About LumenUs
Forged from darkness.
Built with purpose.
LumenUs is a grief care platform for the long arc after loss, founded by those who have lived it, and are living it still.
The founding story
On the evening of my first wedding anniversary, I lost my husband, Jaryd, in a car accident.
I was in shock, devastated, and completely lost. As I was discharged from the hospital, a kind chaplain handed me a stack of papers. Things to read. A long list of things I had to do.
“Prepare yourself for what is coming. You are going to have to make a lot of decisions in the coming days, weeks, and months.”
Searching for a cremation center. Organizing a funeral. Moving out of our home. Closing bank accounts. When I called Social Security, I learned that Jaryd had not contributed long enough for me to qualify for anything, because he had died too young.
I went back to work while still carrying bruises across both my body and my mind. After months of waiting, despite good health insurance, I finally walked into a therapist's room, only to find an intern with no background in grief whatsoever.
That is when I knew I had to build my own path of survival, and find my way back to myself. I had to educate myself about what I was experiencing, and often those around me too. Breaking the taboos. Building a new norm. Establishing what a healthy way to grieve could even look like.
Sara Tashakorinia
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Our mission
To bring light to life's hardest moments, and ensure no one walks through them alone.
What we believe
We lead with empathy, not efficiency.
Every screen, every word, every interaction is designed for someone in one of the hardest hours of their life.
We carry what we can.
The paperwork, the logistics, the administrative mountain. That weight should not fall on someone who is already carrying everything they can hold.
We are clinically informed, never clinically performed.
Our support is informed by modern grief science. Clinical care is routed to licensed clinicians, and we hold the line between support and treatment with discipline.
We build for the person, not the persona.
No two losses are the same. Our product meets the one person in front of us, and adapts to real people in real situations.
We protect what is sacred.
People trust us with their most sensitive documents and their most vulnerable moments. That trust is the foundation of everything we build.
Founding Team
LumenUs is built by people who understand that this work is sacred, and who hold that responsibility with care.
Sara Tashakorinia
Chief Executive Officer
Master of System Design from IIT. Formerly of Lucid Motors and Lookout. Founding team of two acquired startups, Logitech and Ooma.
Sajad Mirzaei
Chief Technology Officer
PhD in Computer Science from UConn. Formerly of Box and Google.
Larry Keeley
Chief Innovation Officer
Co-founded Doblin, the pioneering innovation strategy firm acquired by Deloitte. Author of Ten Types of Innovation.
There is more to build.
If this is the work you believe in, we would be glad to hear from you.
Get in touch