Interview with Carallel CEO Shara Cohen

In this engaging discussion with Shara Cohen, the CEO of Carallel, we explore her journey from a history major with a passion for volunteering to a leader in the healthcare industry. Shara shares her early experiences as a candy striper, delivering meals on wheels, and how those moments helped shape her career path. We also discuss her time at Berkeley, law school, and her work with the Oakland A's, which provided valuable life lessons and fueled her passion for healthcare and legal topics.

We then dive into the mission and purpose of Carallel, a company  geared to serving  family caregivers. Discover how Carallel provides a human-led, tech-enabled service that makes caregiving easier and helps healthcare organizations and employers deliver a caregiver strategy to attract and retain members.

As of March 2025 HealthBiz is part of CareTalk. Healthcare. Unfiltered and can be found at the following links:

• Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2GTYhbNnvDHriDp7Xo9s6Z
• Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caretalk-healthcare-unfiltered/id1532402352
• YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@CareTalkPodcast
• CareTalk website https://www.caretalkpodcast.com/

Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group.

Episodes through March 2025 were produced by Dafna Williams.

Transcript

0:00:11 - David
Caregiving is incredibly important for patient well-being and it reduces medical costs too. So supporting caregivers should be a no-brainer. But it's hard for a health plan or employer to even know who the caregivers are, never mind how to help them out. So that's where Carolell comes in with its personalized guidance and digital tools that help identify and empower caregivers throughout their journeys. Hi everyone, i'm David Williams, president of Strategy Consulting firm Health Business Group and host of the Health Biz podcast, a weekly show where I interview top healthcare leaders about their lives and careers. My guest today is Shara Cohen. she is CEO of Carolell. If you like this episode, please press that like button and subscribe Shara. welcome to the Health Biz podcast. Thanks so much, david. It's great to be here Outstanding. So we're going to talk about Carolell I love the name, but we'll talk about that in a minute. But I want to start off way back and ask about your childhood, any childhood influences that you had that has stuck with you, or anything else notable from your childhood. 

0:01:16 - Shara
Yeah, i feel like I should lay down on the couch to have this conversation, but happy to start here. I guess you know I had a pretty happily vanilla growing up in the suburbs in Southern California. But maybe most impactful or relevant, i, early on, was both a candy striper and delivered meals on wheels. And in the candy striper days I was too squeamish to actually be on the floor at the hospital so I was happily ensconced in the gift shop And that was an early lesson that I appreciated health care but I couldn't be too close to it. And with meals on wheels, just getting to see how vulnerable a lot of people are, and as a child, having that eye-opener of the supports that society can provide, and so you know, while we were living the OC lifestyle before, it was cool. Those were important moments for me in setting me up, i think, for where I am now. 

0:02:34 - David
Now, did your parents or family get you involved in that, or was that something that you sought out in terms of the hospital rules and meals on wheels? 

0:02:42 - Shara
My mother wanted some activities for us to do together, and so she happily enrolled us, or got us invited, to be part of the National Charity League, which was an activity all through junior, high and high school. I think she liked it because there were tees and events that I was forced to go with her to, but it also really instilled a lot of priority around volunteering and being out in the community. That was a good time in my life to be influenced by that priority. I hope she's not listening. She also valued the volunteering. 

0:03:25 - David
We'll make a special. you know, we can cast where these podcasts go. 

0:03:30 - Shara
We can decide, That's right, we can narrow, cast it and avoid mom. 

0:03:34 - David
I'm sure she's proud of you. I knew what she was doing Now. I think you became a history major in college at Berkeley. Is that right? 

0:03:46 - Shara
I did. I thought I was going to grow up to become a photojournalist and that therefore I could major in anything and just go where the interest took me. And I think that the lesson for me is you should go where your interests take you And I learned a lot through that discipline but don't use the research I did on American history as much as I could have used other majors perhaps in my professional life. Maybe that's why I needed to go to Fordham and get the law degree. 

