Method to the Madness

Lisa Kiefer: [00:00:06] This is Method to the Madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K A L X Berkeley celebrating innovators. I'm your host, Lisa Kiefer. And today, I'm speaking with Ashley Grosh, the CEO of PIP's Rewards. Thank you for coming on the show, Ashley. What is PIPs?

Ashley Grosh: [00:00:36] So PIPs Rewards is an app and it's a technology platform that is owned and operated by our company 3P Partners. We call ourselves an impact tech company. What we really do is we turn a verifiable engagement in beneficial behaviors, things happening daily, riding your bike, bus riding, taking a workout class. All these beneficial behaviors that you might be doing throughout the day, we verify that and we award you our digital currency when you do those things. So Pip's is our digital currency, which stands for Positive Impact Points.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:01:09] That's interesting. It sounds complex how you would measure this. So walk me through the application as a user. An example.

Ashley Grosh: [00:01:18] Yeah. So from a user perspective, it's actually very lightweight and easy. You just would download the app in the app store for iPhone or Android. You download Pip's rewards. Today we're targeted in higher education, so you would use your university email through a single sign on. We would capture who you are. You'd set up an account and then you'd really begin to start using the platform. It takes you through a quick tutorial of what you need to do. You'd want to have your Bluetooth enabled and it shows you ways in which you can now start going out into the community and around campus and earning the currency. So a day in the life of a Pip's user, you may wake up in the morning, you fill up your water bottle, which has our little QR code sticker on it, which you may have gone to pick up an environmental center on campus. So you carry that water bottle with you. But when you fill it up, you take your phone out, you take a picture of your QR code and then you've earned 10 points. You can only refill your water bottle three times per day. So if you try to do that again, you'll get an error message. And that's really more just the behavior, we want you just to be in the habit of carrying that water bottle.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:02:19] You don't want people scamming this system.

Ashley Grosh: [00:02:20] That's right. So we set barriers in place to make sure that doesn't happen. So then let's say you're going to a study group in the morning, so you hop on one of the bike shares programs that's here on campus and we are automatically already integrated with that bike sharing platform. So when you check out that bike, we know who you are. We know you're on that bike. And all the sudden immediately our currency goes into your digital wallet with inside the app. And now you've earned for refilling your water bottle. Now you've taken a bike to a meeting and now you've earned again. Let's say you're coming back up to campus for a class in the afternoon and you hop on the bus. Well, now we have either a beacon or an API integration installed with the transit company, and you don't even have to have your phone out for this. In some cases, we might use near-field communication. So we're using a lot of technologies, right, to integrate innovative technologies. If we think about the connected city, smart cities. Right. All these things to track and measure. So you come back up the bus to class and then again in your digital wallet, you see your currency being added for that behavior. :et's say in the afternoon then, there's a speaker coming onto campus that's talking about climate finance on an environmental or health related topic. So let's say you go to that event and that's one of the activities that we award for. We also capture that you've gone to that event and you've earned our currency than you maybe go refill your water bottle again. Then you go into housing and dining. You go have some lunch and let's say you brought your own silverware. So let's say you brought your own bamboo silverware and then let's say you're composting and you're doing all these things. We have different mechanisms to capture that as well within the dining hall. And if if the campus is interested in financial literacy, then students can take EDquity financial literacy modules and earn our currency. I'm giving you kind of a flavor, right, of you go about your day and you're earning all this currency.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:04:08] And it's very transparent to the user, it sounds like.

Ashley Grosh: [00:04:11] Yeah, it happens in real time. So you can see your digital dashboard in your wallet.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:04:15] What is a a data point worth?

Ashley Grosh: [00:04:17] So that's a great point. So one pip is worth one cent. And so then we we do this, you know, kind of carbon pricing on your actions. So when you're refilling a water bottle, you may only get 10 pips for that. But if you're riding the bus. Right, that's got a bigger implication in terms of your carbon savings. So maybe you'll get 50 pips, in that case, if you go to volunteer at a tree planning event in the community, maybe that's a thousand. So we work with the university to really put the value behind each of these actions.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:04:48] And then is this accumulated reward money, can it pay for education and books and things to do with college?

