Welcome to indoctrination, a weekly conversation series about protecting yourself from systems of control.

I'm your host, Rachel Bernstein.

Hello, everyone. Today on the show we have a special guest, Jennifer Ryala.

She is a married mother of three with a BS in social sciences and

criminal justice from Michigan State University. And after working for the state government

investigating cases of child abuse and neglect, she was recruited into Arbonne and convinced to quit

her job. Jennifer joined an MLM,

multi-level marketing, coaching group, and quickly rose to leadership, ascending to the,

quote, white Arbon Mercedes, unquote, level, only to become trapped in a three-year lease

for a car she could not afford.

When she confronted the organization's leader about unfair practices, she was immediately

excommunicated by the entire group. Today, Jennifer works with nonprofits and local school

districts introducing anti-fraud and anti-scam curricula to families.

As part of her healing journey, which includes therapy, workshops, and a supportive network,

Jennifer openly shares her story in hopes of helping others avoid similar pitfalls.

Music of helping others avoid similar pitfalls. It is a pleasure for me to be able to talk to Jennifer Riala today because there's so much for us to cover that

is incredibly important. This whole idea of MLMs, of multi-level marketing, I'm so glad that now

it's in the news more often, it's being covered more often, but still,

there are plenty of people who don't know that this is what they're getting involved in

because the sale tactic is so good in convincing and distracting, I think, from what you

should be able to notice and focus on and really getting demrolled into a lot of

these groups. There is a certain part of this that I really want to be able to talk about,

...