How personal experience shaped our mission in brain health
Tom’s firsthand experience as a caregiver after traumatic brain injury
The call came on an ordinary morning. I had just gotten out of the shower and noticed several missed calls from a number I didn’t recognize. Something in my gut told me to answer when it rang again. It was a police officer from a town just outside where my mom lived. He told me there had been a serious accident. A gravel truck had hit her car during her morning commute. The damage was so extensive they had to airlift her to a trauma hospital closer to the city.
Tom with his mom and her father after her accident.
At the hospital, I was taken to the ICU waiting room. The hours that followed were surreal. Eventually, a doctor came out to update me. My mom had sustained multiple broken ribs, a possible stress-induced heart attack, and traumatic brain injuries. She was alive, but barely. They had placed her in a medically induced coma. The outlook was unclear, and the next few weeks would be critical.
In the days that followed, I stayed at the hospital. I sat beside her, held her hand, played her favorite music, and brought in family photos. I talked to her, even though she couldn’t respond. Some nights I slept in the chair beside her bed, afraid to leave in case something changed. About a week in, a nurse quietly pulled me aside and told me I needed to rest. She said I’d need my energy for what was coming. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what she meant. But I would.
As her sedation was gradually reduced, she began to show small signs of activity such as eye movement, faint sounds, and minimal physical responses. One day, she squeezed my hand. Another day, she moved her finger. Slowly, she started to emerge. But when her eyes opened, there was no recognition. She didn’t know who I was. I was a familiar presence, but not her son.
Eventually, she was transferred to a rehabilitation facility where she began intensive therapy. I visited daily. I helped her relearn basic life skills. I showed her how to fold laundry, use a phone, navigate a sidewalk, and prepare a simple meal. I helped her shop for groceries. And eventually, I taught her how to drive again, starting in empty parking lots and then on quiet streets. It was the milestone I feared most, but one of the most important steps toward restoring her independence.
At the time, I was 31. I had just gotten engaged. My fiancée and I had moved into a new home. And suddenly, I was also the legal guardian of my 52-year-old mother. She didn’t have a spouse, and our extended family lived far away. I was her only child. I had to sit down with my fiancée and explain what this meant. My mother would be moving in with us, we would be caring for her full-time, and we didn’t know how much she would recover.
Over the next ten months, caregiving became my second full-time job. I was responsible for coordinating appointments, managing her medications, driving her to therapy throughout the week, and tracking every aspect of her progress. The woman who had raised me was independent, sharp, and full of life. But she had changed. She was more fragile now. Anxious. Often confused. The traumatic brain injury altered how she related to the world and to others.
She eventually regained enough functional independence to live on her own with occasional support, but she was never the same. Her social life dwindled. She struggled to connect with others. Her behavior could be unpredictable. I remained a steady presence in her life, even as I returned to work and started a family.
In 2017, my mom passed away from heart failure. But I’ve always believed the brain injury and the isolation it brought played just as significant a role. The emotional toll, the loneliness, and the disconnection wore her down. That experience left a permanent mark on me.
Before the accident, I had worked in tech for over a decade. My focus had been on building products, shipping features, and meeting deadlines. After the accident, that changed. I started looking for work that aligned with the things I now cared about deeply: caregiving, accessibility, empathy, and health.
In 2014, I took time off to be with my newborn twins and care for my mom. When I was ready to return to work, Erin Young, co-founder of Slide UX, reached out. She was working with a company called SeniorAdvisor, which helped families find care and housing for aging loved ones. Many of those families were dealing with cognitive challenges like TBI, dementia, or Alzheimer’s. The mission felt personal. It was a way to take what I had lived through and make it useful for others.
From there, I went on to support products like CareGivers.com and A Place for Mom. These weren’t just jobs. I saw them as opportunities to build tools I wished I had when I was in crisis. Tools that could help someone else feel less alone and less lost.
That perspective stayed with me as I grew into leadership roles. In 2019, I joined Slide UX as a fractional product manager. I had the chance to apply my product experience across multiple industries, but the brain health lens never left me. Every project I touched, I saw through the eyes of someone who had once needed clarity, simplicity, and compassion in the middle of chaos.
In 2023, I became a partner at Slide UX. Around the same time, Erin shared that her father had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. She had also tested positive for the same genetic mutation. Not long after, her sister Megan, another partner at Slide UX, shared the same reality. Their father’s condition was inherited, and Megan had to confront the possibility that she and her children could be affected too.
Tom and his mother at wedding when he was a child. He has always been stylish!
It was clear we shared more than professional alignment. We had all been shaped by cognitive illness in our families. That shared experience is what led us to reposition Slide UX. We made a collective decision to focus our work on brain health. This is not simply a strategic business move. It is something we know from the inside out.
We now collaborate with brain health startups, medtech innovators, and research teams to design digital experiences that meet the unique needs of people navigating cognitive change. Our work is grounded in empathy, accessibility, and lived insight. We understand the complexity, the frustration, the grief, and the hope.
This work is personal. It always will be.