Ashley Grosh: [00:04:55] There you go. That whole secret sauce. So what happens is when you accumulate your your pips in your wallet, well, then the question becomes, what can you do with it? Right. And so there's really kind of three key things that you can do. We have an in app e-commerce platform. And so we screen for green, though, any company that we partner with in there has to be promoting sustainability or have a sustainable product. And so we have some food companies in there. So Whole Foods, Chipotle, Patagonia's an example. Roffey shoes, right? These are sustainable companies and brands. And so you can convert your pip's into either gift cards or discounts with those vendors. It's really cool. So you can, you know, use that in app e-commerce site to redeem your currency. You also could donate your currency. So we work with a number of nonprofits, both national and local. So if you're really interested in a cause, an environmental justice or the Nature Conservancy or something happening right here in your community, you can donate your pip's and we will cut a check to that organization from 3P on your behalf. And then the real secret sauce that we just rolled out last spring is the Pip's for Schools program. So this is where it now you can take the Pip's that you've earned and convert it to pay down tuition, books, school fees. We do that through the Office of Financial Aid and then we have a separate fund called the Pips Education Fund in which we provide a match. So let's say you have $100 that you've accumulated. You put that towards your books. We provide you a one to one match. Now you've gotten a $200 scholarship.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:06:27] Who's matching it? 

Ashley Grosh: [00:06:32] So we have a separate fund and it's a 501 C 3 non-profit. We're raising for that fund separately.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:06:34] And so people can donate to that fund. 

Ashley Grosh: [00:06:36] Absolutely. So, alumni or corporate partners, charitable institutions, community foundations, people that are really interested in supporting education, sustainability, student success and higher ed can make a contribution and donate to that fund. And then we use that fund to make the match. And our goal over time is to get to a two or three to one match. So all the sudden you go about your daily life, you're doing all these good things. You're earning the currency that has real value and you're putting that towards your education. When students are taking those earned pips and converting them to tuition dollars, the money's then flowing back to the university through the Office of Financial Aid. And then we are providing through our separate 501 C-3, the Pip's Education Fund, a match. And so really the university is recouping their initial investment of the subscription back through the Office of Financial Aid. So it's a really great ROI for the university. It's really a win win win.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:33] The technology behind this is mind boggling to me. It seems like there's a lot of tech pieces, a lot of data points.

Ashley Grosh: [00:07:40] It is. It is.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:41] It's very I mean, it's transparent to the user. But can you talk to me about the technology that is in place and how that all works?

Ashley Grosh: [00:07:49] Yeah. So some of it, you know, we install so there is an infrastructure component. So I mentioned on buses or on transit or if you're going to an event on campus, we may use little beacons or sensors. And these sensors can know that if you're in the building, it's Bluetooth enabled. And so we can pick up on that, that that student ID is there, we verify that you're there.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:10] So do you have to turn that on, the behavior tracking system?

Ashley Grosh: [00:08:12] You just turn on your Bluetooth and actually people may or may not know this, but these beacons and sensors are used in retail stores. So if I go into Target, for example, they want to know how long am I spending in each section? How long am I spending in the food, in the women's clothing? I'm a mom. So how long am I spending in the baby section? Right. So beacons and sensors have been used in the retail market too.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:34] From your phones.

Ashley Grosh: [00:08:35] From your phones through location based services. Right. If those are enabled on your phone to get data. And now that's a different use case. Right. So we're not using that. We're using it in more of a closed loop system.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:46] There's a lot of talk about giving you back money for your data that you're giving to like, say, Facebook or Amazon. And there are some parallels as far as, you know, verification and the tracking.

Ashley Grosh: [00:08:56] You're right on. I mean, this question comes up a lot, but we follow the privacy policy of the university so we don't do anything with that data other than analyze it, look at it and share it with the university. And then the university looks at, wow, look at the impact, look how many bike rides or look how many bus rides. And wow maybe we need another bus station over here because we're seeing so much action and so we only share the data with the university and we use it to measure retention, engagement, a bunch of things related to the platform. We would never sell that data anywhere outside of the campus.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:09:34] If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Method to the Madness a bi weekly public affairs show on K.A.L.X. Berkeley celebrating innovators. Today, I'm speaking with Ashley Grosh, the COO of Pip's. Pip's uses a behavior tracking platform to reward positive behavior.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:10:00] How do you know that a company or a service that I use as a student is sustainable?

Ashley Grosh: [00:10:05] In the case of like Patagonia, for example, who we bring onto the platform,.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:10:08] That one's pretty obvious.

Ashley Grosh: [00:10:09] That one's pretty obvious, right. But, you know, Rothey's is a good example or Blue Planet that makes sustainable sunglasses. So we really do as a B Corp Right. So we're a certified B Corp. Okay.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:10:21] And just so our audience knows, a benefit corporation is for profit, but you are required to consider the society and the environment in addition to profit. Correct?

