Compassion at Scale: How Mental Health Innovations Is Reimagining Crisis Support with Victoria Hornby, CEO

Jul 23, 2025

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In this episode of Builders Wanted, we’re joined by Victoria Hornby, CEO of Mental Health Innovations. Victoria explores the intersection of empathy and technology in mental health support, the importance of accessibility, and the impact of leveraging digital platforms to build trust at scale. Learn more about the challenges and successes of adapting technology to create human connections and the continuous effort to innovate and reach marginalized communities.

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Key Takeaways:

Technology can bridge gaps and make mental health support more accessible and effective.
The importance of flexibility to pivot quickly in response to external factors while maintaining the quality of services.
A data-driven approach helps tailor training for volunteers and adapt their methods to better meet the needs of specific user groups.

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“ We are using technology to connect a person who is struggling with another person who has decided and trained to help someone exactly in that moment. There's a technical connection, and then that facilitates a human connection. And that means that we are able to provide that service and that connection at scale and 24 hours a day.” – Victoria Hornby

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Episode Timestamps:

‍*(05:44) - What it means to “build trust” in the context of mental health

‍*(09:50) - How Mental Health Innovations uses technology to expand access

‍*(16:17) - How data helps MHI improve its services

‍*(24:57) - The tradeoff between speed and stability

‍*(34:36) - A change or experiment that made a big difference at MHI

‍*(37:20) - A shift in mental health or nonprofit tech Victoria is watching closely

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Links:

Connect with Victoria on LinkedIn

Connect with Kailey on LinkedIn

Learn more about Caspian Studios

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Sponsor

Builders Wanted is brought to you by Twilio – the Customer Engagement Platform that helps builders turn real-time data into meaningful customer experiences. More than 320,000 businesses trust Twilio to transform signals into connections—and connections into revenue. Ready to build what’s next? Learn more at twilio.com.