20% of Children Have Learning Differences, This Startup Is Here to Help | Diana Heldfond of Parallel

Our whole mission here at Parallel is to really support every student and recognize that not every student learns or thinks in the same ways, right? And so what support looks like for one student is very different from what support looks like for the next student. And that's typically why students with learning and thinking challenges, you know, are not able to fully function in the standard classroom, right? Because the standard classroom is not made for neuroatypical brains.

Welcome everybody. I'm Mark Peter Davis, managing partner of Interplay. On this podcast, I interview innovators about their strategies, industries, and decisions. This week I chat with Diana Heldfond, founder and CEO of Parallel. Parallel is an edtech platform that empowers students with learning differences by providing them with a lower-cost, Faster solution for getting the support they need. Now, this is actually a really big problem that Parallel's out tackling. According to Diana, about 1 in 5 students has a learning difference that her platform can help address. Their service is cheaper and faster because it's tech-enabled, which obviously I love. They create efficiencies in a couple of ways. First of all, they automate a lot of the admin work that specialists have to do when they're working to help children. And the second thing they do is they mix and match the specialists needed to make sure that the specialists that are in short supply don't bottleneck the process. All in, this has brought down the price of care by a whopping 50%, and it allows parents to get their child's assessments done and their services way faster. Assessments used to take months and still do in many places, but can be done on Parallel in just a few days. They work directly with families and with schools at this point, which is an interesting channel dynamic we talk about. And overall, the whole company's pretty smart. Uh, it's always so cool to see founders also start companies that hit close to home. Diana was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, which she talks about in the conversation. And what's incredible is this didn't hold her back. She went on to Georgetown, worked on Wall Street, and then eventually started Parallel. It's a great conversation. I learned a lot. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Venwise. Venwise is a curated community of high-growth leaders. It's isolating being a leader, but it doesn't have to be. Through Venwise, you can join discussions and gain support from fellow C-level executives at high-growth tech companies. If you're interested, apply by visiting venwise.com. Diana, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.

All right. I want to start at the top with your company. Do you mind giving us an overview of Parallel?

Yeah. So Parallel is a fully virtual platform where we provide services for kids with learning and thinking differences. So we're talking about students with Everything from dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, to other health indications, like of course ADHD being a large one, anxiety, depression, and so forth. And what we're able to do on our platform is, you know, everything from psychological assessments, really helping kids get to the root of their challenges, working one-on-one with a really amazing group of child psychologists. And then we've now layered on a number of support services so that students can really start to develop skills to work around those weaknesses once they've been identified in the diagnosis process. And that looks like now speech and language therapy, behavioral therapy, skill-based tutoring, and executive function coaching. So essentially, we've built kind of a one-stop shop, if you will, for families who are navigating these challenges on behalf of their children and made it as easy as possible to get not only more accessible, affordable care, but also a higher quality of care than they would get in traditional setting going to, say, a private psychologist or a private tutor. Other thing I'll note is that we actually have recently also started working directly with school districts who also are, you know, required by law to actually provide a number of these special education services. So have been able to, you know, expand our accessible care option directly to those districts.

So there's a lot of infrastructure around this space already in the states. I'm sure states vary. We've got different tax regimes, and I think subsequently, different social support. How does this fit into the myriad of options that are available to families now? Why do they need this solution versus what's already available?

Yeah, no, absolutely. So families typically have 2 options when they recognize that their child may be struggling in some form in the classroom, right? And keep in mind, coming out of COVID where students have been learning from their living rooms for the past 18 months, 2 years, You know, there's a lot of heightened focus from parents and teachers on children's development, both in an academic setting and also, you know, of course, their mental health. And with that, you know, families have essentially 2 options when it comes to developmental delays in the classroom. They can go straight to the school district and request basically special education services. There are a lot of unfortunate dynamics right now with the special education system and the American education system in general, in that there is a huge staffing crisis facing school systems. So it's very hard for the schools to actually find enough school psychologists and other special education providers in order to actually provide services to those kids. And you end up with a lot of kids on lengthy waitlists, a lot of kids who, you know, won't qualify for services as well because they just don't have the track record of struggling that the school would be looking for to actually give the services. That said, of course, many students do end up getting services through the school, and it's a really incredible thing. So I will note, you know, for the families that don't qualify or if we're looking for kind of more robust answers outside of the school district, they do tend to go to a private psychologist, private tutors, private therapists, so forth. But what I'll also note is that those services tend to be highly inaccessible, so very expensive to get, for example, private psychological assessment done. It could cost anywhere between $5,000 to $10,000 when you're in large cities like New York, San Francisco, and so forth. And even across the United States, we're still talking about $2,500 to $3,000 on average for an assessment. So certainly not accessible to the majority of Americans. And similarly, when you look at all of these support services, it's more or less the same story. And I'll also note that there's very long wait times. So we're talking 5, 6, 7 months just to get that initial diagnosis, nevertheless start with services. And, you know, as you can imagine, when your child's struggling, it's a tricky thing to have to wait that long to get the real answers and get them on a course to success. So what we've aimed to do at Parallel is really break down that process and make it as accessible as possible for families. So we offer our services at about 50% of the cost, um, and also can get families started with service providers in just a week in the states that we do service currently. So a very different experience than, uh, what most families are going through today.

