My first passion was for technology; I started coding when I was 7 and built my first website in 5th grade. Next, I became interested in philosophy in high school, which led me to get involved in animal rights and Effective Altruism. In college, I decided to pursue tech entrepreneurship, winning 3rd place ($2,000) in the Brown Entrepreneurship Program Business Plan Competition.
After graduating magna cum laude from Brown in 2010 with a degree in International Relations, I became General Manager of Happy Cloud, a cloud gaming startup, where I oversaw software development and business development for three years. Happy Cloud raised $7M in venture capital funding to make on-demand gaming possible for customers such as Warner Bros. I recently graduated from Harvard Business School, where I started the Harvard University Effective Altruism Student Group, a University-wide student organization promoting the idea of doing the most good for the world given limited resources. I am currently leading its new initiative, the Philanthropy Advisory Fellowship, which recruits Harvard graduate students to advise philanthropists and foundations worldwide on how they can maximize the impact of millions of charitable dollars.
In addition to programming languages, I also enjoy learning human languages, and speak Japanese, Spanish, Hebrew, and Thai. I also happen to be the 3rd-best Thai karaoke singer in Boston.
Family
My family has a strong connection to mental health work, starting with my grandparents Henry and Adele Oppenheim. I co-founded my startup, DynamiCare Health, with my father, Dr. David Gastfriend, an expert in addiction psychiatry. My mother, Jody Gastfriend, is a trained social worker and VP at Care.com. My aunt Lisa Berzins is a clinical psychologist who focuses on mindfulness and self-compassion. And my sister, the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter beccs, sings about struggling with inner demons in her hit song, Therapy.