By: LEILA ROCHA
After leaving the royal family, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex is now taking on a new job as the first Chief Impact Officer at BetterUp. BetterUp was founded by its CEO, Alexi Robichaux, in 2013 is a thriving mental health start-up. According to the company’s website, “The BetterUp experience brings together world-class coaching, AI technology, and behavioral science experts to deliver change at scale — improving individual resilience, adaptability, and effectiveness.”
People began speculating that the company hired Prince Harry for the publicity. Robichaux stated in an interview with CNN that the reasoning behind Prince Harry’s hiring was actually because of “who he is as a person.” He then went on to clarify what actually motivated him to hire the prince: “Long before we had the opportunity to meet him, I had always had a daydream that maybe we would be fortunate enough to work with someone like him, who’s been one of the leading forces in the world for mental health.”
Prince Harry told The Wall Street Journal that he wants “to help create impact in people’s lives.” Prince Harry has been advocating for mental health for a long time. In one of BetterUp’s blogs welcoming Prince Harry to the company, Robichaux told how Prince Harry “has dedicated his life’s work to bringing attention to the diverse needs of people everywhere and advocating for mental health initiatives: from founding the Invictus Games, a platform for service personnel to use sport as part of their psychological and physical rehabilitation, to launching Sentebale, which supports the mental health and wellbeing of young people affected by HIV in Lesotho and Botswana.”
In the same blog Prince Harry was able to share that his goal “is to lift up critical dialogues around mental health, build supportive and compassionate communities, and foster an environment for honest and vulnerable conversations” while his hope “is to help people develop their inner strength, resilience, and confidence.” Although Prince Harry is stepping down from being a royal, he isn’t done working. He is doing his best to make positive contributions to the world by focusing on mental health.
beniciapaw.com 