A particular kind of care for a particular kind of need
Medicine was built to deal with the diagnosis. But along with every diagnosis are the lives it impacts, and those lives get no appointment. The impossible decisions. The marriage under strain. The question your kid asked in the car. How to face friends. What to say at work. The grief that starts before the loss and lasts longer than anyone imagined.
This is a club we all belong to, just by being human. But most of us don’t invoke our membership until a moment of crisis. Then, it’s the only one that matters.
We are a membership for the hardest stretch of a life. We are for anyone living with or alongside serious illness, grief, or dying. Inside is a community of people who carry the same credential. Conversations. Meet ups. A library of hard-won wisdom. Practitioners who know the terrain and don't flinch. And the oldest medicine: the music, poetry, and beauty that have carried people through since long before anyone could treat the body.
We build it all into the care, by design. We call it the exquisite craft of care, because the people who need it are owed nothing less.
Palliative Care Physician, Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur
Mettle Co-Founder & Chairman of Common Denominator, Mettle’s Parent CompanyBJ Miller, MD
I’ve been working as a palliative care physician for 20 years, and in that time I’ve had the privilege of sitting with thousands of patients and their families through some of the hardest moments of their lives. What I've learned — what they’ve taught me — is that what people really need when they’re facing serious illness isn’t what our healthcare system typically thinks to offer.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get these conversations into the open. My TED Talk, “What Really Matters at the End of Life,” has found its way to over 13 million people. In 2019, I co-wrote A Beginner’s Guide to the End, an attempt to give people the practical, honest guidance I wish everyone had access to.
All of it — the talks, the book, and now Mettle — comes down to the same thing: helping people live as fully as possible, right up until the end. Because dying isn’t separate from living. It’s part of it.
Co-Founder, Head of People & CultureSonya Dolan
I came to palliative care through loss. I became a caregiver, my mom died, and it changed everything. I left event management and moved into hospice administration. Hospice was instrumental in the experience of my mother’s death, and it felt like the place I needed to be. I worked alongside clinicians, patients, and families, learning how care actually happens, what works, what doesn’t. That’s where I met BJ, and that’s where I discovered palliative care.
Then I got diagnosed with breast cancer myself. Suddenly I was on the other side of the system I’d been working in, and you learn things you just can’t learn any other way. You see what healthcare gets right, and where it falls short.
I learn from the practitioners I work with, I learn from the people we serve, and I take that learning into all the work we do. I know that life-centered care is essential to the whole patient and caregiver experience. And I’m committed to building something that lives that out.
Our leadership team
CEODeb Bubb, MSW
What becomes possible when we treat people as whole human beings, especially in their hardest moments?
I’ve been thinking about this question for most of my life. Early losses — my father, my grandparents, multiple miscarriages on my path to motherhood — taught me the power of showing up for each other when it matters most. Receiving my MSW and years as a clinical social worker grounded that belief in practice.
I’ve spent 30 years at the intersection of people, purpose, and potential. At Intel, I built organizations grounded in the neuroscience of leadership. At IBM, I led a team that created an industry-leading AI-powered learning platform. When the pandemic arrived, I joined Optum to lead at the intersection of healthcare and human need.
After a lifetime of believing that how we show up in difficult moments shapes what’s possible, I’m bringing that same conviction to Mettle. We accompany people through serious illness, dying, and grief — not to fix or treat, but to witness and support the full journey. Whole life care, in all we do.
Head of PracticeBridget Sumser, LCSW
People I love dearly brought me to this work, and have kept me in it. I learned early what it means to sit with someone whose life is unfolding in ways they didn’t plan and didn’t want. What they taught me is that what matters most is the ability to stay, and to pay attention.
That capacity became a vocation. The people I care for are living with serious illness, or caring for someone who is, or learning to carry a loss that has changed the shape of their lives. Together we discover what needs tending to, what will help, and how to be with what is. Being with people in the face of dying has taught me more than any training. I believe how we accompany one another through grief is one of the most central questions of our time.
I hold an MSW from NYU’s Silver School of Social Work, completed the Zelda Foster Fellowship in Palliative and End of Life Care, and went on to an Interprofessional Palliative Care Fellowship at Beth Israel. I co-edited Oxford's “Palliative Care: A Guide for Health Social Workers” and hold faculty appointments at Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service and UCSF School of Medicine. I joined Mettle as a practitioner in 2021 and now lead our practitioner team — designing, as I like to say, for love to flow.