Okay, so when you started off, you gave us a litany of things that you guys support, the different types of learning differences. How do you do all of it? What, what, what is the program here? If someone goes to your website and signs up, What are they signing up for?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I'll note our whole mission here at Parallel is to really support every student and recognize that not every student learns or thinks in the same ways, right? And so what support looks like for one student is very different from what support looks like for the next student. And that's typically why students with learning and thinking challenges, you know, are not able to fully function in the standard classroom, right? Because the standard classroom is not made for neuroatypical brains, right? And the way that we do it here at Parallel is by providing highly individualized care and support. So when a family comes and clicks that Get Started button on our website, they start by talking to a member of our care team where we really start to dig into what the referral concern is and then ultimately match them with a provider that suits their needs. So Most families do start with an evaluation and then move into support services with us. But of course, many families, you know, already come with an assessment or are just looking for support services for various reasons. So very flexible there. But once we have that initial consultation, our care team will hand-match the student and that family with a provider on our platform and also a care coordinator to really help them navigate the services. So Again, that all happens within a week, and then all of the services are, again, highly individualized and tailored to that student's specific needs. So on the assessment side, the first session is a meeting with your psychologist to really, again, dig into those referral concerns, understand the child's academic history, medical history, where all of those challenges lie, so that we can ultimately build a testing plan that really is able to answer the— the concerns and questions that parents came here for in the first place, and then ultimately carry out about 5 to 6 hours of psychological testing using standard materials. We actually work very closely with Riverside and other testing publishers and do all of that testing on our proprietary platform, which we're really excited about, and ultimately deliver families these lengthy reports that go into all kinds of details about how their child's brain works, right? So all the strengths, all of the areas of improvement, right? And ultimately provide that diagnosis if warranted, as well as, I think probably the most exciting part is this learning plan or support plan that really gets at, all right, what's the next step and how can we really set this child up for success? What interventions can be taken at home, in the classroom? What services would be helpful? What accommodations would be helpful? And so forth. And then just quickly on the support service side. Um, first session is a goal-setting session with the, uh, provider. So if you're signing up to work with a learning specialist, if you're signing up to work with— um, sorry, I, uh, have a visitor of my, my dog. Um, if you are, uh, signing up— Dogs are welcome. If you're signing up to work with a learning specialist, if you're signing up to work with a, um, speech and language therapist, whoever it is, right? Very first session, again, is going to be that goal-setting session to really dig into what is the concern, what are tangible goals, and what should this program look like for this individual child's needs? And then again, building that program to make sure that we're actually helping students achieve their goals.

Okay. So I'm hearing headlines of it's less expensive, onboarding and service delivery are faster. How do you— if the story is that, hey, there's a shortage of labor that specializes in these areas, In the whole market, and that's why there's kind of this bottleneck. How are you able to deliver the service faster? I assume you're drawing from the same labor pool, so how are you making up for that difference?

