Team
REAL Engagement AI brings together expertise across psychology, media, AI systems, governance, and licensing to advance a humanistic standard for emotional intelligence.
Founder & Scientific Lead — Renée Bunnell, PhD
Renée Bunnell is the founder of REAL Engagement AI and the originator of its humanistic emotion framework. Her work bridges clinical psychology, character science, media systems, and applied AI, translating decades of research on meaning, positive emotion, and character strengths into measurable, licensable systems used across media, organizational, and AI contexts.
Research & Academic Collaborators
REAL collaborates with academic researchers and institutions working in psychology, character science, media studies, and human-centered AI. These collaborations inform ongoing validation, measurement, and methodological rigor.
Licensing & Strategy — Howard Applebaum -Licensing Lead
Howard brings deep expertise in technology licensing, commercialization strategy, and market-facing execution. He works with partners and licensees to integrate REAL’s humanistic framework into existing products and platforms while preserving long-term value, trust, and governance alignment.
Forward Engineers & Clinical Practitioners
REAL Engagement AI works with forward‑looking engineers and clinical practitioners who are actively embedding character strengths and humanistic frameworks into human‑AI systems. This includes professionals designing agentic systems, autonomous platforms, and therapeutic or care‑oriented technologies where psychological safety, meaning, and flourishing are first‑order requirements rather than afterthoughts.
Legal & Operations — Mike Drath -Production Lead
Mike leads REAL’s legal and intellectual property strategy, ensuring that the framework is stewarded responsibly and remains aligned with evolving regulatory, ethical, and commercial environments. His role focuses on enabling adoption while protecting clients from downstream risk.
Industry Advisors
Advisors across media, AI, organizational leadership, and governance support REAL’s mission to establish a durable, humanistic standard for emotion AI.
Business & Partnerships — Paul Lupi - Commercial Strategy
Paul supports commercial strategy, partnerships, and operational execution across media, technology, and emerging AI platforms. He focuses on practical deployment pathways that connect REAL’s research foundation to real-world business outcomes.
Internal & External AI Agents
Blue — Global Emotion AI Research Agent
Blue continuously surveys the global landscape of emotion AI, tracking research breakthroughs, market trends, and emerging applications across industries. Blue identifies where emotion AI is evolving, where risks are emerging, and where humanistic frameworks create durable advantage.
TR — Humanistic Compliance & Protection Agent
TR focuses on protecting clients from misuse of emotion AI by non-humanistic or manipulative practitioners. TR monitors alignment with psychological best practices, supports adherence to APA-aligned principles, and helps ensure that emotionally intelligent systems remain explainable, ethical, and safe as they scale.
(Planned) External Agent — Partner & Ecosystem Interface
An external-facing agent will support partners and licensees by translating REAL’s framework into applied guidance, integration pathways, and ongoing alignment support across platforms and domains.
Exploring how emotion, values, and trust drive long-term performance and enterprise value across intelligent systems?
REAL Engagement AI works with senior leaders and forward-looking teams to embed humanistic, character-based metrics into AI and LLM platforms, media and advertising systems, companion robotics, organizational intelligence, clinical and therapeutic technologies, and autonomous agents — improving decision quality, alignment, trust, and durable business outcomes at scale.
Use the form to begin a strategic conversation about integration, licensing, or research collaboration.