software engineering careers / headway / mental health
Why I Joined Headway as a Software Engineer
Austin Starks explains how his experience seeking mental health support at Cornell shaped his decision to join Headway as a software engineer. He discusses stigma, access to care, and the engineering problems he wants to work on.
Transcript
0:00Mental health care is heavily stigmatized in black communities We often say that the most common ailments like anxiety and
0:08depression don't exist within black communities And that is why even though black people and white people suffer from these
0:19ailments at roughly the same rate black people are only 33 likely to seek the help they need as
0:27opposed to 50 of white people This stigma is exactly what prevented me from seeking the mental help that
0:36I needed when I was an undergraduate student at Cornell University And even when I took that big leap to
0:45seeking the help I needed I often gave up because the process was just too hard That is why I'm
0:54extremely excited and proud to announce that I've accepted a job offer to work as a software engineer at Headway
1:02Headway offers the software that helps people like me seek the help they need and they do it at an
1:11extremely low cost for the patient and an extremely convenient way for the provider making them earn even more than
1:19they might have earned by themselves I'll be joining a startup within a startup within Headway and tackling some of
1:28the organization's hardest problems and I couldn't be more excited Let's fix this horrible stigma and make access to mental
1:39health care affordable to everybody
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