Rachel Thompson (BSc ’15, Health Studies) had no intention of starting a business. But, like many a reluctant entrepreneur before her, she found a problem that simply had to be solved.
Rachel’s grandmother, Marilyn, had given up reading after living with dementia for seven years. But it turned out she could still read — she just couldn’t handle the visual clutter and complexity of normal adult books. So Rachel set out to find simplified reading materials her grandmother would enjoy.
When she came up empty-handed, Rachel suspected other families might be looking for the same thing. A bit outside her comfort zone, she pitched the idea to GreenHouse, the social-impact incubator run through St. Paul’s University College. To her shock, she won the Big Ideas Challenge, which provided both a residency at the GreenHouse and access to generous startup funding.
Two years later, Marlena Books sold more than 200 books to long-term care facilities after its soft launch in fall 2016.
Next, Rachel took her company into the Velocity Garage, hoping to serve what she could see was a large and growing consumer market. In spring 2017 she landed a coveted $25,000 Velocity grant, which she is using to create a Marlena Books application for smartphones and tablets. The app will include audio support, automatic page turning, graduated reading levels and other tools to bring reading back to an even wider audience.
“It’s important to change our mindset about people living with Alzheimer’s, dementia and other cognitive challenges," says Rachel. "Many of them can still do the things they love if we give them the tools they need.”
