The Hero’s Journey Continues
A look back at our commitment to Human Centered Design Technology, and a peak into the future!
HeroBridge’s goal has always been to equip organizations with the resource and communication tools that lead to positive outcomes through the aid of Community Affective Technology (CAT).
Our marketplace differentiator has always been our dedication to Human-Centered and Community Affective Technology (CAT) to build strong and productive communities of mentorship. Technology has always been our bridge to deliver intuitive affective communication and resources to support the productivity of mentorship communities and cohorts. Tech that acts like connective tissue that bridges the gaps between organizations, mentors and mentees.
The hero's journey is a powerful tool that deeply resonates with the human psyche. It also reminds us we cannot take journeys alone - the greatest version of ourselves requires the superpowers that are already in us and can be brought out through relationships and resources. Last year we used Star Wars: A New Hope as a terrific example of our business philosophy of how mentors and technologies unleash everyone’s inner hero.
Another unsung hero is the technology itself. If HeroBridge as a technology was born, it would have been in 2010 and my has Hero grown.
Our first go at Community Affective Technology (CAT) was for agricultural workforces in India. Small hold, far flung farming families had no access to real time support and advice that could change the socio-economic paradigm for organic farmers.
2010 After five years of failed attempts to create a cooperative one of the largest coffee manufacturers turned to us to try something completely novel - a virtual SMS cooperative and automated farm-to- market logistic system that changed the lives and prosperity for over 300 farming families spread out over hundreds of miles.
In 2010 The concept of HeroBridge was born, where with a pair of IIT engineers we used SMS 'text' tech to connect farmers to each other (and the global marketplace) through a virtual coops that provided real world, real time mentorship and financial literacy. Still in existence today, the coop’s women self help group used their community wealth to buy broadband towers that allowed their children to continue their education over pandemic.
The robust Arduino is a simple edge computer board that can be programmed to interface with machines in the real world. With a simple bluetooth antenna similar to the one found in your phone, the Arduino can communicate data that we used to revolutionize the Technical Transfer Model (TOTEM) in developing countries.
In 2013, in the Caribbean, and as part of a UN backed SDG water quality initiative, we used ubiquitous Arduino internet-of-things processors that could connect real time technical experts in the US and Europe to developing country workforce. The ability to deliver data based mentorship to programs that delivered the dignifying gift of water was befitting to our mission of human centered technology. This ‘toddler’ version of HeroBridge allowed a bio-chemist/master plumber in Philadelphia, PA receive an email from a machine in Belize, allowing him to inform a plumber in Belize that a waste water pump was about to fail, and how to replace it. For a beachside eco-resort, this was the difference between a sunny day at the beach for guests versus shutting down the resort for a week for repairs.
In 2019, on walk with their golden Louis, Deborah and Frank dreamt up the present form of HeroBridge. With developers from around the world they human-center designed and launched a smartphone app and cloud media platform that could bridge the gap for mentorship organizations to marginalized communities.
This iteration gave rise to HeroBridge Media Technology as a company, a business and a leader in human-centered design and CAT. Our goal was simple - create a media tech that builds and supports productive communities. Our first customer, Stepping Forward, found our mentorship platform so effective that they closed all their brick-and-mortar locations and grew their mentorship service footprint from a few zip codes to all of Los Angeles County. In three short years their organization grew 1029%.
In 2024, we reached our “Mt Everest base-camp”: as part of our three year collaboration, MIT Media Labs Affective Computing Group published research that supported the efficacy of our virtual mentorship community platform and the higher likelihood of better outcomes through affective communication.
The launch in December 2024 of a cost effective AI processor, gives HeroBridge the ability to edge compute without transfer of our proprietary data to a cloud, provides us with the next evolution of agentic mentorship technology. “Hero” is all grown up and ready to provide superpowers to humans and eliminate the margins toward a new future of work in Amer
Now in 2025, we take our bold next steps into the frontier of agentic edge technology: by leveraging the tremendous pool of our own in-platform behavioral data that six years of building healthy, happy and productive communities has resulted in (ie. “Learning tracks” “Ticketed Mentorship” group dynamics, affective communication, all of it… used to train predictive models for better outcomes and productive community-building for industry, education and society.)
The HeroBridge app technology provided the gift of an ocean of behavioral data to be used for human-centered purposes. This year the new hero technology has arrived, the Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano process is taking us to the edge of behavioral community affective technology - allowing us the safely, securely and real-time use of data to provide predictive models that will revolutionize the future of work for marginalized communities. In essence, this new hero technology will destroy the margins like Iron Robot. We therefore, all grown up, we have named our new AI processor "Hero" who we will train and put into service starting end of Jan 25 to assist with our Mentor Hero AI engine and Landspeeder v.2.0.
You support through our HeroGive DAF allows us to write grants to the nonprofits who can benefit from our technology and R&D. Click here to contribute.
