Keisha McCotry worked as a brand and marketing executive for Fortune 500 companies for over 20 years before a layoff propelled her into entrepreneurship.
Rounds of job applications and interviews were extremely exhausting. Considering McCotry has ADHD, the process also triggered rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD), a term for intense emotional pain around perceived rejection. Instead of letting this rule her life, McCotry built the app she needed most: ZelmWell, an emotional regulation app for adults with ADHD.
Armed with Claude and ChatGPT subscriptions, McCotry created 18 iterations of the app before it finally went live on the App Store.
Now others can use ZelmWell to access custom AI meditations, RSD support, and pattern tracking to help manage their ADHD.
Journey to Entrepreneurship
Born and raised in West Point, Mississippi, McCotry earned a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations from Mississippi State University. She then attained an MBA and an executive certificate in human relations. Over the next 20 years, she built an impressive career. As an entertainment marketing specialist, she worked with brands including Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and other major film studios. She grew into senior-level brand PR; her work influenced companies like PepsiCo, Ernst & Young, Google, and Procter & Gamble. McCotry also worked in the communications department for two HR Saas companies, Employee and Fountain.
Beyond her communication work, McCotry also has a keen interest in technology, particularly coding and AI. When AI first took off, she started taking free courses from Google and OpenAI. As AI became more mainstream, she couldn’t help but notice who was being left behind. According to McCotry, poor internet access, limited exposure to STEM education, and digital redlining have left many Black people without access to AI. She argues that AI has massive wealth-building potential, and these barriers widen the wealth gap in the U.S. Troubled by this, McCotry founded the Mosaic Method Agency, where she began offering AI readiness trainings for people of color, nonprofits, and small companies. She also doubles as an AI consultant for C-suite leaders and private equity firms, helping them unlock a competitive advantage through strategic AI adoption.
Turning a Layoff into a Launch
Even with McCotry’s extensive experience and technical knowledge, she lost her job in July 2025 amid steep job losses for Black women. Black women’s employment rate fell 1.4 percentage points that year, one of the largest drops in a quarter century, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Many people turned to LinkedIn to share their uncertainty about the future. McCotry saw a mental health crisis unfolding as people struggled with unemployment and a rapidly changing workforce.
Struggling with ADHD and the job application process herself, McCotry recognized a gap in the market. There were few resources to support neurodivergent people in managing the emotional symptoms they faced. Most ADHD apps focus on maximizing productivity or organizing to-do lists. Few put emotional regulation or RSD first. This is when the idea for ZelmWell was born.
“Since the job market stopped choosing me, I decided to choose myself,” McCotry told UrbanGeekz in an exclusive interview. Since March, McCotry has worked tirelessly to bring her idea to life.
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How a Pr Professional Built Her Own App
ZelmWell launched on the App Store at the end of August, but the road there was not simple. McCotry built the app herself without formal software development training. Instead, she leaned on AI and YouTube University. She took a “product lab” approach, treating product development like a science experiment and focusing on rapid prototyping, user testing, and iterative learning. Throughout the process, McCotry applied a human-first AI approach. She designed wireframes by hand, took a picture, and fed these into AI for coding. Her development budget was lean. She paid for subscriptions to Claude, ChatGPT, and Loveable, plus an Apple developer account.
“Back in the day, if you had to hire an engineer to do this, that would have been thousands and thousands of dollars. But I spent less than $300 a month. People have to understand that it’s no longer cost-prohibitive. Your future is literally in your two hands,” McCotry emphasized. She believes that AI has democratized product development and removed cost barriers for creators with limited budgets.
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Tech Challenges within AI
AI helped her move faster with product thinking, user flows, feature logic, copy, and testing. But the technology isn’t perfect, and McCotry still encountered bugs. She used several tools, including Lovable, OpenAI’s Codex, Claude, and Codeium (now Windsurf), and the platforms sometimes conflicted.
The conflict showed most clearly while she built the payment feature. ZelmWell was rejected from the App Store six times because of a backend glitch. The checkout button froze without showing an error. McCotry reached out to the community for help. She consulted online forums, particularly a #buildinpublic thread, and started talking to iOS developers. She was honest and vulnerable about being laid off and wanting to build an app of her own. People resonated with McCotry and offered to help spot the problem. After hours of digging, they found the error in a single hidden line of code.
McCotry then debugged the entire payment structure and backend code and built an AI checks-and-balances system. She had Lovable upload all the code to GitHub. From there, she pivoted to strictly using Codeium to build and Claude to run daily quality-assurance checks. The system clicked, and ZelmWell was ready for users.
“I endured six rejections to bring an app about rejection sensitivity into the world. Every setback tested the same resilience the app was built to support, and I refused to stop until it was live,” McCotry said.
About ZelmWell
Open ZelmWell and the interface and colors signal calm right away. The app is designed to meet users in overwhelming moments and help them regulate their emotions. Features include a breathing orb on the home screen that guides a 4-4-6 breath cycle for emotional meltdowns or emergencies. Users can log an RSD episode in one tap, noting the trigger, intensity, physical sensations, and what helped. Other tools include CBT-informed thought-challenging exercises, six ambient soundscapes, and journaling prompts designed for ADHD. A pattern dashboard and AI-powered insights track trends, and users can download the data to share with a therapist.
What truly sets ZelmWell apart is that it recognizes people experience ADHD and RSD differently. Instead of offering a one-size-fits-all solution, it uses AI to personalize its features. The custom AI meditations let users enter their exact situation and emotion, and the app tailors the script to those circumstances. When seeing a therapist for every daily trigger is not feasible or affordable, people with ADHD can use ZelmWell to help manage their emotional well-being.
ZelmWell’s design also aims to feel safe and supportive. Common gamification tactics, such as streaks, can push users to engage out of guilt. Breaking a streak can leave them feeling bad. ZelmWell rejects rigid daily demands. It measures value by how supported users feel, not by how many consecutive days they log in.
The app operates on a freemium model. It offers five free meditations per month, with premium access available at $9.99 monthly or $79.99 annually
The Importance of Privacy in Health Tech
When building ZelmWell, McCotry prioritized privacy as a core feature, not an afterthought. Her privacy statement is written in plain language so that users can easily understand it. It explicitly states that ZelmWell does not sell personal data or use people’s wellness data to train AI models without explicit consent. When you delete the app, it also deletes all your personal information. “People should not have to trade privacy for personalization,” McCotry explained.
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The Future of ZelmWell
When McCotry was laid off, she treated it as a pivot, not an ending. Her own struggles with job hunting and RSD revealed a gap she knew she could address. AI helped make the entire process more accessible, allowing her to move from an idea to a working product without a traditional tech background. Within six months, she created something she now uses and that helps others navigate the same emotional challenges.
Looking ahead, McCotry wants to grow ZelmWell into a household emotional wellness platform, with workplace wellness and brand partnerships among her goals. She sees opportunities to work with companies and organizations that want to better support neurodivergent employees and create more inclusive wellness resources. For McCotry, ZelmWell is an example of how lived experience, accessible AI tools, and the willingness to build can turn a personal setback into a solution for others.
Main image: Keisha McCotry, provided by the Mosaic Method Agency.