0:04:19 - David
That's probably right. But you know he's supposed to put a plug in for the liberal arts. It's supposed to help you learn how to think, and all that. And you know one of the things is that I actually met a photojournalist. 

The other day I was a guest speaker at a brunch that I went to and he said you know it's, it's not really possible to make a living as a photojournalist. There's not many that are on staff, they're all kind of freelance, and he was going back to school to get his PhD. He said also, most people associate photojournalism with a war correspondence, so he had struggled, i think, to make it, even though he was like he's on the Pulitzer judging committee and all this, but he couldn't actually make it as a photojournalist. So it's probably better that you you took a different road that led to law school. 

0:05:00 - Shara
I think that there were. there were many years in between Berkeley and law school, but, like him, and I guess earlier on, i realized that it wasn't that I was going to be a starving photojournalist, and I was graduating from from Berkeley, across the bay, from this little internet thing that was starting to happen Just was too strong a pull. And so, though I, like him, wanted to, wanted to make a living. 

0:05:32 - David
So I know that you know there's this temptation across the bay from from Berkeley, as the internet was starting up and you and you had some roles there, but it looks like maybe it didn't leave that side of the bay right away. I saw there was some kind of some kind of work with the Oakland A's and I assume it wasn't a field of dreams or whatever, where you I didn't. 

0:05:54 - Shara
Yeah, i am, i did, I had, i had two seasons. I still measure it in seasons, even if I wasn't on the field. I had two seasons with the Oakland A's. I started as an intern and and had a summer internship in the marketing and promotions department, which I loved, and therefore when the internship ended, i just kept showing up to work, yeah, in the hopes that they were going to give me a job. And it took a long time, but they did, and maybe maybe a good life lesson that I that I learned from the A's was, by the time maybe took six months before they actually gave me the paying job. And my first project was to design the brochure for the annual fan fest, the big festival that kicked off the season, and on the cover talks about how the the fan fest, all the proceeds benefited the ace community fund, which had a flagship program called read to succeed, to help kids meet their reading goals. And when it was printed for the 40,000 attendees for fan fest, we realized I had spelled. meet me at. 

Yeah not not a strong move for for teaching kids to read their meet their reading goals. So it taught me some attention to detail and anybody who's worked with me knows that I have a very anal retentive streak about details like that. I think, And I think I know why. I was also the mascot, which is also a fun fun. 

0:07:40 - David
I was going to ask you about that. It can be kind of hot, you know. Luckily the weather is like fairly mild in Oakland, but you could be like 130 degrees in that suit if you're not careful. 

0:07:49 - Shara
We? yeah, there were, there were some really hot days. 

0:07:52 - David
Yes, yeah, i was going to say maybe there I was going to say maybe has some like passive, aggressive, you know, attitude toward the vegetarian or vegan community when you, when you put that on there, but I sounds like you've gotten past that, so I thought you thought we were done with that when we, when we, stopped discussing your childhood. But you still have to get up off the couch now. After that I saw you were at and it was called. was it called Elmer? was it the say elm exchange? 

0:08:22 - Shara
We said we called it elm exchange. It was educated was. It was originally education in legal medicine, but that doesn't have as doesn't roll off the tongue as easily. So But in the, in the peak of malpractice crisis, we were educating physicians on legal responsibilities and and what, what they could be tuned into that would help mitigate risk in their practice. And that was my. That was my introduction to healthcare. It was my introduction to legal topics in any level of detail And and it was a great. It was a great learning experience. It was also a great learning for building a small business and and and getting getting customers and getting usage and getting getting a message out there. So I learned a lot. 

0:09:18 - David
So true confession, sharu, you and I were colleagues after that because I was the chairman of a company called APS, which we didn't call apps, and stood for advanced practice strategies, and you were and you worked there. So we didn't connect directly through the hiring process, but we got to know another little bit at APS and you weren't there that long but I had to include it because you know we were there together. 

0:09:41 - Shara
That's right. That's right. You never did these happy accidents in life. Yeah, you were. You were the first board that I had to interact with. I learned. I learned a fair amount from that process as well. No, that's all the good questions. You're always good for a hard question, david. So far, so far it's okay. 

