Rocket Innovation Studio: Community and Academic Partnerships

Rocket Innovation Studio seeks to impact the outcome in our local communities in Windsor, Canada, and have the positive effect Rocket Companies® has had across the United States.

Something I have always been passionate about is engaging with our local communities and schools and joining Rocket Innovation Studio has given me the opporutnity to do just that.

Engaging with our local community and academic partners is an effective way to increase brand awareness, establish a positive reputation and grow our business. Furthermore, it allows our team members to establish meaningful connections and give back to the community we live and work in.

Our team members want their voices heard and want to be involved in things that matter. Having a sense of purpose that goes outside of their day-to-day tasks increases team member engagement and happiness in the workplace. When team members are inspired and passionate about different initiatives, great things are bound to happen. A good way to do that is to build a community engagement initiative to create opportunities for team members to engage with our community and each other.

Rocket Innovation Studio team members have had the pleasure of working closely with a few different community partners such as United Way, New Beginnings and Habitat for Humanity. Our team members participated in many different engagements such as Career Navigation Sessions with United Way On Track To Success students and the Summer Eats Program.  

Rocket Innovation Studio team members also created the Living in My Shoes simulation, working in partnership with United Way Windsor-Essex. This simulation helps community members learn the challenges faced by a fictional 19-year-old Windsor resident who is struggling to make ends meet earning minimum wage while taking care of two young children.

In addition to community partnerships, Rocket Innovation Studio is committed to developing relationships with our academic partners as well.

Rocket Innovation Studio has had over eight co-op and intern cycles since we opened our doors in 2018 and this has resulted in five full-time team members. In addition, we have students that return to us for multiple work terms because they enjoyed their experience so much.

Having a co-op/intern program provides many benefits to the students and us as the employer. Students are given the chance to put into practice what they’ve been learning and gain real word experience. The students also have an opportunity to expand their professional network and immerse themselves into the culture at Rocket Companies.

Our academic partnerships are part of our long-term talent brand strategy and as the world of technology is always changing, these students bring new knowledge and fresh perspective to our company. It also gives our team members an opportunity to provide mentorship, build on their leadership abilities and evaluate the students while they are here with us.

We currently work with various post-secondary schools across Ontario and have built solid relationships with local schools like University of Windsor and St. Clair College. These relationships have given us a chance to get to know the students and faculty by participating in a variety of engagements such as workshops, job shadows, career fairs, hackathons and fireside chats with students.

Most recently Rocket Innovation Studio joined forces with University of Windsor Continuing Education as an industry partner for the Applied Leadership Program.  As industry partners, our team had the opportunity to work with the faculty from Continuing Education by providing feedback on the program curriculum. Additionally, we were able to support by offering ideas around case studies based on challenges we face in the technology industry which will be part of the student’s final capstone project for the course.

While we are focused on community engagement and our academic partnerships, we are also focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. Partnering up with local organizations like WE-tech always brings fresh perspectives to engagements. This October, we worked together with WE-tech, University of Windsor and Rocket Mortgage^TM to bring together an incredible panel of “Women Who Impact Tech” to network with the women in STEM programs at the university.

As we wrap up 2022 and look into the future, we know we have made an impact and that our team members are seeing it too. We want to continue to provide new opportunities that spark bonds between people, places we work and our culture.