Yeah, absolutely. There's a few different ways that we do it, and I think that this is one of the very exciting things about digital health these days, right? Um, is just how you can ultimately use technology to make these systems more efficient, um, and also how you can be strategic in thinking about staffing your actual services. And so, um, When it comes to the technology, first thing we did was really start to look at the assessment process and try to pinpoint why it was so expensive and why there were such long wait times, right? Was it simply that there's a staffing shortage around providers, or is it also that the actual assessment process is highly inefficient, which turns out it is? Just to break down what this usually looks like, as I mentioned, it's 5 to 6 hours of synchronous face-to-face testing, but There's document review, there's classroom observations in some cases, there's a ton of scoring. Psychologists literally will write down scores on paper and then they'll upload them to a website and then they'll transfer them to a report, which can take them hours just to do the scoring. And then they're putting together a really lengthy report. And typically, the higher the price tag on the psychological assessment, the longer and more cohesive the report is, right? And, um, it's just wildly inefficient, like I said, when you start to actually dig into each of these processes that psychologists are going through. And frankly, there are very few tools out there to help aid efficiency in the psychological assessment process. And so, um, what we immediately started doing was thinking about how we can build some technology to cut out those administrative inefficiencies. And so, You know, everything from ultimately collecting information about clients to producing those reports, we've found ways to weave in technology and cut down the actual time spent by psychologists quite significantly, which makes their time being used much more efficiently. Also allows us to bring down the cost quite significantly as a whole when we look at the package price, right? But what I think is also exciting for us from a business perspective is that we can actually pay psychologists quite well, right? Because we're using just less hours of their time, right? And we're allowing them to really focus on the things that they want to be doing, which is working with the children, providing that ultimate diagnosis and support plan, right? And really doing what they went to school to do, right? Versus scheduling sessions and administrative work that is a waste of their time, right? And then on the staffing piece, as I noted, one of the other exciting things about being a large company, right, is that we can actually develop systems to use supervisory models for staffing. So similar to a lot of our peers in the space, we use a supervisory nature, in particular with the assessments, we use psychometrists who are highly trained professionals to administer some of that synchronous face-to-face testing and help with some of that administrative work where the technology, isn't able to, right? But being able to do that by highly trained professionals who are not clinical psychologists with a PhD ultimately allows us to bring down the price point again, but also, you know, it allows us to work with a much larger pool of professionals to your first point, right? That you don't run into necessarily the same supply constraints that if you were just trying to do, you know, all of your sessions or all of your assessments with PhD clinical psychologists, it would just not be a sustainable business model. And frankly, when you look at the landscape today and why these inefficiencies exist, from the high prices to the wait times, it's because that is the traditional model, right? So, you know, I think just as a company and we think about our mission, it's really about how do we implement and use that technology and be strategic, right, about our processes and our workflows to ultimately be able to provide the highest quality of care and still be able to do it in that much more efficient manner.

So change is hard and it's scary for people and it forces people to change jobs or make more or less money. You're disrupting a big industry and an industry that's not usually called an industry. Who are the naysayers for this and what are their complaints?

Yeah, I mean, I think COVID has changed a lot of things. I actually had, you know, one of our earliest advisors when I first contacted him when I was starting Parallel, which I started in the middle of COVID or right at the beginning of COVID you know, he had previously been approached by a number of other companies that wanted him involved, and he laughed in their faces when he said, oh, we're going to do psychological testing in a virtual setting. And then COVID broke out and I happened to get in touch with him a couple of months later. And he immediately was like, I'm all in. Because I think that one of the biggest issues facing this industry, right, was the question of, is it actually valid to do a lot of these services online? Right? Can you actually— is it clinically sound? Right? And we can definitely get into the research in a second. But Also, are you able to provide that higher quality of care, right? And I think a lot of psychologists, a lot of parents, a lot of teachers and administrators, everyone that's a stakeholder in this space just had no interest in trying the virtual route, right? Despite the fact that teletherapy has been around for decades, it just wasn't something that anyone was being pushed to do. And so I actually think one of the biggest holdouts was probably actually on the psychology side. And it's still something that, you know, there's constantly research being developed that's able to point to teleassessment as a valid form of assessment, as well as, you know, teletherapy and so forth. And I'll also note that on our clinical team, we have actually one of the top researchers in the world for teleassessment, Dr. Jordan Wright, who has conducted a lot of pivotal research on the use of the WISC and other psychological tests in a virtual setting and being able to compare those norm scores of virtual testing to those of traditional in-person testing. And that really has helped propel, you know, this whole industry into a virtual setting. And it's been really exciting to see over the last, you know, 2 years or so that we've been working on Parallel.

So are there things that the virtual setting doesn't work for? I mean, people talk about This is a big debate. I think this even extends beyond what you're doing, right? Virtual versus in-person. Are there places where virtual is better or worse, or is it across the board better? What's the narrative here?

No, I think, look, to be realistic, there are always going to be cases that don't work in a virtual setting, right? I think one really good example is when we're thinking about something like autism, right? It's a very physical condition. There's actually It's basically impossible to do autism testing in a virtual setting. That said, there's constantly new tests being published, so fingers crossed that that becomes an ability one day. But, you know, there are certainly, like I said, cases where this isn't the right fit either from a clinical perspective or also just, for example, a student who has maybe really, really severe ADHD. It might genuinely be really hard for them to sit in front of a computer screen and do the testing. That said, you know, we've built in a lot of, um, you know, ways around that and have seen really great success to date. And, you know, it really comes down—

How do you, how do you get people to engage?

