79: Where are They Now? A special catching up episode with Dr. Katherine Grill, CEO and Co-Founder, Neolth

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0:42 Why is prep revolutionizes studying to empower and enable students full potential? Did you know that 56 percent of college students who start a four-year degree? Still drop out for team-wise prep? That is not okay. We're revolutionizing studying through a personalized course and campus specific learning experience, so that students can use our proprietary technology. G to reduce study time and improve grades. Hello everyone, and welcome to another fantastic episode of Ed up. Ed Tech.

1:22 My name is Holly Owens and I'm your host. And today, we have a special. Where are they now episode? And I have with me again, dr. Katherine Grill, who is the CEO? And co-founder of Neolithic, Catherine, welcome back to the show. Hi Holly, it's so great to be back. I'm excited. I'm glad we are able to meet up again and get all the updates on all the fabulous things you've been doing at Neolithic. But first, I want you to remind the audience who you are, what you do, and what Neil with is. So give us the details and then we're going to jump into those updates.

2:03 Yeah. Hey everyone. It's so nice to be back as Holly mentioned. My name is dr. Catherine Grill. I'm the CEO and co-founder Of a mental health startup for students, it's called NEOS are based out here in San Francisco, Bay Area. My background, I worked for a while, as a therapist in psychiatric care, I did my doctor in Neuroscience, I did some NIH research, a lot around creating health, programs validating health, programs focused on adolescent Behavioral Health and then it ended up getting into the digital Health world and founding this company. So it's been really fun ride especially relevant during Over there and all the student. Mental health needs that have popped up in the past couple of years.

2:45 It's been so fun to run this company and looking forward to our conversation today. Me too. I can't wait to hear some of your updates. We highlighted those things you were going to be doing and this past year. But now we're here and we want to hear about all the things. But do you first want to give us like a rundown of what you do with provides how it helps students? You know how the whole thing kind of started and give us a brief overview of that. Totally. Yeah, I can start with sounding story. I guess how it started. And my background is, I've always been interested in mental health. I came from a family that had a lot of mental health struggles. So kind of growing up witnessing that from a young age, seeing things like Financial barriers stigma as barriers people, not being able to access care and left. Its Mark, get imprinted on me and I became very interested in solving this mental health problem making things. More accessible and more Equitable. I went to school like I mentioned I became a therapist I work for a bit in psychiatric care, but then quickly felt like I wanted to do more.

3:51 I want to learn how to make things more Equitable and accessible, and do that through the research route. So that's how I got my PhD in neuroscience and I focused on a lot of this adolescent Behavioral Health and some of the work that I was doing loved, it, got to learn a lot about how to build new health programs. How to Halliday new help program is make sure that they were actually working for people but ultimately, my heart was in implementation science. I didn't just want to do research studies with 200 or 500 people. I wanted to make sure that absolutely everybody who needed care had access to it and Technology to me is really that vehicle to make things more accessible and more Equitable. So, about five years ago, I moved out to Silicon Valley, which is where I am now and ended up founding meal to a few years.

4:40 Later. I love your story and I'm so glad that you're doing this for people who don't have access and for people who just don't know where to go, when it comes to mental health issues. And I think last time on the show, we talked about all the astigmatism that surrounds, you know, mental health and trying to get help when you need it for what I'm so happy for what you're doing. And that's why that episode has so many downloads and is amazing and will definitely going to link back to the previous episode in the show. Notes, but tell us what's been going on. What have you been doing in the past year? Oh my gosh so much we're just talking about it. I can't believe a whole year has gone by and now I you know just even thinking about it right, starting this company, building it up, launching the product in 2021 and now we're couple years removed from the start of the pandemic. So much has happened.

5:35 Brief recap for those of you who maybe didn't listen to the other episode or listen to it but it's been a while. What Neo Is is a self-guided program for mental health support. So we have both ad and digital platform based versions of the program. It's really meant to provide resilience and skill building for these kids to meet them at the point before crisis. So be a preventative program, a lot of mental health, education, a lot of stigma reduction, so getting them comfortable with accessing Mental Health Services, and not having them kind of wait until a crisis happens and some care escalation. As well. So very much meant to support these kids in all aspects of their mental health. Gosh, so much has been happening. We really been expanding a lot in K-12 Holly so that's been it. That's great.

