Our Team

Milena Esherick, PsyD

Co-Founder & Chief Clinical Officer

As a licensed clinical psychologist and the founding director of the Counseling Psychology Program at the Wright Institute, Milena brings over 15 years of leadership experience across higher education and healthcare. She has successfully launched and scaled a graduate program, increasing enrollment tenfold, and has built and led intensive treatment programs for adults with eating disorders. Currently, Milena is focused on the intersection of psychology and AI, advising behavioral health tech startups on how to integrate clinical best practices into emerging technologies to improve care.

Sam Ward

Co-Founder & CEO

A seasoned product and program manager, Sam specializes in bringing complex design programs and user experiences to life. His career includes senior roles at frog, Wells Fargo, and TuneIn, where he launched and managed design operations programs. At The Center for Investigative Reporting, he led user experience design, developing innovative projects like a chatbot-powered SMS platform and an analytics dashboard for media organizations to track the real-world impact of their work.

Ed Landau

Co-Founder & CTO

An engineering executive with over 25 years of experience, Ed specializes in building and scaling hardware-centric products from prototype to mass production. He has led large, cross-functional teams with budgets exceeding \$30M at both Microsoft, where he was a key program manager for the Xbox Kinect, and multiple startups. As the current VP of Engineering at Movano Health, he has deep expertise in the medical device field, driving FDA 510(k) submissions and leading teams through the entire product lifecycle while ensuring compliance with standards like ISO 14971 and IEC 62304.

Nnamdi Pole, PhD

Advisor

Nnamdi Pole is the Harold and Elsa Israel Professor of Psychology at Smith College, where he has taught since 2008 and currently chairs the Psychology Department. He earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from UC Berkeley and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at UC San Francisco. A licensed psychologist and fellow of the American Psychological Society, his research spans psychological trauma, the psychophysiology of emotion, psychotherapy, and ethnic minority mental health, with particular focus on PTSD among police officers and sexual assault survivors. He serves as Associate Editor of Psychological Bulletin and Affective Science, and has served on the boards of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the APA Trauma Division. He received an APA Presidential Citation in 2023 for his contributions to trauma psychology.

Sian Townsend

Advisor

Sian is a UX leader with more than 20 years of experience helping companies understand customer needs and turn those insights into successful products. She has led user research teams at Google, Instagram, Intercom, and Coinbase, shaping products across consumer, B2B, and emerging technology spaces.

Drawing on her background in both Human-Computer Interaction and Counseling Psychology, Sian advises mental health companies on UX, customer insights, and product strategy. She is passionate about helping startups reduce uncertainty, uncover opportunities, and build products that solve real human problems.