Yeah, I mean, just little things. So like on a Zoom screen, right, you know, a child with ADHD, when you're talking about a 7-year-old, could be distracted by clicking a mouse, right? Uh, on our platform, The child has no control of a mouse unless the provider gives them access, right? So very little things that has come down to us working with our clinical team as well as folks over at these large testing publishing companies, right? Like Riverside, helping us understand things like, okay, if a child minimizes the screen, we need to be able to know that as a provider so that we can fix that before we continue with testing, right? Because if the child's actually, you know, watching YouTube in the corner, that's not going to work very well, right? And so it's been really interesting to take all of the lessons, right? Because it's not like here at Parallel we're the only people doing teleassessment, right, or teletherapy, right? But we look at what's been the case for all of these psychologists over the past 2 years and better understand the different use cases. And we're able to really solve for them, both using the technology and also just building in protocols, right? So how do we prepare parents to be able to build an environment for their child to then do this testing and not be distracted? And how do we test their technology to make sure that they have the right or strong Wi-Fi connection? Or is it actually better that the student does the testing from school because maybe that's a more distraction-free environment than doing it, say, in a New York City studio apartment where their parents are there kind of thing, right? So we're constantly learning and evolving the product and, of course, the processes that we're conveying to these families and trying to kind of build the best case scenario around it. But I think, you know, overall, when you think about virtual versus in-person, the reality is, is when you're thinking about in-person testing, things can be missed as well, right? Or even actually thinking about my own experience with in-person testing when I was a child, because I grew up with, you know, being diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD as well. Um, you know, I remember being really traumatized, frankly, by being dragged to the psychologist's office, right? And I think that there's something really liberating about the fact that children can now do you know, psychological testing or their tutoring, their speech therapy, all from, you know, the comfort and privacy of, of their own home. And that we can really actually aid, particularly on the support service side, the sessions with, you know, their, their everyday environment. So for example, executive function coaching, a lot of our coaches will actually just build programs and work with the students with everyday surroundings. So if you're talking about how to better organize your life, how better to do that than, you know, taking things from your own bedroom, right, to actually be able to practice that.

So, you know, to talk about success, we need to talk about how you measure, right? What is the measurement for outcomes here? When you say something's working or it's not, what are you looking for? Does it vary by discipline?

Yeah, it absolutely does vary basically by service, right? And of course, success is going to look different for each of the students we work with based off of, you know, their specific needs and the conditions that they're struggling with and so forth. And so, You know, one of the ways that we test is very clinical, right? So setting a baseline early on, using clinical measures, right, to understand where that child is at, and then being able to measure every couple of months that they're on the platform to see what, you know, how they're improving. As well as, and as I mentioned, you know, the first session is that goal-setting session, right, which is of course more qualitative, talking to parents, about what they want to see for their child, or teachers, what they want to see for that child, right? And being able to build that program that ultimately does get child to a place of success, right? And again, that's going to look different for every student. But, you know, again, between the clinical measures where we can see, you know, real hard data that this child is improving in the areas of, you know, challenge areas, right? And then paired with, of course, being able to build that plan where we really know that we're going to be able to help that child reach those specific goals, whether it's, you know, getting slightly better grades in school, being able to bring, you know, their homework home and get it turned in on time. Right. Whatever it is for that family that that child specifically is struggling with, you know, we really are trying to build the program specifically to help uplift that child.

So there's some very interesting business insights in what you're doing that maybe are abstracted from the specific space. First thing you talked about was you were doing a direct-to-consumer, a B2C, and now you're also working with schools, a B2B. How'd you think about the channel strategy? How'd you go from one to the other? Is there some sort of analysis you were leveraging? What's the method for picking a channel?

