Victor Juárez didn’t set out on his entrepreneurial journey looking to build a business—he was looking for answers. Then a government employee in Guatemala promoting the United States as an academic destination, Victor spent his days recruiting potential scholars—bright, promising youth who, on paper, should have leapt at the opportunity to pursue new opportunities abroad. But instead, most hesitated or declined altogether. After frequent visits with these students, something deeper emerged.

“I found out that they were victims of violence, and they shared with me that there were a lot of problems with substances and bullying, and in many cases, they were sibling number seven [or] eight, and so they already had a big responsibility in their family,” Juárez said. “So being aware of these opportunities and discarding them immediately was because of external reasons. And with the main issues around violence and substances, they were not talking to anyone about it.”

At the same time, Juárez realized he knew many trained psychologists in Guatemala who were underemployed or working in unrelated jobs at call centers or as Uber drivers because there was no demand for their services. Inspired by this disconnection, Juárez set out to build a bridge between them.

TuConsejería—literally translated to “your counseling”—was first established as a hyperlocal venture targeting the youth demographic Juárez identified. He set up a pilot mental health chat service using Facebook Messenger in computer labs in rural Guatemalan schools, and each time they ran the program, the labs filled to capacity.

After this initial success, Juárez wanted to further explore his product-market fit, so he applied to Halcyon.

Juárez’s time at Halcyon allowed him to deeply explore the U.S. market, validating the potential for TuConsejería’s mental health services among Hispanic populations in the country. After shaping his venture’s expansion strategy, Juárez launched and incorporated in the U.S. in 2022 to eventually provide a new basis of support for these underserved communities.

This experience also enhanced Juárez’s expertise on the topics of migration and mobility for populations coming and going from the U.S. and Latin America. He believes these systems are hugely influencing mental health across the region, where the pressures of migration, climate change, and more are often overlapping—and compounding.

“There’s a big connection between climate change and mental health, especially in [these] countries,” Juárez said. “You see everyday people who are starting to migrate because a lot of things have changed around them—access to water, access to good soil, things like that.”

TuConsejería’s largest consumer markets include migrants, temporary workers and their families, survivors of violence, women, seniors, and youth—all populations disproportionately affected by the crises of today’s world.

In its expansion, TuConsejería has won several government- and organization-funded competitions to do migrant support work in countries including Colombia, and they’ve used these pipelines to continue their growth and identify future projects in countries like México and on the African continent in Malawi.

This past year, TuConsejería also won a project with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to fund its AI development.

In an age where caution and nervousness persist around artificial intelligence, Juárez’s thesis is clear: not to replace therapists with AI, but to use AI to lower the barriers to accessing and using mental health services.

Juárez and his team developed a WhatsApp-integrated AI assistant that delivers personalized, relevant information to employees across industries, covering topics like financial literacy, climate change, and labor migration. Designed to integrate seamlessly into workplace systems, the tool helps users do their jobs more effectively, all while building trust to increase the likelihood of people using the product as a mental health resource.

Take, for example, the predominantly male warehouse workers at a large distribution center—a demographic with a notable gap in engaging with the healthcare system, particularly in seeking mental health support.

The TuConsejería team first trained their AI tool with practical resources by uploading the warehouse’s machinery manuals into their system. As employees began relying on the tool for everyday tasks—messaging the WhatsApp number from their personal devices to get quick answers about forklift lever functions or weight restrictions—engagement grew.

“As soon as they started asking questions and making their lives easier with the AI, the trust increased,” Juárez said.

After the workday, this communication strategy continued, opening the door for more personal check-ins around mental health and well-being. Employees would receive a message asking, “How was your day today?” and because they’re accustomed to regular, positive interactions with the service, they typically replied from there, Juárez said.

We just tell potential users: “Test it. Try it. Ask for help,” Juárez said, underscoring how this curiosity-driven use and trust-building through routine interaction can help reduce stigma and barriers to care-seeking.

TuConsejería’s AI model even identifies red-flag language and moments of crisis, and can connect users directly with a live psychologist—a core part of TuConsejería’s original business design.

Critically, it’s simple to deploy, requiring no apps to download or accounts to set up—just a new WhatsApp number to add to your contacts.

In addition, it’s affordable. TuConsejería uses a B2B2C model so that companies pay a membership plan, making it a free and confidential service for the final user. Increasingly, Juárez has been inundated with requests for families of employees who receive this benefit to be able to use the technology—a demand he is preparing to meet by launching a full B2C offering.

Juárez believes the future of healthcare will be shaped by social impact ventures like his.

“In healthcare in general, and specifically in mental health, there’s been a lot of services and opportunities, but most of them are located at the top of the pyramid,” Juárez said. “That’s the main reason why we are focused on the bottom of the pyramid, which is where most of the people on the planet are, where most of the needs are.”

This belief is why he made TuConsejería a for-profit business and not a charitable foundation, for instance.

“I really wanted [my audience] to feel like we were always going to be there in any scenario possible, meaning that we really needed to work on sustainability,” Juárez said. “We [are going] to remain as close as possible to our clients, users, audiences—despite anything that happens politically, socially, or anything [else] that happens around us … That is our mission.”