For U.C. Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center (GGSC), I spearheaded the Bridging Differences Playbook. This Playbook featured four science-based “bridging” practices to help people navigate social and political divisions in their personal and professional lives. Through the 18 months of the project, I worked alongside 100 leading experts, researchers and practitioners.

We launched the Playbook in June 2020, and more than 200,000 people downloaded it in the first three months (since then that number has more than doubled).

Since its release, multiple philanthropic funders have made significant investments into the overall initiative, which has now become the Bridging Differences Program at the UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, mixing science and storytelling to address social and political polarization. The first transformed the Playbook into a more comprehensive free online course for the edX platform, which has helped tens of thousands of people bridge differences in their workplaces and lives. The other wrote a check for $1 million which helped us to build a full-time team and expand our program offerings across the country.

To refine the Playbook before our public launch, I also convened two communities of practice: a group of 25 mayors and council members from cities across the U.S, and a group of 25 community leaders from national organizations like the YWCA. Through their feedback, we refined the Playbook to ensure it was aligned to current practices & realities.