What Caregiving Asks of Us with Shauna Sweeney

What Caregiving Asks of Us with Shauna Sweeney, Founder & CEO of tendercare

Have you loved someone so deeply that you were willing to reshape your entire life for them, even when you have no idea how? One day you’re someone’s daughter, and the next you are their memory keeper, their organizer, their protector, their advocate, sometimes all at once. This episode lives in that tender space where love stretches us wider than we ever planned, and asks us to grow into roles we never trained for, all while holding on to the relationship that matters most.

Our guest today, Shauna Sweeney,  founder and CEO of tendercare, knows this shift intimately. After her father, Mike, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2014, Shauna found herself managing nearly every part of his life from 3,500 miles away while working as a tech executive at Meta. With no roadmap, she experienced firsthand how fragmented, overwhelming, and emotionally isolating caregiving can be for families. That season shaped her deeply, not only as a daughter, but as a leader who began asking bigger questions about why families are so often left to build their own systems of care in silence.

In our conversation, Shauna reflects on the emotional collision of identities that caregiving brings daughter, advocate, organizer, protector, and what she learned from her dad about dignity, autonomy, and the desire to still be known. We talk about inequity in caregiving, why families must be treated as the true power source of care, and how tendercare is challenging a system that too often centers institutions over people.

We also explore how families can move from crisis-mode to coordinated care, what it looks like for teams (including voices like Chris Punsalan) to truly walk with families, and what gives Shauna hope about how we care for one another.

This is a tender, honest, and hopeful conversation about love, responsibility, and how we might redesign care so no family has to navigate care alone. Thank you, Shauna!

Listen to our episode HERE.

Get your free tenderID HERE: https://trytendercare.com/tenderid/

Get Info on trusted network: https://trytendercare.com/trusted-network/

Watch Sweeney's Rock Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3xe_SH2_n4

Thank you to our Sponsor

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About Shauna Sweeney

Shauna Sweeney is the founder and CEO of tendercare, an AI-powered platform that helps families care smarter for aging loved ones. After her father's early-onset Alzheimer's diagnosis in 2014, Shauna experienced firsthand the challenges of managing his care from 3,500 miles away while working as a tech executive at Meta. This inspired her to create tendercare, which provides personalized care plans, a trusted services marketplace, emergency preparedness, and intelligent recommendations to answer crucial care questions like "What should I do?" and "Who can I trust for help?" Before launching tendercare, Shauna was an executive at Meta, leading a 3,000-member employee resource group focused on supporting aging parents. She has served on the board of directors of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce and the Asia Society Business Council.

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We are not medical professionals and are not providing any medical advice. If you have any medical questions, we recommend that you talk with a medical professional of your choice. willGather has taken care in selecting its speakers but the opinions of our speakers are theirs alone. Thank you for your continued interest in our podcasts.

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Nicole Will is our host and founder of willGather.