lighthouse

Crisis doesn't wait.
Neither do we.

Built for families facing the storm by families who have already weathered it.

A navigator for families facing a child's mental health crisis

Balise guides parents through the hardest hours of a child's mental health crisis — from immediate stabilization through provider matching, care team coordination, and long-term support. Clinically grounded. Human supervised. No technology making decisions alone.

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Our Story

Built for families facing the storm by families who have already weathered it.

Balise was not born in a boardroom. It's a map drawn the hard way, by parents who lived through a child's mental health crisis and refuse to let the next family navigate one alone.

Hayley Higgins

Co-founder, CEO & Story-keeper

Hayley lived this problem, named it clearly, and assembled the team building the solution. Her role is to keep the work grounded in purpose and pointed toward the same north star.

As Founder and President of Allovus Design, Inc., a Pacific Northwest UX design agency she built and led for 18 years with no outside investment, Hayley has grown the business to $5M in annual revenue and a team of 27, several of whom have been with her since day one. She has a track record of building strong teams, earning client and community trust, and delivering results, including a decade of service on community boards and a scholarship partnership with her own high school that has given back over $250,000.

For years, Hayley navigated a fragmented mental health system for her daughter Sami, building a trauma-informed care team without a clear path and at great personal and financial cost. Her realization was simple: the resources existed, but the guide did not. Balise is that guide.

"The resources existed. The providers existed. What didn’t exist was a guide."

Eighteen years building teams. Now building the guide her family needed.

James Tee

Co-founder, Product Design & AI Leader

James is the father of two daughters who have experienced debilitating and, in one case, life-threatening mental health crises. It took his family years of disconnected systems, adversarial insurance, and fractured provider networks to build the circle of care his girls needed.

He has spent three decades designing brands, experiences, and technology that has to work on the worst day, not just the best one — leading design direction for Windows 10, the Azure Cognitive Services team, and end-to-end UX for Azure AI Foundry. Today he's a human-centered design leader within Liberty Mutual's enterprise AI transformation.

His conviction: AI must never quietly take the wheel from the person accountable for the outcome. In a crisis, the parent stays the one deciding. Balise navigates. It does not diagnose, and it does not decide.

"I have spent my career making complicated things easy to comprehend, attain, and use."

Thirty years in. Still champions the human. Now more than ever.

The Problem

No product exists today to guide a parent through the first 24 hours of a child's mental health crisis — one of the most consequential and underserved moments in all of healthcare.

There is a moment in the emergency room when everything changes. You brought your child in because there were no options left. And somewhere between the intake forms and the psych evaluation, the last layer of denial falls away.

"Nobody prepares you for what comes next. Not the ER staff. Not the discharge paperwork. Not the list of phone numbers they hand you on the way out the door."

— Hayley Higgins, Balise Founder

Finding help is a scavenger hunt through noise. The resources exist. The providers exist. What does not exist is a guide. Our journey should not be the price of admission to getting help.

1 in 6
adolescents experienced a major depressive episode in the past year
SAMHSA National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2024
56%
of caregivers report that accessing mental health care is difficult or impossible
NSCH, 2020–2022
44%
of children discharged from a mental health emergency visit received no outpatient follow-up within 30 days
American Academy of Pediatrics, 2023
1 in 4
children returned to the emergency department or were hospitalized again within six months of a mental health discharge
American Academy of Pediatrics, 2023

How Balise Works

From crisis to care, in a fraction of the time it took us.

No account, no clinical background, no insurance expertise required. Clinicians guide every step, and every interaction is grounded in clinical best practices. Technology never makes decisions alone.

1

Stabilize

Describe what is happening in your own words. Balise surfaces the most important next steps immediately — crisis lines, mobile crisis teams, local ER options, and immediate safety resources based on your location and situation.

No forms. No jargon. Just help.
2

Match

Guided questions connect your family to providers who specialize in exactly what your child is facing — matched by age, clinical need, insurance, geography, and availability. Every match is grounded in verified, curated data reviewed by our clinical team.

The right help for this child, not just any provider.
3

Build

A psychiatrist. A trauma counselor. A somatic practitioner. A school liaison. An insurance advocate. Balise helps you build and coordinate a real care team — so you are never the only connective tissue holding everything together.

The team your child needs. Not just one provider.
4

Adapt

The interface reads how you are holding up and adjusts in real time — from guided questions when you can think, to simple yes-or-no taps when you cannot. Designed for the moments when cognitive load is highest.

Built for the worst moments, not the best ones.

The Product

What it looks like when you open it at 2am.

Zero friction. No signup. Help in seconds.

The first screen asks one thing: how are you holding up right now? From there, Balise adapts — guided questions when you can think, simple yes-or-no taps when you cannot.

