When the labor market stopped recognizing what Keisha McCotry had spent more than two decades building, she faced a choice: wait for another company to choose her, or choose herself; she chose herself.
After losing her position during a labor market downturn that disproportionately affected Black women, McCotry turned to a problem she knew personally. Her own experience navigating ADHD, emotional overwhelm, and rejection sensitivity had exposed a gap in the wellness technology available to adults living with the emotional side of ADHD.
The result is Zelmwell, an emotional regulation wellness app now available in the App Store. McCotry brings more than 20 years of experience in marketing, communications, brand strategy, and product marketing, with work spanning organizations including Google, Netflix, Disney, PepsiCo, McKinsey, and American Express; but she had never built a software company, so she learned.
Beginning development in March, McCotry taught herself the product development process, used AI as a development partner, collaborated with technical experts, and guided Zelmwell from concept to launch. The process included 18 versions, months of troubleshooting, a rebuilt onboarding experience, and six rejected App Store submissions before the app was finally approved.
The irony was difficult to miss. A product created in part to address rejection sensitivity had to survive rejection after rejection before reaching the people who needed it. Zelmwell approaches ADHD differently from many productivity-focused apps. Rather than centering timers, routines, and task management, it focuses on emotional awareness and regulation. Users can document difficult moments, identify potential triggers, reflect on thought patterns, access calming soundscapes, and track personal patterns over time. Guided reflection exercises and session summaries can also help users organize what they are experiencing before conversations with a therapist or other mental health professional.
For McCotry, building Zelmwell became more than a career pivot. It became an application of everything she had spent her career learning about building products and brands, this time to solve a problem she had lived herself. “Losing my job forced me to confront a question I think a lot of Black women have been asking lately: What happens when the market stops recognizing everything you’ve built?” McCotry says. “I decided I wasn’t going to wait for another company to choose me. I chose myself, and I built the product I wished had existed when I needed it most.”
Zelmwell is now available as a free download in the App Store, with premium access available after a seven-day free trial. The story is ultimately bigger than the launch of an app. McCotry took professional expertise, lived experience, and repeated rejection and turned them into something that did not exist before. She did not wait for the next opportunity to arrive, she built one.
We think. We be. We build.