0:10:02 - David
But when we have the video going on. I'm better on the easier questions, you know, and I want to come off as too much of a troublemaker, but no, there was some good, some good times there and we're. You know we're working on the whole of the malpractice issues and trying to actually get out in front of it and educate the practitioners so that they didn't end up in the courtroom at the end of the day. 

So so that has value to it. Now, emmy, they got all these weird names of companies. So, emmy, is that an act? Is that an acronym? 

0:10:31 - Shara
That also started as an acronym. That went away and we kept trying to educate people that it was not in all caps and you could, you could, you didn't need to do that, but that that was also originally expectation management and medical information. I think was the original nice the impetus, which also this is a good branding lesson for anybody listening about about what not to start with. 

0:11:02 - David
Now, emmy was so. So Emmy was pretty successful in that, you know, built it up and then ended up selling it to Walters Clure, which is not an acronym, it's just a weird European name. What's your names? And so what was that journey like? 

0:11:18 - Shara
That was a spectacular journey. We started with Emmy in 2010. We were a about a 40 person team at the time. It's what moved me to Chicago, where I still am 13 years later, intended to move here for two years to be with me, and focused on patient engagement and the notion that people are an underutilized resource in health care And if we can give them tools on their own terms, like when they're not in clinical settings that we could really bend the cost curve and drive real outcomes. And we were. we were really successful with that. I think we we really documented and demonstrated that impact that we could have And instead of two years, we all stayed until six years into my tenure much longer for the, for the entire business but in in 2016, we sold. 

we were at we were probably 170 employees at that point and joined Walters Clure and as part of their health division, which was then 1200 employees globally and best known for I think they're up to date product, which is really about clinical reference and decision making for clinicians, and got to see leading customer experience for for them, spent three years there and really got to see sort of global health care delivery. I had an amazing journey with them and and who couldn't have envisioned that in 2010, coming to work on this, you know, start up and with any, that that it can turn into such a rich journey, so it's a real highlight. 

0:13:18 - David
Carallel. As I mentioned at the outset, i like the name And I meant that I like the name in general, but not just that. I like it compared to all the lousy names of companies that you've met before. But now that we've gotten through them I realize maybe that's part of it, but I think I like it because it sounds like caring and parallel and it just sounds good. But what is the need for? why does the company exist And what's the need that they're serving? 

0:13:43 - Shara
Well, so, first of all, since you gave it a shout out, i just need to put a shout out to John Banta, one of our co-founders, who had a moment of inspiration and coming up with Carallel along with 200 other inspirations that were less successful, that he had, but Carallel was a stroke of genius. And then, in terms of the need being a family caregiver so we're entirely focused on the non-professional caregiver helping a loved one in need is that it's really hard playing that role or being in that position, and so when I think about the need, i think about it in multiple ways. I think about the macro level. There are a lot of family caregivers out there and we need them. So, just to put it in perspective, one in five US adults are caregivers today. And if we just focus on I've been long interested in how people can be better involved in their health and in the health care system. if we think about how our population is aging at a macro level, today, about 17% 18% of our population is over 65. And that's going to be north of 20% in just a little over 15 years. And today 80% of care in the home is provided by family caregivers. that $600 billion in annual value to the health care system. So we've got a growing aging population that needs care, needs more care, and we've got a significant provider shortage. So this is all to say we need family caregivers. We're already relying on them and that's only increasing. But one of the great things about what we do and the experience we have doing it is the very human level, the micro level of what the caregiving experience is. 

So I think about these individual stories every day. We have a caregiver named Cheryl, whose mom has dementia and is living independently. but really threw up some flags for Cheryl when she paid $7,000 to someone to rake the leaves from her lawn. And now Cheryl is in a position of what can she do, what should she do for her mom to maintain the dignity of her living where she wants to live and feel safe and connected and manage that with the concerns about her safety, her health, her well-being. That cascades into lots of questions for Cheryl. 

