Richlove Nkansah ’26 was buzzing with excitement the week before spring break – she had just launched her business and was headed to California to pitch it to a group of Silicon Valley Cornell alumni and entrepreneurs.
Nkansah is the co-founder, with Harmony Prado ’24, of CultureCare, a digital platform for BIPOC (Black, indigenous, and people of color) therapists to manage their practice and connect to clients. They met during Nkansah’s first year, at the Engaged to Empower hackathon, where they worked to develop an idea focused on mental health related to children.
“We both come from backgrounds where mental health isn’t talked about a lot,” Nkansah said. “And we realized that when we did reach out for help, it was mostly from people who weren’t representative of us. There was a gap with understanding and receiving the help we needed.”
CultureCare was accepted into the this year, so they’ve been working on customer discovery, business planning and growth strategies under the guidance of eLab instructors and alumni mentors. They traveled to New York City for a pitch event in the fall, as well as organized the spring trip to California.