6:25 I was going to ask what's been happening there. Yeah, that's been an interesting area because I think on like higher ed and we can totally dive into some of the differences. K12 has been an area where they understand curriculum integration and there's been this big Focus right on SEL so a program like NEOS, especially that self-guided. There's been a lot of interest in that space. I definitely want to hear about some of the differences when it comes to k12 and higher ed and how they deal with mental health because obviously, they're serving different audiences. And I feel like sometimes it's easier to integrate these types of tools in the higher ed because the students will seek them out more about.

7:09 How does that all work when it goes to K through 12? Yeah that's a great question. We've seen two very different implementation models even though our business I've been the same as kind of Enterprise SAS in K-12 and higher ed with in higher ed. What we see is that this program is typically implemented as an opt-in self-guided service. It's a student wellness or Health Service. It's available to the whole student body. And if they want to use it, they can. And that's obviously very simple to implement. It's essentially just student marketing and student Outreach that we do in partnership with usually the Health Center or the wellness center to make sure the kids know that this Graham is available for them and it's just very TurnKey.

7:53 They do a lot of kind of newsletters email blast. The student sign up if they want to, they use it. However, they see fit in K-12, it's been a little bit different because we've been doing some curriculum integration. So actually going into the classroom and integrating into sometimes PE class sometimes health class and that also requires oftentimes training the teachers as well. Yeah, I would say I was going to say, you have to think about this whole Different type of implementation and making sure that the people who are facilitating the training, understand you more message, obviously. When the students are opting into the app, they get the whole feel for the application and all the support resources.

8:36 But in K through 12, there's probably some more guidance that needs to be there for it to be successful. Yeah, absolutely. And when we were talking last year, we might have just been releasing our third and newest product. So we have the product, the app for students, we have an analytics portal, which is often used by school counselors, to get alerts around students and then we released the third and latest product, which is an educator platform. And it's exactly for that reason to help the teachers understand the program. And we think of it as a implementation booster that they can bring the program into the classroom and has all of the content and the student app has, they can play videos, do activities in the classroom, they can even through the educator. Assign activities for students to do on the app for homework and track completion.

9:25 But having that additional support of bringing it into the classroom, doing it with the teachers, kind of integrating into the curriculum, that's certainly something that we've seen working well in K-12, but it does require a little bit more effort up front on the implementation side, right? And I feel like sometimes K through 12 as a lot of Gatekeepers, when it comes to implementing new tools. And also new content, you know, they just have to be things that have to be approved. So how do you navigate that space? I always think about weird stuff when it comes to Ed Ed Tech tools. Like, oh, how did they get to be a partnership or how did they get to have that collaborative relationship?

10:08 You know, that's the kinds of things I think about, but I see this as a product that kind of does that for you. You don't really have to push too hard, but I do know that K through 12 has a lot of regulations when it comes to like there. Standards and who gets in and you have to have different certifications, that kind of stuff. It does. And it's so tricky, navigating the politics. Since our last conversation, there's been a lot talking about, you know, SEL and other aspects and what shouldn't shouldn't be in the curriculum and K12. So my team, my development team was really fantastic and they thought of a great way to navigate this with ease.

10:48 I think we're far as I know, the only mental health company that has a customizable Content Library, so we no longer have any issues with trying to just play politics and say, you know, which state are we going out with? And which content do we have? Because we literally give them? Here's our Content Library, you go through and you pick and choose. Do you want everything that we have? Great are some of the videos on there may be around a topic that you don't want to have in your state. Okay? We can hide those videos for you. It's a click of a button on our admin pool, so we've been able to really streamline that process where they're able to customize the Content Library for their District or further. And that has been so helpful getting around some of these issues. Yeah.

