We are your AI implementation partner. Integrating new technologies into existing social programs requires careful attention. Our focus is on building durable AI solutions that fit within existing operations, analytics, and planning processes.

We’re an engineering team by design. When you're working with sensitive data and real users, stability, security, and usability aren’t optional. We bring deep engineering experience, to solve the data infrastructure and systems challenges that too often slow down public service work.

Testimonials

“Brocade's data science team has done something I have never seen before - land, make sense of a messy situation, bring people together around a common plan, and build maintainable and reusable products that function after they move on.”

— Pim Welle, Chief Data Scientist, Allegheny County Department of Human Services

“Brocade brings high emotional intelligence coupled with quick situational analysis. They can read a room well and move stakeholders to consensus, or tease out unseen consensus.”

— Adam Kenney, Managing Director of Programs, Bridgeway Capital

“With Brocade’s facilitation and with good input from the Board, the result was a focused and realistic, but challenging, long-range plan. The whole process was executed with efficiency, humor, and excellent insights into our long-term hopes.”

— Jay Johnston, Jr., Board Chair, Polegreen Foundation

Selected Work

Allegheny County Department of Human Services

We developed and deployed machine learning models for estimating the probabilities of specific public health outcomes. These models are used to target and evaluate programs. In either case, a model run could generate 4 million predictions. Supporting a scheduled use case and an on-demand use case required the ability to use the same ETL logic and predictive models with two different triggers. Meanwhile, predictions produced through a daily batch process could be automatically ingested into other systems directly from the analytics database.

Impact Tech Company

We built an AWS-native data mart, consolidating product, marketing, and financial data into a unified, governed model. As part of the engagement, we rationalized overlapping sources, eliminated redundant transformations, and added monitoring and alerting to ensure data accuracy and freshness. The result was a set of maintainable workflows that significantly reduced cycle time for answering core operational questions.

Achievement First

In partnership with one of the largest charter school networks in the country, we used AI to detect inconsistencies in hiring and retention practices. We were able to quantify the extent to which the network's talent management practices were aligning with its mission and goals. The work involved developing customized data infrastructure to support predictive models, and led to more effective and equitable talent management aligned with the network's mission and goals.

AI Engineering

Our team has led AI engineering engagements for organizations of varying size, mission, and sector.