Empact Studio

Work With Us

Community-Driven Offerings

An end-to-end strategic consultancy for empathetic brands, stories, and experiences.

Empact Studio is a consulting practice specializing in community design—a heart-led approach that brings together people and perspectives. At Empact, community is not an afterthought—it’s the foundation of meaningful change.

Have you seen Empact Community? Our ability to thoughtfully design and grow our own community programming makes us more qualified to support partners.

Let's Collaborate

Leading With Purpose

Rubini Naidu founded Empact to cultivate meaningful connections between people and communities. Through Empact Studio, she extends core community engagement techniques to bridge strategy, design, and storytelling with community insight. Rubini works closely with clients to define goals, uncover opportunities, and assemble tailored teams of designers and strategists that drive lasting impact.

Born and based in Detroit, Rubini is a documentary photographer, community designer, and strategist with degrees from Columbia and Carnegie Mellon and experience as a Fulbright Scholar in India. She brings empathy, curiosity, and an equity-centered approach to every project, helping brands and organizations create work that resonates with communities.

Our Services

Facilitation & Research

We create safe, inclusive spaces that surface insight, build trust, and generate actionable learnings. Through workshops, focus groups, and participatory research, we ensure community voices inform every stage of your work.

  • We create safe, inclusive spaces where communities can speak openly, listen deeply, and reflect together. These dialogues generate rich qualitative insights that inform strategy, design, and storytelling with authenticity.

  • Our mixed-methods research goes beyond surface-level feedback to uncover the motivations, needs, and lived experiences of your audiences. We integrate our signature Community Circles with further research and persona development into meaningful insight reports you can act on.

  • From single sessions to multi-day retreats, we design participatory experiences that spark creativity, deepen connection, and move teams or communities toward shared understanding and aligned action.

  • We support organizations in strengthening team culture and clarifying future visions. Through guided conversations and custom facilitation, arrive at future-proof alignment.

Strategy & Community Engagement

We help organizations align around clear, purpose-driven action. From brand and content strategy to community engagement and impact planning, we guide teams to create strategies that are actionable, equitable, and meaningful.

  • We design and support initiatives that bring people together in meaningful ways—whether it’s a pop-up event, a long-term campaign, or a co-designed program. Each activation is rooted in trust-building and shared purpose.

  • Defining what makes your organization distinct and ensuring your brand meets diverse audience needs. Crafting intentional names and frameworks grounded in research and meaning.

  • Crafting compelling language that communicates your purpose, values, and vision through effective tone of voice and copy.

  • We help you define your key messages and plan strategic content in a way that resonates with your audiences.

Visual Storytelling

We channel the power of image and narrative towards deeper meaning and shared humanity. Through a lens of empathy and collaboration, our visual work speaks with communities and their stories.

  • We use photography and video as tools for documentation, reflection, and healing. Whether for campaigns our internal programming, these stories are deeply grounded in the lived experiences of individuals and communities.

  • Working directly with participants to co-create narratives, our collaborative approach actively centers voices that are too often sidelined. This can extend from community members, organizational stakeholders, artists. and others to ensure authenticity and agency.

  • Through visual storytelling experiences that live in public space, we connect everyday people to place, memory, and each other, transforming public space into sites of dialogue and visibility.

  • We design and facilitate participatory arts experiences that invite people to tell their own stories through visual media. These projects foster creative expression, collective memory, and a sense of ownership in the storytelling process—turning audiences into authors.

Design

We offer design services rooted in community insight, strategic alignment, and visual clarity. We believe in design that is accessible, emotionally resonant, and purpose-driven.

  • We develop brand identities that reflect your values and resonate with the communities you serve. Every element—from color to typography—is designed with intention and your brand story in mind.

  • We guide the visual and narrative expression of your brand across mediums. From campaigns to exhibitions, our creative direction ensures everything feels cohesive, compelling, and true to your voice.

  • We design digital experiences that are intuitive, beautiful, and accessible. Whether you're building a website or an app, we make sure visitors feel welcomed, informed, and connected.

How We Work, Together

At Empact, we partner with brands and organizations with a vision towards the long term, embedding ourselves as collaborators rather than just vendors. Our goal is to help teams sustain impact, strengthen capacity, and translate insight into action across strategy, storytelling, and design.

From flexible project approaches to retainer-based engagements, we strive to be true partners in scaling, sustaining, and deepening impact.

  • Coordinating teams, timelines, and workflows so initiatives stay on track.

  • Strengthening internal capacity through workshops, mentorship, and knowledge transfer.

  • We help design structures, processes, and evaluation systems that ensure community-centered work continues to thrive over time.

  • Partnering continuously to refine approaches and adapt to evolving needs.

Aligned Partnerships

We partner with groups seeking to deepen their approach to community engagement. These are often BIPOC and women-led initiatives, and include the following entities:

  • Nonprofit Organizations

  • Purpose-Driven Studios and Agencies

  • Companies and Local Businesses

  • Employee Resource Groups

  • Universities and Schools

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In Collaboration With

Thomas Savage

Creative Reaction Lab, Director of Learning Innovation and Design

“My partnership with Empact began in spring 2024, during a pivotal moment in my search for a thought partner who could meaningfully amplify youth as transformative leaders in their communities. Empact was exactly that—and more.

In June 2024, Rubini brought her brilliance to our Young Leaders for Health Equity and Civic Change convening, leading a powerful session on identity and storytelling. It wasn’t just a highlight—it was the moment that resonated most with our participants. Her intentional facilitation created a space for deep reflection, allowing youth to ground themselves in their experiences and connect their personal narratives to larger systems of change.

Since then, Empact’s influence has extended well beyond that session. Their collaborative spirit and storytelling expertise have helped shape our program strategy and strengthened my own leadership. Partnering with Empact hasn’t just enhanced our work—it’s elevated it.”

Let’s Collaborate

We enjoy meaningful collaborations and would love to hear from you. Please complete the form below or contact us directly at hello@empact.community.

You can also connect with our Founder, Rubini Naidu, on LinkedIn.