Areas of Work
Health Technology
I have spent most of my career building technology for people in the middle of a cancer diagnosis. This page covers the work at Gryt Health and the Testicular Cancer Foundation, and what building for patients rather than institutions actually requires.
What Gryt Health does
Gryt Health is a digital health company that connects people affected by cancer to community, clinical trial information, and peer support. I am a Co-Founder, Board Member, and Chief Technology Officer, and I work with engineers, researchers, and survivors on the systems underneath that — what gets built, what gets maintained, and what has to keep running without anyone watching it.
Building for patients rather than institutions
Most health technology is designed around the institution delivering care: its workflows, its records, its reporting requirements. Building around the patient inverts the starting question, and the design constraints change with it. Someone reading a screen two hours after a diagnosis is not the same user as someone browsing on a Tuesday afternoon, and a system that ignores the difference will be abandoned at the moment it was supposed to help.
The other constraint is durability. Patient communities are held together by a small number of people who know how everything works — which is fine until one of them leaves. Treating community as infrastructure rather than a feature means documenting it, staffing it, and designing it so that it survives a departure.
How I got here
My father was diagnosed with testicular cancer while I was in high school. That led to the young adult cancer advocacy world and, in 2009, to an internship at the organization that became Stupid Cancer, where I spent six years running operations, technology, events, merchandise, and partnerships, and left as Chief Operating Officer. During the 2012 rebrand, founder Matthew Zachary gave me the honorary title of Co-Founder. The work since — Gryt Health, and the Testicular Cancer Foundation — has been a continuation of the same problem in different organizations.
My Cancer Story
My father’s diagnosis, and the two decades of building for patients that followed it.
Where this connects to the research
Health nonprofits are a demanding case for the questions I am now studying formally at Texas State University’s McCoy College of Business: small teams, high stakes, heavy reliance on individual knowledge, and consequences when a hand-off fails that are measured in people rather than revenue. My research interests are in organizational durability and executive dependency, and this sector is where I first saw the problem clearly. More on executive leadership.
Go deeper
- Instapeer
- How AI and SEO Helped Us Save Lives
- The Stupid Cancer Show
- I’m Too Young for This
- What GoFundMe Taught Us
- How I Became Co-Founder of Stupid Cancer
- Press & Media
More areas of work: Executive Leadership · Nonprofit Leadership
If These Balls Could Talk: A Guide to Testicular Cancer is the book I wish my family had in 2005.
It's 22 chapters. It covers everything, from what testicular cancer actually is, to early signs and diagnosis, to treatment options, to the things nobody talks about enough: fertility, sexual health, mental health, how to navigate conversations with your employer, how to manage isolation, how to be a caregiver without losing yourself, and what life looks like on the other side.