Making a Big Impact With a Little Humanity

How human-in-the-loop AI is helping Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America meet their mentoring mission

For the nation’s preeminent one-to-one youth mentoring organization, It Takes Little to be Big.

“Our mission is to ensure every child has the support, guidance, and opportunities they need to thrive, regardless of their background or circumstances, and so by matching adult mentors we help shape brighter futures through positive relationships, trust, and consistent support,” according to Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America’s CTO Travis Gibson.

“I was drawn here just because of its profound impact on young lives and the opportunity to leverage technology to amplify that impact.”

Travis Gibson

For 120 years, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) has helped young people realize their full potential. Today, through a network of 30,000 volunteers working in over 5,000 communities throughout the country, Big Brothers Big Sisters helps create a future where all young people are empowered with a plan for their future and a mentor whose impact lasts a lifetime.

By partnering with parents, guardians, volunteers, and others in the community, the organization is committed to guiding young people to achieve higher aspirations, greater confidence, better relationships, avoidance of risky behaviors, and educational success. Meaningful monitored matches between adult volunteers (“Bigs”) and young people (“Littles”), ages 5 through young adulthood is indispensable to their cause.

Gibson’s mandate is to modernize the organization’s technology ecosystem to better serve their agencies, volunteers, and the youth they mentor. That means addressing cybersecurity risks, reducing technical debt, and improving their capabilities while also harnessing emerging technologies such as human-in-the-loop AI (HITL) to transform volunteer engagement, match mentors and mentees, and support strategic decision-making.

“Ultimately, my mission is to create technology that empowers not just for efficiency’s sake, but to help match more kids with life changing mentors faster, more effectively and with greater long-term success.”

With 120 years of experience in fostering mentorship relationships, Big Brothers Big Sisters has continually evolved its ability to transform knowledge into action. Today, technology plays a critical role in helping the organization surface insights that drive stronger outcomes for youth, families, and communities.

Said Gibson, “AI is changing that by unlocking data in ways that were previously time consuming or just not practical. For example, AI helps us analyze unstructured data such as notes from match coordinators or volunteer interviews that surfaces, key trends, and insights. Instead of our people having to sift through thousands of records AI can highlight patterns and why volunteers drop off, what challenges certain mentees face, or where engagement efforts are most successful.”

Gibson’s team is developing an AI smart match engine that leverages both structured and unstructured data to enhance match recommendations for staff. “Deeper, more personal insights are often buried in unstructured data such as interviews, emails, and case notes, and AI allows us to extract and analyze this data at scale, helping us move beyond surface level criteria to create truly impactful matches at scale,” Gibson explained, an endeavor that wasn’t feasible before HITL AI.

Traditionally, the volunteer matching process required manual data reviews to assess key factors such as demographics, geography, lived experiences, interests, dislikes, career, aspirations, personality traits, and other match criteria. “With AI, we can go even deeper, analyzing sentiment for interviews and allowing us to uncover meaningful connections faster and with greater precision, ultimately leading to stronger, more successful matches.”

AI also reduces the anxieties of the caring staff who give from the heart to make sure every match is as perfect as possible “AI is helping us reduce that staff anxiety,” Gibson noted. “AI-driven insights help staff make data driven decisions, freeing them to focus on the human aspects of mentorship rather than administrative guesswork.”

Business partnerships support a sweeping mission

“I look for partners who understand that technology isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about empowering people and driving transformation,” Gibson stressed. The organization is collaborating with SolarWinds on AI-driven solutions that enhance their ability to support their network of agencies to serve youth more effectively.

“I value partners who cocreate with us rather than offering one-size-fits-all solutions and that’s really where SolarWinds has come in. They’ve co-created with us in ways that are helping us better serve our agencies, which gets them back to mission fulfillment a lot faster. The ideal partner is not only one that provides technology but helps us think through how it can be implemented ethically, sustainably, and with real world impact.”

BBBSA is investing in AI powered insights for volunteer engagement, automated workflows to reduce administrative burdens, and data visualization tools to help our agencies make social media decisions,” he said. “Additionally, we’re improving cybersecurity and modernizing our IT infrastructure to ensure that all this innovation happens securely and at scale.”

Additionally, they are exploring GenAI use cases in IT service management with SolarWinds, whose service desk tool helps support staff members across the country. “AI and IT service management and the SolarWinds service desk tool helps us support all these people in a cost-effective way.” The initiative aims to enhance efficiency and IT support, automate common issue resolution, and provide a more seamless technology experience for local and national users.

“One of the reasons why we’re all here at Big Brothers Big Sisters is because it’s a mission-driven culture, a deeply collaborative culture built on trust and mentorship and shared commitment to helping young people succeed,” he said.

“For my team specifically, that means a culture of innovation, problem-solving, and adaptability. We’re not just IT professionals, we’re mission enablers. Whether it’s using AI to streamline operations or enhancing security to protect sensitive data, their work directly impacts the ability of mentors and mentees to connect and thrive.

“There’s also a strong culture of learning on my team. We embrace emerging technology not for its own sake, but to continuously ask how we can do better for the kids, families, and communities we serve. And that mindset keeps us agile, forward thinking, and relentlessly focused on impact.”

The organization is deeply committed to responsible AI adoption, which is especially important in a mission whose foundation is built on trust. “Technology is a force multiplier for human impact,” Gibson concluded. “Our approach is thoughtful, mission-driven, and focused on using AI to enhance, not replace, the human connections that make mentoring so powerful. And by embracing emerging technology responsibly and strategically we’re setting the stage for a future where every child has the support and opportunities they deserve.”