Ashley Grosh: [00:10:31] That's right. So it's that triple bottom line that we hear about where we want to see an environmental return, a social return and then a financial return. Right. So we're looking at the triple bottom line and we screen for other companies and partners to be a part of our ecosystem. You've also got to have those same values. Air BnB is a partner of ours. Again, that's a circular economy. The shared economy. I can convert my pip's to a gift card for AirBnb. You know, we provide gift cards to Wholefoods, which is technically Amazon's the parent company, but Wholefoods is still a wonderful partner of ours and we'd like to see Amazon learn more about our platform and figure out other ways to partner with us and then offer maybe even further discounts. Could we also work with Amazon on other features, you know, other sustainable products? That's a huge area of opportunity for us. So I think Amazon, you know, will continue to have those conversations through the door of working with Whole Foods. You know, we're selectively screened for green companies. And so Panera is one that we just added, Chipotle,right, that are thoughtful about their supply chain. We love to really promote local. So when we come onto a campus, we also will go around to all the local vendors. In Boulder, for example, our flagship university, CU Boulder, there is a store called Refill Revolution where you can fill up bulk laundry detergent, lotion, shampoo, conditioner, things like that. And so they're a partner of ours. They accept our currency as well as you earn. So there are certain sort of a dual partner. But we love to go locally and find partners like that in the community, local stores. And we haven't had anybody turn us away yet in wanting to be a part of the program.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:12:10] Where are you happening? You say you're focusing on universities.

Ashley Grosh: [00:12:14] CU Boulder, as I mentioned, was our early adopter. They are our flagship university, Univeristy of Colorado Boulder and very similar, a sister campus, I would say, to Berkeley. But so CU is really interested in this technology. When they learned about it really from two aspects from a retention standpoint and from a sustainability standpoint. So they want to be leaders in promoting sustainable actions on campus. They want to measure that. They want to put that into their climate action planning. They really want to better understand that the footprint they're having in the city and then retention, retention is probably the number one buzz word on campuses. Right. If you don't get students to stay engaged and to graduate the four, five plus years, you're leaving big money on the table. There's a lot of reasons why students come to campus and they don't continue. And partly it's the cost. Partly it's food insecurity and then it's mental stress and it's not finding friends. And so those are some of the top reasons that we've we've studied a lot of surveys around retention data. And so our thought is, if we can help with food insecurity. Right. We're helping to offset and subsidize the cost of healthy food by providing more access and more funding to food, healthy food choices, transportation costs. We can help to offset that. Financial aid. Right. If we're now starting to contribute in, you know, a couple thousand dollars per semester that a student could earn. Now, it doesn't seem so overwhelming, the burden of debt and then mental health. We also have mindfulness trainings. We also have financial literacy that we can do through the app and then we make it fun. You can gamify it..

Lisa Kiefer: [00:13:44] So you get points for taking care of yourself.

Ashley Grosh: [00:13:46] Yeah.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:13:46] So how long have you been doing Boulder?

Ashley Grosh: [00:13:48] We started a pilot there in the fall of 2017. That was our pilot year. And then we took the outcomes. We targeted just freshman that year and we took all the results back to the university and they really saw the opportunity to scale this. So they in 2018 signed a three year contract with us. And so we're now in that contract. We've we keep adding to it. We're constantly measuring, really working on the user adoption and then adding new actions, adding new partners, building the ecosystem.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:14:17] So it's actually working there and it's successful.

Ashley Grosh: [00:14:19] Yes, we've got about 5000 users on the platform. We initially set out to get about 10 percent of the student body and now we've exceeded that. Now we've added staff and faculty onto the platform. And what's cool about that is the staff or faculty can donate their pip's to individual student or to the Pip's Education Fund. It's really booming over there. And it's we now just launch refer a friend feature. So if you bring a friend onto the platform, you're rewarded. The origin of this is really around behavior, you know, neuroscience kind of the way that we act. Dopamine, the way that we're engaged, incented. And we know that rewards work. We know that gamification works. And so. We gamify, we do a lot of contests where you can count constantly be earning. And then we make it really fun with our prizes. We also have ski passes. That's what makes us different if you think about the value of these rewards. You know, you're getting food, you're getting Patagonia gear. You're getting tuition. Ski passes.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:15:15] And it's not interfering with academic study.

