We strive to find and fill gaps in everyday needs.
Our team of cancer survivors and caregivers is driven to empower others like us with support and resources.
Founded by survivors and caregivers
Leadership
Carolyn Treviño Jenkins
Carolyn Jenkins is Co-founder & CEO. She is a previous SaaS CEO and serial entrepreneur with exits up to 10x investment capital. In past startups, Carolyn won national awards when she was Chief Employee Development Officer and international awards when she was Vice President of Customer Success. Carolyn is data driven and can pivot as needed. Carolyn’s leadership style of achieving accountability with servant and compassionate leadership instills extreme loyalty and trust. She has an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. Carolyn is also a 2x cancer caregiver and a cancer survivor. She has the passion and experience to lead We Are Here to success.
Carolyn’s job is to keep the team focused on achieving the right objectives in the right order and to remove any barriers in their way. It’s important that she keeps a pulse on how the team is feeling (especially since we are all remote) and that we have a strong culture, even at this small size. It is also her responsibility to find investors and drive revenue. The team is counting on Carolyn to extend the runway so we may all improve the lives of those impacted by cancer.
Shea Mencel
Shea Mencel is Co-founder & VP, Navigation & Impact. Shea built social impact programs locally and globally while Deputy Director at Eisenhower Fellowships. She has a BA in International Relations from the University of Delaware. When she faced her own cancer battle, she returned to school to become a licensed integrative health coach to educate herself on how to address many of the gaps in her own cancer care. Shea is also secondary trauma certified and peer support trained. Since 2020, Shea has held a leadership volunteer position with Living Beyond Breast Cancer, where she was trained on how to provide peer support for women newly diagnosed with the disease. In addition, since 2019 she has volunteered with Unite for HER, another breast cancer non-profit. Her deep experience in the non-profit space earns We Are Here trust.
Shea leads our community engagement. She is uniquely qualified to listen to our members and expeditiously guide them to the right resources. She is pivotal in training our ML models. Shea is also responsible for identifying the types of resources we need to have ready for our members. She builds relationships with our non-profit partners and with vendors, often securing discounts for our members. Shea also manages the programs that connect our members to each other. Shea excels at ensuring our solution meets our members where they are. Shea is the primary reason we have a 100% satisfaction rating 10 quarters in a row.
Alex Grishaver
Alex Grishaver, our Chief Product Officer, was inspired to help conceive We Are Here following his experience as a cancer caregiver – first for his former wife, and then for his mother.
Before co-founding We Are Here, Alex spent over 20 years at IDEO, the world’s leading firm for human-centered design, with roughly 5 of those years devoted to health-related projects: from health-related services to medical devices. During his last five years at IDEO, Alex was the Sr Director leading social impact initiatives across healthcare, public sector, and environmental domains. He helped conceive, design, and launch human-centered health transportation services within Greenfield Labs (now D-Ford) and worked with various health-sector clients to envision and build patient-centric services. In prior IDEO roles Alex led or founded several software prototyping teams at IDEO.
Alex thrives on connecting abstract, strategic goals to specific product experiences, service flows and key metrics. On any given day he may be conducting end-user research to inspire new features, or refining existing aspects of our MVP. His humor brings levity to a team continuously interacting with people facing stressful and challenging circumstances.
Chandra Ilindra (IC)
Chandra Ilindra (IC) is our founding CTO. Chandra is a highly effective and results-oriented technology leader with a strong background in building and delivering technology strategy and solutions, including AI/ML. Previously, he was a Senior Technology Leader at US Bank where he managed a $20M portfolio, directed the data and reporting teams, and collaborated with enterprise architects to create data, reporting, and AI/ML roadmaps and execution strategies. He also made significant contributions to application rationalization and established effective release management and vendor management strategies. Chandra’s experience also includes various startups and he serves as an angel and technology due diligence volunteer for Southwest Angel Network. His mother and father-in-law both passed from cancer. Chandra holds a Master of Science in Computer Science and completed the AI for Leaders Post Graduate Program at the University of Texas at Austin.
Chandra provides valuable guidance to We Are Here on technology choices, AI/ML Models, web application frameworks, integrations, data structures and reporting solutions. He helps recruit and assess our developers and works very closely with our full time ML engineer.
Extended Team
Vinona Bhatia, MD, MPH
Vinona Bhatia, MD, MPH is our Strategic Oncology Advisor. Her primary goal is to unblock millions of individuals from the barriers they face in accessing cancer screening and care.
