Wellness 2.0

Growing up with obsessive-compulsive disorder, Brad Brenner, BS 18, didn’t have many treatment options. Instead, he self-medicated with “screen time” in the form of video games.

“Pokémon, Tamagotchi, Club Penguin—any of those fun games, I played them,” Brenner says. “I was struggling with OCD, and when it came to doing things that would drive positive outcomes in my future, I put those aside.”

At Haas, he met others with similar histories, including Kevin Bunarjo, BS/BA 18 (computer science), who was working on connecting the concept of Tamagotchi, a video game in which players feed, train, and care for digital pets, to routine skills. Amid the pandemic, the two teamed up with Isaac Eaves, BS/BA 18 (computer science), to found Joon Health, an integrated care model that uses
video-game concepts to help neurodivergent kids ages 6–12 develop life skills. Neurodiversity is the nonmedical concept that differences in brain functioning, such as autism, dyslexia, or attention-
deficit/hyperactivity disorder, are normal variations with strengths and weaknesses. Joon supports such kids and their families with everything from self-service resources to fully integrated therapy.

“This isn’t just because you struggle with attention or because you’re just not a good student,” says Brenner, Joon’s COO. “We’re asking, ‘How can we support everyone?’”

Other Haas alumni are asking similar questions as the wellness market has evolved from a touchy-feely niche sector into a $1.8 trillion global powerhouse, one that’s growing up to 10% a year, according to McKinsey, and impacting everything from early childhood nutrition to eldercare innovations to end-of-life considerations.  

As life expectancy increases and demand for healthcare grows, entrepreneurs are supercharging their wellness offerings with AI and data-driven solutions. But no matter what the focus, Haas alumni agree that the future of wellness is all about using technology to personalize offerings—and to fill gaps in the healthcare system.

On-demand care

Giving people more access to basic healthcare tools is exactly what Elvina Hewitt, MBA 16, was aiming for as a recent product manager at OnMed. The company’s “Clinic-in-a-Box” is a self-service care hybrid giving users access to basic health monitoring equipment—scales, stethoscopes, blood-pressure monitors, high-definition cameras, and thermal imaging—while having a video conference with a doctor. 

That kind of immediate access is especially important in rural and underserved minority communities where clinics and hospitals are in short supply. In fact, the U.S. is expected to face a shortage of 3.2 million healthcare workers by 2026, according to a report from the American Hospital Association. 

“The innovation here is healthcare on demand,” says Hewitt, a former nurse who’s now on a career pause. “You just push start, and someone will pick up the call versus having to wait six months to see a primary care doctor.”

Right now, OnMed is focused on installing its CareStations more broadly in places like libraries, community centers, and homeless shelters. The CareStations could also lead to better wellness. For example, a high blood pressure reading could result in a doctor’s plan for lowering blood pressure. Combined with AI, that could be a game changer for many.

“How do we help you eat healthier? How do we manage whatever chronic illness you might have?” Hewitt asks. “Imagine the efficiencies you could build in just by overlaying AI onto everything.”

Wellness at work

As a healthcare management consultant in the early aughts, David Cherner, MBA/MPH 94, got so stressed trying to improve the efficiency of hospitals and health systems that he needed a yoga retreat to recoup. He came away relaxed—and transformed. 

“I saw the power of retreats in terms of helping my own wellness,” he says, “and I felt there were a lot of incredibly stressed-out people in corporate America who could benefit from that.”

From there, he co-founded and now leads YOL (Turkish for path, road, or way), a corporate wellness and learning company that combines neuroscience, positive psychology, and mindfulness into business retreats and workshops designed to cultivate resilience and leadership. Clients include Amazon, Google, and Bank of America. A recent partnership with a Fortune 500 company helped reduce workplace stress 35% and increased employee satisfaction over 25%. 

Those numbers translate into serious monetary gains, according to a study from the University of Oxford, which shows a direct correlation between employee well-being and a firm’s financial success. 

YOL is now partnering with Sageful AI to deliver personalized well-being coaching through seamless, in-the-flow-of-work interactions via text/SMS, Slack, and Microsoft Teams—significantly expanding accessibility and scalability. “It allows us to blend the human connection, which we’re all about, with the power of artificial intelligence to reinforce learning to change behavior,” Cherner says.

Most recently, YOL is working with national health systems to address clinical workforce retention, burnout, and disengagement. “We’re building an integrated model that combines leadership coaching, AI-enabled peer support, and real-time frontline feedback,” Cherner says.

Dementia protocols

Cynthia Benjamin, MBA 97, understands how powerful behavior change can be for growing threats to the aging population: dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, the two afflict nearly 7 million people nationally, a figure that’s expected to grow substantially as the youngest baby boomers turn 61 this year. 