Everything shared will be private and HIPAA-compliant. Your name, your child's name, your situation — it will live only in that session. When you close the window, it is gone.

Entry and Privacy: Start immediately. No account required. Full session privacy from the first tap.

Guided Questions: Capacity-aware intake that reads where you are and meets you there.

Prototype screens shown. Product in active development.

Mobile phone views of the entry and privacy screen and example of a guided questions screen

What Makes Balise Different

Every other resource helps with one moment. Balise stays for the whole journey.

Crisis lines get you through the worst night. Directories give you names to call. Wellness apps track how your child is feeling. All of them matter, but none of them walk a family through what comes next: the decisions, the paperwork, the search for ongoing care, the long months of recovery. Balise does.

Caregiver-first design

Most mental health platforms are built for the patient or the clinician. Balise is built for the parent, the person doing the navigating, in the hardest moment of their life.

Crisis to recovery, not just crisis

From the acute moment through provider matching, care team coordination, and ongoing support. A full navigation arc. Balise does not hand you off and disappear.

Best practices

Clinician-guided at every step and every interaction is grounded in clinical best practices. No technology making decisions alone.

Equity at the core

Medicaid, sliding scale, and uninsured access filters are first-class features, not footnotes. Balise is built for every family, not just the ones who already know how to navigate.

What Balise is not

Balise does not diagnose, treat, or replace professional care. It does not operate a crisis hotline or provide real-time therapy. It is a navigation tool, the guide that helps families find and coordinate the right human care, faster.

The Team

A powerhouse assembled before a dollar of funding existed.

Every person on this team has been touched by mental health crisis — personally, professionally, or both. They did not join for the opportunity. They joined because they know what this problem costs families, and they are done waiting for someone else to fix it.

Hayley Higgins

Co-founder, CEO & Story Keeper

18 years building Allovus Design Inc. Expert at assembling high-performing teams around hard problems. Lived this journey.

The story-keeper.

James Tee

Co-founder, Product Design & AI Leader

Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, Windows 10, Cortana, Copilot Studio. Expert in how AI impacts design and the human experience.

Father of two daughters who navigated this.

Jenn Mason

Co-Founder, Technical Lead

Software design agency leader building community-focused, equity-centered products. Has already built Balise's intake AI agent.

The builder who believed first.

Mary Cadera

Clinical Lead, MA, LMHCA

25 years of experience including Paul Allen's organization. Bridges tech product fluency with mental health clinical practice.

Clinical credibility meets product instinct.

Jackie Smith

Care Team Lead, MSW, LICSW

Experienced clinician and consultant. Brings deep mental health system knowledge to triage protocols and clinical governance.

The clinical anchor.

Chris Teitzel

Business Advisor, Founder & CEO Cellar Door

16+ years building HIPAA-compliant enterprise platforms. Cellar Door. National data privacy advisor. Seasoned founder.

Builds things that hold sensitive data safely.

Jenn Hergert

Creative Director, UX & Design

24 years in design, storytelling, and strategy. Brings an empathetic approach to ensure every Balise experience sees the human behind the crisis.

Design that sees the whole human.

Scott Schopman

Product Manager, Technology Ecosystems

15+ years in product management, QA, and mobile development. Has already built Prototype #1.

Turns complexity into something shippable.

Liz Ashley & Shelby Butcher

Research & Project Management

Research rigor, workflow intelligence, and the operational muscle that keeps everything moving forward.

The team behind the team.

Get Involved

Help us build the guide we needed.

Balise is seeking $100,000 to build and validate our MVP, from intake through provider matching, care team coordination, and the educational layer families need to navigate what comes next.

We are starting with our community: the people who know this problem personally, who have watched families struggle, or who simply believe that a child in crisis deserves better than a piece of paper and a parking lot.

  • A volunteer team of 10 has already built the foundation
  • Rue, our intake AI agent and prototype, is already working
  • Clinical, design, engineering, and legal disciplines are all represented
  • All donations go toward getting our next phase off the ground

Balise will always be free for families. Service providers such as mental health nonprofits, crisis centers, insurance providers, and clinicians are the primary source of revenue, not families. Donations also help fund the service and keep it free for the people who need it. Exactly how this comes together is still taking shape.

We are starting with parents and children. The navigation problem we are solving is not unique to mental health. Families face the same fragmented systems and the same lack of a guide in chronic illness, aging care, and beyond. This is a starting point, not a ceiling.

"If you have ever been that parent, in that parking lot, in that waiting room, at that kitchen table at 2am, this is for you."

Join the founding circle.

Friends, family, and community supporters.

Your contribution funds the MVP that will help the next family in crisis find the right care faster than we did. Every amount matters. Every person who believes in this makes it more real.

Donate now