Amy Looper is an AI EdTech/MedTech social venture entrepreneur and the Co-Founder/COO of OneSeventeen Media. With nine partners and a stellar team, she grew her first tech company 8,164% in 35 months resulting in a $158M IPO. Now on her fourth company, Amy and her partner have built a digital mental health & analytics platform called reThinkIt! for School™ that makes kids emotionally healthier through a combination of AI and interpersonal communication and intervention. The evidence-based mobile app has already prevented a school shooting and multiple student suicides. OneSeventeen Media is a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) recognized for meeting the highest standard of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency as one of the top 5% of B Corporations in the world using their business as a force for good. Learn more about OneSeventeen Media here. In this episode we discuss: The foundational component to building resilience (at any age) The mental and emotional impact of valuing and validating kids and their experiences An example of repurposing technology to approach a human problem in a new and effective way 4 practical business lessons learned from a serial entrepreneur The value of using an “ecosystem approach” to problem-solving   Key Takeaways: Going back to the story Amy told about being consistently bullied as a child, I can’t help but think of the profound impact on self-concept and self-esteem that results from being able to separate our experiences from our identity. When we are able to learn that we are not the same as what happens to us, that we are not the same as how people treat us, then our potential becomes limitless. However, when we internalize these experiences and confuse them with our identity, the narratives end up becoming a prison. I’m blown away by the impact reThinkIt! has had on kids and consequently their school environment. It’s great from a school P&L standpoint, but what’s more important is the human impact. As a society, what would we pay to reduce or eliminate teen suicide and school shootings? How about teen depression? It seems an obvious choice that the government would mandate reThinkIt! in every single public school. Since we aren’t there yet, let’s leverage the power of Word of Moms and Dads and PTA’s to start demanding it. I’m very intrigued by reThinkIt! being offered through employee benefit programs to help employees’ kids. It seems like a really creative solution, and I haven’t seen many employee benefits targeted to employees’ kids before. I’m curious how much presenteeism is caused by parents being distracted at work with worries about their kids, and how much that loss in productivity would lessen if kids were equipped with a tool they trusted to help them navigate their emotions. References: Communities in Schools is a non-profit organization supporting schools across the country Strategyzer offers tools and training for companies The difference between mental health and emotional health, from “The Emotional and Mental Aspects of Well-Being” by Andrea Herron: Mental health refers to our ability to process information; Emotional health refers to our ability to express feelings that are based on the information we’ve processed. The time teachers spend disciplining students in the classroom, from the “Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/Scholastic Teacher Survey” says: 53% of teachers reported they would like to spend less time disciplining students; Teachers reported they spend 4 hours out of their 7.5 hour day disciplining students in their classrooms. Report from the American School Counselors Association (ASCA), “State-by-State Student-to-Counselor Ratio Maps By School District” by Pooja Patel and Melissa Clinedinst. The ASCA’s data in this report was commissioned for the district-level student-to-counselor ratios to provided and further inform policy discussions at the local, state, and federal level about the need to hire, train, and equip more sch