Bridget O’Connor Garsh ’00: On the Cutting Edge of the Care Economy

Garsh describes her company FamTech.org as “an industry association focused on helping founders, investors, policymakers, and partners connect and drive forward solutions within the care economy.” The “care economy,” she goes on to say, “sounds like a fancy term, but it’s basically supporting caregivers across a life spectrum, from cradle to grave.” The organization, which comprises some 300 founder members, supports a sector “that can often be overlooked from a traditional investment perspective.” A startup founder herself, she transitioned to her current role in January. 

Many famtech founders—including Garsh—launched their businesses to address an unmet need in their own lives. “I had never thought about child care before I was pregnant,” explains Garsh, whose children are now 6 and 4. 

She was one of the lucky ones: Her husband (David Garsh ’99) worked for a company that offered on-site day care. But when the “incredible teachers” there left, Garsh wondered if there might be a better way—one in which teachers felt empowered to open their own small child care businesses, making the whole model more economically sustainable. To that end, Garsh soon co-founded NeighborSchools, supporting a mission of “better child care for everybody.” 

Garsh’s path to famtech was neither linear nor predictable. After graduating from Rivers, she went on to Wellesley College, where she studied psychology and economics. “Everyone had always told me I should be a lawyer,” says Garsh. But a short stint working at a law firm put a decisive end to that ambition. Like many false starts, however, it brought her actual preferences into focus: She knew she wanted to do work that was more compelling and more people-focused. She held several roles in business, working in product marketing and customer success, before taking on a senior advancement position at Wellesley College. While working at Wellesley, she developed the concept for NeighborSchools, launching it in 2019. It was acquired by Higher Ground Education in 2022. 

Garsh says her journey was enabled, at least in part, by her Rivers experiences. The school’s emphasis on balance and risk-taking, she says, made her comfortable in a wide variety of roles. Also key was the relationships she built with faculty members. “I knew that they cared about me deeply and saw potential in me before I could see it in myself,” she says. “That level of encouragement gave me the confidence that I could do something if I set my mind to it.”

Garsh’s current role gives her a rare perspective on caregiving—not simply as a human need but as an economic engine as well. She can’t guess where her professional journey will take her next, but she’s learned this much: “I love building something, whether it’s a team or a product or a company. I love creating something out of nothing.”