A British Columbia-based startup is trying to turn intent into action when it comes to Indigenous reconciliation with a new app it soft-launched earlier this month.
Laurel Anne Stark, Bridge
“Right now, only a small percentage of companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange actually have reconciliation action plans, and most are just kind of brochures and good intentions.”
Bridge is a Victoria-based startup whose AI-driven platform, Bridge Impact AI, offers tools for organizations and individuals to measure and implement Indigenous reconciliation practices, as well as fund youth-led community projects and learn about Indigenous culture and history.
Founded by Laurel Anne Stark and led by a group of Indigenous advisors, Bridge launched the beta version of its app at Victoria Tech Week.
“It’s basically an application that turns intention into action,” Stark said. “Over 80 percent of Canadians want to be involved in reconciliation. We all know a lot of information, but the next steps aren’t always clear.”
Bridge’s platform connects individual users with measurable actions they can take, like philanthropic giving or personal education, while providing individualized “reconciliation plans” to give structure to the process. There is also an organizational tier to the app that can run an assessment on the organization’s reconciliation plans and develop implementation action plans going forward.
“Right now, organizations are pretty much just self-reporting,” Stark said. “With Bridge for organizations, one of the benefits is we provide third-party verification of actions being taken.”
Evolving need
Stark, who is not Indigenous herself, grew Bridge out of Remarkable Communications, a startup she founded in 2019. Remarkable Communications is a communications and tech firm that serves indigenous communities and organizations, supporting initiatives around reconciliation, language, and cultural preservation, as well as community engagement. Among the initiatives borne from that company is the Remarkable Gives Foundation, which provides weekly micro-grants of $150 to Indigenous youth in arts and athletics.
Stark said that program exceeded her company’s ability to sustain it, with over 30 applications coming in each week. That eventually led her to partner with Victoria’s tech community to develop Bridge, which began as a philanthropic giving portal before evolving into the reconciliation resource unveiled earlier this month.
“That was the impetus behind building it as a web app,” she said. “That way people didn’t have to go through me, but could fund the kids directly.”
Indigenous data
Bridge’s platform is currently acting as a business rather than a non-profit, but noted that it is in the process of applying and navigating the complex regulatory hurdles needed to gain non-profit status. Instead, Bridge takes 15 percent of the donations received and uses them to sustain the business’ operations. Stark said the company also sources revenue through its organizational tier, which is a paid service.
“We’re still in beta right now, so we’re looking for organizational partners to co-develop the tech with,” Stark said. “The basics are there, it functions, but it’s better to co-create something with customers than build something that may potentially not work for them.”
Stark has some partners already. In developing the app, she brought on a board of Indigenous advisors that includes a hereditary chief from the Lyackson First Nation, a filmmaker and language holder, and a co-founder of the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council. That board has been instrumental in developing Bridge’s AI advisory function, which Stark said is trained on datasets around Indigenous knowledge provided by the board and its network.
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BetaKit reached out to members of the advisory board, but its members were unavailable to speak with us by press time.
“The intention behind this is to build a data set that is built from the Indigenous worldview, based on Indigenous knowledge … because the majority of AI, like Claude or Gemini, they pull from colonial data sets that have bias built in,” Stark said.
Because those data sets vary from nation to nation and region to region, Stark said Bridge’s AI is still quite limited, and primarily focused on BC-based First Nations and Indigenous groups, pulling from the BC Union of Indian Chiefs’ benchmarks for reconciliation.
“We’re pretty focused on BC; This is where our roots are,” Stark said. “There’s certainly a risk of painting all Indigenous communities with one brush, but when it comes to reconciliation principles and fundamentals, they’re quite similar across the majority of communities … so those are pretty clearly outlined.”
Looking toward the future
While still in its earliest stages, Stark said she and the advisory board have high hopes for Bridge, both in terms of its reach and impact. Stark said she hopes the platform can help change the corporate culture around reconciliation, tying progress to something more concrete than platitudes.
“I would like to see organizations with action plans that are tied to milestones and show progress. Right now, only a small percentage of companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange actually have reconciliation action plans, and most are just kind of brochures and good intentions,” Stark said.
“We’d also like to see adoption throughout Canada, and then likely we’ll be expanding into Australia, because they do have a lot of momentum in their reconciliation area as well,” she added. “We’re going down there for reconciliation week in spring of 2027.”
Feature image courtesy of Bridge Impact AI.