Context & Challenge:
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Policy research typically lives in dense whitepapers or PDFs stored on institutional websites with limited reach. These documents are hard to navigate, cannot be easily queried or updated, and lack real-time engagement tools. Stakeholders—including donors, journalists, and policymakers—often overlook critical insights because they aren’t accessible or interactive. As a result, think tanks struggle to demonstrate impact, gather usage data, and secure sustained funding or collaboration opportunities.
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Sara followed a research-to-product approach that enabled reusability and policy engagement at scale. She collaborated with a cross-functional Wisely team to transform a traditionally formatted report into an interactive asset that policymakers, donors, and researchers could engage with independently. Her approach included:

* Segmented Content: Divided her research by region (South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, U.S. Coasts) and by impact scenarios (economic, infrastructure, migration rates).

* Embedded Tools: Included forecast dashboards, annotated maps, policy timelines, and downloadable infographics.

* AI Configuration: Trained Wisely’s assistant to explain findings in policy language, answer scenario-based queries (e.g., "What happens if sea level rises 1m by 2040?"), and generate briefs by region.

* Access & Licensing: Offered open access to general summaries and gated modules for government and NGO partners with licensing agreements for reuse.
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Features Leveraged:
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1. Sara leveraged Wisely’s advanced functionality to ensure her policy research was both accessible and actionable at scale:Geographic tagging and interactive policy visualizations that supported more than 720 unique regional data queries, with the highest usage concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa (28%), South Asia (24%), and coastal U.S. states (15%).

2. AI assistant trained on 6,000+ lines of annotated climate policy text sourced from 14 published reports and 7 datasets, enabling highly contextual responses to over 500 user queries across 21 topic areas, including infrastructure risk, displacement triggers, and funding allocation efficiency.

3. Tiered content access (open/public vs. licensed/partnered), with over 70% of gated content accessed by verified institutional users across 14 countries—primarily by ministries of environment (31%), NGO consortia (22%), and university-affiliated policy labs (17%).

4. Downloadable toolkits, timelines, and citations used in 12 grant applications and linked in 5 international climate policy updates.

Results:

* 10,000+ total views in 6 months, with users spanning 28 countries

* 3 EdTech platforms licensed content modules for in-app use, reaching 25,000+ learners

* 4 university programs formally adopted the Collection as part of core curriculum

* 18 educators embedded modules in LMS platforms (e.g., Canvas, Blackboard)

* AI assistant handled 920+ questions, with 38% tied to decision neuroscience and 24% to learning model comparisons

* 2 nonprofit partners licensed modules for use in low-bandwidth classroom deployments across Africa and Southeast Asia

* 92% of survey respondents rated the Collection “very useful” or “extremely useful” for translating academic content into practice

* 1,278 unique visitors in the first 90 days (43% from government domains), spanning 22 countries

* $100K in new grants secured from international development funds including GIZ, UNDP, and the World Bank

* Referenced in 3 regional policy briefings, 2 UN-affiliated whitepapers, and one G20 climate policy working group

* 5X increase in engagement time (from 4.2 to 21.8 minutes per session)

* 732 documents downloaded or bookmarked by verified institutional users

* 68% of partners said the Collection improved their policy formulation process (based on post-access survey of 31 institutional users)

* 3 follow-up collaborations initiated with regional policy labs based on AI assistant usage patterns
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