Jessica Berlinski is the Director K-12 of Ripple Effects, an innovative social change enterprise focused on leveraging personalized SEL to improve students’ behavior and academics, address trauma, and achieve educational equity. She also serves as a consultant, advocate and social changemaker with over a decade of experience leading organizations dedicated to supporting the “whole child” through academic and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) tools and programs.
Prior, Berlinski co-founded and served as Chief Impact Officer and Chief Learning Officer (respectively) of two SEL tech start-ups, commercializing the first evidence-based SEL assessment and learning game for K-12 and the first SEL iPad game for the consumer marketplace. As part of this work, she collaborated to create the country’s first community-based SEL initiative in Newtown CT, where she worked with the school district, community leaders and victims’ families to leverage technology to teach SEL skills.
In the non profit arena, Berlinski served as Managing Director of GameDesk, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded non-profit focused on innovative learning models. As National Director of Character Counts, she co-created and implemented values-based programs in urban and rural school districts across the country, as well as successfully advocated for the inclusion of programs and language supporting school climate in Obama’s ESEA proposal.
Berlinski speaks on technology, equity and Social Emotional Learning at education and social change conferences nationally, and her work has been featured on National Public Radio, and in Forbes and Newsweek. Berlinski graduated from Northwestern University with a BA in Philosophy, with a focus on ethics and philosophy of religion.