Ashley Grosh: [00:15:18] It's actually aiding in helping them with basic needs support.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:15:22] What were some of the challenges that, what were your biggest challenges?

Ashley Grosh: [00:15:25] There's a lot of different parts of campus that you want to engage. So you want to engage housing and dining, you know, Office of Financial Aid, the communications group, because you want to message this out in any way you can. So you really got to work and integrate with the communications teams on campus. Hey, how can we get included in newsletters? Where can we get some signage? So it really is a collaboration I think, when you're first setting it up, the messaging, how do we fit into the brand in the brand voice on campus? And so it takes, you know, a couple of of different groups to come together on campus.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:15:58] Campuses are noisy with groups.

Ashley Grosh: [00:16:00] That's right.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:16:01] There's a lot going.

Ashley Grosh: [00:16:02] That's that's exactly right. So there's clubs every which way. There's a lot of competing interest. That's why the refer a friend. Right. We know that things get sticky when other people talk about it. So if I'm a student and I have my phone out and I'm doing something. It seems like. What are you doing? Oh, well, I'm doing this cool app where I can earn currency and I can pay my tuition. tuition.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:16:19] How did you get the word out initially?

Ashley Grosh: [00:16:22] The strategy that we used at Boulder was to integrate it into welcome week. And so as students are coming to campus, even before they came to campus, we had a welcome letter that went to the parents and the students. Download this app before you come to campus. And then when you come to campus, we set up a scavenger hunt so that students could really learn, hey, here's the library, here's the dining hall, here's the rec center. And they used our app to go through this scavenger hunt. And then they got Pip's at every place they went. And so we got really clever about welcome week. All the students filed into the football stadium and we got a big P.A. message, hey, have you heard about the Pip's app? And we got thousands of downloads in a matter of a week. And so that, you know, integrating into welcome week, but otherwise you can do it into other events on campus. So there's lots of different ways. But the welcome week one is is really a trick of ours.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:17:14] Where are your other applications happening?

Ashley Grosh: [00:17:14] Yeah, we're pretty early in our journey. So CU was the early adopter. But now we like to take a systems approach. So we're looking at the University of Colorado system. So we've launched to their second largest campus, which is in Colorado Springs. And then we're looking to roll out at U.C. Denver. And so that would capture the entire system so we're at two of those system wide campuses now and then we've got proposals really throughout the country into large university systems. And so really looking at a systems approach in different parts of the country, but also within Colorado, we've got a handful of other universities coming on in 2020 to help us regionally gain some traction, gain some visibility, get some of the regional transit partners on board, getting a ubiquitous feel to the currency across higher ed in one state, and then we can go regionally and plug and play. But what's really great is we're getting all of these in-bounds now. So people, sustainability officers are talking about this. You know, Forbes did an article on us, hey, turn your actions into tuition money. There's a lot of talk right now around basic needs support, food insecurity. Just this week, I talked to somebody at University of Miami that said, hey, we're on the frontlines of climate change. Our students and our staff and community need to be doing everything we can. Can you please come here and help us? And so that's what's really starting to get exciting is is the inbound buzz that we're getting. So I think we'll continue to really lead in Colorado, but then you'll start to see us regionally as we head into 2020.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:18:41] And California is on your map?

Ashley Grosh: [00:18:43] California is... all things lead back to California in some ways, just from the leadership standpoint that California has taken, in so many measures. And so, you know, we really would love to be out in California. There's a lot we could do. And even in the UC system, you could imagine two of the two or three or handful, the universities competing. Right. Who could draw down the most carbon. So we have a carbon drawdown challenge. And so that becomes really fun, right? In the storytelling there. We can also integrate into athletics. So we could have a green game, you know, through the PAC Twelve and do some fun things there. But really getting a system on board is a significant goal. And where we're spending a lot of our focus right now, talking to the UC system, talking to the California state system, the community college system, too, if we think about some rural places, Bakersfield and others, you know, how can we promote alternative transportation, how can we promote some of these healthy behaviors in more rural communities?

Lisa Kiefer: [00:19:37] You're giving currency back to people, social currency. But how are you as a company making money off of this?

