A little about us

People are strange. We narrate our own lives in the second person. We reorganise an entire cupboard to avoid sending one email. We can hold, simultaneously and with total conviction, the belief that we are completely fine and the certainty that we are not.

None of that is a malfunction. It's a brain built for daylight, movement, real food, sleep and other people, currently being run indoors, seated, alone, on four hours' sleep, at speed, inside a device designed to hold its attention. Depression, anxiety, ADHD, PTSD and suicide are at record highs. We were never built for this, and the technology that promised to help has mostly been helping itself.

Mellow Labs is building the future of mental health by closing the gap between science and how people actually live — with a particular focus on the populations that research has ignored longest.

Start with the numbers. The first clinical trials to include women: 1993. The first brain scans of women: 1996. Today, roughly 1% of all brain scans represent a woman's brain. Half the species is being diagnosed and treated on evidence gathered almost entirely from the other half. We're bringing neurotechnology to women's brain health to change that.

Almost all mental health marketing pretends none of the strangeness is true. Soft gradients. Someone gazing peacefully out of a window. The word “journey.” It's so calm it becomes unrecognisable — nobody sees themselves in it, because nobody has ever actually felt like that photograph. And almost all neuroscience marketing does the opposite: glowing brains, big claims, no evidence.

We want neither. We want the real texture of being a person — specific, contradictory, sometimes very funny — sitting alongside science we can actually stand behind. That's the job.

What you'll do

• Own the strategy. Set the content, social and video strategy end to end — what we make, why, which channels it runs on, and what each piece is meant to achieve.

• Start from a blank canvas. There's no back catalogue, no established voice, no playbook. You'll build the first version of all of it, and the decisions you make will shape the company's direction rather than just describe it.

• Run the content calendar. Plan and produce a consistent pipeline across channels: long-form, short-form, scripts, newsletters and social copy.

• Own social day to day. Voice, formats, publishing cadence, community engagement, and a steady programme of platform experiments.

• Own video end to end. Concepts, shot lists, direction, and either editing yourself or briefing an editor — with formats built for each platform rather than one cut resized four ways.

• Source real stories. Work with clinicians, researchers and community members to find and tell first-hand stories, always with consent and appropriate review.

• Translate the science accurately. Partner with the science and clinical team so every claim we publish is supported by the evidence, and nothing is overstated.

• Define and protect the voice. Set editorial standards and brand voice, and keep them consistent across everyone who writes for us.

• Measure and report. Set content goals, report on performance monthly, and make clear recommendations about what to scale and what to stop.

• Scale beyond yourself. Build the briefs, processes and freelance or contributor bench so output can grow past one person by year two.

Who we think you are

• You're an incredible storyteller. This is the non-negotiable one. You know where the tension goes, what to leave out, and how to make one person's very specific experience land for someone who has never had it.

• You can be funny about being human without being funny about people's pain. If you can't feel that line, this will be the wrong job and a bad week for everyone.

• You can read a study without either glazing over or overclaiming. You don't need a science background. You do need the instinct to ask “what does this actually prove?” before you write the headline.

• 4+ years doing this for real — content, social, brand, or video that shipped and had consequences.

• Actual opinions about video, and hands to match: you can hold a camera, or direct someone who can, or brief an editor without saying “make it pop.”

• You've built something from nothing before. A channel, a newsletter, a series, a strange little corner of the internet people kept coming back to. Scale isn't the point; taste and follow-through are.

• Native fluency in the internet. You can tell a living format from one that has been dead for six months and is being carried around by brands who haven't checked its pulse.

• Taste, the spine to defend it, and the grace to be wrong out loud and move on the same afternoon.

Things that would make us lean forward

• Something you made that has no business existing and yet does.

• You've worked in women's health, mental health, neuroscience, or health tech — or you've been close enough to the research to be angry about the gaps.

• A newsletter, podcast, or channel with subscribers who are not related to you.

• You've built a community, not just an audience — somewhere people talked back.

• Something of yours went strangely wide, and you can explain why without inventing a framework after the fact.

• Lived experience, professional or personal. It's not a requirement and we won't ask you to disclose anything. It does tend to show up in the work.

Things this job is not

• Not a caretaker for a posting calendar.

• Not somebody waiting for a brief, a template, or permission.

• Not “make the deck prettier.”

• Not turning someone's worst year into engagement bait. Recognition, not spectacle.

• Not writing cheques the science can't cash. We'd rather be the least exaggerated company in neurotech.

• Not a hermit role, either. You'll work close to clinical, science, product and the founders. Storytelling here is a contact sport.

How to apply

Send a note to hello@mellowlabs.ca — and then ignore everything you've ever been taught about how to send a note.

The application is the test. We want to see the strangest, most inventive way you can communicate an idea, share what you know, and pass on something worth having. Voice memo, zine, spreadsheet, annotated playlist, a video you shot in your kitchen, a single extremely good paragraph. Format is entirely yours. Somewhere in it we should learn who you are and why this.

Two things we're actually reading for:

• How you make information travel. Take something you understand well and get it into our heads in a way nobody would expect.

• What you'd pass along. Send us a couple of things — a study, an essay, a creator, a clip — that you'd hand a colleague, and why.

A CV is optional. Weird for its own sake doesn't count; it has to actually work on us. If it does, we'll write back.

Why join

Because there is a 1% number sitting at the centre of women's brain health and almost nobody has heard it. Because mental health is getting worse while the marketing around it gets softer and more identical. And because the words we choose here decide whether someone recognises themselves, believes the science, and asks for help.

You'll get the pen, the camera, the budget and an unusual amount of rope. You won't spend your first six months seeking approval on captions. You'll spend them deciding what Mellow Labs sounds like — and then that's what we'll sound like for years.

Mellow Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds and are committed to an inclusive, accessible hiring process — tell us what you need and we'll make it work.