What Gave a Nurse the Audacity to Build a Tech Startup?

Psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and Silicon Valley clinician Nana Adabie joins Becky to talk about the paradox she lives inside every day: building a tech tool to help people recover from tech overload. Nana shares the patient moment that sparked the idea for Loretta, a grounding app named after the tree in her front yard, and walks through why traditional meditation apps fail people with ADHD, how dopamine-seeking and parasocial relationships online affect mental health, and what "grounding" actually means in the body. They talk candidly about audacity, immigrant identity, burnout, and Nana leads a live guided grounding exercise listeners can do right along with her.Topics Covered (with timestamps): • (02:17) Nana's background as a Silicon Valley psych nurse practitioner and the burnout epidemic she saw firsthand • (03:35) The patient moment that sparked Loretta: "I wish I had a Nana in my pocket" • (05:51) Why Loretta is built differently for neurodivergent users, short, narrative, not traditional meditation • (06:54) Nana's own relationship with technology, burnout, and the parasocial trap of online validation • (09:42) Is dopamine addiction real? How the ADHD brain seeks novelty and stimulation • (11:37) Living with "two identities" and how Nana rebuilt her own offline creativity through piano, painting, and nature • (15:21) What grounding actually means, in Nana's own words • (17:24) The story behind Loretta's name, the tree in front of Nana's house • (17:56) A live guided grounding exercise listeners can follow along with • (22:58) The audacity conversation: "there's so many mediocre men building so much dumb stuff, why not me?" • (27:54) How the Loretta app actually works, step by step • (33:36) Nana's closing advice: go sit in the sun, barefoot, for ten minutesResources Mentioned: • Loretta app: helloloretta.com • Nana's Substack: https://nanaefua.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips • "The Creative Act" by Rick Rubin: https://amzn.to/4xtruBN • "Liberate Your Business" by Becky Mollenkamp: beckymollenkamp.com/book🎤 JOIN US IN THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE: http://feministpodcastcollective.com/