Carrie Shaw (Embodied Labs) on the Denial, Anger, and Fear of Growing Old

The Guest

Carrie Shaw is the CEO and co-founder of Embodied Labs, a company changing the way professional and family caregivers view — and care for — older adults through the use of immersive experiences.

After graduating from UNC Chapel Hill with a B.S. in Public Health, Carrie spent 2 years working as a Health Education Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic where she fell in love with the way visual communication tools have the unique potential to cross cultural, language, and education barriers. Following that time, Carrie worked as her mother's primary caregiver, who's diagnosis of Early Onset Alzheimer's disease opened Carrie's eyes to the needs of caregivers and the aging services workforce. 

Carrie holds a Master's of Science in Biomedical Visualization and her work has been featured by a number of publications, including Oprah Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as television shows on The History Channel, and CBS.

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The Conversation

In this conversation, Carrie describes the way her mother’s disease impacted her mother’s life and the way Carrie dealt with and grew from the experience of being a primary caregiver.

We talk about the company she’s created in the aftermath of her experience, including the entrepreneurial journey she’s been on as she’s gone from company inception to product-market fit.

We talk about some of the challenges of dealing with an aging population, and Carrie describes the fundamental goal of the immersive learning experiences her team is creating: a bridge to accelerate people through the stages of denial, anger, or fear of getting old – for our benefit and those we care about.

We kick off the interview with a story about Carrie’s early efforts to cure cancer.

Jason McDowallVR, consumer, education, enterprise