Benjamin, with a background in life sciences, health, and innovation, co-founded Together Senior Health with Deborah Barnes, PhD 01 (epidemiology), an Alzheimer’s and dementia epidemiology expert who implemented an integrative group movement program at a San Francisco Veterans Affairs nursing home that yielded improvements two to three times better than drugs alone. 

“The program also resulted in things like improvements in quality of life and reduced caregiver stress that drugs don’t even measure,” says Benjamin, chief strategy and innovation officer of the company, which offers online classes focused on enhancing patients’ physical and brain health through mindfulness, mental stimulation, social engagement, and music. 

“People with cognitive impairment are often the object in the room. They become this thing to be managed,” says Benjamin. “We tried to deeply understand…what their challenges and needs are and design it from their perspective.” Participants reported clinically meaningful physical, psychological, social, and cognitive benefits, including improved balance, focus, and connections to others.

With their company recently purchased by Linus Health, Benjamin and Barnes are exploring using AI to identify people at high risk for Alzheimer’s. A study from the Lancet Commission shows early intervention could delay or reduce 45% of new dementia cases. “We’ve used it with a couple of partners, and it’s looking very promising,” Benjamin says. “There are things we can do that are typically considered wellness, and when you put them all together, they have this kind of synergistic effect for both your body and your brain.”

Post-traumatic growth

Brad Wolfe, MBA 13, discovered firsthand that turning toward pain rather than away from it can help people not only live better lives but also die better deaths. While an undergrad at Stanford, Wolfe began playing music for a childhood friend who had been diagnosed with a rare form of pediatric cancer. Over the next two years, until she died, Wolfe stayed by her bedside playing guitar to help her cope—all the while developing the kernel of an idea.  

“I saw the healing power of using the arts as a way to connect people through what’s hard,” Wolfe recalls. “So I asked myself, ‘How do we help everyone find their own music through the hard parts of life?’”

Wolfe went to Haas to turn that question into a business model, eventually founding Reimagine, a nonprofit online social platform aimed at helping people channel adversity, loss, and mortality into action and growth.

“How do we acknowledge and sit with death, loss, and really many other traumas that we experience that in our culture we often push away?” he asks.

The answer for Wolfe and Reimagine is providing space for people to talk about these themes—and use them as springboards to better well-being. The science behind the idea is known as post-traumatic growth or PTG, a scientifically proven process that transforms struggle into positive change. 

“There are steps people can take to cultivate this growth, and three key tenets are knowing it’s possible, sharing your story, and doing acts of service in the area of your pain,” Wolfe explains. 

So far, Reimagine has hosted more than 4,000 free PTG-focused arts and Zoom events with 250,000 registrants. Fully 90% of participants using Reimagine’s new social platform for PTG report being able to turn their pain into purpose, from COVID losses to cancer diagnoses to the collective grief from geopolitical conflicts.

As he envisions the future, Wolfe sees AI playing a different role than many other wellness entrepreneurs. “We’re building an offering for all the losses and grief that are going to stem from AI,” he says. “Whether it’s perceived loss of human efficacy or job loss, how do we process these changes in healthy ways?”  

Digital immortality

Kyle Oura, MBA 15, is looking at wellness and grief through a different lens: digital immortality that gives the elderly agency while helping their loved ones cope with their eventual loss. Oura lost his mother to cancer when he was 5 and his father to stroke and dementia 28 years later. 

“My sister and I had to lead the caregiving at a young age, so this is pretty personal,” Oura says, referring to MemoryVideo.com, the company he founded. 

That venture combines his background in developing and operating senior living communities, his passion for giving voice to the elderly, and his skill with emerging technologies into an affordable online business model that records basic life stories for under $90—a fraction of the cost of a professional videographer. More than just stories, the recordings are also vehicles to better well-being.

“Knowing that maybe their great-great-grandchild will find value in what they know changes people’s sense of worth,” Oura says. “And AI is creating opportunities where it wasn’t financially feasible to do something like this before.”

Oura plans to beef up his offerings with the forthcoming “Go Beyond Video” service that includes books and memoirs. He’s even exploring virtual AI chatbots of deceased loved ones based on existing videos. While such options may seem creepy now, he’s confident that sentiment will change. “As this gets more mainstream,” he says, “the bigger human desire to be remembered is going to blow past the cultural aversion.” 

As destabilizing as some tech advances can initially be, Oura and other Haas entrepreneurs are embracing innovation to help people thrive. In so doing, they’re ensuring a profound shift—a future where personalized wellness is universally accessible through every life stage. 

Imagine. A healthier world for all.