Ryan Wolfington
Ryan Wolfington
President, Jewel Inc. | Founder, Inspiring Children Foundation | Co Founder, Not Alone Challenge
Ryan Wolfington is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, mental health advocate, producer, and sports and entertainment innovator. He is President of Jewel Inc., the holding company for four time Grammy nominated singer songwriter and New York Times bestselling author Jewel’s work across entertainment, technology, mental health, entrepreneurship, and social impact.
Before dedicating his career to nonprofit leadership and mental health, Wolfington built and restructured companies in financial services, gaming, technology, healthcare, and teleservices. He was involved in two companies that went public on NASDAQ and served as President of Casino Money Centers, which he helped grow from the ground up to 85 employees and seven offices nationwide. Since the early 1990s, he has been an early advocate of conscious capitalism, workplace wellness, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and human centered culture.
After achieving success in business, Wolfington made a major personal and professional shift. He began applying the same tools he had used to restructure companies to restructure his own life, and then to help others do the same. That work evolved into Wolfington’s 10 Pillars of Healing, Growth, and High Performance Living, a whole human framework designed to help people become physically, socially, emotionally, and mentally healthy.
Wolfington’s proprietary 10 Pillars curriculum became the foundation behind the creation of the Inspiring Children Foundation, a nationally recognized nonprofit and pioneer in youth mental health that Wolfington founded and has led as a volunteer for the last 27 years. The Foundation supports youth facing anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, trauma, financial hardship, family instability, and limited access to opportunity. Its programs tap into a child’s passions, including tennis, pickleball, sports, entrepreneurship, music, art, media, academics, leadership, technology, service, and project based learning, to inspire young people to work on their physical, social, emotional, and mental health.
Through the Inspiring Children Foundation, Wolfington’s programs have served millions online, thousands in person, and hundreds through its intensive leadership pathway with tremendous success. The Foundation’s goal is to help young people become “professionals in life.” Over nearly three decades, its students have earned scholarships and admission to leading universities including Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, Georgetown, Brown, Dartmouth, UCLA, the Air Force Academy, the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, Vanderbilt, Villanova, Williams, The Citadel, BYU, and many others. More importantly, the program has helped young people move from crisis, isolation, and emotional pain into peace of mind, purpose, confidence, leadership, and service.
Wolfington’s mental health and high performance work has expanded far beyond youth programming. He has served as a Chief Mental Health Officer, collaborator, consultant, and wellness strategist for companies and organizations including Hudson’s Bay Company, Saks Fifth Avenue, Zappos, Kroger, the Intennse Professional Tennis League, and for a variety of elite athletes, musicians, entrepreneurs, and high performing executives.
Through his work with Jewel and an invitation from Jeff Bezos to attend the annual MARS Conference, one of the world’s leading gatherings on artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, and emerging technology, Wolfington became an early adopter in AI and robotics. In 2023, he started an AI community focused on helping leaders, creators, entrepreneurs, and mission driven organizations understand and responsibly apply emerging technology. He continues to be passionate about the integration of AI for good, especially in emotional wellness, mental health, youth support, education, and human flourishing.
Wolfington is the cofounder of the Not Alone Challenge, described as the largest mental health campaign in history, and the Not Alone Awards with iHeartRadio, which celebrates top leaders in the mental health movement. He is also a co founder of the Not Alone Summit, a premier gathering of leading voices in mental health, philanthropy, business, culture, science, entertainment, innovation, and lived experience. He is also the Co Founder of SCALE, a financial, investment, and human capital conference in Las Vegas.
His work with Jewel has helped bring mental health and wellness tools to a national audience through ICF’s Not Alone program, including the Not Alone Challenge, Not Alone Summit, Not Alone Awards, and free online community and toolkit. Their work has also expanded through The Wellness Experience Music and Mental Health Festival and The Portal by Jewel, an extraordinary artistic exhibition created by Jewel in partnership with Crystal Bridges Museum.
Wolfington has served as a major figure in sports management, tennis, pickleball programming, and live event production. He served as President and Director of the United States Tennis Association in Nevada, held leadership roles at the national, sectional, and district levels, and helped restructure and revive USTA Nevada into a thriving organization with more than 27 national tournaments and record breaking reserves.
Through the Inspiring Children Foundation and his broader tennis work, Wolfington founded VegasTennis.com, one of the first tennis newsletters in America, and the No Quit Tennis Academy, voted top three in the nation by the Tennis Channel. In partnership with the winningest tennis team in history, Bob and Mike Bryan, he also started the Team Bryan Leadership Program, a high performance youth development pathway combining tennis, academics, leadership, mentoring, mental health, and life skills.
Wolfington has helped create, produce, and promote the Nadal Invitational, Richard Branson’s Necker Cup, the MGM Slam owned by MGM Resorts International, Billie Jean King’s World TeamTennis Vegas Rollers, Smash Hits with Elton John, the PowerShares Series, USTA Pro Circuit tournaments, and more than 27 national events per year. These events have involved many of the greatest names in tennis, including Rafael Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz, Andre Agassi, Michael Chang, Martina Navratilova, Serena Williams, Eugenie Bouchard, Bjorn Borg, Novak Djokovic, Caroline Wozniacki, Boris Becker, Bob Bryan, Mike Bryan, and many others.
Wolfington’s video and film production career began in college, where he operated a video production company well into his 20s while attending Villanova University. Later, he returned to film and documentary work as a producer and contributor on projects connected to human dignity, mindfulness, wellness, nutrition, youth, homelessness, social justice, and personal transformation. His film and media work includes Bella, winner of the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, Cabrini, which has a 98 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, Lost in America, The Mindfulness Movement, and Forks Over Knives, all purpose-driven projects built on values and principles he cares deeply about.
His work has been recognized with the President of the United States Service Award, the Human of the Year Award presented by Apple co founder Steve Wozniak, and a number of USTA and USPTA honors for industry excellence.
Across all aspects of his career, Wolfington’s philosophy is simple:
By doing right, you feel right. In the end, only kindness matters.