Carrie Shaw
Carrie Shaw is passionate about the art and science of human health.
She’s turned that passion into a company, Embodied Labs, that is dedicated to revolutionizing the way health care providers, caregivers, and patients learn about human health through virtual reality storytelling. Embodied Labs envisions a world where healthcare providers and caregivers can provide better quality care to patient populations by better understanding their first-person experiences.
Carrie is no stranger to delivering healthcare information in unique ways. Following her graduation from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.S. in Public Health, Carrie joined the Peace Corps as a Health Education volunteer in the Dominican Republic, where she taught reproductive health to youth and worked as a medical translator. It was through this life-changing experience that she discovered that art and storytelling can be used not only as an effective teaching tool for health education, but can cut through cultural and language barriers.
After serving in the Peace Corps, Carrie became a caregiver for her mother, who had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and wondered, “If I could somehow step into my mother’s shoes and learn about life with AD through her eyes, would that help me become a better and more empathetic caregiver?” That question, along with lasting lessons of her service in the Peace Corps, drove her to pursue her Masters of Science in Biomedical Visualization at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she met two of her fellow Embodied Labs co-founders. Since then, Carrie has been named to the “Chicago 50 on Fire” by Chicago Inno, and Embodied Labs’ work has been featured by UpWorthy, HuffPost, and the History Channel.
