Edtech startup headversity secures $1 million in seed funding to evolve its workplace resilience training platform

headversity, a workplace resilience training app that helps companies develop a more resilient workplace, has raised a $1 million seed-stage financing to evolve headversity’s platform and expand the team to support increased client and product demand. The round was led by a group of private investors.

Founded in 2016 by co-founded by Dr. Ryan Todd, Dr. Karen MacNeill, Dr. Jordan DeCoste, Kameron Erker, and Steven Gramlich, the Calgary, Alberta, Canada-based headversity is a workplace resilience training program that aims to help everyone think, feel, and be better. Companies like ATB Financial, Copeman Healthcare, PBA Land & Development, and the Canadian Olympic Committee have participated in pilot programs with headversity to measure, track, and train resilience.

headversity’s team blends experience from industry-leading mental health professionals and performance psychologists, as well as learning, technology and marketing specialists to create a comprehensive resilience training program. We built headversity to help more people execute, take on challenges and stay mentally well.

headversity’s proprietary headscan metric allows organizations to learn the baseline resilience of their people, as well as how they’ve built resilience through exposure to headversity’s resilience training. Resilience improves employee performance, reduces costs associated with mental illness, and mitigates legal exposure by providing a psychologically safe workplace.

Managers and human resource professionals understand that resilience is inherently connected to job performance today. In fact, resilience is gaining steam in human capital circles throughout North America, where it is now seen as a key characteristic in potential new employees and a fundamental element of any organizational emotional health strategy.

“Resilience – one’s readiness to face adversity – is a critical attribute in today’s employees given the rate of change experienced in the modern workplace,” said Kerilee Snatenchuk, Director of People & Culture at ATB Financial. “Our mental health strategy considers resilience as a vital component moving forward – we are testing this through our pilot with headversity.”

Dr. Ryan Todd, a clinical psychiatrist and CEO of headversity, set out to build a mental health and performance program that considered the full spectrum of mental experience, helping everyone to understand mental health while they train to think, feel and be better, all at the same time.

“Companies today with a mental health strategy are, by and large, investing in resources to help employees that are too sick to work,” said Dr. Ryan Todd. “But this is not a cost-effective solution, nor does it address the other 95% of the workforce. Our program proactively trains people on mental skills for everyday situations, and for when adversity arises, so they can be their best no matter what. And this offers many downstream benefits for organizations.”

headversity entered the corporate market because the workplace is now, more than ever, ground zero of mental health. According to the Mental Health Commission of Canada, the workplace is the leading source of stress in our lives.