It Takes a Meerkat Village

It Takes a Meerkat Village

Dr. Crystal Morrison (‘95) helps create platform that brings together a child’s caregivers in central place

If you’ve ever seen videos of meerkats, you’re likely to remember them. The small mammals are mongooses that are about the size of a squirrel. What makes them memorable in nature videos is that they are always standing, staying alert to their surroundings. When there is danger, they communicate it quickly among their large community.

It was that sense of community that spurred Dr. Crystal Morrison (’95) and her business partner Dan Richason to co-found Meerkat Village, a software company focused on leveraging technology to promote social and emotional wellness for children and families.

A child with social, emotional, behavioral and medical needs often will visit with various doctors, mental health professionals, special education teachers, school administrators and other caregivers. The information is usually shared directly only with the child’s parent, who is then responsible for navigating all these bits of information on their own into one cohesive plan.

“Parents have that burden to try to keep people on track,” Morrison said. “It’s unbelievable the amount of time a parent can spend trying to get their child’s treatment team on the same page.”

Meerkat Village off ers a digital platform where all of the providers involved in a child’s care may have a central space to share information and suggestions with each other. Whether it’s the child’s doctor, coach, teacher, parent or other caregiver, they can provide updates and suggestions in the shared space where everyone in the child’s village can see it and respond to it. Everyone has access to all of the information at once.

Morrison and Richason met at a random networking event in Pittsburgh, Pa., three years ago. The event was focused on creating tech that made a good social impact on society. Richason had a concept for a collaborative treatment system. It was a random meeting between two professionals who didn’t realize the similarities in background they had.

Richason has a Master’s of Education in special education and teaching. His career has included time as a family therapist as well as a college educator teaching courses focused on disabled learners and behavior disorders.

Morrison has a bachelor’s in chemistry and a master’s and doctorate in macromolecular science and engineering. She spent many years in the corporate world working as a scientist as well as in research and development.

She also had fi rst-hand experience raising a child who required various levels of special needs care. Her oldest child Jacob was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism which aff ects a person’s ability to eff ectively socialize and communicate. She quickly became familiar with how the treatment of a special-needs child was handled.

“I’ve navigated what we call the ‘system of care’ in this country for almost 18 years,” Morrison said. “It’s an incredibly siloed-system where the people who are part of your children’s teams actually don’t talk to each other. And there’s no reason for it. There’s no reason that if given consent by the parent my treatment team for my child can’t actually talk to each other and collaborate and communicate. There’s nothing preventing that.”

In her professional career, she was building high-performance teams to deliver research and development, but she couldn’t get her child’s treatment team to behave like a high-performance team, she said.

Morrison’s family was living in New Mexico when Jacob — who was almost 3 at the time — began receiving early intervention services. She said the situation was overpowering at times, being a new mother who was also working full-time. There also weren’t many resources in northern New Mexico.

“It was completely and totally overwhelming because I had known for a long time that my child was a little diff erent from other kids. I knew it. I felt it. I tried everything I could to support him and get him the help and resources he needed,” she said.

Even so, she felt guilty and questioned her ability as a parent. She didn’t have any kind of support system. She would go to work every day praying that she wouldn’t receive a call from his day care to come get him.

Morrison didn’t know any other parents with children with developmental needs. She recalled battling an eating disorder herself in which she dealt with mental illness and depression. She remembered a “village of supporters” who helped her and her parents through that time, but she didn’t have that with Jacob.

“It was just this unbelievable feeling of desperation that I dealt with for years just trying to find people to help me help him,” she said.

Over time in New Mexico, she did gain some support through his day care as well as through an early intervention program and a therapist for Jacob. He later had a classroom therapist in kindergarten as his village began to grow.

“I had all of them engaged, but again I had to try to keep all of them on the same page on what was going on,” she said.

When the family moved to the Pittsburgh area, more resources became available nearby. Once again, Jacob’s village of caregivers had grown, all of which it was up to Morrison to try to pull together.

“That meant more people to try to keep on the same page supporting him. With just my oldest son alone, between teachers, therapists, specialists, neighbors and friends, I’ve probably interfaced with at least 100 people in two different states over the past 15 years on behalf of my son’s care,” she said.

That’s why Meerkat Village’s platform can be advantageous for all involved. The company currently works with special groups such as behavioral health programs, educational organizations and other institutions that buy a certain number of licenses for “villages” on the company’s platform.

Those organizations can then give clients a license to use, allowing the parent or guardian to invite any caregiver they wish into the village. When the caregiver is invited into the child’s village, HIPPA and other privacy paperwork is included, allowing information to be share freely without any violations.