11:31 And I love the aspect that it's customizable and that speaks a lot to the Adaptive learning of how even the younger Learners they want to customize their own paths. And everybody as you know, has different needs and especially when it comes to mental health they might need some direction here but not so much here and I really love when companies like yours do that and they give them that that individual feel and I feel it builds trust with the consumer but it also So, makes you feel very safe for your at in that space. Yeah, it's just so important, you know, there are some things that were getting into which we can talk about going Beyond traditional mental health, and anxiety, and depression. Other things that are really relevant for the kids relationships, wanting to maybe getting to share sex ed and stuff like that. And yeah, since I'm realistic, I know that in certain areas, they might have different priorities around what can and cannot be there.

12:23 The content you're giving to and middle school or Elementary School might be really different from higher ed or from high school. So just being able to sit down with the customer and have that transparent conversation of Hey, listen, here's what we have. We have all this fantastic content, but we want to only show on the platform what you feel comfortable with. So let's put you in the driver's seat for this process, it just makes things go so much more smoothly. Absolutely, I have a sister who's 26 years are going to be. So she's a middle school and she was talking the whole time. Ten-minute conversation about how she was a therapist and one of her friends who like somebody and doesn't know how to navigate.

13:04 I'm like it's so complicated. This does middle school high school time and you know developing the relationships and I see the emotions and they're so intense. They're very intense emotions and it's hard especially for her. Her and some of her friends to process that and deal with that. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's a we we have the as, you know, the crisis care escalation component of what we do on me. Oh, so it was really important for us to not just build up a tier 1 kind of self-guided program, but also be able to seamlessly integrate into those tier 2 and tier 3 support. So if we were noticing something was going on with the kid, we could alert the school or in some cases they want us to direct the kids to, you know, the sea. Sighs Prevention, Hotline, whatever it is so the school can decide what that process looks like, and who's being alerted, but oftentimes, you know, will pick up on something if the kids are journaling, for example, on meals and you can see some of the emotional.

14:00 He could say topics that they're thinking about, but it's been so fantastic to be able to build in that feature. Even in this past month, we've identified a couple kids. And within minutes I've been able to alert the school and say, hey, there's something going on here. Let's check in on this. There is a lot, I think that goes on. In in, in middle school and high schoolers lives that you forget as you become an adult, you know, getting back into this company. We've really been able to recognize that and use those experiences to tweak the algorithm and make sure that we identify any kids who are struggling right away. Let's shift a little bit like what do you seen happening? There's a lot going on in our world right now and our culture, you know, internationally different things. What are kind of some of the trends isn't things that you're seeing whether people using the product or just things with psychological any statistics that you can share.

14:47 Are things good or bad as far as the kids and what they're struggling with? Yeah. Yeah, I'm struggling with the most, the biggest thing by far that we see and we just started to expand internationally. So I'm curious how this will change in different regions. But in the US, the biggest thing that we see is this immense, immense pressure to succeed, to get the best grades be the best in their class. Go to the best college, get the best job have a suit. A high paying salary that is across regions across socioeconomic status. That seems to be the top issue that's really impacting Mental Health. Why is prep revolutionizes studying to empower and enable students full potential?

15:41 Did you know that 56 percent of college students who start a four-year degree? Still drop out for team-wise prep? That is not okay. We're revolutionizing studying through a personalized course and campus specific learning experience. So that We can use our proprietary technology to reduce study time and improve grades. My goodness still feel that pressure as a, middle-aged sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can't imagine you get, you know, like, as adults we can process that better and I can't imagine feeling like that as a younger person, trying to navigate that difficult space.

16:23 So what are some of the things that the app kind of does to help with them in dealing, with their pressure and job searching? I would say there are three core components where we go to help with that one, is our relaxation, practice Library, where we have, we Kno full library that they They can go through pick and choose what they want, but we also recommend practices specific for them to make it easier to find something, you know, in that moment. But when they're feeling that overwhelm, or that sense of panic and like, this is all too much. I just can't handle this pressure. That's when you see them jumping in to do those relaxation practices, whether it's 2 minutes, 5 minutes or 10 minutes, and that's probably where they're spending about half of their time on the platform, really utilizing that as you can. Imagine a lot of times in the middle of the night, we see, you know, activity which is great that they have the app in 21st.

