Melissa Floren Filippone

Chief Executive Officer @Jake Collective

Park City, UT, US

The Jake Collective is a multi-pronged initiative that supports the health and wellbeing of a population of young people whose complex minds, while powering intellectual, artistic, and other talents, can also generate great risk.*We fund research via grantmaking through the Jake Foundation.*As impact investors, we address underinvestment in mental health startups.*We support legislative efforts to create policy change to serve and protect these young people and their families.The young people we aim to help tend broadly to think, learn, and process differently from their peers. These gaps, widening through adolescence, can leave young people isolated with certain traits that increase their risk of suicide, including negative urgency.Adding to the complexity, young people can experience these traits without the full complement of symptoms that generally give rise to a developmental disorder diagnosis. If and when there is a diagnosis, most often these individuals are identified as living with ADHD. Other children might be treated for anxiety. But the set of traits we are most concerned with collectively create a significant risk to the young person, and rarely is this risk identified—and never has it been effectively quantified. Even when well-resourced, complex young people often struggle to develop the resilience and impulse control to stay safe through adolescence and early adulthood. The tools we possess aren’t effective in this population.We are proud to work corollary to such efforts by focusing on this subset of the youth population whose risk factors are disproportionately high. Research into the developmental pathways of these young people is rapidly evolving but, given the risk to these children, hugely underfunded. In all of our efforts, we honor life, heart, and brilliance of Jake Schreiber.With almost three decades of experience in health care investment, research, and entrepreneurship, I lead the Jake Collective across all functions.

Middlebury College

Chinese School

Chartered Financial Analyst

CFA

Princeton University

Politics and East Asian Studes, Politicis and East Asian Studies