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, schools, K through 12 schools are one of the largest providers or distributors of our services, right? So historically, school districts have on staff school psychologists, speech and language therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, you name it, right? And of course, special education teachers who are highly trained in supporting students with learning differences, right? So it's not new for the schools to provide these services. In fact, about 15% of students within the K through 12 education system are receiving these services. Unfortunately, right now, schools are just inundated with, A, more requests than ever for special education services, as well as just a lack of staff, right? It's no surprise every time you open the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, there's a different article about how this teacher staffing crisis is just plaguing the system. And unfortunately, it's really hitting the special education space hard. And, you know, I get it also on the teacher side, right? Because you also have so many teachers who are just completely overburdened with higher caseloads than ever before that it's just, it's unsustainable. And so we see schools looking for outsourced solutions like Parallel, right? To be able to fill that gap and get through, for example, the backlog of services that were not provided during COVID Because keep in mind, remember when schools went virtual, Schools were scrambling just to put day-to-day classroom sessions online, nevertheless trying to figure out how to do speech and language therapy online for all of these special education students. And so many of these students just had services fully cut off, and now the schools do need to still make up those hours and provide those services, as well as many of these schools have really long backlogs of actual evaluations that they need to get through. So Just to preface kind of where the space is at. And so what was interesting for us as a company is that, again, we always saw the schools as a really exciting channel for us. And there are other players, incumbent players out there that have sold traditionally teletherapy services to school districts. So we definitely knew it was possible to build some sort of outsourced solution. But what I will note about our personal journey that was quite interesting is that Schools have always been an amazing referral channel for our B2C side of the business, right? So teachers, administrators in both private and public schools are constantly sending families our way, those families, right, that we talked about earlier, either not qualifying for services or need more robust services than what the school can provide, or for whatever reason, right? They're constantly looking for referrals and turning to trusted folks like teachers to give them those referrals. And so we were already working with a lot of schools in this kind of referral-based capacity. Interesting is that, you know, public schools hold lists of independent evaluators. They hold lists of independent providers across the board. They're actually required to by law. And so as I was calling up these special education directors just trying to get on the independent provider list, the conversations morphed immediately where, you know, they were just perplexed by how, frankly, cheap our services were. And the conversation morphed very quickly from, well, that's great, you can be on the independent providers list, but also— you know, why don't we talk about actually contracting the services directly with the school? Because we're actually in much greater need of that. So it was somewhat a natural, you know, change for us, right? And that said, consumer side of the business is still growing really quickly, and there are so many use cases for families to need to go outside of the school district that we're really excited about being able to build this you know, go-to-market strategy or this dual go-to-market strategy, you know, in tandem with each other. And I think for us, what's really exciting is that we're being able to build it from the beginning all at once, right? As opposed to a lot of companies that are, you know, kind of going from consumer to enterprise later on, right? And having to adjust the product in many ways later in the company's progression. But the one other thing I'll say is that I think we also had a unique opportunity by starting on the consumer side to, A, make sure that we were building a sound platform and being able to really understand the clinical side of what we were doing and so forth and show some initial outcomes, right? But also being able to build a platform and a product that's actually a delight for users, as opposed to some of these more clunky platforms that frankly, are built for K through 12 institutions. I mean, a lot of edtech solutions are not made for the individual consumer. And I think that that's one really unique piece of what we're doing is just those efficiencies that we're trying to get from the tech and also just the general user experience. And then of course, the outcomes that we're really aiming to produce is all very unique when you think about, you know, us having started as a consumer-based company, right? And then transitioning To the enterprise side of things.

This is great. I mean, looking at your channel strategy, I love the, the way you did it is the way I think someone would want to do it in hindsight. You avoided the gatekeepers up front, you put the product under the pressure cooker of the consumer market, and then listened to the, to the market when they pulled you into a B2B. I mean, that's a classic set of good decisions being made by an entrepreneur.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, no, it's awesome. You know, and I think people struggle with this decision a lot. Like, how do you— where do you go first? And there's some wisdom in that.

Yeah, I think it's an interesting thing, particularly that you're seeing more and more in digital health, right, is this idea of kind of this B2C and back-to-B model that really does allow you to build this supreme product and service.

Yeah, it's amazing that people can get away with a crap service, if they— and the experience, maybe the service is fine— if they sell B2B first. Like, it's just, it's kind of shocking that the business-to-business market isn't more demanding for that as well. But another conversation.

Yeah.

Um, now you also, you did more than that. You're, you're going into a highly stigmatized space. There's a lot of emotion and feelings around this. How do you You know, when you do a consumer-oriented channel, how do you break that down? Any lessons learned? There's a number of entrepreneurs who claim to specialize in this. This is their— they want to break down stigmas. Yeah, through product categories.