17:08 Access because they're stressed or lying in bed, you know, they can't sleep. But beyond that kind of in the moment overwhelm, the community section is really where they get a lot of advice and when they kind of come back down a little bit from that state of panic where they can start to watch videos and think things through and be a little bit more reflective. Whether it's a video from what we call, our expert advice section, which might be someone who's further along in their career or a doctor, or therapist and kind of walks them through like, hey, I was struggling with this. And here's what Happened and here's kind of peek into the future 10. 20 years ahead of time or it might be the student stories where there's other students, they're the same age sharing, what they're going through just so they know they're not alone so they can kind of pick and choose from that content in the moment.

17:53 What's the most helpful for them? I love those script, three spaces and I know during covid, people felt very, very isolated, that's wonderful to hear that these these spaces were there for the students and continue to be there. As we, you know, our Continuing to be like a higher vert, I promote culture, I always in these episodes debate about asking whether or not to ask about entrepreneurship because obviously, you have a great product here. It's doing very well. You have a lot of experienced people who are in the audience right now and they're thinking about maybe I want to be an edtech founder. Maybe, I want to develop a tool, I want to be a CEO, is there any sort of advice, maybe like three or four things that you could share?

18:38 Are in your experience, your, on the 30, under 30 list on Forbes. That's huge can share with people who are thinking about jumping into this space. So my advice guidance so much I start really think about it. Is the first thing I get so many especially of the kids that we work with, right saying they want to found a company and they want to be a CO. And I'm like, that's fantastic. But we need to break that down a little bit. Why? You know, a lot of times people find out about me. In the work that I'm doing through things like this right through podcast and everything seems bright and shiny or other webinars and interviews. But what they're not seeing are all the ups and downs in between and as a start-up founder.

19:20 There's a lot of ups and downs. There's a lot of uncertainty and that it can affect you, right? It can affect you emotionally, it can affect mental health, right? Yeah. 110, yeah, and financially to write a mean, this is a decision. I had to make with my husband, right? We were married. When we started this company, do you leave your job? Do you? You give up a steady salary, do you put money into this company? So there's a lot of things that need to be thought through. Not saying that you shouldn't do it. But not jumping into things too quickly. Really taking some time to think through. Are we going to be okay with this pressure, financially, and emotionally and how long are we going to kind of give this a go, what sort of Milestones do? We feel like we need to hit each year to continue to go to make that uncertainty worth it? Oh, that's great advice.

20:06 And I know a lot of people don't talk about Money. And I think there's a common misconception, like, Ed Tech, Founders are rich. They just, they have a, they have all this money. I'm like, no, these people that like yourself to start these companies, you don't do it for that. You're doing it because you want to make a difference and a change. And yes that's a park if that happens but really it's about a passion behind that. And in the support that you're offering is honestly it's priceless. Q. Yeah, I think that is a huge misconception and I will go on record here set things straight. You hear a lot. When you look at new Forbes and other groups who are highlighting of these, you know, repeat Founders and they're able to have an idea and go out and raise millions, and probably yeah pay themselves a lot of money, that's not typical. That might be what's highlighted in the news, but I can tell you from being a Founder, from knowing a lot of other Founders from doing accelerator programs.

21:01 Most of us in whether it's you know, Health tech, ed, Tech space. Especially if it's your first company you're going out. You probably have another job at first so you're working two jobs until you feel like you're ready to make the big jump. You're not paying yourself. Some of us don't pay ourselves for years, not a single dollar. You actually taking your own money and investing it into the company. So it is not like this is a very steady financially career path and it is something that's important to know. Yeah. I agree with you and I'm sure you and I can talk Talk having a whole nother episode, get a couple people together that have been on the show and talk about all the different challenges of navigating that space financially mentally.

21:44 So what are the things as an entrepreneur that you appreciate? What are the things that have been most beneficial in your eyes? I think my co-founder. Yes. Yes, of course, you know, my co-founder is fantastic. I'm in one of those interesting situations where my co-founder is my husband. We were married first, I've seen the opposite where people get married afterwards, but we were married first. And you know, he's just been fantastic because we're very complementary, right? I'm on more of the house side. The design side you study Finance business and also engineering. So very Every skill set, which is great for co-founders, but also just somebody who really has been with me through to start through all the ups and downs and really has had my back and somebody who's not always featured and not always the, you know, in the Press like I am. Yeah, my shoutout.

