What the New York Stock Exchange Taught Me About Impact, AI, and Why We’re Growing Faster Than Ever
Last week, I had the surreal privilege of walking onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange boardroom to talk about Agentic AI use cases for Ring Central’s Investor Day. To be able to go from a small, scrappy, passion project to introducing the company my husband Chris and I cofounded: Axis Integrated Mental Health, as ColoradoBiz Magazine’s Top Startup of the Year and one of Denver Business Journal’s top philanthropists, is pretty unheard of. In 20+ years of supporting high-tech companies that dream of going on the exchange to talk about their massive growth and returns, I was invited to talk about the power of being able to help more people transform.
Standing under that iconic bell, I felt two things at once: 1) profound gratitude, and 2) a renewed sense of responsibility.
Because Axis didn’t get here the traditional way. No venture capital. No giant corporate backing. Just a mission born from being parents who know what it’s like to watch a child in pain and not know where to turn.
We built Axis for the mom who just wants to see her kid smile again. For the person who’s white-knuckling their way through burnout. For the adult with ADHD who simply needs a quick refill before life unravels. For anyone who has felt lost in a system that was supposed to help them.
And weirdly, standing on that trading floor taught me something about the future of this mission and about who actually survives in mental health.
The Unicorn vs. The Elephant
Here’s what I’ve learned watching this industry: There are two philosophies competing in mental health right now.
One is built on the unicorn model. Raise massive capital. Burn faster. Scale aggressively. Optimize for headlines, user acquisition, and the next funding round. It’s seductive. It looks incredible on a venture deck. You get press. You get prestige. You get to call yourself a “disruptor.”
But here’s what nobody tells you: Unicorns are rare for a reason. Most of them don’t survive past their Series C. They collapse under the weight of their own burn rate. Clinicians leave because they can’t handle the pressure. Culture cracks. Quality slips. And suddenly you’re explaining to your board why your growth metrics look great but your patient outcomes don’t.
The other philosophy–ours–is the elephant model. We’re building something that’s actually profitable. Something that actually lasts. Something where clinicians don’t quit because they’re burned out. Where growth doesn’t mean compromising care. Where sustainability isn’t a “future problem”. It’s built into every decision we make right now.
The NYSE is obsessed with unicorns. But we’re building an elephant.
Chasing Impact – Not Optics
The difference shows up everywhere.
We didn’t scale because we chased prestige. We scaled because we chased meaning and asked one simple question:
“How can we help more people, faster, without losing the humanity that makes healing possible?”
That question is what led us straight into the world of AI.
AI Isn’t Replacing Care. It’s Protecting It.
In mental health, people assume AI is the enemy. We’ve lost clinicians and some patients because of it, and we’re ok with that because the mission is the boss. But at Axis, AI is one of the biggest reasons we can stay human, and one of the biggest reasons we’ll still be here in five years when companies chasing unsustainable growth are collapsing under their own weight.
Since September, our phone calls have tripled, a wild, exhilarating, borderline terrifying reality. As we desperately try to hire and train more people to answer those calls, 33% of those calls are now being handled by AI, allowing our team to focus on the humans who need us most.
AI routes our incoming text messages to the right person. AI helps summarize the flood of résumés we’re receiving because we’re growing too fast for our own inboxes. AI charts notes. AI automates workflows. AI buys our staff time and energy: time and energy they can give back to each patient sitting in front of them.
And that’s the part people often miss when they panic about AI in mental health.
AI isn’t replacing mental health care. It is clearing the thorns out of the path so our clinicians can walk faster toward the people who are hurting. It’s giving us more clinician capacity, not less. It’s letting us serve our community without burning out the very people who make healing happen.
That’s a fundamentally different use of technology than companies designed to extract value and move on.
Growth Fueled by Purpose
We are hiring at a pace that feels both impossible and exhilarating. We’re buying competitors and expanding across Colorado. We’re onboarding more clinicians, more support staff, more care navigators because the need is overwhelming, and because we refuse to not try because Colorado’s mental health crisis is so massive.
But here’s the difference between our growth and the growth I see elsewhere in this space: We’re hiring because the community needs us, not because an investor needs us to hit a Series B. We’re expanding because we have the infrastructure to maintain quality, not because we’re racing against a funding clock.
AI helps us do this safely, quickly, and with the highest quality standards possible, but the mission is still human to its core. Our clinicians aren’t being asked to see more patients in less time. They’re being asked to focus on what only they can do: the irreplaceable work of healing.
Every time a patient gets scheduled, every time someone feels seen, every time a family gets their hope back, that’s the real bell ringing.
Standing on the NYSE Floor Made One Thing Crystal Clear
The future of mental health care won’t be built by choosing between people and technology.
But it will be decided by leaders who understand the difference between growth for growth’s sake and growth for impact’s sake.
One model looks good on a spreadsheet for a few years. The other actually survives because it’s solving real problems for real people, one clinician and one patient at a time.
Axis is not on the NYSE. But our mission walked onto that floor with me, just as loud and just as proud.
And it reminded me why we show up every day:
To help people heal. To build something that lasts. To make care easier without making care cheaper. And to create a mental health system worthy of the people who depend on it.
Colorado needs us. And we’re just getting started.
If you’re looking for meaningful work in a place that leads with heart and harnesses the best tools of our time, we’d love to meet you.
