Who We Are
Opening eyes and minds to a different view of poverty
Our mission
Our mission is to open eyes and minds to an entirely different view of poverty and the people who live in it. We do this by having you experience how poverty changes the brain.
Modeled after social science laboratory experiments, the game segment of Gettin’ By imposes multiple kinds of scarcity and has you face true-to-life situations. You try to make good decisions with limited time, resources, and information – just like in real life for millions of people.
We believe that poverty’s impact on the brain shapes every aspect of life. And when you deeply understand this – and how you would struggle in the same way – you have a broader view that you cannot ignore. We strive to help you return to your work with a new way of seeing how your work can be more effective and successful for people living in poverty.
We’re not just playing a game. We hope to inspire you to be a game-changer in your organization and make a difference for people living in poverty.
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The founder
Linda Riddell
Linda Riddell is an epidemiologist, specializing in poverty and social-economic status issues. She has a master’s degree in health policy and management. She keeps abreast of developments with courses at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Michigan. She has a bachelor’s in English.
Riddell dedicates her career to helping clients measure, understand, and improve health, especially for low-income and disadvantaged people. She works with state governments, private institutes, and large insurers as a data scientist. Projects range from long-term care capacity planning to HIV care management.
Published work & podcasts
Published work
- The Last Mile: Making Help More Helpful for People Coping with SDOH FactorsSDOH Education
- How to improve your employees’ health without blood, sweat or tearsMainebiz
- Commentary: Shooting for a better moonPortland Press Herald
- Maine Voices: As pandemic instability fades, our mental crowding will easePortland Press Herald
- 3 factors to focus on when teaching kids living in povertyNWEA Blog
- Maine Voices: To make America truly great again, move toward greater equityPortland Press Herald
Podcasts
- The Power of UnpredictabilityHealth Education and Training Institute — December 2024
- Understanding the Effects of Poverty with the Founder of Health EconomyMedHost — 2019
- Addressing In-Work PovertyHR Power Hour — March 2024
“We’re not just playing a game. We hope to inspire you to be a game-changer.”
A note from Linda
I got interested in the mash-up of social, economic, biological, and health factors in graduate school. I was fascinated by research showing that people have better health and longer lives as they rise up the socioeconomic scale — that your health status is strongly linked to your annual income.
The reasons are more subtle than you might expect. Diet, exercise, and smoking all come to mind. But studies find that poor people suffer more illness from poor choices than rich people making the same choices. Rich smokers are less likely to get lung cancer than poor smokers. There was clearly something else going on.
“A brain overwhelmed with poverty cannot function at its optimal level.”
As a hobby — admittedly an odd one — I enjoy reading about the brain. I came upon the book Scarcity, which explains how scarcity of various types (time, money, information) shapes how we think and behave. The authors describe social science experiments that induced the poverty mindset and nudged people into behaving like a person in scarcity would.
The aha moment
If a social scientist could create an experience of scarcity, then maybe a game could too. If people could experience for themselves how their thinking changed when they were in “poverty” — would they see it differently? Would they change how they worked with people in poverty to make support more successful, ultimately to make everyone more successful?
A game focused on budgeting money alone wasn’t going to cut it. Poverty is much more than having less money. Gettin’ By includes money-related situations, but also other kinds of assets — time and energy, home and family, work. The game forces players to spend all of their assets as best they can as they face real-life situations. Time scarcity is built in too, mimicking real-life constraints.
The game is meant to be frustrating and stressful. That’s the point. I hope you’ll join us and experience it for yourself.
Linda Riddell
Founder, Gettin’ By | Health Economy LLC
“We hope to inspire you to be a game-changer in your organization.”
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