Road to Innovation Expo 2025: Talkspace
National mental healthcare brand turns to Stevens School of Business students to assist in expanding client base
Mental health and well-being are major topics of conversation across the country. At the Stevens School of Business, a group of business and technology and accounting and analytics students are helping turn those discussions into action.
Talkspace, a leading virtual mental healthcare provider with a network of more than 5,000 licensed clinicians, including therapists and psychiatric providers, tasked the group to research how to best support the senior population. The team was well positioned to take on this role with two members with professional and academic experience in the healthcare space.
“I have a healthcare background,” said Ekagra Jain, a student from India. “All my internships have been in healthcare. We were specifically looking for a company in that industry, and Talkspace was the biggest company on the entire list of senior design projects. We felt like we needed to get this company because our experiences matched. We made our presentation, and the professor was impressed, so we got to work with Talkspace.”
Melanie O’Beirne began her Stevens career as a chemical biology major before switching to accounting and analytics. Her professional experience includes time as a medical scribe for Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center and a medical assistant at the New Jersey Vein and Vascular Center.
“My healthcare background drew me to the project,” she said. “I have experience working in the healthcare system both with elderly patients and insurance criteria, and Medicare was initially the focus of the project. Eventually, the project pivoted from researching Medicare to senior population research."
The Team
Matthew Bodziony | Queens, New York | Accounting & Analytics
Ekagra Jain | West New York, New Jersey| Business & Technology
Ray Murphy | Yonkers, New York | Accounting & Analytics
Melanie O’Beirne | Essex County, New Jersey | Accounting & Analytics
Meghan Slate | Woodstock, Connecticut | Business & Technology
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Ann Murphy, Professor of Strategic Management
Q&A with the Talkspace Team
How was the experience working with a national brand?
Matthew Bodziony: “Working with a big company like Talkspace has been a very exciting opportunity. You usually only hear about those companies, and I didn't think at the beginning of senior design that I would be able to work with a very large company like Talkspace. It’s been a fun experience and a very good learning experience that ultimately prepares us for the workplace.”
Meghan Slate: “I was nervous about working with a big company. When people think about big companies, they assume it's harder to reach the higher-ups and harder to communicate because there are so many different people you have to go through. However, with Talkspace, I've learned how to conduct business in a professional and personal manner. Even though they are a big company, they still make sure they communicate with everyone, and everyone is on the same page. They've been so kind to us. It's so amazing to have someone from the C-suite come in and join the meetings because usually, especially if you do an entry-level job, you're not going to be talking with them, but they fully engage with us.”
Ray Murphy: “It was really unique compared to a lot of the projects that were available. Getting to work with a company that has so many resources jumped out at us. They have more flexibility in what they can actually do with their product planning and development process. The resources available to them give us a lot more freedom when we're coming up with ideas or suggestions. Given their big customer footprint, it was challenging to consider the whole country when we're thinking about any problems they have.”
How did your academic work prepare you to work with a real-world business?
Melanie O’Beirne: “I learned a lot of important business skills in my accounting curriculum that prepared me to work with Talkspace. For this project, I needed to communicate clearly and professionally, understand how to make presentations that are visually compelling, and be able to illustrate the story data tells. I learned that you can do great research, but it's another thing to be able to present it in a way that's received effectively. These are all skills the business school taught me, and I felt very prepared to deliver what the client was asking for.”
Ekagra Jain: “There were quite a few things. For example, we learned how to make a proper report and presentation. We had so many presentations in different classes that really helped us to understand how we actually present something to clients. These small things matter. Another thing that was important was research. How do you research about some particular thing? In most of our classes, we had to do some sort of research and come up with reports about what was in the studies. This really helped us because we knew how to initiate research and find data related to any particular problem.
Meghan Slate: “I was really prepared because a lot of the Stevens curriculum centers on presentation and how to speak publicly and carry yourself in a professional way. I like that the professors challenge you. They're not afraid to ask questions that might throw you off because it ensures that you're prepared for when you do talk to a client. If they asked a question we weren’t expecting, we knew how to handle it. It has forced me to learn how to conduct myself in a way that is both professional and clear when I communicate.
How important is adding a real-world consulting experience to your resume while still a student?
Ray Murphy: “It's something that I would feel good about talking about in a job interview. More than anything, I can now say I've had a client before. There are a lot of things you have to think about when you work with a client. It's the communication with them. It's the scheduling. It's understanding what they want, things that anybody would learn on their first go around of having a client. Having a head start with that is definitely something that I would be happy to talk about.”
Ekagra Jain: “People do ask about it in interviews. What did you do with Talkspace? What is senior design? When I explain it to them, it feels like they’re really interested in it because not everyone has that on their resume. This is going to really help me.”
Matthew Bodziony: “Getting that real-world experience has definitely been very positive. In class, we’ve had various assignments, but this project lets me apply what I've learned, expand on my knowledge and really put it to use. It's been very exciting and fun.”
What were some of the challenges you had to overcome during your work with Talkspace?
Meghan Slate: “I think our biggest challenge was to Talkspace in the beginning because it's a national firm. We felt a lot of pressure to represent Stevens in the best way possible. There was a lot of, ‘Are we saying this correctly? Are we ensuring that the client is comfortable but also having enough time to speak and share their views?’ It's forced us to learn how to continue the conversation and lead it in a way that people know that you prepared for it, but also that they are able to add in things when they want to.”
Melanie O’Beirne: “Recently, we were working on a deliverable related to quantifying a population. We decided that the research online was great, but we wanted to go out and gather additional data ourselves. We started by interviewing senior experts and seniors themselves. From that, we were able to build personas. After we built the personas, the client wanted us to build a matrix of sorts, stratifying the persona types based on the issues that individuals face and their technology proficiency. They wanted us to figure out numerically how many seniors fall into each category. As I'm sure you can imagine, that was very difficult to do. After spending a lot of time experimenting with different methods, we were finally able to give the client good estimates.”
What are some of the lessons you’ll keep going back to during your professional journey?
Matthew Bodziony: “One thing I'm going to carry into my career is the idea of working as a team. In accounting, you're often working with an audit team, for example, and being able to communicate and solve problems together will be helpful. We have had to solve many different problems together, things like how we were going to implement certain data into our findings or our conclusion for a certain presentation. I'm going to use those skills in the future for sure.”
Ekagra Jain: “What I learned from the project was the actual experience of working with clients in real-time. This was something that you can’t do in a class. It was like an actual capstone program, which I always wanted to do. That real-life experience is something I learned at Talkspace.”