Care Lab Collective is much more than a platform.
It’s how two moms with decades of experience supporting communities decided to resist the daily isolation, ableism, and overwhelm that harm us and build a new reality for ourselves & families like ours.
About the Founders
Before Jessica Mingus and Rachel Henes became business partners, they were trusted mom friends helping each other—and for the last several years, hundreds of parents in their local community—navigate the wide-ranging challenges of raising neurodivergent and disabled children amidst constant messages that the way their kids look, sound, play and learn are deficiencies to be fixed.
Care Lab Collective is built on the foundation of the 450+ member peer support group for local caregivers of neurodivergent and disabled kids that Jessica and Rachel have led and moderated for years.
With decades of combined experience as social workers, program designers, and facilitators, Jessica and Rachel have spent years co-building and fortifying communities of care that address parents and kids’ complex realities and needs.
The work they’ve done throughout their careers has reached thousands of people across New York City and beyond.
Care Lab is where their personal and professional worlds meet—with conviction, compassion, and radical imagination.
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Co-Founder
Jessica is a mom, community advocate, seasoned organization-builder and social worker. Her work is all about building and sustaining systems of collective care, with a focus on reaching people inside big systems. She has twenty years of experience capacity-building, staffing, and sustaining mission-driven organizations committed to social justice, higher education, and inner/collective wellbeing.
Jessica founded the SOMA Peer Support and Action Network for IEP Families (PSAN) in 2021—the prototype and guiding inspiration for Care Lab Collective—to fill the critical gaps in her parenting journey in her local community. She moderates PSAN with Rachel and an amazing crew of fiercely loving mamas.
For 7 years, Jessica led and advocated for the programmatic work of Lineage Project, a beloved NYC non-profit that provided trauma-informed mindfulness programs to thousands of young people inside systems, and the adult staff and caregivers who support them.
Jessica is a longtime Buddhist practitioner and yogi, and a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher through the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care + Society at UMass Medical School.
She is the recipient of the prestigious Garrison Institute Fellowship for socially-engaged contemplative leaders committed to building a more compassionate, interconnected and healed society. With their support, she has developed a contemplative framework for caregivers facing complex challenges.
She earned a B.A. from Princeton University, and an MSW with honors from the Silberman School of Social Work.Jessica is co-author of “Unpacking racism, poverty and trauma’s impact on the school-to-prison pipeline” in Strategies for Deconstructing Racism in the Health and Human Services (Oxford University Press, 2016) with child trauma expert Dr. Robert Abramovitz.
Jessica is grateful for the infinite joy and inspiration of her precious son, family, and caregiving village. When she isn’t pouring herself into Care Lab Collective, she’s writing her first book, Healing-Centered Parenting: A Collective Call to Action….or at step class.
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Co-Founder
Rachel is a social worker, mindful parenting coach, and seasoned facilitator with over two decades of experience consulting and capacity building with school communities. Rachel’s work centers on interrogating the ways that norms and beliefs about achievement, power, and hierarchy trickle down into the everyday decisions, beliefs and mindsets of parents and educators - and exploring ways of creating new possibilities in how we show up with young people and with each other.
After almost 20 years of developing programs and partnerships as part of nonprofit organizations, Rachel started her own consulting practice, Rachel Henes Consulting, where she leads individual & group coaching with parents, and leads professional development with educators in K-12 schools.
Rachel has been featured in Psychology Today and recognized as an expert in the best-selling book Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It. She is the co-author of ”Preventing Substance Use & Addiction” in New Directions in Treatment, Education, and Outreach for Mental Health and Addiction Journal (2018), as well as multiple curricula on gender, consent, and sexual violence prevention that have reached thousands of youth and adults nationally and internationally. For 8 years, Rachel served as the director of Hallways, a social-emotional health program that reached thousands of students, faculty and parents in New York City’s independent schools.
Rachel has pursued extensive anti-racist and gender-based violence prevention training from the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, the Center for Racial Justice in Education, and A CALL TO MEN. She has received training and/or certifications in Mindful Parenting, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, The Whole Brain Child Approach, Beyond Behaviors (with Dr. Mona Delahooke) & Collaborative & Proactive Solutions, Lives in the Balance Training.
Rachel co-moderates the SOMA Peer Support and Action Network for IEP Families (PSAN), started by co-founder Jessica Mingus, a community of hundreds of compassionate and fierce advocates and parents of neurodivergent and disabled kids, and the inspiration for Care Lab Collective.
Rachel holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MSW from Hunter College in New York City. Her most treasured and important work is as mom to her two young children, and to the practice of consciously co-creating what home, family and community looks like.
