About Tech-enhanced Life
Together with a community of older adults called the Longevity Explorers, we are exploring the future of aging, and the intersection of aging and technology.
Our mission is to improve the quality of life of older adults and their families
What We Do
- We create insights for older adults (published on this website) — with an emphasis on pushing off the day at which getting older gets in the way of living life to the full.
- We provide advisory services for companies — who want to develop products and services that older adults actually want, need, and will pay a premium for.
- We enable, and lead the Longevity Explorers: a unique sharing, evaluation, and ideation community— made up of older adults (in their 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s), and their friends, families, and caregivers.
About The Company
Tech-enhanced Life, PBC is a Public Benefit Corporation, incorporated in Delaware, USA. This relatively new class of corporation combines the features of a mission-driven, non-profit organization with the focus and innovative spirit that comes from being a for-profit business. As a PBC we are allowed to have a dual purpose: making our shareholders happy, while also focusing on our mission.
The specific public benefit purpose of the corporation is to improve the quality of life of older adults and their families. This formal mission is codified in our Certificate of Incorporation.
We believe in the power of market-driven capitalism as a force for change, which is why we are a PBC rather than a conventional non-profit organization. While our business model is still a work in progress, we expect to share the economic benefits of this adventure with the members of our collaborative community — and especially with the Longevity Explorers.
We are based in Silicon Valley, but aspire to create a global community that can make a real impact on the quality of life of aging people around the world.
The Underlying Idea
We believe that there is huge potential for development of clever new products and services that will greatly improve the quality of life of all of us as we age.
Unfortunately, all too often the people who understand the problems, and the people who could solve those problems, inhabit different worlds.
We want to bring these groups together and work collaboratively to identify and / or help create new solutions to the challenge of living longer, with higher functionality — at costs that are affordable to individuals and to nations.
Collaborators & Contributors
The Tech-enhanced Life website is how our community of Longevity Explorers share what we learn with older adults around the world. It is also a platform where experts, evaluators, makers — and others interesting in improving the quality of life as we age — share their learnings.
We publish learnings from our community of Longevity Explorers, as well as insights from domain experts, and original research by our internal analyst team and other collaborators. We especially like to publish explorations by citizen evaluators of product categories, and "hacks" by makers trying to improve their own quality of life, or that of their parents.
View Collaborators & Contributors.
Founder circle
Richard Caro
Dr. Richard G. Caro has 30+ years of experience at the intersection of technology and business — as startup CEO (Vital Insite); startup CTO (Summit Technology); scientist / inventor; angel investor; and strategic advisor (TangibleFuture) to emerging growth companies in fields such as agetech; medical devices; telecom; digital health; and photonics.
Richard has been responsible for development of a number of successful products; has for many years been an "occasional" Silicon Valley angel investor; and has 24 issued patents. He received a D.Phil. in Physics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
John Milford
John has deep expertise in the aging services industry, and thirty-four years of management experience and service organization development skills.
He opened and served as Executive Director of the San Francisco Towers (CCRC) for over fifteen years after a career in hospital and health care administration.
John remains active as the principal of Heritage Consulting for Retirement Living, supports non-profit work for seniors as Board Chair at the San Francisco Senior Center and Board Secretary at San Francisco Village, and has served as Chair of the Grownups Forum at the Commonwealth Club of California for over thirteen years.
Walt Maclay
Walt Maclay is President of Voler Systems, which provides the integrated design, development and risk assessment of new devices for medical, industrial, semiconductor, and instrumentation applications.
Voler is active in the problems of the aged, home health, and wearable devices, using its skills in sensors, wireless, motion control, and medical devices.
Mr. Maclay is recognized as a domain expert in Silicon Valley technical consulting associations. He is an instructor for the Product Realization NPI Program; and is a past President of the Professional and Technical Consultants Association (PATCA). Walt holds a BSEE degree in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University.