Feature Story
Feature Story
REDEFINING THE LANGUAGE OF EMPATHY
some people walk into a room and naturally draw attention, while others
have the ability to shift the energy of the space. Jess Toft is one of those who
rearranges the energy.
She speaks softly, listens deeply, and carries the quiet certainty of someone who has dedicated her life to understanding the nuances of communication. Her leadership style isn’t about performance; it is intrinsic and authentic. She doesn’t need to raise her mvoice to make an impact.
There’s no need for her to announce herself as a founder, educator, designer, and neurodivergent woman breaking barriers in the field of AI. You can feel her presence the moment you meet her.
However, it wasn’t a pitch deck or a TED Talk that led to her most significant
innovation. It was a profoundly personal
moment that no mother ever forgets,
watching her child suffer, fully aware that the world lacks the vocabulary to define that pain.
When Jess raised her concerns with the school, the response was predictable and almost rehearsed: “She’s just sensitive. She’ll toughen up. ” But Jess recognized the dismissive language. She could see the gaslighting for what it was.
When Jess raised her concerns with the school, the response was predictable and almost rehearsed: “She’s just sensitive. She’ll toughen up. ” But Jess recognized the dismissive language. She could see the gaslighting for what it was.
The Moment That Sparked a Movement
Socially, Charlotte—Jess’s daughter—wasn’t being pushed or yelled at. Instead, she was being excluded. Systematically. Quietly. She was left out of birthday parties and noticed that conversations would stop as soon as she
entered a room. The inside jokes carried an unspoken message: “You don’t belong here.”
A Platform With a Pulse
Jess’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, the cursor blinking back at her like it was holding its breath. Beside her, Dustin, her advisor and quiet champion through it all watched as she typed the very first query into the app she had spent months building from the ground up: “What should I do if my daughter is being left out every day, and the school says it’s not bullying?”
She hit Enter.
The answer appeared almost instantly, but Jess barely registered the words. The tears came first. Not because the algorithm worked, but because for the first time, something, even if it was a machine, understood.
“IT WAS WHEN I KNEW WE HAD BUILT SOMETHING THAT COULD SPEAK TRUTH WHERE INSTITUTIONS GASLIGHT. THAT COULD HOLD PEOPLE WHEN SYSTEMS DROP THEM. ”
That moment was the heartbeat behind Bully Buddy.
Bully Buddy: Your Compassionate AI Reality Anchor for Clarity, Healing, and Respectful Interactions is not a tagline. It’s a manifesto.
Bully Buddy is a trauma informed, emotionally intelligent AI designed to help people navigate the invisible wounds of psychological manipulation, gaslighting, exclusion, and bullying, whether in school,
at work, in families, or online. It’s not a therapist. It’s not a friend. It’s something else entirely: an emotionally neutral, alwaysavailable companion that helps you get back to the truth beneath the noise.
Bully Buddy was born out of Jess’s lived reality, watching her daughter Charlotte suffer the quiet cruelty of exclusion while the adults around her dismissed it as “oversensitivity. ” Jess knew the language of dismissal too well. So she built a platform that refuses to look away.
The platform empowers users to:
Find clarity in confusing or emotionally loaded situations.
Rebuild trust in their own instincts and perception.
Access coping tools and guidance toward healing.
Learn healthier, restorative ways to engage with others.
Unlike other platforms, Bully Buddy isn’t built to replace human connection. It is designed to anchor you, to help you hold your cente when the world seems intent on throwing you off balance.
Every line of code was written with inclusivity in mind, particularly for neurodivergent individuals whose experiences are often misunderstood or overlooked. Bully Buddy sees what others miss.
It recognizes subtle power dynamics, flags patterns of emotional harm, and guides users toward clarity without judgment.
What Jess created isn’t just technology. It’s a lifeline for Charlotte, for countless others, and for anyone who has ever questioned whether what they felt was real.
A LEGACY OF SOFT POWER
Jess didn’t arrive at this work through Silicon Valley. She arrived through survival. “Growing up without a lot of financial resources taught me to make something from nothing, ” she says. “Creativity wasn’t about art. It was about function. It was a way of thinking. A way of living.