22:38 Yeah, but I mean, I couldn't I couldn't do it without having the right co-founder is key. I love that people that do it themselves. What people don't realize there's really a lot of players behind I'm the scenes to that are supporting you like, for example, this show, it's not just me, there's a lot of people who support me. Although, you know, I'm the host everything. There's so much that goes on. You can't do it without a community, right? Whether that's a co-founder or having different people to help, take some tasks away from you, so you can free up some time. I'm hundred percent. Yeah, and it's there's a lot of people. I know, I'm as a CEO typically, the one featured, but there are a lot of people supporting me behind me.

23:21 Now if and investors and advisors and employees, but my co-founder is definitely the one where he's not a fair-weather friend, right? Whether it's good, whether it's bad, it's 3:00 in the morning whatever it is, you know, we can have those open and honest transparent conversations with each other and it's so appreciated until needed. Yeah, we've covered a lot in this episode. We have. I want to know if there's anything else. Yeah. Things I'm really excited about right now. One is a partnership and one is more. Just my theory and thoughts of student mental health. The first is our International expansion, which I don't know that we were doing last time we talked, but we've partnered with a great company out in the asia-pacific region.

24:09 We're starting to expand in 20 countries out there through High group and are just really excited to work with them. They've been working in that region for, I believe about 40 years. So they know Ed Tech. Check in those countries really well. It's going to be exciting for us to start to see the nuances of student mental health in different regions. Obviously, culture is huge, so wanting to understand that and respect that and learn how to scale and just reach more kids internationally and the data to, oh my goodness, you're gonna have so much data. It's going to be a challenge but a really exciting challenge. Yeah. For sure. And the other It was just more me kind of thinking and curious to hear other people's thoughts, what does mental health mean? You know, that's been something I really, really, been thinking about it as I've had a lot of conversations with stakeholders people even within the schools.

25:05 Oftentimes think about mental health as anxiety, depression clinical disorders were going to wait until the kids are struggling or God forbid, you know, suicidal and then they get help. Mental health is so much more expansive. I really think of it as an umbrella term. Yes, you have anxiety. Xiety you have depression, you have clinical conditions, prices, care and treatment. But there are so many other things that affect kids, like we even talked about, in this episode finances, Financial Health, Career Development relationships. There is just absolutely so much around what mental health is and what mental health means. And as a company, that's a direction, when we're starting to go to get really diverse around the types of content and support that we offer that way we can meet kids wherever they are in that. Mental health Journey.

25:53 When you say, you have anxiety, or you say, you have depression, and it was like what happened and you're like, nothing really happened. You have to understand the background of it. Like it's mental, its genetic it's maybe something did happen and kind of getting that information out there. You have to be proactive about it in your approach to the situations. And not just when you're saying like it's a crisis level, like we need intervention like ASAP. We want to prevent getting to those points. 100%. Absolutely. We could have a whole nother episode about. Yeah, it's science in the brain biomarkers of these conditions. Yeah, there's so much to talk about there. You're the expert, but I would just speak from experience, has two. And one of the huge things that I want to spend upon and maybe invite some friends on about is talking about grief. My grief is a huge part of mental health and like having those experiences I would ever age. And I think people just kind of show grief off as like it's a there's a Finish Line there.

26:51 So yeah, we could definitely have more conversations about this. Oh my gosh. Yeah, can't wait. Yeah. So well thank you for coming back on the show and updating us and giving us all the Deets about everything that you're doing. I can't believe it's been a whole year. I honestly, I'm sitting here thinking about that and I'm like, yeah, we literally talked a year ago and it's been 365 days. And now we're going to talk again hopefully sooner and I look forward to seeing about The international expansion and then also what this meant to help me and that sounds like a great show title. Absolutely. Yeah. Looking forward to it. And thanks again for having me on as a guest of course any time you've just experienced an another amazing episode of Ed up, Ed Tech. Be sure to visit our website at Ed up edtech.com to get all the updates on the latest edtech happening. See you next time.