Melissa McParland

My journey into mental health started during my time as a peer mentor at Babson College, where I worked one-on-one with first-year students. I realized that everyone I spoke to was struggling and holding something back, and I was one of those people too. I wanted to find a way to work in the mental health space and do it at scale. I had originally wanted to get into teaching or coaching - I was even a preschool teacher while going to school, which was really fun. I went to Babson for entrepreneurship because I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I figured entrepreneurship was about making whatever you end up wanting to make. After graduating, I started my career at Gym Pass (now WellHub) in the wellness industry as a first step, with the hope of specializing in mental health down the line. Then I found iBerry, reached out, loved what they were doing, and they brought me on. Now it's come full circle because I get to work with higher ed institutions again, which is where I started. I head up client success, which means I do everything from educating points of contact at different institutions - higher ed, government, community mental health, and employers - about what we do. We provide anonymous mental health screenings that support the silent gap, which is the people who are in distress but not reaching out for help. There's that hidden space between awareness and intervention, and that's the area we're trying to focus on. My role is educating on what we do, launching these partnerships, and maintaining those relationships.