Internship USA Alum Founds Health App for Eating Disorder Recovery

Our December alum of the month, Ekaterina Karabasheva, is a Bulgarian citizen with a passion for social change, German culture, and international experiences. After completing a bachelor’s degree in Media Studies from the University of Trier in Germany, Ekaterina interned at Goethe Zentrum Atlanta, a German Cultural Center in Atlanta, Georgia, through the CIEE Internship USA program. Her internship focused on marketing, communications, event management, and teaching German language and literature.

Ekaterina says her internship experience in the U.S. gave her confidence to deal with new and challenging situations. “It opened my eyes to several operations practices that I knew would be valuable in my home country and for my future professional development,” she says. After completing her internship in the States, Ekaterina returned to Germany to complete a master’s degree in communication studies at the University of Arts in Berlin, and then focused her career on digital health and social innovation.

In 2014, she founded the health start-up Jourvie, an app that supports people with eating disorders during the recovery process. The goal of Jourvie is to support patients during the treatment process by solving the problem of tedious paperwork, lack of moral support, and motivation. Jourvie was inspired by Ekaterina’s personal experience with an eating disorder, and uses established therapy methods in a new, digital, accessible way. “Through a smartphone app we provide [our users] with the tools they need for a more successful recovery, such as a food journal, coping tactics, and motivation,” says Ekaterina. Just over a year after its launch, Jourvie has received positive press from a wide variety of news outlets, including a feature in Wired, The Changer, Mashable, and several German websites. PEP Germany, a social entrepreneurship program made possible by Ashoka and SAP, was the first partner that supported the project.

Jourvie continues to grow, and have expanded their partner network to include clinics and therapists. In the future, Ekaterina hopes to expand Jourvie not only in Germany, but on an international level. When she’s not working on Jourvie, Ekaterina is working on digital healthcare innovation at Pfizer Germany, where she looks to create collaboration opportunities between Pfizer and digital health startups in Germany.