"Don’t Just Talk About Culture—Build It: A Live Volunteer Experience"

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In this interactive session, participants will step inside a live volunteer activation designed to demonstrate how shared service can create connection, belonging, and purpose at work. Guided by Baylee El-Bakri and supported by a professional event host, attendees will work together to build financial literacy board games that help young people develop practical money-management skills.

 

The activity is more than a volunteer project. It is a real-time demonstration of how thoughtful experience design can help colleagues move beyond small talk, collaborate with purpose, and connect their individual contributions to a meaningful shared outcome. Throughout the session, Baylee will unpack the elements that make the experience work—including cause alignment, accessibility, facilitation, storytelling, and reflection.

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Attendees will then translate what they experienced into a simple action plan for their own organization. They will identify one culture or connection goal, choose a cause or shared purpose that supports it, and outline an experience they can realistically put into action.

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Participants will leave having created a tangible educational resource for young people in the local community—and with a repeatable framework for designing employee experiences that are memorable, inclusive, and grounded in genuine impact.

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Participants will leave ready to:​​​

1. Use a purpose-to-participation framework to connect a volunteer experience to a specific workplace culture goal, such as belonging, cross-team connection, or employee well-being.

2. Design an inclusive, high-participation volunteer experience by making intentional choices around the activity, facilitation, accessibility, timing, and cause education.

3. Create an actionable plan for their own organization by identifying a culture goal, target audience, community need, potential activity, and one way to measure success.

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Speaker Bio:

Baylee El-Bakri helps organizations turn employee volunteering into meaningful experiences that strengthen connection, belonging, and culture. She partners with companies such as AWS, Wayfair, Kraft Heinz, and Trane Technologies to design and deliver purpose-driven programs across in-person, virtual, and hybrid workplaces—from intimate team activations to large-scale conference experiences.

 

Baylee’s work sits at the intersection of employee engagement, experience design, and social impact. She guides clients through the practical details that determine whether a volunteer program truly works: choosing the right activity, making participation accessible, connecting the experience to a community need, and creating a moment employees will remember. Through her work with global organizations, she has seen firsthand that volunteering is most powerful when it is not treated as a one-off activity, but as an intentional way to bring people together.