SHIFT Global helps frontline workers, counselors, educators, and humanitarian teams practice complex conversations, receive competency-based feedback, and build real-world capability before they enter the field.
Grounded in 18 years of global mental health, crisis-response, and implementation research across 25 countries.
Most training simulators speak English and grade everyone against a Western script. SHIFT doesn't.
SHIFT draws on 18 years of research developing, evaluating, and implementing psychological and psychosocial interventions across humanitarian, global health, and high-stress workforce settings. Its simulations, competency frameworks, and feedback systems are informed by evidence-based practices and by our team's extensive experience translating evidence into real-world training and practice.
Helping skills develop through repeated practice, timely feedback, and effective supervision. Yet live role-play is difficult to scale, feedback is often delayed, and the conversations that matter most — around safety, disclosure, resistance, and crisis — can be especially difficult to rehearse. SHIFT gives trainees structured, repeatable opportunities to practice these conversations and receive feedback while the learning is still fresh.
AI can make realistic, repeatable practice available at a scale traditional training alone cannot achieve. But in high-stakes helping work, scale is not enough. Simulation must also be safe, supervised, culturally responsive, and grounded in observable competencies. SHIFT is being built to meet that need — combining the reach of AI with the structure, accountability, and human oversight that high-quality training requires.
SHIFT combines responsive simulation, contextual competency assessment, and evidence-linked feedback to help trainees learn, practice, reflect, and improve. Every session shows what the learner demonstrated, where they struggled, and what to try next.
Trust is earned. Simulated clients open up as rapport develops and may hesitate or pull back when a response misses the moment. Each new attempt introduces natural variation, so trainees learn to respond rather than memorize a script.
Trainees can practice and receive feedback in their preferred language. Cultural context informs both the client interaction and the assessment rubric, helping ensure that communication is interpreted within the relevant setting rather than against a single Western norm.
Responses are assessed for quality in context: whether the skill was well formed, well timed, and responsive to the client. Trainees are evaluated only on competencies that the scenario provides a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate — not on whether they force every skill into every conversation.
SHIFT does more than identify an open question or empathic response. It quotes the trainee's words, explains why the response worked or missed the mark, and offers a stronger alternative — turning each interaction into a learning opportunity, not simply a score.
Revisit difficult moments, try a different response, compare attempts, and build competence module by module. Progress becomes visible over time, allowing practice to accumulate rather than end with a single session.
Focus Mode hides live scoring so learners can stay present in the conversation without watching every indicator. A complete, supportive debrief is still provided at the end of the session.
Each session concludes with a structured summary of strengths, missed opportunities, transcript-based examples, and targeted priorities for continued practice.
Programs can monitor development over time, review individual sessions, identify common skill gaps, and focus supervision where it will have the greatest value.
A built-in walkthrough, plain-language competency definitions, response starters, and worked examples help learners understand both the platform and the skills they are practicing — from initial orientation through to independent practice.
Select a skill pathway or scenario matched to the learner's role and setting.
Respond turn by turn to a simulated client with a realistic presenting concern.
Each response is scored turn by turn — tap any skill to see why it landed and a stronger line to try next.
End with a graded, supervisor-ready debrief — strengths, focus areas, and a model response for each skill.
Step 4 in the app — every session ends with a structured, AI-assisted debrief: what the trainee demonstrated, what was missed, and what to practice next.
SHIFT assesses five core competencies that can be practiced, observed, and strengthened over time: empathy and rapport, open questions, technique use, safety and referral, and action planning. Each competency is evaluated for quality, timing, responsiveness, and cultural and contextual fit — not simply for whether it appeared.
Using reflective listening, validation, and warmth to help the client feel heard and understood.
Asking questions that invite elaboration and help the client describe their experience in their own words.
Applying the module's core helping technique accurately, appropriately, and in response to the client's needs.
Recognizing relevant risk cues, responding calmly and directly, and identifying an appropriate next step when needed.
Working with the client to agree on one small, specific, and realistic next step.
From foundational communication skills to safety and risk management, SHIFT offers structured modules for practicing the conversations that helping professionals encounter in real-world settings. The library is designed to support progressive learning, with new modules and intervention-specific pathways added over time.
That need scalable practice and feedback for large cohorts.
Who need visibility into trainee growth and where to focus support.
Training lay and non-specialist workforces to deliver evidence-based care with fidelity — across contexts, languages, and high-stakes settings.
Teaching high-stakes interpersonal skills.
Studying AI-supported capability development and skill transfer.
Supervisors and program leads can see where trainees are building competence, whether they're practising with fidelity to the method, where they need support, and how performance changes over time.
SHIFT is being developed alongside a review of AI-enabled training in global mental health settings, with a focus on competency measurement, safety, cultural validity, supervision, and skill transfer. The research agenda is practical: can AI-supported simulation help people develop demonstrable, transferable helping skills — safely, equitably, and at scale?
SHIFT studies how people develop capability with AI in high-stakes interpersonal work, and builds validated measures to assess whether AI-supported learning transfers into safer, more effective practice.
SHIFT addresses the implementation gap in global mental health by making training, practice, supervision, and fidelity assessment more scalable and culturally adaptable.
SHIFT is not a therapy chatbot, diagnostic system, crisis service, or replacement for clinical supervision. It is a practice-and-feedback environment designed to complement formal training, live supervision, face-to-face role-play, and case discussion under appropriate program oversight.
Try the interactive demo in your browser — no install, no account. Or reach out to bring SHIFT Global to your program.
Designed for use in settings such as universities, humanitarian organizations, public health programs, and workforce training teams — informed by experience across global mental health, humanitarian response, refugee health, and workforce wellbeing.
Developed by Dr. Alvin K. Tay, Adjunct Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University; former United Nations global mental health technology and strategy advisor. LinkedIn ↗