No, absolutely. And I have to admit, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that I've learned from, particularly when you look at their marketing strategies and so on. And Yeah, I really, I mean, I would look at like Zach over at Ro, for example, and, you know, he got up in front of national television to tell everyone about his challenges and, you know, really try to normalize them in everyone's own living room, right? And it's really an empowering way to build your business, right, and really bring consumers in the door and also, of course, really build that trust with consumers, right? That builds that lasting relationship. And so certainly, you know, Parallel was driven by my own experience growing up with a lot of the same challenges and frankly, a lot of my own frustration of going through the school system, having this label of dyslexia and ADHD, but not necessarily knowing what that actually meant or how it really affected me, right? I mean, there were very clear memories that I have. There's actually a story that's up on our website about page, but I remember in first grade there were kids reading like Harry Potter chapter books, and I was struggling to read, you know, the picture book with one sentence per page kind of thing. So it was very clear that I was developing at a different pace. But when you're 7 years old, you're not processing what that difference means, right? And frankly, got very far through my educational career before I really started to piece it all together. And it wasn't actually until, unfortunately, I was having to really defend myself and the accommodations that I needed and so forth. I really took the time to better understand kind of what all of this meant, how my brain worked and so forth, and was actually really empowered once I put it all together. Because I, you know, it's almost a leg up to actually be able to understand in that much detail how your brain works. And, you know, where there are areas of weakness, there are also areas of really extreme strength, right? And being able to lean into those areas of strength, I think, is really important. And so that is something that we've actually really tried to do at Parallel. from both a product perspective as well as a marketing perspective, right, is putting the student frankly at the center of all of this. So, you know, obviously we want to educate and empower the parents as well, but really, you know, this is an incredible opportunity for students to be able to get this one-on-one support, this highly individualized support. And, you know, I think that that's the best thing that we can do when it comes to a marketing plan or strategy, right? As well as, you know, being able to build that supreme product we talked about earlier.

So you kind of bled into something I wanted to ask you about later, but I want to do it now. You know, you've got all these different types of disabilities, right? Challenges, learning differences that folks have. But in modern times, it feels like Asperger's is a competitive advantage, right? We're seeing a lot of people thrive, be extremely successful in industry because they've got a different way they think. That is maybe better for building organizations or better in certain applications. Are there particular superpowers? Have you identified that, hey, this quote unquote disability is actually a superpower for this application or this role? Are you starting to see those patterns emerge, or is that me dreaming?

You know what I think it all comes down to is when you deal with these challenges, whatever it may be, whether it's struggling with, you know, mild autism, struggling with dyslexia, struggling with anxiety, when you recognize these challenges and you start to learn how to compensate for these challenges, right? And that, you know, happens regardless of if you are a child that is getting, you know, the best support possible at the youngest age with early intervention, or just somebody who struggled through the system and figured it out on their own eventually, which I hear stories about all the time, right? right? You really do learn how to cope. And I think that that's the greatest strength, right? Is so all of, you know, whether it's these other founders or, you know, actually there's a stat that I don't, I hesitate quoting 'cause I don't know how to justify it, but that 25% of the Fortune 500 CEOs are dyslexic, which I think actually like from a lot of the personal stories I've heard might be true. But there's an immense number of people who have really done amazing things who do challenge in some form or another with a learning difference or developmental delay of some sort. And I think what it all really comes down to is, like I said, this ability to build skills around those weaknesses to cope, and that strength that you build as a result is really empowering and it really allows you to go on and do some really great things.

Yeah, I feel like grit, it sounds like this is a story of grit, right? The people who overcome such adversity or challenges trying to fit into a standard mold of learning with different needs.

Absolutely. And then one other thing I'll say is, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other thing I'll, I'll just note is, you know, it's not new news that everyone learns and thinks differently, right? I mean, we have no problem saying someone's a visual learner versus an auditory learner. We're starting to have more of a conversation around these actual medical diagnoses, right? But the reality is, is forever, you know, we've been aware that people learn in different ways and fashions. And so I do think that more and more we're really seeing people be more empowered and starting to have more open conversations about their specific challenges when it comes to both learning and mental health and, you know, how those worlds blend together as well. But, you know, hopefully it's really empowering to adults and certainly to students that are going through the system now. to feel like they really can be set up for success, even if they do challenge or if they are challenged by, you know, the typical classroom.

Fantastic. Can you give us an overview of your background? Like, how did you get here? This is an interesting journey for you.