About the Team
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Social Media Marketing Strategist
Mika is a creative strategist, storyteller, and autism advocate. As Senior Creative Strategist at Fandom, she drives campaigns that connect brands with passionate fan communities. Her career includes roles at ABC Studios, Clear Channel, and ESPN, along with freelance work in comedy writing and digital content for Crypt TV and Blumhouse Productions.
Mika is a dedicated public speaker and autism advocate, inspired by her journey as a proud mother to an Autistic son. She serves as an Advisory Board Member for Together We Bloom, an organization dedicated to empowering neurodivergent families and individuals. She co-hosts The Bronx Couch, a gaming channel celebrating NYC culture, and These2Locas, a vibrant series where she highlights local businesses owned by underrepresented communities—engaging in conversations about pop culture, entertainment, and community impact.
Her insights have been featured on AMC’s Comic Book Men, TLC’s Cake Boss, and platforms like GLAAD, Refinery29, Cosmopolitan, Scary Mommy, and Elite Daily. Mika’s work seamlessly blends marketing, advocacy, and media, driven by her passion for storytelling, community-building, and authentic representation.
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Communications Lead
Sarah Díaz, LMSW is a psychotherapist and consultant who integrates psychodynamic, relational, and anti-oppressive approaches to support individuals and organizations. Sarah is deeply influenced by critical race theory, which centers the influence of oppressive ideologies and systems on ourselves and our experiences; and the work of third- and fourth-wave feminists, which emphasizes our connections to one another and finding opportunities for liberation within those systems. She is especially interested in helping those she supports build capacity for the smaller acts that can help them feel more aligned with their values and more engaged in their communities, moving toward the world they want while living in the world we have.
Sarah received her MSW from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and her BA in American Studies from Wesleyan University. She currently practices individual therapy as part of Critical Therapy Institute. Sarah has a decade of experience studying healthy and liberatory practices for youth development, with a focus on supporting parents and educators, and is the co-author of From the Inside Out: The Hallways Handbook for Raising Emotionally Healthy Adolescents.
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Evaluation Strategist
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User Experience Strategist
Cheryl Chen is a graduate student at NYU, specializing in Learning Technology and Experience Design. With hands-on experience in designing educational content, she focuses on creating engaging and effective learning solutions. Passionate about front-end design, Cheryl is dedicated to developing user-centered experiences that seamlessly blend technology and creativity.
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Media Strategist
Ron is an award-winning, highly resourceful video editor and producer with experience in all aspects of social media management, video production, including ideation, logistics and shooting. Knowledgeable about music, TV, film, comedy, meme and pop culture, Ron has the ability to creatively integrate these into engaging social media content. He's a wizard at working simultaneously on multiple projects while maintaining a positive attitude towards clients, internal team members and vendors.
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Operations & Design Lead
Casey is a Denver-based Business Systems & Project Management Consultant who is passionate about helping mission-driven teams get organized and bring their unique ideas to life. With a background in nonprofit operations, fundraising, and communications, she brings a people-first, systems-savvy approach to her work—always with an eye toward clarity, creativity, and impact.
Over the past several years, Casey worked closely with Jessica Mingus at Lineage Project to manage trauma-sensitive mindfulness programs that support young people and adult staff inside NYC’s criminal legal, foster care, education, shelter, immigration, psychiatric, and school suspension systems. She is skilled in leveraging project management tools, CRM systems, and data platforms to create more efficient and sustainable workflows for small teams.
As a 200-hour certified yoga teacher, Casey is passionate about community care and making wellness and mindfulness more accessible. She’s excited to be collaborating with Care Lab Collective for their beta launch, offering operational and design support to help lay the groundwork for a product that reflects Care Lab’s thoughtful, community-centered mission.
You can reach Casey at caseygerberpowell@gmail.com or connect on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseygerberpowell.
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User Experience Strategist
Jiayu Du is a passionate product designer with a unique blend of expertise in health science and education. She enjoys empowering individuals and helping others lead more fulfilling lives by utilizing design thinking and technology.
With a BS in Pharmacy, Jiayu is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Learning Technology and Experience Design at NYU, where she explores using product design and learning experience design to promote well-being from a different perspective. Beyond her academic and professional pursuits, Jiayu enjoys writing blogs on self-help and spiritual healing.
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User Experience Strategist
Eryca Chen, a graduate student in User Experience Design at NYU, is passionate about combining the power of storytelling with innovative design strategies. With a keen eye for branding and an intuitive understanding of user needs, Eryca strives to create meaningful, engaging experiences that connect people and ideas. Her diverse background in blogging, project leadership, and UX research reflects her commitment to shaping impactful narratives that resonate with audiences worldwide.