Cortico is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded and led by MIT Professor Deb Roy and an expert team of technologists, community organizers, and qualitative researchers – with over 300 partners putting our methods into practice.

In cooperation with MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication, Cortico has refined an approach that blends human-centered design, responsible technology, and collaborative listening.

Through this work, lived experience becomes shared understanding — turning real conversations into insight and action — empowering young people to lead through listening; informing journalism rooted in community voices; helping businesses better understand their customers and communities; enabling local decision-makers to make more informed choices; and creating a channel for foundations to hear real needs from the communities they serve.

Town halls, surveys, and focus groups have long been essential to organizations large and small – but they can also make it hard to encourage genuine interaction and amplify real voices.

Cortico offers a new alternative, or a complement, to this legacy toolkit: scalable, measurable qualitative research based on authentic inputs. We help your community, organization, or company harness the power of recorded, small-group dialogue to build a new kind of conversation. To understand – and act upon – what might otherwise go unheard.

And Cortico’s collaborative listening approach puts the power of interpretation into the hands of your own community members.