Al Etmanski & Vickie Cammack

Through their social purpose business – Tyze Personal Networks, Al Etmanski and Vickie Cammack are reducing the social and emotional costs of isolation and loneliness. Their online platform offers personalized support networks that contribute to better health, academic and employment outcomes, and more effective use of health and social services. Tyze creates personalized support networks that bridge the divide between formal and informal (natural) care providers.

Tyze networks strengthen communication and improve collaboration among families, friends, neighbors, professionals and specialists. The results are improved health and social outcomes, assistance for caregivers, coordinated community engagement and lower costs of care. Tyze’s focus is people with disabilities or chronic illnesses, seniors, family caregivers and others vulnerable to isolation and the health and social care organizations that support them. Tyze is a two year old, hybrid social purpose ‘B’ Corp business. Tyze has raised over $1M in philanthropic donations and $750k in private investment from capital investors, creating an impact for thousands in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. As a result of Al and Vickie’s strategic partnerships through their other organization, PLAN Institute for Caring Citizenship, they have capitalized on their global relationships to further disseminate the Tyze model and have helped establish a “Disability Fellows Network” within the Ashoka organization.

As North America and Europe’s increasingly aging populations retire and tax bases are diminished, maintaining reasonable health care budgets will be a top policy priority in the coming years. Therefore it is critical to find constructive economic responses to the burgeoning costs of health and social care. By expanding programs such as Tyze, formal and informal caregivers have a flexible and inexpensive forum to communicate and identify areas for collaboration, reducing the end costs to the public and private sectors.

Building on their past success, Al and Vickie are looking to expand Tyze both in its scope of beneficiaries and its geographic reach to spawn a new movement of collaborative and coordinated care among formal and informal providers. Their plan includes extending coverage to veterans, new immigrants, those undergoing treatment for critical illnesses, new parents, at-risk youth, parolees and other demographic groups vulnerable to isolation. Geographically, Tyze’s expansion will first be focused in English-speaking countries while the network platform develops multi-lingual capabilities. To scale their idea, Al and Vickie are also developing new policy initiatives to enable agencies, institutions and governments to offer Tyze free to their constituents. Al and Vickie envision a transformation of how care is currently delivered to vulnerable populations, creating a world in which everyone belongs.