In this exclusive CanadianSME Small Business Magazine interview, Negin Chelehmalzadeh, Founder & CEO of Pathpal Inc., shares how lived experience, brand strategy expertise, and a commitment to culturally attuned care inspired a platform that transforms how people and workplaces navigate grief and major life transitions. Starting with a deeply personal gap she faced for years, Negin explains how Pathpal delivers proactive, evergreen support blending community, on‑demand tools, and workplace education to ensure no one has to hide their grief to do their job, and every organization can respond with empathy, clarity, and impact.
Negin Chelehmalzadeh is the Founder & CEO of Pathpal Inc., bringing an extensive background in marketing and advertising where she led strategy for some of the world’s most recognizable household brands. Having worked both client-side and agency-side, she built a reputation for sharp strategic thinking, brand clarity, and an ability to translate complex human insights into meaningful action. Today, Negin leads Pathpal with a mission to transform how people navigate grief, how workplaces understand human impact, and how communities are better — together.
What inspired you to found Pathpal, and when did you first notice the gap in grief and loss support in workplaces?
I founded Pathpal out of something deeply personal — and because I realized my experience wasn’t unique. I lived with prolonged grief disorder for years, yet at work, I masked it with what I now call my “Robin-Hood effect”: doing everything I could to make others feel safe, supported, and seen — even when I had no idea how to support myself. Sometimes it was the “wrong” thing to do at work, but it was my way of filling a deep void inside me.
Launching Pathpal wasn’t just about creating another mental health platform. Traditional systems, like Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), are often reactive, short-term, solo experiences that require the employee to trigger them. Data shows most people don’t feel safe asking for help in these systems. I wanted something different — ever-green, proactive, and discreet. A tool that provides ongoing support, breaks the feeling of isolation, and gives people a safe space offered to them, for them, even before a crisis occurs.
Pathpal is our response — a way to ensure that no one has to hide their grief to do their job, and that employers are equipped with proactive tools, education, and resources to genuinely support their teams. Because what people bring into work is real, and what happens outside work doesn’t stop at the office door.
How does grief typically manifest in the workplace, and why do existing resources often fall short in supporting employees?
Grief in the workplace rarely looks like what people expect. Most employees don’t openly talk about what they’re going through; instead, it shows up in subtle behavioral and performance shifts. Common signs include difficulty concentrating, emotional volatility or numbness, withdrawal from colleagues, increased mistakes, or the opposite—over-functioning and people-pleasing as a way to cope. Many employees enter the workplace already carrying grief from earlier losses or major life transitions such as divorce, health changes, a partner’s job loss, financial strain, or moving. Because these experiences aren’t always disclosed, they’re often misinterpreted as performance issues rather than signs of someone quietly struggling.
Existing workplace resources fall short because they weren’t designed with the human experience of grief in mind. Bereavement policies typically offer only a few days off, addressing logistics, not emotional recovery. Support tends to be reactive rather than proactive, and managers rarely receive training on how to respond with confidence and empathy. Employee Assistance Programs remain underused due to stigma, lack of awareness, and limited continuity of care. Ultimately, most workplace systems assume grief is short-term and predictable, when in reality it is long, nonlinear, and profoundly personal—leaving employees without the support they genuinely need.
What makes Pathpal’s approach to grief support different from traditional mental health solutions currently available?
What makes Pathpal different is that it isn’t a traditional mental health tool—it’s an evergreen wellbeing platform designed specifically for the realities of grief and major life transitions. Most mental health solutions focus on acute crisis, diagnosis, or short-term counseling, which doesn’t match the way grief shows up at work: quietly, unpredictably, and often long before or long after a formal “event.”
Pathpal takes a fundamentally different approach. Instead of assuming employees will self-identify or reach out for help, it embeds proactive, ongoing grief literacy into the organization. It guides managers, teams, and HR leaders in real time with language, actions, and support strategies tailored to the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral impacts of loss.
As an evergreen platform, Pathpal supports the full continuum of human experience—including bereavement, divorce, health changes, caregiving, financial strain, fertility challenges, partner job loss, and other life transitions that shape how people show up at work. This means support doesn’t begin and end with a leave policy; it adapts as employees’ needs evolve.
Pathpal integrates relational insights, behavior patterns, and workplace dynamics, creating a sustainable, organization-wide approach that traditional EAPs and short-term mental health programs simply weren’t built for. It closes the gap between what workplaces offer—and what people actually need to feel seen, supported, and able to thrive.
Can you share a personal or professional experience that shaped your vision and leadership style at Pathpal?
A pivotal experience that shaped my vision and leadership at Pathpal was recognizing that my own grief and past trauma never actually left me—they simply found quieter ways to exist inside my work. For years, I believed I had “moved on,” but grief has a way of resurfacing in the seams of your professional life. It showed up in how I performed: the over-functioning, the people-pleasing, the urgency to make everyone around me feel okay. And as I got older, it began influencing how I made decisions—sometimes thoughtfully, sometimes impulsively, and not always in ways that served me.
There were moments when those patterns helped me succeed, but there were also moments when they held me back. That realization was humbling. It forced me to confront how unspoken emotional histories shape our leadership, our choices, and our sense of self at work.
This awareness now defines how I lead Pathpal. I understand deeply that employees don’t walk into work unaffected by their pasts; they bring their whole lives with them. My leadership is grounded in honesty, compassion, and the belief that organizations must support the unseen parts of people—not just the roles they fill. It’s why Pathpal exists: to ensure no one has to navigate that complexity alone.
What recent milestones, such as your Apple App Store launch or Pathpal Grief Summit, best represent the impact Pathpal is having on individuals and workplaces?
Recent milestones showcase the profound impact Pathpal is having on both individuals and workplaces. In less than a year since its App Store launch, the Pathpal app has built a thriving community of over 14,000 users, offering discreet, proactive support for those navigating grief and loss. Alongside this, we are preparing to launch our latest B2B platform in 2026, designed specifically for employers. Early engagement with large organizations has been remarkable—leaders increasingly recognize not only the deeply personal toll grief takes on employees, but also the economic cost of unacknowledged loss, including turnover, presenteeism, and diminished productivity. Pathpal equips organizations with sustainable, proactive tools that fill the gaps traditional HR policies and EAPs leave behind.
In addition, the Pathpal Grief Summit, scheduled for April 23, 2026, will convene pioneers in health tech, mental health, and wellness, along with inspiring founders and Jess Sims, Peloton instructor and GMA contributor, for a fireside chat exploring grief as a human experience. The Summit brings critical conversations into the spotlight, highlighting what workplaces and society can do to mitigate the impact of grief.
Together, these milestones demonstrate that Pathpal is more than a platform—it’s a movement transforming how workplaces understand, respond to, and support grief.