And I think about Jean, another caregiver that we recently interacted with, whose husband is disabled, who is very financially unstable and called into one of our team members about how could she afford, or could no longer afford, incontinence products for her husband And what that indicates, i should say, for their food stability, their medication access, their access to care all sorts of other flags go up. So, from my perspective, when I think about the need, i think that we, as humans, thrive on connection And we want to find the highest level of dignity in how we live and the lowest security setting, and I think that family caregivers are just such a fundamental key to us all. successfully doing that, and making sure that they're resilient and confident and feel able to take on those responsibilities is really important. So you gave me a soapbox and I just went right up on it. 

But that's how we think about it. 

0:18:18 - David
I'll have to be careful about what are the questions I ask here? 

0:18:21 - Shara
But that's a good answer. 

0:18:23 - David
So how did you find your way there? Obviously it's in Chicago, so that's one part of it, but was there. it's not an obvious connection with Walter's glue or more of an obvious connection with what you said you did in high school or junior high as a volunteer. So how did you manage to get over there? 

0:18:41 - Shara
So there was really two connector points. I think One is, you know, with Emmy, we really did have this focus on how do we empower people to be more connected with their care and do that strategically so that they could improve, help improve and play a role in managing cost and quality. And so, for all the soapbox reasons that I just said, you know, we realized in that endeavor with Emmy that oftentimes there was this hidden force in the family caregiver that we weren't focused on addressing Our customers were asking questions about but really also weren't focused on addressing. And so I was always, sort of from that experience, aware of the growing magnitude of the need And, as terrific as my experience was through Emmy into Walter's Clure, you know, at 1200 employees and global scale, i was ready to get back to really building something and getting into an earlier, earlier stage organization. And so the combination of that need and just the stage of my career and being connected to the founders at Carolell John Banta and Hillary E Bach it just the stars aligned and I joined in early 2021. 

0:20:25 - David
So caregivers are great, and I don't think anybody would say otherwise, but they also can be a little bit forgotten. You know they're not paid, It's a family member. It's not that well-noticed, And so my question is you know who cares about caregivers, and how does that from a business standpoint, how does that influence what you do as a company? 

0:20:43 - Shara
Yeah, so there are. There are really three major entities that I think are categories of organizations that care about caregivers that we interact with. Often, health plans providers, employers all dependent on caregivers were impacted by caregiving activities, and so that's really where we're focused. From a health plan, health insurance perspective, you know we spend a lot of time working with Medicare Advantage plans. We work with ASO and fully insured plans for commercial carriers starting to do some work around long-term care and supplemental benefits. Those are groups that are are really impacted by the caregiving endeavor And so, whether it's their members who are caregiving or their members who are dependent on caregivers, that that's a it's a really important area for us to focus on. We do see increasing care coming from provider organizations, particularly those that are at risk and and invested in value-based care because they are reliant on caregivers, in the same way that health plans are to support care plans and and to help manage member and patient needs outside of clinical settings. 

And for employers who are worried about the impacts of caregiving on their employees. There's a lot of discussion out there around the impact of caregiving for sandwich generation caregivers, or caring both for an aging parent and a child. You know that is the workforce, and there was recent data out that 73% of us are are employees, are caregiving in some way, and, and so that's a big concern for employers, both from a health impact for their employees, from a presenteeism perspective, and for recognizing that it's a concern for employees and as employers of choice, many organizations are really looking at how do we, how do we, better serve the needs of our employees. So those are the groups that we think about And, in particular, because we you know part of our business model we want to make sure that we're not creating additional burden for for caregivers, and so we really appreciate the partnership of those groups in making services like ours available. 

0:23:35 - David
Great. So it sounds like there is a reason and an interest and an acknowledgement of that by these different stakeholders that they want to participate. Now, what is the offering that you actually provide, and how much does it vary from one you know caregiver or one or one customer to the next? 

