Dr. Natalia Birgisson was working in the pediatric ER at Stanford when one day she sadly lost a young patient to suicide. The next day, she treated another teenager in crisis and knew this kid needed support beyond traditional outpatient visits. This teenager needed the kind of intensive, coordinated care that could prevent tragedies like the one she'd just witnessed.

Natalia constantly saw young people with serious mental needs fall through the gaps. She saw parents desperate to help their kids, but told time and again they were on a waitlist. She knew effective interventions existed, but unfortunately weren't accessible.

"I refused to accept that these families had nowhere to turn," said Natalia.

After Stanford, Natalia spent four years building a health tech startup that solved patient needs in other areas of medicine. She saw how digital tools for doctors could improve the patient experience and solve gaps in care. So she decided to combine those two experiences, her clinical training and her building healthcare technology.

That's when Natalia connected with John Haskell, a fellow Stanford alum, who understood the problem from lived experience. John grew up with serious mental health needs, and his outcomes could have been very different. After building and selling a healthcare company, John spent years researching why outcomes were so different for people with the same diagnosis.

"Every path lead to the same answer," said John. "It wasn't genetics or willpower, it was access to care."

Natalia and John had the clinical model and the business model. But they needed someone who could build the technology to make it work.

‍Josh Gachnang was the first engineering hire at John's previous company, where he spent years building software that helped people with substance use disorders, people traditional systems had given up on. He understood how technology could reach families who couldn't access the care they needed.

Together, they launched Flourish Health with a clear mission: build a clinical model with proven interventions, reach families as early as possible, and use technology to make expert care accessible.

Today, Natalia, John and Josh work with a team of talented professionals to support families and bring expert care to young people with serious mental health needs.