Ashley Grosh: [00:19:44] Great question. So I'm a trained banker and I spent my whole career working on businesses, scaling technologies, looking at business models, a program I actually in my former role worked with here on campus at Berkeley is the Clean Tech to Market program, the C-2M Program with Brian Steele and Beverly Alexander, I have to give them a shout out. But really looking at right, how do you take an innovative technology platform and scale it? And so we make revenue in a couple of different ways. So it's a subscription model. So first and foremost, the university pays us a subscription to have the Pip's Rewards platform deployed on campus that unlocks the pool of pips then that we divvy out. But then we also have action partners that pay to join our programs. So that could be ridesharing companies, companies like Zipcar, Car2Go, you know, Lyft and Uber really want to dominate the university place. We've got proposals into both of them. If I come to the university and I pick a ridesharing company, when I leave the university, I'm probably going to use that one. Bike sharing platforms pay to be on our platform. So that's another source of revenue. Within our catalog, our E commerce catalogue, our affiliate catalog, we also earn a small commission. If somebody uses their pip's to buy something, we may have a commission that comes back to us. And then sponsorship is another source of revenue. And this is when I really get excited about too. So I mentioned, Chipotle and some other partners that are on the platform. But thinking about large corporate brands. Right, that spend so much money on marketing, if they have a really strong CSR, corporate social responsibility mission, an initiative, you know, their brands are really working hard across communities to promote sustainability, promote maybe their products. So we really see sponsorship in underwriting as an opportunity. A beverage company, for example, could come in and underwrite the recycling behaviors on our platform. As we know in most California campuses that have divested from plastic. But that takes a little bit of behavior change to think about. What are the alternative sources? CU Boulder just rolled out some new aluminum type refillable cans for their stadiums or cups, I should say. But there's some behavior change that has to happen there so we can use our app to educate. But brands that really want to be associated with an app like ours, we're in front of young people, we're in front of their customers. Sponsorship is it is a big opportunity for us to go and work with large corporate and small corporate brands.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:22:01] Tell me how this idea even got started.

Ashley Grosh: [00:22:04] So Wendy Gordon is our co-founder. There's several co-founders. And so Wendy has a fascinating history. She's a serial entrepreneur and she's always tackled this riddle of how do we change the behavior? How do we get consumers, you know, to think about smarter products, to think about their footprint? She launched and co-founded Mothers and Others for a Livable Planet with Meryl Streep, which was the original green guide, and that ended up being acquired by National Geographic. And then Wendy was an environmentalist at the National Resource Defense Council, NRDC. And so she's got a really fascinating background all around, you know, sustainability, the sciences in consumer. And so, Wendy, you know, really thought how could we think about rewards points? So if we look at traditional credit card, frequent flyer miles, they sound really good on the surface, but the redemption rates of those are very low. And so, Wendy and one of her college classmates, David Sands, got together. They went to Princeton. And they've kind of been thinking about this riddle of how do we how do we get people to do things, right? It's through incentives and rewards. So they came up with this initial idea and then they were introduced to two developers. So technical folks, Evan and Ynev and Ynev actually has a neuroscience background. And he ran a dopamine lab. So he started bringing in the science and started to look at loss aversion and all these different, you know, scientific ways of the way that we interact in the way that we're, you know, incentivized and what works and what does it what keeps us coming back, what makes things sticky. That's why we bring in gamification. So you had the business side that, you know, Wendy and David were building and then you had the technical side and Evan and Ynev said, think about all the wearables, the wearable market, Fitbit, if you think about the connected economy, that there's so many things that we could plug into. If we build an open source platform with API, we can connect into all these tracking devices and start to verify the actions. We don't want to see greenwashing. We don't want to say, I pledge to do this or I pledge to do that. We really want to verify that you took an action. So the company got formed and then really started to think about where could this application where's the best use case? They tested it in a new enterprise locations, some real estate firms doing fitness competitions and things like that. But then really it was CU Boulder that said, you know, we think this is a higher ed solution. So spend a couple of years.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:24:24] So they came to you? 

Ashley Grosh: [00:24:25] Yeah. Yeah. Sue Boulder came to Wendy and said, you know, we really think this is best served in the higher ed space. And so they completely pivoted and decided to focus all the actions, all the technical side on Boulder and in really targeting higher, higher institutions, higher ed.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:24:44] What are some of your future plans?

Ashley Grosh: [00:24:46] So longer term, I think there is absolutely an enterprise solution here. So that's an employee engagement platform. Again, retention is another key issue we know with employers. And so if you could. Offer meaningful rewards for employees. You know, Google we've talked to, they have a problem with transportation. They have too many people driving single occupancy vehicles or this is a case of a lot of employers, right. So how can you change the behavior and get them to carpool or get them to ride the bus system? And then how do you incentivize them to do that? So you could use our rewards platform to do that. And we have proposals into some other large corporates that, you know, see it as a benefit from a fun currency. But if they need to change behavior.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:25:26] So are you reaching out to cities, city governments?

