Tell us about the idea to create Jasper?
To know me over the last 15 years was to know my dog Jasper. Jasper was my baby.
Jasper passed away a year-and-a-half ago. During that time, two of my best friends lost parents. We started to have these profound conversations about loss and purpose, and also about “disenfranchised” grief: suicide, pet loss, drug overdose, and estrangement.
I kept wondering why it was so difficult to feel supported. Why is grief so taboo and so scary for people, especially in western cultures, to discuss out loud? I figured that if I am feeling this way, others must be too.
The current tools to deal with grief are static content like podcasts, and time-boxed care through therapy. These are helpful, but they are not always dynamic and fluid to our evolving emotional states during grief.
The Jasper app is a grief support digital companion that blends community, curated tools, and on-demand care. People can sign-up for sessions led by grief counselors, or chat privately with a grief counselor or community member.
Take us through your journey to finding your dog Jasper, how did you know he was “the one” (or as some on TikTok call it, your “soul dog”)?
I grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut, where I went to public schools. After high school I went to the University of Tampa, where I studied PR and advertising with a focus on web development and design. After college I started working with Tampa’s pro-hockey team the Tampa Bay Lightning. A lot of my friends left Tampa after college, and I always knew I wanted a dog as a companion. I started looking, prioritizing finding a female dog. But something hit me when I saw Jasper.
I remember being in front of a litter of black and tan Maltese Yorkies (Morkies). He was going crazy, jumping up and down, so excited and so full of energy. I left with him that day, and he was by my side ever since.
After that we moved around a lot–to Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and eventually New York City with Google. I was excited to be closer to my family, who still live in Darien. An opportunity to grow Uber in Connecticut came to me in June 2014. I took the role and moved back to Stamford to manage Uber’s marketing in Connecticut.
Moving around never bothered me, because I always had Jasper. He made me feel like the most important person in the world, and I never felt alone.
What was it like losing Jasper?
Jasper’s death was heartbreaking. I’m still not sure how I made it through.
When Jasper got sick, I was actually in the process of freezing my eggs. I found out that he had cancer the day before my retrieval.
While he was sick, I was incredibly lucky to have a support system, including my vet Dr. Shelley Skopit at Park Animal Hospital in Darien, and specialist Dr. Marnin Foreman and team at Cornell Vet in Stamford.
How did this make you reevaluate your relationship with grief?
I always knew Jasper’s loss was going to absolutely devastate me. But nobody can prepare you for how viscerally that void is immediately felt.
After Jasper died I asked my therapist Stephen what I should do, and something that he said stuck with me: I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t truly feel my grief and work through it.
When did Jasper the community and app launch? Has anything like it existed?
Grief is one of the biggest consumer sectors, as it’s something that everyone has to deal with at some point in life. But there is little to no innovation in this space.
Realizing how difficult it was to navigate grief in one place, I launched Jasper by myself with the help of a psychiatrist nurse practitioner friend. At first, I reached out to some people on Facebook and Reddit, and asked if they would be interested in joining.
And the interest grew and grew. One in five of our members come from referrals. We now have multiple virtual support groups around the world every day, talking about issues like early grief, opening up your home to a new pet, and navigating the new normal of routine without your pet.
What is the future plan for the app and the community?
I recently brought on my co-founder Todd Sifleet, a former Uber colleague who is an artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) expert.
We’re building an artificial intelligence component as a supplement, not a substitute for human care. This means counselors will be accessible, and support will be instant and available 24/7.
Pet loss is our first area to tackle, and then we will move on to other forms of “disenfranchised” grief: those dealing with pregnancy and fertility grief, loss to suicide and overdose, and non-death griefs like estrangement and identity shifts.
We want to be a platform for emotional transitions, supporting people across a lifetime of loss, change and resilience. In a time when bereavement is rushed and many losses are considered unworthy of support, we want to shift how people deal with hard things in life.
If you're interested in learning more, visit jaspertheapp.com.