Last week the YMCA Calgary officially reopened its Health & Wellness facilities and welcomed back their members and the public, for the first time since the COVID pandemic forced a temporary closure back in Mid-March.

“We have lots of clients who are constantly bringing us very interesting data challenges to solve. But with the YMCAs, we are tackling something that is beyond both organizations”

In conjunction with months of hard work led by YMCA senior leadership, YMCA Calgary also looked towards Calgary-based AI and analytics company, White Whale, for assistance. Given the constantly evolving rules, regulations and distancing requirements, White Whale was tasked with creating advanced AI analytics models to evaluate the risk profiles of various potential scenarios and help determine an optimal re-opening strategy.

Using DeepSea, White Whale’s end-to-end AI platform, YMCA was able to access large amounts of internal and external datasets and ML-based financial models in an interface that is simple to use and easy to understand. Insights from these models provided clarity on their reopening plan and schedule.

“White Whale has been a long-term partner of YMCA Calgary and YMCAs across Canada. Their team and software have provided us actionable recommendations at critical times based on science and hard data. We count on White Whale’s models in numerous areas of our operation including membership retention, program optimization, financial forecasting, and more importantly, our community program design to further our cause as a charitable organization,” said Shannon Doram, YMCA Calgary President and CEO.

“We have lots of clients who are constantly bringing us very interesting data challenges to solve. But with the YMCAs, we are tackling something that is beyond both organizations,” said Jack Williams, Head of Operations, White Whale. “The outputs from our models are directly impacting the lives of our friends, neighbours, and our community at a large scale. This means in all aspects of our solution design, we are taking a stakeholder perspective, that we are all in this together. And I think that is particularly relevant given our current context.”

For more information about YMCA Calgary’s reopening plans, please visit: https://www.ymcacalgary.org/faqs/

About White Whale:

White Whale is a growing software technology company that empowers businesses to turn their data into insights with AI Analytics. White Whale’s AI platform, DeepSea, provides machine learning and AI optimization solutions to a variety of industries including Energy, Health and Wellness, Real Estate, Not-for-Profit and Professional Sports. Clients include Boardwalk, YMCA Calgary, The Calgary Flames, United Way Calgary, Black Swan Energy and a number of Canada’s largest energy companies.

About YMCA Calgary:

YMCA Calgary is a charity dedicated to building healthy communities. For 118 years, YMCA Calgary has been committed to nurturing the potential of children, youth and families, promoting healthy living and fostering social responsibility within the community.