peer-support
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Tempest made sobriety a choice, not a confession
Holly Whitaker built an online recovery school for people who wanted to quit drinking without accepting a label. Its sale to Monument brought clinical care into the picture - and a harder lesson about trust.
The Health Plan That Asked the Neighbors to Help
Wider Circle sells health plans an old-fashioned intervention: people who live near one another, meet regularly, and help each other get care. The machinery behind that simple scene is far more deliberate than a potluck.
The Mental-Health Company Betting That Belonging Is Medicine
Vanna Health starts where the clinic usually stops: at home, on the bus, inside a clubhouse, and in the slow work of earning trust. Its wager is that the most useful mental-health technology may be the one that helps another human keep showing up.
Cambridge’s female founders have more than dinner planned
A WhatsApp group grew into a network of founders, investors and practical business programmes. Cambridge Female Founders Network is betting that better introductions - and better preparation - belong on the same menu.
Transhuman Inc.
Transhuman Inc. is a mental health and emotionAI research and development company founded in 2014 by Amanda Johnstone and Dr. Roy Sugarman. Best known for its free peer-support check-in app Be A Looper, which operated in 87 countries, the company builds proprietary EmotionAI technologies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Bodies (IoB), and human emotion. Its focus is on suicide prevention, emotional communication, and human-to-computer relationships.
Mantra Health
Mantra Health is a New York-based digital mental health company that partners with colleges and universities to give students access to a full spectrum of care - from self-guided wellness content and coaching to therapy, psychiatry, and 24/7 crisis support. Its 'Whole Campus Care' model integrates with existing campus counseling centers to close gaps in access, reduce wait times, and help students stay enrolled and succeed.
Marigold Health
Marigold Health is a Boston-based digital behavioral health company that combines certified peer recovery coaches with a 24/7 anonymous, text-based support community. Natural language processing scans member conversations to flag emerging needs and route human support where it matters most, helping people with mental health and substance use conditions stay engaged in recovery. Marigold contracts primarily with Medicaid and dual-eligible health plans under value-based arrangements, and became the largest provider of peer recovery supports in Delaware.
Shrenik Jain
Shrenik Jain is the founder and CEO of Marigold Health, a Boston-based company that pairs certified peer specialists with 24/7 text-based support groups, supported by natural language processing that surfaces needs inside conversations. A Johns Hopkins graduate and former EMT, he raised an $11M Series A in June 2024 led by Rock Health and Innospark Ventures, and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Healthcare.
Allswell
Allswell is a queer-founded, community-first mental health company delivering virtual, affirming therapy for LGBTQ+ adults. It pairs clients with licensed therapists trained in LGBTQ+-affirming care and evidence-based modalities (CBT, CPT, EMDR, DBT, IFS), and blends one-on-one video sessions with peer groups and community spaces. Live in Maryland and in-network with Medicaid and major insurers, Allswell raised $1.3M in pre-seed funding led by Amboy Street Ventures to close longstanding gaps in mental health care for queer people.
RecoveryLink
RecoveryLink is a Philadelphia-based digital recovery technology company that gives people in recovery - and the organizations that serve them - a platform for peer-based support at the touch of a button. It combines an electronic recovery record, asynchronous training, one-on-one telerecovery peer sessions, and live video group support into a single HIPAA-compliant suite. Founded by recovery scientist Robert Ashford alongside Chris Hart and Brent Canode, the company treats recovery as an individualized, data-informed process supported by both technology and human connection.
Better Health
Better Health is a modern medical supplier and digital care platform that helps people living with chronic conditions get the supplies they need at home, delivered with peer support, education, and insurance handled for them. Founded in 2019 by Naama Stauber Breckler and Adam Breckler, the company bundles diabetes, ostomy, urology, incontinence, and wound care products with human peer coaching, operating across 48 states and contracting directly with payers including Medicare, Medicaid, Cigna, Humana, Florida Blue, and Oscar.
Circles
Circles is a New York-based digital mental health company that connects people facing similar life challenges - grief, divorce, infertility, caregiving, narcissistic relationships - into small, professionally facilitated peer support groups. Founded in 2020 by Irad Eichler and Dan Landa, its mobile and web platform pairs trained therapists with groups of strangers who share a struggle, betting that being heard by people who actually understand is its own form of medicine. The company has raised $24.5M and grown to more than 160,000 members.
Irad Eichler
Irad Eichler is the founder and CEO of Circles, an app that puts people through the same life challenge - divorce, grief, infertility, caregiving - into small, professionally guided peer support groups they can join from a phone. A serial social entrepreneur who earlier built Shekulo Tov, Israel's largest organization for people with psychiatric disabilities, he was named Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the World Economic Forum. The idea for Circles came from watching his mother, in her final months with cancer, light up most not with him but with a friend who had walked the same road.
Dr. Alicia Garcia-Cisneros
Dr. Alicia Garcia-Cisneros is a Doctor of Nursing Practice, Nurse Executive, and Certified Caritas Coach serving as Chief Nurse Executive at Valley State Prison within California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS). Born to Hispanic migrant agricultural workers, she climbed from Certified Nursing Assistant to the highest levels of nursing leadership over two decades, championing caring science, peer support programs, and staff wellness inside California's correctional health system.