A Collaboration Without Limits

Tieal Bishop, CEO and executive director of A Rosie Place for Children, is always innovating ways to make life for medically fragile children more joyful and expansive. At the specialty hospital in South Bend, Indiana, a saltwater aquarium, colorful murals and an outdoor pond and waterfall captivate young patients and their family members. Rather than a routine or nerve-wracking hospital stay, visits to A Rosie Place resemble extended slumber parties where complex pediatric conditions are addressed amid an atmosphere of play and creativity.

Sustaining a creative atmosphere at a specialty children’s hospital is hardly easy. It also involves significant expenses. Fortunately, A Rosie Place found a supportive and eager team just up the road at the University of Notre Dame.

Grow Irish Week is a cornerstone of the Master of Science in Management (MSM) program at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. Teams of students from the College’s graduate business programs study an organization and its challenges for several weeks, then develop a strategic plan and work intensively onsite for a week implementing their recommendations.

“It’s a good partnership because for us there’s really no ceiling,” said Bishop. “It’s about, what can we create and develop? What do we need to put in place to have a successful outcome? Our Grow Irish groups have done all kinds of things with us.”

Art has been a focal point since A Rosie Place’s inception when Bishop noticed that, given their special needs, the children weren’t drawing pictures for their parents in typical preschool and kindergarten settings.

“Moms and dads weren’t getting these priceless, beautiful creations from their children,” said Bishop. “So that became the driving force to help the children create these pieces of art, which we affectionately now call ‘heARTworks.’”

Bishop didn’t want to simply facilitate arts and crafts time for interested kids. She wanted to wield innovative technology to redefine the boundaries of creativity for children who might not even be aware of their capacity to express themselves. Her vision became HeARTworks Studio, a 2,158-square-foot art space meticulously tailored to meet the exceptional abilities of special needs children. Still in construction, the studio will serve as a designated space when it opens this year for traditional activities, including painting, woodworking and playing instruments as well as recent innovations such as virtual reality and 3D printing.

To help fundraise and implement the cutting-edge technology necessary for such an endeavor, Bishop enlisted Judah Fontz, CEO of digital marketing agency Datamize. Fontz introduced AI and eye-gaze technology that enables non-verbal children to generate images and create original works of art.

“The children can just look at what they want on a screen and prompt an image without speaking,” Fontz said of the eye-gaze tool. When the children are content with their creations, they can then “toss” the images to a ceiling gallery where everything is visible to everyone, including those seated in wheelchairs. “They really, really love it.”

So far, five Grow Irish teams have provided hands-on consultations for A Rosie Place, moving the needle toward a completed HeARTworks Studio with each project.

“You get a consulting team that’s more passionate about what the program is doing,” commented Fontz. “I feel like once you meet the children and the team, it’s hard not to be passionate about it. They really stayed involved and stayed motivated.”

The first Grow Irish group worked closely with Fontz to research different AI-powered music and art tools and devise a strategy for implementing such tools. The second group designed a comprehensive fundraising plan, and the third group expanded on the efforts of the previous two teams by implementing an official HeARTworks Studio Fundraising Plan and scalable AI-driven programs for future locations.

Ian Murphy (MSM ’25), who was a team manager for the third group, reflected on what made the project so rewarding. “Our work at A Rosie Place required us to figure it out by any means necessary. We needed to collaborate and find creative solutions.”

“[Bishop’s] enthusiasm for A Rosie Place and their mission is contagious,” added Addison Berry (MSM ’25), project manager for the third group. “It was impossible not to share their enthusiasm … I wanted to stay connected and continue working with them.”

The entire team shared Berry’s desire to stay connected. They presented a detailed strategy to maximize fundraising efforts and leverage AI and augmented reality in HeARTworks Studio’s programming. Then after Grow Irish Week concluded, the team continued to volunteer with A Rosie Place and even attended the studio’s groundbreaking ceremony during finals week.

“We were trying to come up with ways outside of grants and loans to fundraise money, and I felt like we needed to use our Notre Dame athletics platform to our advantage,” said Murphy, who played for the Fighting Irish men’s ice hockey team. In fact, the entire group was made up of student athletes. They realized that using the large crowds attending games could help further support A Rosie Place. After the official collaboration ended, the students executed a silent auction for Murphy’s jersey during a hockey game with all proceeds going back to HeARTworks Studio.

“The relationships with Grow Irish teams are extraordinary. They’re willing to do anything for our mission. They really get it,” said Bishop. “I expect to see all of them again as we continue through this process of construction.”

The fourth Grow Irish team expanded on the scalability initiative by helping A Rosie Place begin plans to launch nationally. Most recently, the fifth group aided in this endeavor by developing a marketing playbook to communicate the financial and social value of A Rosie Place for Children to state officials.

“There’s only six of these facilities across our country, so obviously there’s a desperate need,” said Bishop. “It takes a lot of effort and a lot of committed people in our community and beyond to make sure that we can offer these services at no cost to families. I’m happily looking forward to creating the next challenge for the Grow Irish team.”