About Ripple Effects

Ripple Effects, Inc. makes software to solve behavior problems and improve school, work, and personal performance.

Founded in 1997 by social learning expert Alice Ray, and technology innovator and producer Sarah Berg, the company has pioneered a technology-driven learning system that helps people of all ages do better, by building the underlying social-emotional skills most connected to life success. The company has integrated decades of complex, disjointed research into a media-rich software application that, for the first time, makes social learning effective, engaging, scaleable, and individualized-all at the same time.

Our vision: to create social and economic value, and prove prevention is more lucrative than punishment

Ripple Effects intends to provide a higher return on investment than that offered by investments in the most profitable prisons, mental hospitals, or treatment centers, thereby proving that prevention of social injury and lost productivity can be more lucrative than their punishment or cure. This "double bottom line" has earned the Company recognition in The Wall Street Journal and a second place award in a national Social Venture Business Plan competition for businesses that provide both social and economic value, sponsored by the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. In Spring of 2002, it earned CEO Alice Ray recognition by the National Association of Women Business Owners, who honored her with their 2002 "Rising Star" award.

Who we are

Ripple Effects is a small, lean - but not mean - woman-owned company with a commitment to diversity. Historically, 35% of staff have been minority youth coming out of opportunity programs. Ripple Effects' commitment to diversity in hiring has led to a long-term partnership with OpNet, an organization whose mission is to create significant economic opportunities in the new media industry for low-income young adults. It has also been selected as a portfolio company by Silicon Valley Community Ventures, an organization whose purpose is to create economic opportunities for low-income workers in the Bay Area. In its five years, Ripple Effects has accomplished more than companies with 10 to 30 times its funding. In doing this, Ripple Effects has shown that an emphasis on a prosocial, diverse, caring work environment is more than just a good thing to do-when coupled with high expectations, it actually results in extremely high productivity levels.

Accomplishments To Date

Ripple Effects released its flagship product, Ripple Effects for Teens, in fall of 1998. It has since translated its learning system into a line of products for students ages 7 to 17, and educators. Ripple Effects education products have won a bevy of awards from the education, health, software and communications industries, as well as rave reviews from both users and experts. Ripple Effects has been featured in print and electronic media, and early research indicates its programs work. Today, they are used in hundreds of sites, in 130+ school districts and communities, in 34 states and five countries.

In early 2001, Ripple Effects released its first business training product, Business Coach, and partnered with an Australian energy company and a major international consultancy to evaluate its effectiveness. Ripple Effects also partnered with McAfee.com, a leading online security company, to release CyberSavvy, a program to help teens stay safe online. In partnership with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a national civil rights advocacy organization, Ripple Effects developed a hate crime prevention program for teens entitled Preventing Hate, Promoting Respect. In response to the terrorist attack, Ripple Effects developed a free 22 topic web site called Resist, to help teens cope constructively in the wake of 9/11. In late 2001, District of Columbia Public Schools selected Ripple Effects software as a model program for its Character Education Initiative, funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

In 2002, Ripple Effects released a major new program for educators, Teaching Coach, that includes simple screening tools for ADHD and dyslexia, and helps educators identify and teach to student learning needs and aptitudes. The company's character education program, True To Your Core, received a prestigious international honor: a Citation of Excellence from the Bologna New Media Prize. It was one of just eight entries recognized from a field of nearly 1,000, and beat out products from the major publishing companies in the US and Europe.

Where we come from

Ripple Effects cofounder and CEO Alice Ray is a nationally recognized expert in social learning and media design. The genesis of Ripple Effects social learning model is a series of studies begun by Ray 18 years ago.

At that time she was Executive Director of a leading child abuse prevention organization, Committee for Children. Her organization's abuse prevention materials were being used in more than 25% of the country's school districts, but it bothered her that prevention efforts rested so heavily on the shoulders of victims and potential victims.

A simple question

So she asked a simple question: What would it take for the next generation of young people not to be perpetrators of violence?

In the process of answering that question, not only did she identify core abilities that separate people who injure others from those who don't, she found mounting evidence that the same core abilities - often called emotional intelligence - were major success factors in school and on the job. And they were learnable.

Using this model, she conceived and oversaw the development by her staff of a print curriculum now used in more than 60,000 US classrooms. Over a period of several years, research by outside experts showed her hypothesis and solution were both correct. Her approach to social learning worked and worked dramatically, but a print curriculum to be delivered by teachers during classroom hours was not a scaleable solution.

Meanwhile, research in both business and education showed that the same core abilities that were major factors in social failure and injury- when they were missing- were huge factors in academic and professional success, as well as personal happiness, when they were present.

What had long been common sense was being scientifically validated: people who are socially and emotionally literate - who know how to handle conflict, manage feelings, solve problems, stand up for themselves, communicate clearly and empathize with others - do better in school, in work, and in life.

How technology fits in

Meanwhile, emerging technologies offered new opportunities for learning, including learning social behavior. Making the connection between them would be the contribution of Ripple Effects cofounder and COO, Sarah Berg.

Ray first worked with technology innovator Sarah Berg in 1994, when Berg produced a highly acclaimed technology exhibit, the Electric Carnival, which toured as part of the Lollapalooza music festival, and gained national media attention in such outlets as Nightline, Dateline, NBC, CNN, MTV, Newsweek, and The New York Times. Between 1994 and 1997, Berg successfully produced complex, large scale web and multimedia projects, for corporate, public, and nonprofit clients. She developed an unmatched track record of producing innovative, engaging, technology applications and exhibits, often exposing emerging technologies to new audiences, and always producing projects on time and within budget.

The partnership clicked and Ray and Berg formed Ripple Effects with a shared a vision of the potential of emerging technology to create major social change, the potential of a technology-based solutions to social behavior problems to make a lot of money, and the value of building a new kind of company, one that focused on creating social and economic value at the same time.

Ripple Effects, Inc. provides effective, scaleable, social learning software solutions to improve school, work, and personal performance. Founded in 1997 by social learning expert Alice Ray, and technology innovator and producer Sarah Berg, the company has taken complex, disjointed social learning research and turned it into an integrated technology-based social learning system that helps people of all ages do better. More

Founders, Management, Advisors, and Staff

Meet the talented, diverse team that contributes to Ripple Effects' success. More