my time at the Royal College of Art in London, I learned that my way of thinking could be applied in the policy sphere. My Masters degree focused on the regeneration of a train line into a dispersed series of towns and villages along the tracks. I moved from architecture to policy change, to disrupting design within healthcare, to ultimately consulting for the client partners we have today. What excited me to start the studio was the ability to be purposely broad. We like applying our methodologies across diverse themes and sectors, so it’s the inclusivity and creativity of our approach that reaches the outcome achieved, not the particular discipline in which we're trained.?

MG: What has been your most significant professional achievement?

RA: I made the?Forbes 30 Under 30?list for social impact in government recently, but I would say my most significant professional achievement is probably bringing our team of 50 misfits together to refine and constantly improve the proposition we are creating.?

MG: What do you see as the biggest change in your organization/industry in the next 1-3 years?

RA: Massive culture change around digital transformation for how we track societal impact and value against public spend. If we are to manage some of the major challenges we face in the world today, such as climate, health, and talent/skills, then we need to disrupt the way our public bodies interact. They need to be transparent and make the shift to shared outcome driven economies, otherwise we won’t achieve much of anything.?

MG: What is the biggest initiative you’re working on right now?

RA: We are in the process of developing our digital twin rollout to capture the community impact and outcome monitoring of €1 Billion of funding for a European body across 17 cities in Northern Ireland and Ireland. Its enablement as a tool for civil servants could influence a decade or more of public expenditure decision-making.?

MG: What are the ways that you give back to your community, organization, industry, etc.?

RA: We have raised funds, designed, and operate a community cultural venue that has, in it's first year, engaged with more than 50,000 people locally in our neighborhood. We're working with local charities and even making our very own signature banana beer. We're excited and really enjoying building this one! (BananaBlock.org).?

MG: What advice do you have for building your network and staying connected?

RA: Authenticity and Openness. It’s not always easy, but find early adopters who are looking for change and disruption and stick with them. It doesn’t matter where you are on the journey, you always have something to offer. And remember, you can burn out from networking as much as you can from working so make sure you can sustain the great opportunities that spin out from all of your efforts.

MG: Are you reading any good books right now (or following a blog, podcast, or Twitter feed)?

RA: There are a couple of books I’m dipping into right now, both copy and podcast: 1)?Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making, by Tony Fadell--every member of our team has been given a copy. His approach to product build is inclusive and beyond just tech; 2) Fundraising, by Ryan Breslow; and 3) Good Economics for Hard Times, by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo--I'm revisiting this book because its always a good reminder with powerful principles.

MG: If someone wanted to get started in your field, what should they focus on?

RA: If it’s social impact in government, start small, build relationships, win a small contract and start the learning process of how to fix things and move fast. There is a great paper on this from the RSA on this?https://www.thersa.org/reports/move-fast-and-fix-things

MG: If you could wave a magic wand, what’s one thing you would change and why?

RA: I would change the fact that there is no Waitrose in Belfast, Northern Ireland where our HQ is based--for readers outside the UK, it’s the best English supermarket and reminds me of home! On a more serious note, I would change the way public spend is redistributed around a mission economy. An outcomes-driven approach would be up there as well, no more siloed actions across our institutions, we need to find holistic solutions for tackling the problems we face today.??

MG: Outside of family and work, what are you really passionate about?

RA: Food and wine, hence the supermarket response! I love to cook and unwind and dig into cultural conversations across all geographies, philosophies, and walks of life. My co-founder doesn’t agree when he looks at our bank statements!

MG: If you could take a dream trip anywhere, where would you go??

RA: I’m very lucky to get the chance to travel considerably with my work and meet great people along the way. Right now I would be happy to be sitting in Lisboa, Portugal, in July--great food, great people and great energy.?

MG: Do you have a favorite quote or pearls of wisdom that have inspired you?

RA: “A society grows great when communities plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” --Greek Proverb

MG: What’s the best way for people to get in contact with you?

RA: We are always looking for talented people to join our mission or develop synergy to achieve it, you can reach me by email at:?[email protected]