0:23:53 - Shara
Yeah, so what we provide is a human led, tech enabled service focused on making caregiving easier, and so we have a team of caregiving experts that are available on call, on demand, to counsel, to support, to guide and to assist caregivers through a myriad of challenges that they may be facing. 

And we coupled that with digital tools and a technology platform that we call my care desk, which is really the digital home for a circle of care, as we refer to it, to collaborate around the health and wellness of a loved one. And so, for our customers, for the healthcare organizations and the employers that we serve, we're really helping them deliver a caregiver strategy that is a member attraction and retention strategy, that's a clinical extension for them to partner with caregivers, to impact outcomes and really to help them, as a service, identify, connect with and better understand the caregivers that they're dependent on. For the caregivers themselves, it is a widely variable experience, just as every caregiving experience is widely variable. So whether people are in, you know, in sort of anticipatory stages, where they're thinking about the needs of their loved one in advance, or all the way through end of life and making really hard, grappling with really hard decisions and hard conversations and challenges, you know, financially and legally and otherwise, we see it all. 

0:25:44 - David
What have you done in order to fund the company's growth? 

0:25:50 - Shara
We've taken a pretty, i think, typical path in terms of initial seed funding from friends and family and friendlies, and we grew the business in the early years too through that seed funding and some debt financing, and then, in November, closed a series A round with Venture Capital. That's really helping us fuel a new phase of growth, and we're also lucky to have partnered with some really terrific customers with the caregiver action network, which, for whom we provide the national helpline for caregivers, with employers who are concerned about their employees, and with health plans who are really thinking about their members in innovative ways, and so, both through that revenue and through the investment partners that we have, we've been off to the races. 

0:27:00 - David
So if you look ahead, you know three or five years of racing. Where are you going to get to? 

0:27:07 - Shara
Well, there are a lot of things that I'm excited about. 

I think that one to have a conversation like this is, I think, indicative of a national conversation that's emerging about caregiving and fueling recognition of the need and focus and growth for an organization like ours. New technology is making it easier and easier for us to deliver the support that we do and the you know, even the human front and an empathy that we do at scale, which is really exciting. And as our team grows, it's allowing us to become more and more diverse and better reflect the diversity of the caregiving experience and the people that we serve. And so, in terms of what lies ahead, you know, I see all of those things expanding And I think where we fit in the care economy becomes even more and more exciting, because organizations are really thinking about how does this connect to my social driver strategy and determinants of health and how do I think about this from a health equity lens and connect to other services that I'm introducing to support our members, our patients and our employees. And so I think that connectivity is exciting for organizations like ours. 

0:28:46 - David
So I want to ask a last question, which is not to do with the business, unless you want to make it about that And that's about whether you've had a chance to read any good books lately, anything that you might recommend for our listeners. 

0:29:01 - Shara
Well, david, i have a toddler at home, so my books are very. I've read a lot of books lately, but they're very short, thankfully, and so I've got a whole host of, you know, the little blue truck that helps the big dump truck out of the muck and mire. That I think is a good one. The Gruffalo is a big favorite. I do have a stack though that's growing of things that I'm really excited about that. I just cracked the first chapter on the gift of caring, saving our parents and ourselves from the perils of modern healthcare, which maybe will balance out the Tabby McTatt that. 

I will also be reading. 

0:29:47 - David
I think that kids books are a little more optimistic. 

0:29:49 - Shara
So yeah, You learn it all and now it's great. 

0:29:56 - David
Great Well, thanks for sharing those Well. Shera Cohen, ceo of Carallel. I want to say thank you for joining me today on the Health Biz podcast. 

0:30:05 - Shara
Thanks so much. It was great to see you. 

0:30:08 - David
You've been listening to the Health Biz podcast with me, david Williams, president of Health Business Group. I conduct in-depth interviews with leaders in healthcare, business and policy. If you like what you hear, go ahead and subscribe on your favorite service. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe on your second and third favorite services as well. There's more good stuff to come and you won't want to miss an episode. If your organization is seeking strategy consulting services in healthcare, check out our website, healthbusinessgroupcom.