After rising from a fall, an alumna now helps others realize wellness

Mariana Charakopoulou Travlou was on a glide path. Passionate about mental health care, she earned her bachelor’s degree at Northeastern University (neuroscience and psychology), then attended King’s College London for a master’s in child and adolescent mental health. Next up: a PhD, and then opening her own professional psychology practice. Each next step was so clear.

“I was a little bit like a horse, when they have blinders on,” Charakopoulou Travlou says now.

She rode out the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic at home in Athens, Greece, where she worked in a hospital, providing ad hoc mental health care. In 2022, she moved back to the U.S.—to San Francisco this time—to consider a doctoral program at Stanford University. Almost immediately upon touching down, she sought out the kind of sprawling California ranches where she could partake in another passion: horseback riding.

At the stable, Charakopoulou Travlou was paired with a mare. “She was really lovely, but a bit frisky, too,” she says. No matter, Charakopoulou Travlou had been riding since she was a child.

They were out for a horseback hike one afternoon when the mare, spooked by a movement in the trees, reared up, bucking off Charakopoulou Travlou—and changing the course of her life.

“She got really scared and just threw me. I had no time to react,” she says. “Everything was just white, and I was in a lot of pain. For a few minutes, I thought I couldn’t move my legs, which was scary.”

Charakopoulou Travlou was rushed to the hospital. She had a concussion, broke her lower back, fractured several ribs, and her liver hemorrhaged. “I had had all these plans, this path I thought I was supposed to take, and life just said, ‘No girl, that’s not happening,’” Charakopoulou Travlou says now.

Though her injuries were severe, Charakopoulou Travlou’s recovery was smooth, if isolating. She spent about a week in a hospital half a world away from her home in Athens, and Charakopoulou Travlou found that her convalescence could be lonely—and tough on her own mental health. The COVID restrictions still in place also meant that she also couldn’t have any visitors, so even the few people she knew nearby might as well have been on another planet.

“I just remember thinking, I wish I could just chat with someone right now,” she says. “That would’ve helped so much.” Instead, Charakopoulou Travlou got herself through the ordeal by simply telling herself, over and over, that she’d be OK.

What she needed at that time, Charakopoulou Travlou understands now, were mental health services that could be accessed from anywhere, any time. A service that fit around her recovery schedule—and followed her as she moved from place to place.

This idea started to take shape in the back of Charakopoulou Travlou’s mind. She had the mental health care training already, and she’d always wanted to create something that would help people. What if she combined the two?

Thus was born Nous Health, a digital platform that enables patients to connect with mental health professionals, reducing barriers to mental health support through AI enhanced treatment.

People who sign up for Nous Health first complete an 18-point questionnaire, Charakopoulou Travlou says. Based on their answers, the user will get matched with a real-life therapist that suits their particular needs—maybe it’s help managing anxiety or depression, processing trauma or postpartum depression. Then, the platform prompts the user to pick from a variety of times within the next week to meet the therapist (by video) for a free 30-minute assessment. The users can then easily book again with the same therapist, and a chat feature embedded in the platform gives them a quick and easy way to check in between sessions if needed. The professionals associated with Nous Health specialize in cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, which has been shown to work best in online settings, Charakopoulou Travlou says.

The venture, and Charakopoulou Travlou’s tenacity as an entrepreneur, earned accolades from the judges of this year’s Northeastern University Women Who Empower Innovator Awards. The annual awards honor entrepreneurs for their innovative, boundary-pushing work. This year’s recipients—students and alumni from the Northeastern community—were selected by a panel of judges and will receive a total of $500,000 in funding. Charakopoulou Travlou was honored among undergraduate alumnae award winners, and took third place in the speciality award category, “AI Powering Innovation and Impact.”

“Mariana anchors herself in generational humility and has activated her inherently creative and compassionate mind to support so many in need,” says Carolyn Jasinski, assistant vice president of leadership relations in the Office of University Advancement at Northeastern. Jasinski, a mentor of Charakopoulou Travlou, is also a liaison for two groups at the university among which Charakopoulou Travlou is involved: Young Global Leaders and global communities.

Part of her mission with Nous Health, Charakopoulou Travlou says, is to bring essential mental health care into the light in Greece, where outdated stigmas still rule the day.

“Greece is a very small country, and people are still wary of going to a therapist or psychologist—it’s very questionable,” she says. “In Greece, there’s still a lot of stigma.”

To that end, Charakopoulou Travlou was instrumental in launching the first Intergenerational Leaders Exchange in Athens, Greece, last year, Jasinski says, adding that she’s “been a tireless advocate for promoting mental health via shared experience in pressure-less settings that create an intimate sharing space. It is in that spirit of community and vulnerability that I am confident Mariana and Nous Health will have great impact across decades of lives.”

Charakopoulou Travlou took inspiration for Nous Health from a mental health platform popular in the United Kingdom called Ginger. As evidence of the power of such companies, consider this: Ginger recently partnered with another popular mindfulness app, Headspace, to create a $3 billion company that reaches more than 100 million people.

“If I can help even just one percent of people realize that our mental health is actually the most important part of ourselves, then I’m happy,” Charakopoulou Travlou says. “As someone who studied it, I knew that mental health is really important. And then I had that accident, and I realized that if your mental health is not well, and if you’re not taking care of yourself mentally, then your body will also not take care of you.”