How did this happen? Yeah. Well, I was born and raised in the Bay Area, in San Francisco, and, you know, was lucky enough to have parents that were actually hyper-aware of, you know, learning differences and what those challenges looked like. And so I really kind of consider myself one of the lucky ones where I was, you know, tested for learning differences actually at 7 years old when I remember that challenge with the, you know, not being able to read the Harry Potter books like my peers. And so had a lot of support in place from a young age and was you know, extremely lucky to have access to that, that support and that care. And, um, certainly had my fair share of challenges going through the education system, but overall, um, you know, had a positive experience. And, um, you know, from there went on to, uh, go to college. I went to Georgetown and actually started an edtech company while I was there. I like to joke that the second I left San Francisco— by the way, I went to Georgetown because I thought I wanted to like join the CIA or something— and the second I left San Francisco, I was like, no, no, tech, Tech scene's great. So I was really enamored, honestly, by the time I got there with, you know, business world and tech. And like I said, I went on to start this edtech company that was in an entirely different space than Parallel, but was just a really fun opportunity to work with some other smart people and, you know, get to gain a lot of independence starting something from scratch. And, you know, that ended up Flopping, but it was still a really fun experience and— Great way to learn. Yeah, so yeah, exactly. It was an enlightening experience. And so then, you know, went on to actually go work on Wall Street, was working at a bank called PJT Partners, which is a spinoff of Blackstone, doing M&A advisory and restructuring advisory for, you know, large-cap tech healthcare companies. Did a lot of work in the utility space. As well, which was a fantastic experience as well to really think about what a good business at the core of it all looks like. So I very much come from finance world, was ultimately really motivated to start Parallel looking at it from a finance lens, frankly. Was very close to going and working in growth equity actually, and found myself in conversations with a lot of funds who had stakes in the autism space and care delivery centers and was just really intrigued by that from a business perspective. There was a very common thread or trend between all of these funds, but also when you really dig into it, it is a pretty fantastic business model. You've got a condition that requires a lot of ongoing expensive care and high reimbursement rates from a lot of different folks. And so that was really kind of what sparked the idea to really dig in a bit more. And fast forward, call it a year later, pandemic hit. And never in a million years did I think I would actually really start something in this space. But, you know, tying that into my own experience growing up with learning challenges was where things really started to get exciting, was, you know, recognizing that you've got a very similar opportunity as you do with the autism space, but you're talking about 1 in 5 students as opposed to 1 in 50. And you're talking about having even more reimbursement channels because you're now talking about K-12. through 12 school districts, right? In addition to payer that are covering a large chunk of it. So all in all, was just really excited about the opportunity. Pandemic hit. I was, you know, thinking about what my next move was and, you know, decided to go the route of being an entrepreneur instead of going into private equity, which I think was a good decision in the end. And then, you know, obviously, given that I come from finance realm, first thing was first was go hire a really great team of folks that could help us figure out the clinical part and the operating part. And now we have an amazing group of individuals on the team and have grown quite immensely over the past year and a half or so since we started.

That's a hell of a story and a hell of a resume. How did learning differences, your learning differences you talked about earlier, fit into that? Because Doesn't sound like it held you back too much.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I actually did a fellowship when I was in college that was specifically for students with disabilities across the board. I mean, physical disabilities, mental disabilities. And I just was absolutely captivated. It was called Lime Connect. So if there's any other students that are listening to this that are Sophomores in high school, I highly suggest you apply. It was one of the most empowering things I've ever done and just met the most incredible people, people that were so much, so far cooler than, you know, anything I had ever done with my life. It was just, you know, really, really taken by that experience. And that fellowship happened to be supported by a number of actual banks. And that was really ultimately where I went from you know, just being a college student to deciding I was going to go do the finance track was, you know, connected to some really fantastic people through that opportunity. And that was really what got me, you know, certainly in the finance realm. But it's interesting now that everything has really come full circle, that now I'm focused back on my learning challenges where I started.

Yeah, but it sounds like I'm taking— one thing I'm taking away from this is if you look at You know, the narrative starting with, hey, I had started out with trouble reading, I was behind, then I ended up going to Georgetown and working in investment banking and now run a cool company and a venture-backed CEO, right? It, you know, you look at, um, this, the learning differences are very prevalent. I have kids and in the parenting conversation it comes up all the time. I don't hear about it a lot with my adult peer group. Does that mean that we are getting pretty good at supporting people through the process and people are kind of getting on the rails in their own way, or we're not doing well and they're out of sight? Like, what's happening? Where's the disconnect between that volume of conversation with kids but not at the adult level?

No, it's a great, great question. I think the reality is it's still highly stigmatized. I mean, we see this all the time, right? It is very, very— it's a touchy subject, right, for a parent to go admit to their peers that their child is struggling, particularly in today's hypercompetitive world for kids. And so it's not talked about as much as it should be, or as much as it, you know, is prevalent, right? And so, um, I wouldn't say necessarily, frankly, though, that kids are necessarily out there talking about it either. I think I had a very unique— scenario, right? But like I said, I went my almost whole academic career up until that experience, never really understanding what my learning challenges were, certainly never sitting there and talking to my peers about it, right? And never in a million years did I think I would run a company where I literally, for a living, tell people that I have dyslexia, right?

Right.

