We build the tech capacity of our clients, bridging existing organizational structures and resourcing with emerging tools and innovative research techniques.
Ground-truth signals—spoken, posted, recorded—are the earliest indicators of change.
Technology should clarify, not overwhelm.
David grew up in rural Vermont. A bucolic postcard of snow, hills, and Holstein cows. Vermont has a fierce independent streak. Its residents take pride in the smallness and managing their communities face-to-face. His career began in state policymaking. David saw that what moved educated politicians to break form and find uncommon agreement wasn’t data or research, but authentic, personal stories from local residents. These anecdotes hit viscerally and linger. Channelling a localized narrative had the uncommon capacity to send a person to bed believing something different than when they had awoken.
Later, David had a chance to support the National Institutes of Health on an inspiring mission: clinical research trials for a promising vaccine against Ebola Virus Disease. NIH researchers needed to enroll survivors and other participants in the trials in Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere. Thousands had already died. Stigma and misinformation outweighed abstract mortality statistics, keeping people from enrolling as rumors and denial spread on radio and social media and delaying clinical trials. Echoes of the Vermont State House, of the town square, were appearing an ocean away.
Global norms and expert guidance are severely challenged by hyperlocal anecdotes. The messenger matters. This is why we founded RootWise. The name is an homage: stay close to the ground. To understand what information is not just informing debate but actually changing behavior and shaping beliefs. This is why we build tools that help us truly listen to the communities where we work.
FounderDavid Cyprian on LinkedIn
David believes that well-designed systems can help us see and understand the world better. He is passionate about building tools that create clarity. David's approach blends pragmistism and innovation for projects in public health, public education, national security, and humanitarian assistance that span his local community to across the globe.
Prior to RootWise, David led a product team that implemented custom Machine Learning models to predict sentiment analysis on near real-time data at the big data analytics company Novetta (now part of Accenture Federal Services).
David lives in the Washington D.C. area.
Director of Business Development
Kyle Martel blends approaches from art and science to tackle complex, large-scale challenges. His career lives at the intersection of public policy and human emotion, where storytelling, data, and systems design meet real-world impact.
Kyle has worked across issues ranging from national power-building with state legislators, to modernizing voter registration systems to expand access, to building community support for large-scale renewable energy projects. In the international health space, his work has focused on curing preventable blindness in remote and underserved communities across Africa and Southeast Asia, translating field-level realities into action at a global scale.
Prior to joining RootWise, Kyle worked in public policy and communications for a large hospital system in the Northeast United States, where he focused on refining storytelling practices to drive community understanding, trust, and change.