I am Shellie Ryan. Founder and CEO, RAISE Tech.
I did not come to this work from technology. I came to technology because twenty years of work inside domestic violence, child welfare, and trauma-informed systems showed me what was missing. The tools did not exist.
She started in the room.
She spent two decades in gender-based violence, child welfare, and trauma-informed systems change, working in courtrooms, emergency shelters, and the complicated space where those worlds collide. She sat with survivors. She worked alongside families navigating every system at once. She developed trauma-informed policy, implemented promising practices across organizations, and testified as an expert witness in criminal and civil trials.
In 2008, she founded SAFE Futures at SAFE Alliance, the first program of its kind in Texas to provide integrated support to families navigating domestic violence and the child welfare system at the same time. It received national recognition as a Pioneer in Children’s Wellbeing from the Ashoka Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and it is still serving families today.
The program she founded now generates $9 to $18 million in avoided public costs per year on an annual budget of approximately $700,000. That is a return of roughly $12 to $25 for every dollar invested.
Pierre R. Berastaín, Stanford Social Innovation Review, February 2026
68% of the families it serves are able to maintain or be reunified with their children.
SAFE Alliance, safeaustin.org
She co-authored the Domestic Violence chapter of the Texas Child Protection Law Bench Book. She spent a decade on the Travis County Parenting in Recovery Family Drug Court, building trauma-informed protocols from the ground up.
She is also a survivor. She knows what it feels like to need these tools from the other side of the table. And that is enough to know that the tools most people are handed when they are trying to rebuild were not built with the understanding of what it actually takes to get back up.
That is why she built RAISE Tech.
I am not a tech person who learned about trauma. I am a trauma expert who is building technology.
In her own words.
Depending on who you are, here is what this work means.
I am a late-diagnosed neurodivergent founder who spent twenty years inside systems that were never built for the people they were meant to serve. I have sat with survivors of domestic violence. I have helped families reunify after the worst moments of their lives. I have watched smart, capable people be sorted out of opportunities because their experience did not fit the mold.
Now I build AI tools that give those people a fighting chance.
The work is informed by twenty years of front-line practice and the trauma-informed frameworks that quietly hold all of it together.
If you have lived experience that the standard systems do not know how to read, my tools were built for you. If you are trying to translate what you have built into language that opens doors, my tools were built for you. If you have been told you are too much, too complicated, or too far from the standard, my tools were built for you.
Twenty years of direct service in gender-based violence and child welfare systems is not background. It is the lens. The policies written, the staff trained, the families supported. That is why these services exist and why they are designed the way they are.
Twenty years in domestic violence advocacy, child welfare, and trauma-informed systems change. I wrote policy, trained staff, testified as an expert witness, and sat in court. I know what it costs an organization to get this wrong, and I know what it looks like when the tools actually work.
I have managed $5M+ in state and federal grants across 26 partner sites. I co-authored the Domestic Violence chapter of the Texas Child Protection Law Bench Book, the judicial reference used by family court judges across all 254 Texas counties. I co-chaired the state legislative taskforce that set statewide standards for how domestic violence and child welfare systems work together.
RAISE Tech exists because that gap should not still exist.
What RAISE Means
Credentials
Two decades, documented.