Today we’d like to introduce you to Brendan Michaelsen.
Hi Brendan, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
Hello! My name is Brendan and I am the co-founder and CTO of Our Wave. My career started all the way back when I was an engineering student at Purdue University. I co-founded my first startup, PearCircuit, with a team of fellow entrepreneurs in our dorm room during my freshman year and led it successfully for more than seven years. Along the way, we consulted and developed software for startup clients and large organizations across the healthcare, human insights, productivity, and education markets. We developed and spun off a product company, Liven, to a large investment group in the Midwest, and I split my leadership efforts between both organizations. After many years of growth, PearCircuit was acquired by an Indianapolis-based tech company in 2019.
After my work at PearCircuit, I transitioned from client and consulting work to product work. I joined the Nicotrax team as CTO to build out their smoking cessation product powered by predictive, behavioral AI. From there, I joined the ExpiWell team and worked to reimagine their mobile experience, overseeing the company through an executive transition and expansion of our product and support teams.
In late 2018, my friend and colleague on multiple startup projects, Kyle Linton, approached me about building a scalable way to empower survivors of sexual assault. We both have had loved ones impacted by traumatic events and were determined to make an impact with technology. We assembled a volunteer team of researchers, designers, and engineers passionate about making a difference, and got to work.
In 2019, Our Wave launched our first online platform for survivors to share stories, receive customized support, and join a community of understanding. While collecting stories and tagged data, we hope to highlight the prevalence of sexual assault and determine patterns for future prevention. As CTO, I develop and manage our platform, security infrastructure, and data initiatives, and work to ensure our technology is as welcoming as possible for our users.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There have certainly been ups and downs along the way. Making the leap to being a full-time business owner after college was a difficult decision for my partners and I – we were not yet profitable, and scaling the business quickly was a formidable task. Those first few years were made up of a lot of late nights and hard work. I learned the hard way about negotiating equity deals, investor relations, and working effectively with a diverse cohort of clients. I also had to make a major adjustment in my work style when I made the decision to move across the country, from Indianapolis to Raleigh, to start a family. This was many years before the virtual workplace revolution, and being a remote CTO was a challenge. All in all, though, these challenges helped prepare me for the current stage of my career, and I am grateful for the opportunities they provided.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Our Wave?
Our Wave is an online platform for survivors of sexual assault to share stories, receive customized support, and join a community of understanding. While collecting stories and messages of hope, we seek to empower survivors, educate society, and strategize to develop smarter prevention methods.
With the rise of the #MeToo movement, more and more people are beginning to come to terms with their own history of sexual violence and are beginning to feel empowered to share their stories to promote awareness and help others. Many fear publicly joining the conversation through public social media, however, due to fear of external exposure, as well as a variety of environmental factors. This leaves many stories untold, especially those originating in underserved populations. This highlights the need for an anonymous online platform for survivors to share their stories.
The purpose of Our Wave story collection is to collect stories of struggle, strength, and healing to foster a community of hope for survivors. We believe that stories are powerful and have the ability to build understanding, cultivate empathy, and ultimately create change. Together with our partners, we are working to distribute this empowering opportunity to survivors worldwide.
To learn more, check out our award-winning film, Finding The Strength To Heal: https://discover.ourwave.org/exhibit/finding-the-strength-to-heal
What’s next?
Our Wave is in an exciting growth stage – both through our partnerships and program development. We have been fortunate to be able to work closely with It’s On Us, End Rape on Campus, USA Gymnastics, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and many other large organizations to distribute our platform and content. At the same time, we have built social and content partnerships with brands like Unapologetically Surviving and the body: a home for love to distribute our content and message to 350,000+ survivors, advocates, and supporters
On our program and platform development side, we have been hard at work building new ways for survivors to find resources and work through their healing journey on the Our Wave platform. These updates are the first few steps towards our larger vision of powering a virtual healing curriculum for survivors. This program is being thoughtfully created by our content experts, engineering team, and partners, and will incorporate the latest advances in machine learning and natural language processing to support survivors.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@ourwave.org
- Website: https://www.ourwave.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ourwavestories
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ourwavestories
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ourwavestories
Image Credits:
Erica Holmsen