My husband and I have made San Francisco home for our kids and pup, surrounded by good people and perfect fog.
Head of Content & CommunityJessica Tillyer
So often, caregiving becomes us.
When I was just out of college, my mom experienced a traumatic accident deep in a Mexican jungle. I fell into the role of her primary caregiver — learning to show up as advocate and companion to a person I loved. Almost 20 years later, my daughter was diagnosed with a rare disease and we spent months in the PICU. Through muscle memory, I assumed the role again, making a beige hospital room our home and headquarters.
Through these experiences, I was buoyed by divine miracles and the quiet kindness of community. And, I was almost buried by how much families are left to piece together alone.
Caring for my mom fueled a desire to reimagine better systems for people at scale. I’ve spent my career doing that alongside founders, communities, and organizations who believe the way things are isn’t the way they have to be — from the US Women's National Team, to Eileen Fisher, to women's health platforms like Maven and Monarch.
At Mettle, my work sits at the intersection of community, creativity, and content. My hope is that we can find wonder, comfort, and connection. Together.
Head of GrowthCamille Borgo, MA, CPMSM
I have always been drawn to the places people look away from. When I discovered hospice early in my healthcare career, I leaned in — and spent the next 20 years making sure others knew it existed.
That drive came from something simple: equity. Too many people facing serious illness, dying, and grief move through it without knowing what support is available. Connecting people to resources and to one another turns out to be the work I was made for.
When my daughter was diagnosed with a serious illness, what I already knew professionally became personal. I understood firsthand what caregivers carry, and how much it matters to feel seen, understood, and connected to others. That experience didn’t just shape me. It helped me find my “mettle”.
People often remark that this work must be so sad. What I’ve learned is something different: people living with serious illness are among our greatest teachers, showing us how to live and reminding us what matters most.
As Head of Growth, I partner with employers, health systems, community organizations, and clinicians so that anyone who wants accompaniment through serious illness, dying, and grief knows where to find it. I’ve lived what that kind of support makes possible.
People and CultureAndreas Soerensen
The question of how to live is, inevitably, a question of death.
I have always been curious about what makes up a good life. That question has led me through psychology, philosophy, and thinkers who have tried to make sense of what it means to live well. That question deepened and broadened, when my grandpa was diagnosed with cancer. It now includes what it means to live and die well.
At the time, I was not old enough to fully understand death. My mom told me that when he died, he would become a star in the sky, lighting it up and waving down to me. A part of me is still looking up for his sparkle, trying to understand what it means to live a life that matters while we are here.
That question followed me into elite soccer, which became my first classroom for understanding life. It came with an education in people, teams, leadership and the conditions that allow individuals and groups to flourish. It continued with industrial/organizational psychology, following my north star of creating meaning inside organizations, places where we spend so much of our precious lives and where we can either come alive or lose touch with what matters.
That is what brings me to Mettle. I feel alive helping build the people and team foundations that allow everyone at Mettle to flourish, so our work can reduce needless suffering and promote love.
I hold a master’s degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from NYU and live in New York City.
OperationsKaren Chandler Cain
I live with some form of grief every day, from missing my dog, to aching for friends with serious illness, to launching my two teenage boys.
That’s what brought me to Mettle — a place where all of it is welcome. The hard feelings, the quiet ones, the ones that don't have names. Mettle holds that space for the people we accompany, for our community, and for ourselves.
My path to Mettle winds through decades of work where the stakes were always human. I've led operations and nonprofit management in the public health sector, overseeing complex contracts and building the infrastructure that lets mission-driven organizations actually do their work. As the HIV epidemic was ravaging the globe, I joined IAVI's clinical team to manage budgets and contracts, and I stayed for 22 years. Living and working internationally taught me that community is built from the inside out, and those experiences shaped how I think about systems and who they're meant to serve.
What I've come to is this: we are all carrying something — the whole of our lives - comprised of pain, joy and ordinariness. At Mettle, I get to help build and steward the operations that make exquisite care possible — for every person who comes to us. Oh, and I have known co-founder BJ Miller since before we were born (I’m younger :-).
I have a Master's degree in Intercultural Relations from Lesley University. I live just over the Golden Gate Bridge with my husband, two sons and two dogs.
You don’t have to carry this alone
Get personalized, 1-on-1 care designed around exactly what you need right now.