Meet the NOCD Team
From the day NOCD was founded, every member of our team has been committed to one mission: to restore hope for people with OCD through better awareness and treatment. Many of us have faced our own challenges with OCD, and we draw on our own experiences—and the experiences of our friends and loved ones—to serve the OCD community every day.
Perspectives from Co-founder & CEO Stephen Smith
I was in the middle of college, playing quarterback for my university's football team, when OCD turned my life completely upside-down. I reached out desperately for help, only to be misdiagnosed and mistreated by professionals who didn't understand OCD. When I finally learned about exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, I learned that I'd have to wait for months to see the one OCD specialist in my area, and I couldn't afford to pay for sessions.
But I was fortunate. My mom found a way to help us pay, and I finally got the help I needed. Otherwise, I don't think I'd be here today. It was only a few months before I started seeing improvement. As I continued to get better using the skills I learned in ERP, I learned I wasn't the only one with this experience—in fact, millions of people across the country and around the world understood what I was going through.
That's why we started NOCD. Since 2015, we've always had one mission: to restore hope for people with OCD through better awareness and treatment. The OCD community needed an option for evidence-based treatment that they could afford and access, no matter where they live—an option that also provided necessary support between sessions. And the entire healthcare industry needed to understand how OCD actually works.
Over the past decade, we've built the world's largest community of people with OCD—nearly a million strong—we've transformed the way evidence-based ERP therapy is delivered, and we've partnered with major insurance providers so about one in two Americans can access life-changing OCD treatment. Every step of the way, we've been guided by members of the OCD community, like myself and so many others on the NOCD team.
“Since NOCD began, we've always had one mission: to restore hope for people with OCD through better awareness and treatment.”
Stephen SmithCo-founder and CEO of NOCD
The story of NOCD
The challenges I faced trying to access ERP therapy taught me that the OCD community needed change. This life-threatening condition was highly treatable, but it was nearly impossible for most people to access the care they needed.
One day in 2014, on a road trip to Dallas, I started sketching out an idea in a notepad, and NOCD began taking shape. I spent the next couple years working tirelessly to bring my vision to life. I taught English in China to pay the bills, then moved back to the US to complete my degree at Pomona College in California—all while designing and testing prototypes, and sending demo videos to OCD experts for feedback.
First came the NOCD app, where people with OCD could time their therapy exercises, log the intensity of their symptoms, and track their progress over time, among other tools. Then came the idea for the NOCD Community, where people could share their experiences and have open conversations with other people who understood what OCD was like.
I knew the NOCD Community could make a major impact for people who felt alone in their experiences, just like I did. But it was an ambitious project—I couldn't take it on alone. I brought on two of NOCD's co-founders: Anil, who is still our Chief Technology Officer today, and Ilyas, who remains our Chief Growth Officer. Shortly after we created the first version of the community, we were joined by NOCD's final co-founder Larry Trusky, who continues to serve as our President.
About a decade later, every single member of the NOCD team has played an essential role in making NOCD the world's leading provider of OCD treatment.
We're not just helping the OCD community —
we're part of it
Every part of NOCD has been shaped shaped by the real experiences of people with OCD. Many people at NOCD have OCD themselves, live with related conditions, or care deeply for family members and other loved ones with OCD.
Dr. Patrick McGrath
Chief Clinical Officer
Working at NOCD has given me a broader reach and platform, so my work can benefit a larger community of people with OCD. Before, there was always the issue of getting people into therapy. If you lived in a big city, you had a much better chance of seeing a therapist than if you lived in a small town, because there weren't specialists there. I didn't think that was fair. And, because we take insurance at NOCD, we can see more people. That leads to less mental health impact on our communities. I'm proud of the work that I've done, and the training that I've provided. At this point in my career, I have helped to train over 1500 therapists to treat OCD using ERP. That means more therapists out there who will recognize OCD and help people conquer it. It's better for our world when we have fewer people who are suffering.
Erin Henkel
Chief Design Officer
I wanted to be somewhere where I was helping to own and build something that was aligned with my personal mission-which is to make the world a better place through creativity and design. I've been in healthcare and design for most of my career, and I'm also sort of the apex customer of healthcare in America myself, as a mom of two kids. The patient experience is so bad in so many places. When you're already struggling, this adds insult to injury. I want people to feel like NOCD is this safe, calm, warm, welcoming place that is completely nonjudgmental and accepting. We try to bring this feeling into every part of the NOCD experience we design.
John Jurich
Sales and Chief Revenue Officer
The beauty of working at NOCD is that when we can get a member in, they can see a light at the end of the tunnel pretty quickly. Those are the benefits that warm my heart today. The amount of progress we've made in a short amount of time is unprecedented. We have about 137 million commercial lives under coverage in just a little under four years. OCD is the most misdiagnosed condition out there, but the stigma is coming down.
Anil Vaitla
Chief Technology Officer
I came to NOCD because of the impact I believed it could have on people's lives. I wanted to use my skills to build out key components of the business, like member education, session experience, and billing. The most valuable moments of my work are hearing the member reviews and feedback. Getting on member calls and just hearing directly how their lives have changed after NOCD therapy services feels great. It's also been cool to learn from a team with lived experience, and see firsthand how prevalent OCD is, and how different it often is from what we may think.