I mean, even when I was working in banking, I didn't dare tell anyone that I had dyslexia. They wouldn't trust any model I ever built. But, you know, I do think when it comes back to the parenting conversation is that this is still just a hyper-stigmatized space and that, you know, we at Parallel as well as all of the other companies in our industry really have a duty to help decrease that stigma, start conversations, and also educate more families about, you know, these conditions and really change the narrative. So it's not that these are disabilities, right? As you can tell, we really hesitate at the word disabilities in general, but rather that, you know, these are differences, that everyone's brain is unique, and that that's something that should be celebrated. Because like I said, you know, where there are areas of improvement or challenge, there's usually places where students are really extremely gifted in other areas. So I think a lot of it just comes down to we're at the baby beginning of this conversation and there's a lot of work to be done. And, you know, I think in particular you're seeing more of a conversation start around behavioral health around children, particularly I think pandemic. One of the good things that came out of the pandemic at least was this heightened awareness of children's mental health and this growing conversation. And I think, you know, neurodiversity as a category is kind of the next step.

What's interesting too, in hearing all of this is, remind me, what percentage of folks, you know, fall into one of these buckets that you said?

1 in 5.

That's a huge percentage of people. The idea for 20% of the population to be stigmatized, it's, you would think it'd almost be normalized at that scale.

Yeah. Um, no, it isn't. Unfortunately, they're just conditions that people don't talk about. And also, You know, going back to the reason why we're all here, there's not great access to the education needed to even understand that some of these conditions are affecting, you know, that 20% of the population, right? Many people go their entire life without ever being properly diagnosed or getting any kind of support for these conditions. And keep in mind that 20% statistic is both learning and thinking differences. So we're talking about anxiety, depression, as well as learning challenges and other developmental delays, right? So a lot of different conditions under one umbrella. That said, there's also so much comorbidity. And studies out there to show that, you know, and it makes perfect sense, right? That child struggling with dyslexia and learning to read is going to inevitably develop other mental health-related concerns when they're not developing at the same pace as their peers. And, you know, are challenged with test-taking. Maybe they develop test anxiety. Maybe that starts to affect their social life and so on. But, you know, there's just So much interconnectivity between education as well as mental health. And, you know, here at Parallel, we're really on a mission to try to bring it all into one general conversation and help parents figure out how to identify these challenges early for their children and then get them the support that they really need to succeed.

What do we know about these learning differences now? I mean, we're talking about the ability to diagnose, which sounds like didn't even exist probably. within a few decades ago, right? That's part of it too, is there's an awareness that didn't exist before. I'm assuming, I'm assuming at least. And we talk about treatments and therapies. Do we understand the science of what's happening yet? Or is that research that still has to be done? Where are we in that journey?

Yeah, no, it's a great question. I mean, I will say there's been research on this space for decades, right? that you have been able to diagnose students with these challenges for quite some time. I think the bigger issue is actually more so around the education piece and making sure that students are even getting to the point where they're meeting with that psychologist and being able to actually get that diagnosis or get that support going forward. That said, for example, I mean, even on the remediation side, you've got many, many evidence-based strategies, Orton-Gillingham being kind of the godfather of them all, and many of them being offshoots of that strategy that has is evidence-based, has been around again for decades, and is proven to help support students with dyslexia and other academic challenges, right? To really be able to learn core subjects like reading, writing, math, and so on, using a multisensory approach to reading. And so, you know, it's amazing how much actually research has been done to date and how many different solutions are out there really on the remediation side. That said, there's still so much work to be done. And frankly, you know, a lot of really incredible research that's coming out of various different institutions in this space to be able to diagnose at an earlier age. You know, early intervention is of course the most important kind of part of the conversation here, because if you're catching these things when children are 2, 3 years old, you can make so much more of an impact than if you're catching this stuff when they're 9, 10 years old, or even, you know, into adulthood, right? Which is unfortunately the case. And so I think that that's where there's a lot of work to be done is really starting to shift the conversation to be more of preemptive screening rather than doing this all in a reactionary way. Right. Which is unfortunately just the case today.

Thank you so much for being on.

Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me. This was really fun.

That was awesome. I love when we're able to talk about things that are stigmatized openly and honestly. Honestly, I think it just helps all of us figure out how to solve these problems. Next, a quick announcement. Next week we're taking a week off on the pod, so look for the next episode 2 weeks out. If you liked what you heard, please hook us up with a like or a 5-star review and feel free to share with a friend. You can find me on Twitter @MPD, and to hear more of my conversations with innovators, subscribe on YouTube, Facebook, or any major podcast platform. Just search for Innovation with Mark Peter Davis.