She completed her hematology-oncology training at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and spent ten years managing the care of cancer patients at UCSF and Kaiser Permanente. She worked at Genentech/Roche, and led the efforts to expand education and access to cancer care and diagnostics in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2018, Vinona transitioned to the digital healthcare space, becoming the Chief Medical Officer at a startup in Paris called Tilak Healthcare, which focuses on using mobile medical applications to connect patients with, and provide essential disease follow up information to, their physicians. Since 2020, Vinona has succeeded as a medical director at startup biotech companies (Silverback therapeutics and 23andMe) and advisor for both digital healthcare companies (Biofourmis, Prosoma, and Sidekick Health) and VCs (How Women Invest and Coyote Ventures). She is a mentor for several of the startups in the CancerX Accelerator. She also volunteers as a board member and advisor for various organizations that focus on improving access to care in sub-Saharan Africa (Illuminaid and Africa Diaspora Network).
Dr. Carol Wang
Dr. Carol Wang is Director of Clinical Research. She is an accomplished social and health research scientist with an extensive background leading and managing collaborative research projects with a focus on community-based and patient-centered outcomes. She is an expert on generating real-world evidence through quantitative and qualitative methodologies, with a strong focus on health equity.
Her primary work has focused on understanding how psycho-social risk and resilience factors influence well-being and cancer-preventative behaviors among those from underserved communities. While Division Director of Research at HCA Healthcare, she developed the inaugural strategic structure to support research and scholarly activity across residency programs in community-based hospitals in Central/West Texas. She completed a Post-doctoral Research Fellowship in Cancer Prevention at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center. She was also a Susan G. Komen Research Fellow in Health Disparities Research at MD Anderson Cancer Center in which she led research on psycho-social determinants impacting cancer survivorship, including well-being, quality of life, and clinical outcomes. She was recognized for excellence as Outstanding Research Trainee in Cancer Prevention Award from the Department of Cancer Prevention and has published in journals such as Psycho-oncology, Supportive Care in Cancer, Addictive Behaviors, and European Journal of Cancer Care.
Trisha Bonilla
Trisha Bonilla is our fractional controller. Trisha is a CPA with a Master of Science in Taxation from Florida International University. She brings accuracy to our financials and record keeping. She handles payroll, expenses, AP/ AR, closing the books each month, and all financial reporting.
Tanner Walsh
Tanner Walsh is our in-house Graphic Designer and Marketing Coordinator. Prior to contracting with We Are Here, Tanner worked over four years as the Design Editor for an Austin based marketing agency called GetMeFriends. Tanner brings an understanding of the current social media marketing landscape through the lens of a graphic designer. He is experienced in creating content and messaging that resonates with audiences, while looking aesthetically pleasing and existing within a brand identity. In addition to social media, Tanner handles the creation of marketing and brand assets such as conference materials, signage, and collateral.
Tanner thrives when working on meaningful projects that have a positive impact on our shared environment and community through design. Outside of We Are Here, he founded and runs an ecologically minded record label called Perfect Dark, and has worked as a whitewater raft guide on the American River.
Board of Directors
Suzanne Stone
Suzanne Stone is the CEO of The Livestrong Foundation. Prior to this role, she was the Chief Strategic Solutions and Programs Officer at Livestrong and is the former Executive Director of Susan G Komen® Austin. She has over eight years of experience serving those impacted by cancer.
John Thornborrow
Beto Lopez
Beto Lopez is Co-Founder & CEO at Design Run Group, a venture studio that only invests in companies building innovative human-centered health care solutions. Beto co-founded and was Managing Director of the Design Institute of Health at the University of Texas at Austin to advance Dell Medical School’s mission to tackle health care reform.
Scott Joy
Scott Joy has served the Livestrong board since 2019. He has been a cancer survivor, caregiver, and passionate advocate for people living with cancer since 2003. He retired from a career in technology management for Liberty Mutual that spanned software engineering, research and innovation, enterprise architecture, technology acquisition and governance, and infrastructure management. He lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and is the father of four adult children. He enjoys choral singing, community theater, and bicycling. Scott holds an B.Sc. from Brown University and an MBA from the University of New Hampshire.
What We Believe
Reactively prepared for cancer when unavoidable.
Proactively working to reduce number & severity of cases downstream.
Reactively prepared for cancer when unavoidable.
Proactively working to reduce number & severity of cases downstream.