About Noggin Notes
The Noggin Notes team is here to empower their clients through their emotional learning. Noggin Notes provides you access to information, resources, and tools in forms that align with each individual personally or in teams in an organization. Emotional learning is designed to assist clients to manage and discern their emotional wellbeing by correctly identifying their emotions to their thoughts.
We guide our clients to be able to manage their thoughts and emotions in a healthy way through…
Self-awareness
To recognize your emotions and how they impact your behavior; acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses to better gain confidence in your abilities.
Self-management
To take control and ownership of your thoughts, emotions, and actions in various situations, as well as setting and working toward goals.
Social awareness
The ability to put yourself in the shoes of another person who may be from a different background or culture from the one you grew up with. To act with empathy and in an ethical manner within your home, school, and community.
Relationship skills
The ability to build and maintain healthy relationships with people from a diverse range of backgrounds. This competency focuses on listening to and being able to communicate with others, peacefully resolving conflict, and knowing when to ask for or offer help.
Making responsible decisions
Choosing how to act or respond to a situation based on learned behaviors such as ethics, safety, weighing consequences, and the well-being of others, as well as yourself.
Educating oneself on trauma, emotional intelligence, and mental health can be daunting, but that's what Noggin Notes is here for! Our mission is to give others the gift of better mental health through education. Society has built an unhealthy way of living consisting of projecting, addictions, and refusing to take accountability for oneself. With the right tools and knowledge, we can all collectively move forward towards conscious living.
There is a deep need for emotional learning among the collective. To begin healing and understanding why we do and behave the way we do in various environments, we empower you to reach your goals in every aspect of your life. Noggin Notes builds customized tools and programs towards your needs to empower you more.
We have created three amazing mental health podcasts in three different continents focused on bringing you informative conversations. Noggin Notes podcast is in the United States, Asia and Africa. Providing localized podcasts helps communities resonate better.
We also offer training for businesses, schools, and individuals to give them tools to improve their mental wellness. Partnerships with schools and organizations to provide them with resources and packages to learn about emotional learning.
Our Partners
Sifiso Ripinga
Founder & Director
Sifiso Ripinga self-funded the organization Noggin Notes to be a source of information, for individuals and organizations around the world. To provide a channel to individuals who are seeking to gain more control over their mental wellbeing and overcome and unlearn unhealthy behaviors and actions that have been keeping them stagnant from healing and growing.
Sifiso is a South African who is driven with an entrepreneurial mindset. His experience consists of bringing out the story of brands, organizations, and individuals. He believes we all have a story to tell, and through our stories we engage, inform, surprise, delight, and impact in our daily interactions.
He started Noggin Notes in 2016, during a difficult time of his life when he experienced what you might call a dark night of the soul. This dark night of the soul activated the beginning of his healing journey which guided him through a deep reflection of his life. During this journey, he realized how difficult it was to find support and resources relating to his emotional rapture. In his mission to repair his rapture, he started researching more about mental health and emotional learning.
He suffered from ADHD and severe anxiety attacks which impacted every aspect of his life. The issue was, he did not understand what these terms were and why the world looked down on these illnesses and the individuals who experienced these symptoms.
In his journey to understanding more he decided, maybe, through his search for healing he could create something for individuals like himself seeking help but not knowing where to find it. This is when Noggin Notes was born.
Sifiso has worked with a multitude of organizations to deliver on measurable business goals. He sees himself as the conduit between brand and consumer.
Sifiso's background is in Tech and Hospitality. Worked in startups in Asia and the United States. He has led teams, though managing hotels and providing consultation to organizations around the world.
Sifiso holds qualifications in project management, Hotel and Hospitality Management and through his work with Noggin Notes recently accredited in Introduction to Psychology by Yale University and accredited in Positive Psychiatry and Mental Health by the University of Sydney.
Jake Wiskerchen
Clinical Partner & USA Podcast Host
Marriage and Family Therapist, National Certified Counselor
Across the counseling field, Jake has helped people struggling with all types of issues and has been trained in a variety of methodologies and theories. Prior to founding Zephyr Wellness, he gained experience working for six different mental health agencies, three colleges, two school districts, Washoe County Adult Drug Court, and a psychiatric inpatient hospital. He has done work both in-home and in-office and enjoys teaching, consulting, and training as much as he does one-on-one psychotherapy. In addition to his degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, he also holds a master’s degree in Higher Education Administration and consults on accreditation surveys for multiple universities.
Jake’s strengths lie in understanding and appreciating a broad variety of people from all walks of life. Having worked numerous jobs across a multitude of industries from food service to security, warehousing to education, and retail to event planning, he takes great pride in being able to connect with all types of folks. Jake believes to his core in treating people as human beings rather than labels; he works to help clients address their longer-standing problems and not just treat their temporary symptoms. He also believes in the infinite capacity of the human mind and that it can conquer anything with the right amount of awareness and intentionality.
Annie Cadwell
School Program Director
Annie (she/her) is a licensed school counselor (LSC, MSE) who has worked both in the United States and internationally. She has witnessed the great needs of schools to build intentional communities and create time and space for explicit skill building in the realm of social-emotional learning and mental health education.
She believes emotional learning and mental health education goes beyond meeting a set of competencies but is about honoring identity exploration and development, meeting the needs of the whole person, promoting behavioral patterns around healing and growth, and building equity.
She does this work because it matters. It is an opportunity to educate the whole person by building on the strengths of young people. She hopes and envisions a future where all students attend a school that has a supportive, caring, and responsive environment where they can grow as well-rounded individuals and have the skills to build a more inclusive and just world.