Using such a platform provides greater access to possible caregivers as well, Morrison said. That is important for families who may be in more rural areas with limited access as she was in New Mexico or such as rural Arkansas.

The platform is currently webbased and with an initial focus on individuals with special needs such as autism or medical challenges. Eventually they want to see the platform to provide what they call “village-driven” care for anyone that needs extra care including eldercare, veteran services, the unhoused, chemical dependencies or other needs.

“Village-driven” care refers to the care an individual receives from the support group around them. It’s similar to what inspired the name of the company in the first place. Adult meerkats work together to raise all of the pups in their communities by providing food, safety and companionship for the young.

They also expect to launch an app later this year that will allow clients to use mobile devices to create and manage their villages. Having the app will also allow individuals and caregivers across the nation to more easily access the service.

Morrison said all three of her children have been very engaged in Meerkat Village. She asked Jacob, who was taking computer programming in high school, about coding for the program. They also helped stuff envelopes to send to potential investors.

She received possibly her highest compliment about a year ago from Jacob. They were having discussions about the scale of the company, trying to determine what would be the best starting size.

“Jacob looked at me and said ‘I just wan you to know how proud of you I am for helping parents deal with the situation you had to deal with me.’ It was one of those moments as a parent you just want to cry. He recognizes that some of the things we’ve faced as a family — both challenges as well as successes — that he’s had some small part creating something that will help a lot of families. That doesn’t come lightly from someone like him,” Morrison said.

Dr. Crystal Morrison (‘95), second from right, has years of personal experience dealing with the struggles of finding the right kind of care and support for her children. Her son Jacob, right, began receiving early intervention services around the age of 3 after he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.

The team from ASMSA won the Governor’s All-State Coding Competition held April 30 at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

ASMSA took top honors among the 17 teams participating in this year’s state competition. The team — comprised of Trey Clark (’22), Joshua Stallings (’22) and Robert Boerwinkle (’23) — qualified for the competition earlier this year through a regional competition.

In the contest, teams work to solve various coding problems based on various scenarios. Each problem receives a score, and in the event of a tie, the amount of time used to answer the questions is used, with the team entering the most correct answers in the least amount of time earning the advantage.

Each member of the winning team received a $2,000 award to be deposited into a 539 College Savings Plan. ASMSA also received $10,000 to support its computer science program for the team winning first place. The prizes were provided by a grant from ARCodeKids.

Nicholas Seward, a computer science instructor at ASMSA, served as the team’s adviser. He said he was very proud of the team’s performance, especially as the competition from across the state grows stronger thanks in part to Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s focus on broadening the scope of computer science education in Arkansas.

“We have gone from 25 CS teachers before the governor’s initiative to 650 now,” Seward said. “There are some exceptional students and teachers spread across the state. I have been very careful to temper my expectations. To have a chance at winning requires careful planning and preparation. I am so proud of the work they put in and the performance they have brought.”

Both Stallings and Clark said their experience from the previous year’s competition helped them better prepare for this year. In regional competitions, each team member may use a computer to work on problems, however in the state competition, the team is limited to one computer.

“We knew to do some practices using only one computer, and Josh’s and my experience competing last year let us know what to practice with and where to delegate our time,” Clark said.

Stallings said the team split the six questions evenly between team members to get started in the competition, writing code for the problems on notebook paper. They then took turns on the computer copying code into the computer. Improving on problem areas from last year was a key to their performance this year, he said.

Seward said he sees competitions such as this as a way for team members to assess and validate their abilities. While the competition may not directly prepare them for future careers in computer science, it can serve as an inspiration to learn more.

“Students are inspired for so many varied reasons,” Seward said. “Some by competition, money, learning, and/or solving problems. What makes this competition special is it so clearly shows how much Arkansas values developing native computer science talent.”

Clark said ASMSA classes provide a foundation for students to build on and then finally display the skills they’ve developed.

“Seward helped me take it much farther and enabled me to do things faster, more efficiently and more clearly,” Clark said. “I was amazed at the level of things we did and how well Seward taught them.”

Stallings said the breadth of classes available at ASMSA also helps students in competitions because of the various topics that are covered. “From the research-oriented capstone class to the variety of electives here, there’s a lot more opportunity to learn about computer science,” Stallings said.

Seward and Carl Frank, who is also an ASMSA computer science educator, were recognized as state finalists for the Arkansas Computer Science Educator of the Year.

Joshua Stallings (‘22), Trey Clark (‘22) and David Boerwinkle (‘23) worked as a team to win the 2022 Governor’s All-State Coding Competition. Nicholas Seward served as their adviser.