Company leader
Lisa McLaughlin
Co-founder
Workit Health
Lisa McLaughlin is a co-founder of Workit Health, an online addiction treatment program she started in 2015 with Robin McIntosh, and its former chief executive. She trained in social work and information science and has led research on digital tools for recovery from substance use disorder.
Studies at the University of Michigan
She earned master's degrees in information science and social work at the University of Michigan. She spent seven years in academic work across psychiatry, information science and social work, and she served on executive teams at digital health and learning startups. She was lucky, in her words, to train "as both a technologist and a clinician".
Recovery and a Shared Mission
She met Robin McIntosh in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the two became close friends and later worked together at startups. Both found long-term recovery, but they lost friends and loved ones to rehab waitlists and rigid treatment programs. In 2014 they quit their jobs to build Workit.
Building Workit Health
Workit launched in 2015 and began offering telehealth addiction treatment in 2017, with clinicians who prescribe medication by video and counselors who lead online recovery groups. She and McIntosh shared the chief executive title, and in 2019 the Schwab Foundation chose both as Social Entrepreneurs of the Year. Workit later raised a $118 million Series C and became a Certified B Corporation.
Research and Harm Reduction
As co-principal investigator on Workit projects with the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, she developed digital interventions and algorithms to measure and predict recovery. She ties the work to harm reduction, which lets members set their own goals for treatment. Her favorite saying comes from that movement: "Nothing about us without us".