Q&A with Brian Kinsella, Co-Founder and Chairman of Stop Soldier Suicide Co-Founder and CEO of Rappore

Brian Kinsella is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Stop Soldier Suicide, a veteran-founded-and-led nonprofit focused on military mental health and suicide prevention, and Co-Founder and CEO of Rappore, a platform that digitally delivers institutional quality mental health care. Brian worked at Goldman Sachs from 2013 to 2018 in the firm's Global Investment Research Division in New York.


Tell us about Stop Soldier Suicide and how your own military service inspired you to launch this organization.
Brian: Service has always been a guiding principle in my life. I was profoundly affected by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and immediately joined ROTC earning a commission in the U.S. Army in 2006. After a fifteen-month deployment to Iraq, I had the most challenging mission of my military career – the massive relief expedition to Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. There I experienced first-hand the devastation to human life caused by the 2010 earthquake that killed over 200,000 people. The level of tragedy was beyond anything I had seen up to this point, and I couldn't stand idly by. I knew I had to continue to make an impact with my life.

After the military, I moved to New York City and despite being thousands of miles away from Iraq and Haiti, I could not put aside the trauma I had witnessed and the thought that so many service members and veterans had experienced these types of deployments (in some cases many, many times). The reintegration post-deployment as well as the transition out of the military brought about many compounding issues and contours that create friction as people leave service and become veterans. It isn’t easy and takes a toll on one’s mental and emotional health, impacts family relationships, and often has a lasting impact.

During my military career I knew many people who considered or died by suicide, including one of the best soldiers I had ever commanded. My experience was not isolated. Over 6,400 veterans lose their lives to suicide annually. Our country needed a sustainable solution to end this growing epidemic. Despite everyone saying it was an impossible task, I, along with two of my best friends – Nick Black and Craig Gridelli (both Army officers from Johns Hopkins), founded Stop Soldier Suicide (SSS) in 2010. Our team is executing an ambitious mission to disrupt veteran suicide and save 13,000 lives by 2030.

For a veteran who reaches out for help, what kinds of resources do you provide and what does the process involve?
Brian: SSS’ mission is to reduce veteran suicide by using enhanced data insights, focused client acquisition, and best-in-class suicide intervention services. SSS’ innovative design engages cutting-edge digital identification strategies to flag those at greatest risk and then provides assessment, care, and holistic community support for as long as necessary.

One of the biggest challenges is identifying people who are at risk of suicide as far in advance as possible and proactively reaching out to offer solutions that could positively alter their path. Our unique approach leverages data and social media to identify individuals with the recognized precursors of suicide and allows healthcare workers to proactively intervene in what has historically been a reactive posture to care and treatment.

Our clients are provided consistent, one-on-one engagement with their Wellness Coordinators, enabling them to build trust and rapport while working to uncover the root causes of their struggles. The SSS phone lines and web-based help are covered by mental health professionals 24/7. Importantly, we have built licensed Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and a life-coaching team into our Wellness Center to provide seamless care and support clients and their families for as long as needed.

Explain the Black Box Project and how it’s helping to identify veterans and service members who may be contemplating suicide.
Brian: Project Block Box securely collects, processes, and uses cutting-edge technology to analyze devices (e.g., phones, laptops, etc.) of veterans who have died by suicide. Our machine learning and AI algorithms data scrape those devices and build models of pre-suicidal behavior to identify red-flag patterns that allow us to rapidly deploy our life-saving services before it’s too late. These leading-edge technology integrations will save service member and veteran lives and could importantly have vast applications across civilian mental health platforms.

Your website provides detailed information and statistics about veteran safety and security. What do you think is the most important takeaway? What statistics surprise people the most?
Brian: It is heartbreaking that those who choose to serve in an all-volunteer force comprised of a few percentage points of our population feel they are left with no other option than to take their own lives. We absolutely must do more at a systems level to improve the process as service members transition to veterans and become empowered, productive members of our society.

Since 9/11, more than 110,000 veterans have died by suicide while 7,037 have died in combat. Military service members and veterans die by suicide at a 50% greater rate than their civilian counterparts. Female veterans are more than twice as likely to die by suicide than non-veterans. Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, suicide rates have increased by another 20%.

We believe Stop Soldier Suicide has disrupted the problem and figured out a way to significantly save lives. Since SSS’ inception, we have never lost an active client and we see a 27% reduction in suicide risk within the first 90 days. We welcome everyone to join our mission.

How can someone help or get involved with Stop Soldier Suicide initiatives?
Brian: Anyone can get involved, at any level. You can help raise resources and awareness through our Facebook challenges, individual generosity or join our coalition of partners by engaging your company’s employee resource groups or other company-based groups.

If you or someone you know is a veteran who’s struggling, call Stop Soldier Suicide 24/7 at (844) 317-1136.

In addition to Stop Soldier Suicide, you also co-founded and are the current CEO of Rappore, a platform that virtually connects mental health patients with personalized therapists. What drew you to the mental healthcare industry and was it related to the work you’ve done with SSS?
Brian: I applied my experience from SSS to civilian mental health, where the current system is fragmented and inefficient. Mental health care is unacceptably out of reach for millions of people, whether it be by geography, accessibility, affordability, or stigma.

Technology and data are key to providing access to mental healthcare. Tech-enabled organizations are disrupting legacy business models and improving the quality of care while simultaneously driving down costs and easing administrative friction.

I created Rappore to take some of the world’s best clinical mental health services virtual and make effective care available to all. I teamed up with Dr. Fred Kass, the Vice Chairman of Psychiatry at Columbia University and the founder of Columbia Doctors Psychiatry, to create a comprehensive platform for patients who want high-quality, affordable, and easily accessible care. The technology behind Rappore also significantly reduces administrative burdens such as insurance processing and clerical work, thus allowing clinicians to focus primarily on patient care and achieve better outcomes.

Rappore is focused on providing people with effective comprehensive care and not just providing a “band-aid” or being a one-time interaction. Our focus is on effective, measurable mental health improvement and we’ve assembled a best-in-class team of medical professionals and clinicians. With our keen focus on efficacy, major insurance carriers have taken interest and Rappore now accepts Aetna, CIGNA and United Healthcare commercial insurance plans and we aim to take Medicare in the near future.

Our ethos of excellence, experience, and passion translates into loyal repeat patients. We prioritize patients and empower clinicians to shape the future of mental healthcare. It is clear from our growth in this massive marketplace that our value proposition is resonating with patients and medical professionals alike.

Explain the Rappore Mental Health Fingerprint and how this helps match patients with mental health professionals.
Brian: At Rappore and with the help of leading industry experts, we are pioneering a proprietary tool – Mental Health Fingerprint® – to diagnose symptoms and stressors most effectively. This improves the clinician matching process and tracks patient improvement based on multiple factors. This data will be used at scale to ensure best practices across treatment, therapy, and medication.

How did your time at Goldman Sachs help you to succeed in building and growing two separate businesses?
Brian: My years at Goldman Sachs were instrumental in laying down the foundation for entrepreneurship and public service. Goldman gave me confidence in my analytical and technical skills and the conviction I could create a successful business. Building SSS concurrently while achieving excellence in my professional career culminated in my belief that I could make a difference in the mental health framework of this nation.

The Goldman values of teamwork, client-centricity, and long-term ambition coupled with the grit and determination from the military gave me the tools and the fortitude to start Rappore. The relationships forged across the GS ecosystem created vast network effects that remain instrumental.