Clinician · Systems Strategist · AI-Native Founder
For over two decades, I have sat in two rooms — the clinical room, where people share what is actually happening in their lives, and the boardroom, where leaders decide what gets built. I build from everything I have learned in each.
"Listen to learn, and understand how you use your voice."
I have spent my entire career solving the same fundamental puzzle: how do we successfully connect people with systems?
Understanding the invisible forces that shape human behavior and decision-making.
Rebuilding fractured fan relationships after a yearlong lockout. Winter Classic. Global expansion.
Direct work with individuals and families blocked from systems designed to serve them.
Leading the Woman's Exchange. Moving from advocate to architect — designing pathways from inside the institution.
Midwest BankCentre. Sitting at the table where capital decisions are made — with clinical empathy intact.
Hello Telle. Compass Kids Crew. Building the solutions nobody else has built yet.
The thread running through every role I have held is the same: how do people interact with the systems built around them, and where does that relationship break down?
From rebuilding trust between a fractured fan base and the NHL after a yearlong lockout, to clinical social work with individuals being overlooked by systems designed to serve them, to earning an MBA not to leave the clinical world behind — but to understand the institutions I had spent years advocating against from the outside. Each move was an intentional step toward the same answer: the most effective change happens from inside the room where decisions are made, not from the sidewalk in front of it.
Leading the Woman's Exchange and stepping into the banking sector gave me that seat. What I brought to it was something most executive tables do not have: twenty years of understanding how real people actually experience the systems institutions build around them. That is not a soft skill. That is the clearest strategic advantage available — and it consistently produces solutions that work in the actual world.
"When you combine the deep empathy of a clinician with the strategic framework of an MBA, you don't just build apps. You build pathways."
What is different now is the tools available. The distance between identifying a real problem and shipping a working solution has compressed dramatically — and I am using it. I build Hello Telle and Compass Kids Crew using AI-assisted development, what practitioners are now calling vibe coding: directing AI to write, test, and iterate on real software in real time, with the human providing the strategic intent, the clinical insight, and the judgment about what actually needs to be built.
This is not a workaround for a lack of technical depth. The behavioral knowledge, the institutional fluency, and the clear problem definition were always the harder parts. The technology has finally caught up to the need. For the first time, a licensed therapist and systems strategist can move from a problem identified in a session to a deployed product — without a traditional engineering team, without a six-month roadmap, and without sacrificing the rigor that makes the solution worth building.
The therapy practice is still where the insight starts. Entrepreneurship — and the tools now available to fuel it — is how I scale the impact.
Every venture I have built, every organization I have advised, and every clinical session I have run has followed the same underlying discipline. It starts with a question, not an assumption. It moves through the system to locate the real friction. And it ends with something that works in the actual world — not just on paper.
The most important thing I learned in two decades of clinical practice is the discipline of not assuming I already know the answer. Every engagement begins with genuine curiosity: what is actually driving this? Not what appears to be, but what is underneath it.
Friction is information. Where people collide with systems, where processes break down, where the distance between institutional intention and human experience is greatest — that is where the most important work lives. I follow it until I understand it completely.
Once the problem is clear, the answer usually is too. Sometimes it means connecting people to what already exists. Sometimes it means building what does not. Either way, the standard is the same: it has to work for the people it was designed to serve — not just the institution that funded it.
Every venture here began with an unmet need I identified — a specific, recurring stress that real people carried and that existing tools weren't addressing. Each venture is a different problem, a different audience, and the same intention: give people their bandwidth back.
This is where everything starts — and always returns to. My therapy practice is built on the belief that the right support at the right time can genuinely change everything. Virtual therapy for adults navigating work stress, relationships, burnout, and the weight of keeping it all together. Every venture I've built grew out of what I kept hearing in these sessions.
Learn more & book a sessionSupport for your loved one. Reassurance for you. Hello Telle connects with aging loved ones through meaningful phone conversations and thoughtful wellness check-ins — no new devices, no apps for them to learn, just a familiar phone call. Families receive warm, high-level summaries after each call: mood, routine, any notable changes. Built for the millions of adults balancing aging parents and growing children at the same time.
Learn more about Hello TelleExisting platforms are engineered to maximize watch time — not childhood. Compass Kids Crew is an app for children under 13 that makes screen time intentional. Kids earn free-choice video time by first watching educational content curated from YouTube. No autoplay. No ads. No rabbit holes. Videos don't load automatically, and the experience is calm and distraction-free by design.
Learn more about Compass Kids CrewIn partnership with Midwest BankCentre, Rising Together is focused on the people and businesses that fall between the cracks of the current system — earning too much for traditional nonprofit support, but not yet at a place of economic stability and thriving. The missing middle of Main Street deserves the same access to tools, capital, and community that everyone else takes for granted.
Learn more about Rising TogetherThe combination of clinical depth and business strategy produces outcomes neither discipline achieves alone.
Twenty years of direct clinical practice — understanding what people actually experience, not just what systems are designed to deliver. The empathy is structural, not performative.
MBA training combined with executive leadership at a regional bank, a nonprofit, and four ventures — translating behavioral insight into operational decisions, frameworks, and measurable outcomes.
Using AI-assisted development to move from identified problem to deployed product — building Hello Telle and Compass Kids Crew without a traditional engineering team. Clinical insight meets modern execution speed.
A few of the moments that have been written about along the way.
Named among the top 100 CEOs and C-suite executives in St. Louis for servant leadership, organizational transformation, and community impact.
Read feature → St. Louis Magazine · Cover StoryOn the cover of the November 2023 issue, celebrating women shaping the city through leadership, innovation, and community.
Read feature → Mestiza New YorkA profile on leadership, empowering women's financial independence, and the philosophy of leading with compassion and high expectations.
Read feature →St. Louis Magazine put us on the cover in 2023 as part of their Saint Louis Women issue. The Titan 100 followed. We're grateful for both — and still very much in the middle of the work.
"Leadership stopped being a position of authority and became a role of service and guidance. I see every day as an opportunity to learn something new, alongside my team."
— Julie Peters, Titan 100 FeatureThe biggest opportunities in wellness, caregiving, and childhood development are hiding in plain sight — in the daily friction that people have accepted as inevitable.
The ventures I'm building are early and intentional. If you're an investor, strategic partner, or someone who wants to help close the same opportunities I'm pursuing — reach out.
For investor and partnership inquiries, collaborations, speaking, or press:
Start a Conversation