It was the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and Jessica Jackson, PhDopens in new window, was in high demand.
She was a young faculty member at Baylor College of Medicine, teaching and delivering inpatient and outpatient care. Not only was the hospital overwhelmed with patients, but Jackson was the sole Black psychologist working for the Harris Health System, which surrounds Houston. People of color—who were disproportionately affected by the health crisis and at the center of a national racial reckoning—clamored for her care.
“It got to a point where I was like, This is not sustainable,” Jackson said. So when she noticed a psychologist friend was doing some consulting work in the health tech space, she, for the first time, questioned whether that was a potential career path for her.
“It had just never occurred to me that this is a job I could do,” Jackson said.
Now Jackson is a clinical strategy manager* at Modern Healthopens in new window, a health tech startup. While she still sees patients part-time virtually, she finds her role at the company allows her to reach more people than had she stayed in a more traditional role.
“The impact I can have is [much] larger than I could have guessed in grad school,” she said.
Other psychologists are also finding unanticipated rewards in the health tech sector.
Sure, it can be more lucrative than clinical or academic work, but it also can appeal to professionals who enjoy faster-paced environments, lots of variety, and working in teams and across disciplines.
And, as Kay Nikiforova, MA, head of clinical and research at the health equity platform Violetopens in new window, emphasizes, “companies need psychologists.” Indeed, investors poured a record-breaking $1.5 billion into mental health startups in 2020 alone, according to Forbesopens in new window.
“Companies need psychologists working at every single level of the company—not just in clinical care but also working on product, in marketing, and on the data team,” said Nikiforova, who serves on APA’s Mental Health Technology Advisory Committee. “Psychologists have the skill sets and the knowledge to be able to guide these companies in a direction that will lead to more efficacious and more ethical care.”
Here’s what Nikiforova and others say psychologists should know before pivoting toward a career in health tech.
Breaking in
David Cooper, PsyDopens in new window, a psychologist who’s been working in digital health for more than a decade, says roles for mental health professionals in the field tend to fall into four categories.
First, there’s research. “Every company’s got to know whether or not their product works,” said Cooper, who also serves on APA’s Mental Health Technology Advisory Committee. There’s also content (how to word questionnaires to screen for suicidal ideation, for example), telehealth (providing direct services to patients or supervising those who do), and product development (helping design or improve the tool itself).
While that work can sound intimidating to technology-averse mental health professionals, Nikiforova said their roles rarely require in-the-weeds tasks like coding. “People tend to have this viewpoint of technology with a capital T,” they said. “But that’s not the totality of health tech companies. And in fact, most psychologists, whether they’re clinicians or researchers, will never touch that. They just have to pick up a little bit of the language.”
One way to figure out which area may be a good fit is through informational interviews, said Mike Arevalo, PsyDopens in new window, now the clinical development lead at Big Health.
When Arevalo was considering a transition from various group practice settings to a digital health role where he hoped he could make more of a systemic impact, he sent cold requests for chats to psychologists via LinkedIn. After pointing out some common ground, like a mutual friend or similar alma mater, in his initial messages, he found “a lot of people were very accommodating.”
Arevalo’s connections led him to a Slack community called Therapists in Tech as well as to consulting gigs with early-stage startups while maintaining his clinical work. But it wasn’t until he took a Google certification course in project management that he began to learn the language that helped him land a full-time job in the field.
“I found it a little difficult when I was doing my informational interviews that a lot of people broke into tech by knowing someone personally or knowing someone who knew someone. And I thought, ‘Why is it so easy for everyone? I’ve had dozens and dozens of interviews, but I can’t seem to get it right,” said Arevalo. “And I’ve learned that’s OK. There’s no straight path for everyone. Everyone’s different.”
That’s true once you’ve broken into the field, too, said Nikiforova, who’s pursuing a PhD in psychology in addition to their role at Violet.
“No trajectory exists at this current moment, which can be difficult because it’s hard to know how to follow,” they said. “But for me, that’s also very exciting. That means we can craft our own paths and work with companies in the way that feels authentic or do the type of work that really speaks to us.”
Arevalo recommends asking potential employers how the clinical side of the business works with the rest of the team. “Clinical might serve as a consultant that’s brought in at the end—or be embedded throughout the product development process,” he said. You can also ask if there are opportunities for collaboration on strategy, Arevalo added.