” That resourcefulness is woven into every system Jess builds. Whether she’s designing education programs or startup frameworks, her leadership model is never top-down. It’s fractal. Collaborative. Sustainable. She identifies strong foundational players and empowers them to co-lead, ensuring the impact doesn’t depend on a single voice at the top.
And that approach isn’t accidental.
Jess knows what it feels like to be dismissed, to be underestimated. “For a long time, no one took me seriously, ” she says. “I learned not to waste time trying to prove myself. I just started showing up. Silently. Consistently. I let my work speak. ”Her leadership style is informed by emotional intelligence and radical empathy, even in professional rooms where those qualities are undervalued. Especially in those rooms
“If Bully Buddy were a person, it would be the friend who knows your patterns, your pain, and never walks away. ”
Emotional Truth Meets Algorithmic Clarity When Jess first stepped into the AI space, it wasn’t to innovate. It was to survive. She was in a dark place, struggling to communicate even with the people closest to her. Traditional methods weren’t working. Therapy wasn’t enough. She didn’t need more affirmation. She needed clarity. She needed a tool that could make sense of patterns when her world felt like chaos. So she began building one.
CREATIVITY AS SURVIVAL
Jess didn’t arrive at this work through Silicon Valley. She arrived through survival. “Growing up without a lot of financial resources taught me to make something from nothing, ” she says. “Creativity wasn’t about art. It was about function. It was a way of thinking. A way of living.
” That resourcefulness is woven into every system Jess builds. Whether she’s designing education programs or startup frameworks, her leadership model is never top-down. It’s fractal. Collaborative. Sustainable. She identifies strong foundational players and empowers them to co-lead, ensuring the impact doesn’t depend on a single voice at the top.
And that approach isn’t accidental.
Jess knows what it feels like to be dismissed, to be underestimated. “For a long time, no one took me seriously, ” she says. “I learned not to waste time trying to prove myself. I just started showing up. Silently. Consistently. I let my work speak. ”Her leadership style is informed by emotional intelligence and radical empathy, even in professional rooms where those qualities are undervalued. Especially in those rooms
“I want to bring the calm of the digital world into the chaos of the physical one. ”
Emotional Truth Meets Algorithmic Clarity When Jess first stepped into the AI space, it wasn’t to innovate. It was to survive. She was in a dark place, struggling to communicate even with the people closest to her. Traditional methods weren’t working. Therapy wasn’t enough. She didn’t need more affirmation. She needed clarity. She needed a tool that could make sense of patterns when her world felt like chaos. So she began building one.
THE POWER OF NAMING WHAT WAS NEVER NAMED
Jess identifies as neurodivergent, diagnosed with ADHD, and self-aware enough to know she likely falls somewhere on the autism spectrum. But labels, for her, are never the point. “I’m not interested in labels for their own sake, ” she says. “I’m interested in
liberation. What matters is how we move through the world and how the world moves around us ”
She is particularly attuned to how autism often shows up differently in women and girls, masked by high-functioning facades and relentless over-adaptation. That invisibility is part of what drives her to build spaces where
no one has to hide or perform. Online, Jess has long found solace in the ability to set boundaries with a click. But she doesn’t want true safety to exist only in digital form. Her mission is to bring that same sense of clarity and emotional safety into real life, to create communities where everyone can simply be.
“PEOPLE BRING THEIR PAIN INTO EVERY CONVERSATION. AI DOESN’T. THAT’S ITS STRENGTH.”
THE ETHICS OF SOFT TECHNOLOGY
In a world that often equates AI with cold logic and disconnection, Jess has built something quietly countercultural. She doesn’t believe empathy is a liability in tech. She believes it’s the next frontier. Her team collaborates with advisors in child development, neurodiversity, psychology, and restorative justice to ensure Bully Buddy is designed not just to perform but to protect. Every feature is vetted for emotional safety as rigorously as it is for usefulness. Jess is equally clear about what AI should never do: Replace human connection Make life-altering decisions without consent Operate in secrecy or silence “Its purpose is partnership. Its power is presence, ” she says.