She Left GOOGLE X to Fix a Crisis 20 Million Teens Face | Obi Felten, Flourish Labs

She led moonshot projects at Google X. Then she walked away to take on one of America's hardest problems: a youth mental health crisis where roughly 20 million teens and young adults need care — and only half get it.

In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw talks with Obi Felten, founder and CEO of Flourish Labs, about a different model for closing that gap: training young adults with lived experience to become accredited, professional peer supporters — and scaling it with telehealth and AI through Peers.net.

In this conversation:

- Why Obi left Google X moonshots for mental health

- The care gap: ~20M young people in need, only half reached

- Peer support as a way to expand the mental health workforce — not just add clinicians

- Winning Medicaid contracts to reach underserved youth

- Peer support in high-risk moments, like post-ER care for suicidal teens

- What it takes to scale a mission to a million supporters

About the guest — Obi Felten:

Founder and CEO of Flourish Labs, scaling professional peer support via Peers.net. Previously led technology moonshot projects at Google X and was Director of Consumer Marketing for Google across EMEA. BA in Philosophy and Psychology from Oxford; based in California.

→ obifelten.com · flourishlabs.com · peers.net