Partner Spotlight: Alnylam’s Care Navigators and Challengers Collective

GenUnity is proud to share the success of a recent collaboration with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Cause Consulting, in support of the Care Navigators in the Challengers Collective. This two-year cohort brings together representatives from Boston Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Whittier Street Health Center alongside Alnylam stakeholders. This work marked a meaningful step forward for the Collective, and for what’s possible when corporations invest deliberately in the people doing the frontline work of patient navigation. 

GenUnity’s role in the Challengers Collective was to bring a people-centered, empathetic approach to cohort-building and collaborative problem solving, empowering Care Navigators by facilitating real-time knowledge sharing and improving the visibility of their impact on the patient community.

It started with listening. GenUnity supported the design of 1:1 listening sessions with Care Navigators from each partner organization. Alongside Cause Consulting, we identified trends from the interviews and proposed a refined vision and desired outcomes for the cohort, which we reviewed with Alnylam to shape the structure of the Collective’s programming. We stayed in close partnership with Life Science Cares Boston and others also supporting the Care Navigators, sharing best practices in service of the larger movement toward this work.

In June 2026, following the program’s design, GenUnity facilitated programming and informed evaluation design. We drew on our experience building issue-based leadership cohorts that leverage lived experience as expertise to inform decision-making, advising on cultural competence and dialogue norms, and helping the cohort formalize its goals, purpose, and outcomes. Our team then debriefed with Cause Consulting to produce a summary of findings, best practices, and feedback that will carry the Collective into their future cohort meetings.

“Partnering with GenUnity was integral to lay a strong foundation for the Challengers Collective,” said Arun Skaria, Alnylam’s Head of DEI & Corporate Responsibility. “They are experts at elevating the lived experiences of everyone to promote constructive facilitated dialogue and collective problem solving. For us, it was imperative that community voice and perspective shaped the structure of this programming, not just the content.”

On leveraging GenUnity’s programming for this project, GenUnity’s Senior Program Manager Asha Kuziwa reflects: “The opening module of GenUnity’s Civic Leadership Program, “People,” is built entirely around storytelling. We emphasize the importance of articulating the ‘why’ i.e. their purpose for being engaged in this work. Participants meet directly with residents, direct service providers, and community leaders, creating space to share their own experiences, before any systems-level analysis begins. We took this same approach co-designing the Care Navigators program, with the ultimate goal of turning lived experience into a shared strategy for the future.”

We believe this work succeeded in fostering meaningful connection and emphasized the importance of shared ownership in solving tough problems in our community together. We’re proud of the momentum we helped build for the Collective going forward.

The Challengers Collective engages nonprofit partner leaders, Care Navigators, and Alnylam employees via working groups and convenings to capture patient insights from the field, advance innovations, and amplify the importance of the Care Navigator role in improving health outcomes. To learn more, see here.

Our Partnership History: Alnylam & GenUnity

From the start, Alnylam recognized the power of cross-sector collaboration and the importance of developing community-rooted leaders. They were among the earliest believers in GenUnity’s Health Equity (HE) programming, providing one of the first investments to sponsor a convening of health equity employers in 2022. This contribution helped us bring together mission-aligned employers, civic leaders, and community voices to co-create a vision for what equitable health systems could look like in Greater Boston.

That belief extended beyond financial support. Between 2022 and 2025, Alnylam’s sponsorship and willingness to uplift our program as a professional development opportunity enabled the participation of their staff to participate in our community leadership programs, building the trust and relationships needed to drive change on the issues, such as housing and healthcare, that affect them most directly.

Thanks to Alnylam’s ongoing partnership, GenUnity has been able to transform early ideas into sustained impact.

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