ORIGIN: Connecting Culture to the Modern-Day Workplace Through New Technology

Melissa Hardy-Giles is in a win-win situation: a member of the Red Rock Indian Band in northern Ontario, Hardy-Giles is the president and CEO of ORIGIN, a company she launched in 2009. ORIGIN provides innovative virtual reality technology to its clients, the majority of who are Indigenous peoples and communities. As Hardy-Giles shares, “Getting to work with communities and getting to see impacts on individuals and families as a whole and communities as a whole … [gives her great satisfaction.] And it’s awesome to be able to promote our own Indigenous culture for a living. It’s awesome because I get to share cultural teachings through virtual reality with Indigenous and non-Indigenous people across our nation.” Hardy-Giles realizes the work ORIGIN is doing is vital. “Of course, it’s an important role to be a facilitator in bringing resources to the community,” she said, “[a]nd it allows me to be a role model as well for those who may not see themselves following a traditional career path. We’re changing lives and that’s the whole jive for me. And that’s our whole why. It’s like there’s too many negative things that are out there for our youth right now. And to be able to motivate and get them excited and trying to guide them on their career path, is most rewarding.” After working for a decade at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay as a senior administrator and human resource practitioner, Hardy-Giles and her husband Paul founded Hardy Giles Consulting (HGC) in 2006 the precursor to ORIGIN. This company specialized in creating innovative approaches and solutions for training and planning. “The freedom got me excited,” Hardy-Giles said of having her own company. “But at the same time the freedom to help people and kind of make my own boundaries and my own rules of how I wanted to do it, there was no holding back at that point.” One of HGC’s first projects was working on a life-skills training program in Hearst, Ontario. Hardy-Giles knew it was necessary to incorporate some form of technology into that program: “Just because our communities are remote, they shouldn’t be left outside when it comes to technology. And a lot of times they are, just because getting bandwidth and everything up north is really, really hard.” HGC brought in heavy equipment simulators and training to communities via a mobile classroom. The simulators were replicas of the machines utilized in the construction industry. As Hardy-Giles notes, “This was our way into helping our communities to be a part of different types of construction projects that are happening all the time in our northern communities.” Turning now to ORIGIN that has received its share of praise for the way it has conducted business since its inception. The company has also gotten much more recognition since it created ImmersiveLink, a virtual reality platform, in 2019. “That was basically to take a step further of being able to interact and be a part of the training rather than just seeing the Virtual Reality productions,” Hardy-Giles said. She also knew her company could provide various educational aspects: “We realized the power of our reach and that’s when we decided to launch a cultural library so at the same time, whoever has our headsets and who has subscribed to our ImmersiveLink library will also be educated and have the opportunity to be educated in how diverse our culture is” (Stranger, 2021). Using Virtual Reality, ImmersiveLink allows individuals to take part in life skills programs. They can quickly acquire skills in time management, budgeting, and self-care, allowing them to prosper in their lives. ImmersiveLink also …