Carrie Shaw (Embodied Labs) on the Denial, Anger, and Fear of Growing Old

05/12/20 • 70 min

Carrie Shaw is the CEO and co-founder of Embodied Labs, a company changing the way professional and family caregivers view — and care for — older adults through the use of immersive experiences.

After graduating from UNC Chapel Hill with a B.S. in Public Health, Carrie spent 2 years working as a Health Education Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic where she fell in love with the way visual communication tools have the unique potential to cross cultural, language, and education barriers. Following that time, Carrie worked as her mother's primary caregiver, who's diagnosis of Early Onset Alzheimer's disease opened Carrie's eyes to the needs of caregivers and the aging services workforce.

Carrie holds a Master's of Science in Biomedical Visualization and her work has been featured by a number of publications, including Oprah Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as television shows on The History Channel, and CBS.

In this conversation, Carrie describes the way her mother’s disease impacted her mother’s life and the way Carrie dealt with and grew from the experience of being a primary caregiver.

We talk about the company she’s created in the aftermath of her experience, including the entrepreneurial journey she’s been on as she’s gone from company inception to product-market fit.

We talk about some of the challenges of dealing with an aging population, and Carrie describes the fundamental goal of the immersive learning experiences her team is creating: a bridge to accelerate people through the stages of denial, anger, or fear of getting old – for our benefit and those we care about.

We kick off the interview with a story about Carrie’s early efforts to cure cancer.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Carrie Shaw is the CEO and co-founder of Embodied Labs, a company changing the way professional and family caregivers view — and care for — older adults through the use of immersive experiences.

In this conversation, Carrie describes the way her mother’s disease impacted her mother’s life and the way Carrie dealt with and grew from the experience of being a primary caregiver.

We talk about the company she’s created in the aftermath of her experience, including the entrepreneurial journey she’s been on as she’s gone from company inception to product-market fit.

We kick off the interview with a story about Carrie’s early efforts to cure cancer.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Previous Episode

Nikolai Suvorov (Spectar) on AR vs Plum Bob and String – The Future of Construction

Nikolai Suvorov is the CEO at Spectar, a company who uses augmented reality to connect construction design documentation to the job site with the goal of accelerating construction timelines while reducing costs.

Nikolai spent 10 years at Hilti, a big, international construction technology company where he served as a VP of Sales in Russia, and a country General Manager in Ukraine, before returning to the US to be a sales leader.

He then was VP of Sales at ToughBuilt before helping to create Spectar.

In this conversation, Nikolai shares his perspective on the challenges and opportunities for infusing technology into an industry that still relies on little weights suspended from strings (plumb bobs and strings).

He talks about his pragmatic approach to focusing on measurable ROI for customers by leveraging the AR technology that exists today, specifically within the Hololens, rather than hoping for what may come.

Nikolai also shares his mandate to keep his team focused, namely there can only be one top priority – everything can’t be the most important thing.

Nikolai goes on to share lessons learned about critical leadership traits particularly during difficult times.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Next Episode

Stefan Alexander (North) on Taking a Human-Centric Approach to Designing Focals (Part 1)

Stefan Alexander is the VP of Advanced R&D at North, a company taking a human-centric approach to creating AR smartglass hardware and experiences that are both useful and respectful.

After earning a Masters of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Stefan spent more than a decade working with OLED display technology at IGNIS Innovation.

From there he joined North to build and lead the team that developed the technology behind Focals 1.0 and the forthcoming 2.0 hardware.

My conversation with Stefan goes deep into the technology, the mindset, and the lessons learned at North, and I’ve split it into two parts.

In the first part of our conversation, Stefan describes some of the design ethos of the company, and a key lesson they carried forward from the development of the Myo armband. Through that experience, they gained a deep appreciation for human biology and individuality as well as the challenges of making something that people feel comfortable wearing - both physically and socially.

Stefan goes on to describe some of the constraints and underlying technology of the Focals smartglasses. He also shares some lessons learned from the launch in 2019, including how people are using Focals every day, and what Stefan believes is the most important capability of smartglasses.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.