Our Founding Story: We set out to define the gold standard of ketamine care

In October of 2025, Ember Health co-founders Dr. Nicolas Grundmann and Tiffany Franke sat down to tell the story of why they built Ember, as a part of an award-shortlisted docuseries, The Ember Project, run by documentarian Chandler Kauffman. The objective of the project is to raise awareness about how IV ketamine works to treat depression, and who it may help. The same care and intention our founders describe here is what we bring to every patient we are humbled to serve, so that they may experience the relief they deserve, realize their full potential, and make their marks in their communities.

You can read Tiffany and Nico’s full video transcript below.

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Tiffany: Before we even saw our first patient, we thought: who are we serving? What are their needs? What does excellence look like? What does safety feel like? And we translated that into a journey of care where no detail was too small to provide the gold standard of care for our patients.

I'm Tiffany Franke. I'm the co-founder and Chief Experience Officer with Ember Health. We administer IV ketamine for people seeking relief from depression. I worked as an organizational strategist for over a decade with consultancies. I founded the organization seven years ago with my husband, Dr. Nico Grundmann. On our very first date, we talked about our shared commitment to leading a life of purpose. To us, that meant a commitment to systems-level change, specifically healthcare.

Nico: My name is Dr. Nico Grundmann. I'm the co-founder and medical director of Ember Health. I am, by training, an emergency medicine physician, and in the emergency department I took care of a lot of really depressed people. There was a shift that I was working in West Virginia where I happened across the data on ketamine. I saw some of the studies that had been published.

Tiffany: Nico called me when I was at my consulting firm. He had been reading about IV ketamine for depression. He was telling me in this very heartfelt way: "Tiffany, so many people are coming into the ED in acute mental distress, and I feel frustrated that I can't help them better in that setting."

Nico: That initial research had me saying, "Hey, this looks like something that could be really meaningful for people." 

Tiffany: At that moment, we committed not only to entering the space, but really to being gold standard bearers. It requires a few core commitments: evidence-based, patient-centered, and partner-oriented care.

In 2018, we started our first pilot site. Nico is a doctor, I was the administrator, and we were figuring out: how does this work? Building the playbooks. And we learned that it had stunning results. And we could also figure out the operations of it to make a business work, 

Nico: And these people's lives were changing.They were feeling better, and people were not suicidal anymore. It was those stories and those individuals that really gave us the confidence that it was worth pursuing and expanding, and making sure that more people could access treatment, given how amazing of a difference it was making for the ones that we were taking care of.

One of the beauties about designing your own practice is that you can reinvent things from the ground up. You can decide these parts really do matter, and these parts are really important to keep and to serve as a foundation, and these things we think should be done differently. Part of the environment design for us is figuring out a patient journey and a patient experience where people could be comfortable in their care, where they weren't filling out the same form six times as they walk in the door, where they were greeted by name in a way that meant that you knew who you were working with.

Tiffany: Everything has been thoughtfully considered that we've brought into this care experience with Ember Health. All those details send the message to somebody that they're safe, that they're welcome, that they are worthy.

Nico: It's a real privilege to be able to come to work with my wife every day. We have two beautiful kids. When our son asks us, "What is it that you do?" Our answer to him is pretty straightforward: 

Tiffany: Building an organization from the ground up is hard. It takes commitment every single day. And I often come back to the fundamentals: really big problem – depression. IV ketamine for depression – it's the best treatment out there, and I believe we're doing it the best it's being done. Ember is built on a foundation of love, and I think people can feel it.

Nico: Living a life of purpose is a very personal thing. For me,t means waking up knowing that I made a difference in somebody's life today. It also means trying to change the national conversation on these topics. Not just helping individuals one-on-one, but helping across the country make a bigger difference in how people feel.

Tiffany: We would really like the Ember model and this gold standard that we have painstakingly created to be the model that can spread and can become accessible to people across our nation.

One of the things that Nico and I bonded over on that first date was believing that people at their best, there is nothing that can't be accomplished. There are no problems too big, and if we can be in the business together of helping people realize their full potential, what's better than that?