Speaking the language
There are practical differences, too, between getting a job in academia and industry. For one, you’ll need a resumé, not a CV, Jackson learned. And accolades that matter in higher education hiring, like publishing articles in top-tier journals and having lab experience, don’t carry much weight at a startup.
Rather, tech companies care that you speak their language—and ditch medical jargon like “DX” for diagnosis—and collaborate well with nonmedical professionals like designers, engineers, salespeople, and marketing professionals, said Jackson, who chairs APA’s Mental Health Technology Advisory Committee.
Psychologists’ value isn’t always well understood in business settings, she added. Applicants must prove it during the application and hiring process, and sometimes beyond. The interview process could include a homework assignment like describing what you think the market is missing—without giving away too much intellectual property.
“It’s a different way to think about applied psychology,” Jackson said. “How do we use our expertise to communicate to people who don’t have a background in mental health to develop products and services?”
Emily Anhalt, PsyD,opens in new window said making her value as a psychologist visible through writing helped land her where she is today: cofounder and chief clinical officer of COAopens in new window, a digital mental health “gym” that hosts therapist-led emotional fitness classes and therapist matchmaking services in some states.
Anhalt’s posts on social media, which largely helped people navigate working relationships based on her knowledge of personal relationships, caught the eye of a product and marketing executive, who’s now COA’s other cofounder.
“I learned early on that when you know a lot about psychology, you know a little about everything,” said Anhalt, who’s also a private practitioner, soon-to-be book author, and speaker. “Every psychologist can take what they know about the human condition and apply it to anything that’s interesting to them.”
A faster pace
For psychologists who work in health tech, no day looks the same. Anhalt, for example, may start her workday in the late morning with one-on-one meetings with COA colleagues, followed by seeing a handful of patients virtually, then putting the final touches on a talk to be delivered in Europe on the traits of an emotionally fit leader.
“One of the benefits of having my own schedule is the ability to do so many things,” she said, because she can do them at the times of day that work best for her. In other words, not early mornings.
For Nikiforova, days can be meetings heavy. They might meet with customers, then with the education team, then with the CEO to discuss high-level strategies for integrating Violet’s services into health plans across the country. Nikiforova might also pick up the occasional task like reading through a blog post to ensure it’s credible. “I so enjoy this work because it really keeps me answering hard questions over and over, and challenges me to come up with creative solutions,” they said.
There are perks to working in a fast-paced environment, too. Jackson joked that in a university role, she needed approval from 10 people to do something as minor as move her desk. Now, if she wants a title change, for example, she can write up a pitch and make it happen.
“People who want to be innovative and are able to be flexible are best cut out for this work,” Jackson said. It also requires some relinquishment of control as a project moves from one phase and one group of experts to the next.
Arevalo appreciates how the field’s variety and pace have pushed him to become more adaptable. On any one day, he may talk to the leadership team about the product, then a designer about more inclusive wording, and then the marketing team about a release strategy. “Previously it was hard for me to change, but now I like to say that my superpower is context switching,” he said.
Not for the risk-averse
For all their allures, health tech careers aren’t suited for all psychologists.
For one, you must be comfortable thinking and talking about money. “In the health tech space, if a company can’t sell a product, they’re not bringing in revenue and that puts our jobs at risk,” Jackson said.
But when you do get paid, it’s typically more than you’d make in an academic setting—and that shouldn’t be taboo, Anhalt said. “It’s OK to want to make money,” she said. And you can do it, she added, without “selling your soul.”
Psychologists who are interested in health tech should also be prepared for hard work, just a different type of hard work from running a clinical practice, Arevalo said. “There are plenty of days where I get tired from a lot of the higher-level strategic planning and decisions that we need to make. You’re just flexing a different muscle,” he said.
Perhaps the most notable downside of the health tech industry is its instability. “In mental health in general, you really have to mess up to lose your job,” Jackson said. “In the tech space, there are massive layoffs.”
Although you can’t get a guarantee of security, it’s important to do your due diligence before taking an offer.
But if you find a company you believe in, you’ll reap the rewards. “I’m in awe sometimes,” Jackson said, “of the way the work we do can touch millions of people.”