Ashley Grosh: [00:25:29] We have proposals into municipalities as well. You know, a lot of the team members within municipalities, they want them to be riding buses, going to certain events. And so it's a similar program that you would do at higher ed, but you would change the actions based on what that individual employer municipality would want to do. And then you you can customize the rewards. One day, what if you just had the city of Berkeley and that included the campus and that included and that's actually the goal is to get it to be a ubiquitous currency. So I think to get there right, you've got to start traction and so you start traction among the universities. But then that can lead over into the cities and they adopt it. And then you're right, it just becomes, you know, a taxpayer benefit. So we also have a carbon footprint calculator. And so I can see.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:13] Where's that?

Ashley Grosh: [00:26:14] In the app.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:15] In the app.

Ashley Grosh: [00:26:15] And it's individualized. So I can see my individual footprint and then I can see my community's footprint. And I can see, you know what? We are making an impact. And so then it doesn't seem so daunting. Right. And I'm doing my part. The other thing is we're building environmental stewards in higher education. We have stories about this, case studies, students that have graduated from C.U. that were on our platform. They've moved to big cities. And their first inclination is to not get into a car or buy a car. They're used to doing public transportation. So Pip's has really led them to those behaviors. And so then they go on and carry them forward.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:53] Do you have competition in this space?

Ashley Grosh: [00:26:54] So that's a great question, right? You always want to know kind of who's in the rear view mirror or off to the side. And we haven't come across anybody that's doing exactly what we're doing in the way that we're doing it. And especially from the technology integration, the verification and the scholarship component and the matching. Right. That's really unique. There are a couple other pledge based systems, pledging that you rode the bus or pledging to do a Meatless Monday or something like that. And then they don't have a reward platform. So they might say you get a gold star or or.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:27:27] You don't get any monetary.

Ashley Grosh: [00:27:29] Right. You might get a badge. They call it. And then two students have five badges and they get eligible for a pizza party or, you know, something. So they don't have the high value rewards into the system, which we know are the drivers to get students to stay on this. And then they don't have all the other bells and whistles that, you know, carbon footprint calculators and all those things, verified actions and the currency. Right. The currency component with the scholarship piece. So that's really what we believe sets us apart. I really think we're on the cutting edge, because if you look at 5G, right. That's getting rolled out. Things are gonna be happening a lot faster, more devices. I'm seeing more wired, you know, clothing and wearable rings that that track your your health metrics and send them to your doctor in real time. So, you know, 5G is really going to enable us to do more of this. And so we're, you know, at the forefront of that. And we're really excited about being able to plug in to the new wearables and the new companies that are coming into the space.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:28:30] Tell our listeners how to get your website and what they can expect to find there.

Ashley Grosh: [00:28:34] Yeah. So if you go to www.pipsrewards.com and then you won't want to sign in because you're not a user... yet. There's some graphics you can start to see our story. You can get a list of all of our partners. As we mentioned some of them on the show today. The earn, redeem, the donate, the nonprofits that we also support that you can donate to, and then you can reach us that suppor@pipsrewards.com. If you want to learn more or bring this to your campus or if you have any other questions or ideas, we're always open to discussions.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:29:09] Are you looking for volunteers or interns at any point?

Ashley Grosh: [00:29:11] We are. So we we have two interns right now and we are growing like crazy. So for folks that are interested, reach out to us. You know, the reason this is so important to me, you know, I've worked in climate and sustainability almost my entire career, but I'm a mom and I also spend a lot of time on college campuses. And I think about these students and I think about my own kids and how successful I want them to be, and any boost that we can give them, any head start, if we can help them chip away at their debt sooner, if we can help them really have healthy behaviors and habits, we're going to better equip them when they head out into the into the big, real scary world. Your actions can make a difference and added up together, they can have a really big impact. You know, that's what we want to do. 

Lisa Kiefer: [00:30:01] Thank you, Ashley, for coming on Method to the Madness.

Ashley Grosh: [00:30:04] Thank you.

Lisa Kiefer: [00:30:06] You've been listening to Method to the Madness, a bi weekly public affairs show on K.A.L.X. Berkeley celebrating innovators. We'll be back again in two weeks.