Peter Samuelson, a veteran film producer and serial nonprofit founder, joins Sunny Ray to describe ROKindness, his new platform designed to make kindness spread the way viral hatred does online. Samuelson traces his charitable path from co-founding Starlight Children's Foundation and Starbright World with Steven Spielberg, ventures that together raised over a billion dollars for seriously ill children, through producing dozens of films and chairing Panavision. He explains ROKindness as a free app and website where one act of kindness triggers a chain: recipients receive a card with a QR code, are asked to pay it forward with three acts of their own, and every ripple is tracked and rewarded with points across generations of givers. Samuelson shares a real example of a rabbi's kindness ripple reaching a volunteer in an Iraqi refugee camp, and describes partnerships with a dozen state governors planning kindness medal ceremonies. He reflects on lessons from building Starbright's early video links to hospitals, the commercial value of selfless work, and his hope that ROKindness becomes self-replicating and reshapes culture within years, not decades.
Film producer and philanthropist Peter Samuelson explains ROKindness, an app that turns single kind acts into viral, trackable ripples.
What are you building with ROKindness, and why should the audience care?
I'm a film producer who built Starlight and Starbright with Steven Spielberg, raising over a billion dollars for sick children. I believe hatred is winning in America, spreading through social media rabbit holes. So I built ROKindness, a free app where one act of kindness triggers a QR-coded chain: recipients pay it forward with three acts, and everyone's ripple is tracked, scored, and visible in a growing family tree of kindness.
You produced films for 25 years and founded five charities. Which of those careers taught you more about how to get something built?
It's circular, really. I've also been a media executive, running Panavision for years. Each career taught me something about the other. My charities gave me commercial benefits too. I wrote about this in my book, Finding Happy: selflessness can be selfish, and that's fine. Volunteering lets young people meet others far above their pay grade in a noncontentious environment, building relationships you'd never get in business alone.
You co-founded Starbright World with Steven Spielberg when connecting sick children by video was genuinely hard. What did building it that early actually take?
We needed broadband into hospitals in the early 1990s, and none existed. We literally had two guys dig a trench to run a T3 line from the street into a hospital. I also learned that because our purpose was nonprofit, competing companies could legally collaborate. We linked immunocompromised kids in isolation rooms, turned it on at Digital World in 1995 with Norman Schwarzkopf and Spielberg, and got six million dollars from Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen.
What would make you say, five years from now, that ROKindness truly changed culture, not just reached a lot of people?
I hope it's five months, though it might take five years. Success means it's gone viral and self-replicating, one to three to nine to twenty-seven, without us pushing hard. Right now we have full-time social media and web staff and work with dozens of influencers. We're also partnering with about a dozen state governors who'll hold kindness medal ceremonies every six months to recognize their state's top kindness champions.
Where can people learn more?
It's rokindness.org, spelled R-O-kindness. It's completely free, nobody wants your money, and you'll be amazed at what we've built. Just open the app or visit the website, and you'll see your own ripple of kindness mapped out in a three-dimensional family tree.
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