Who are the cofounders of Evaheld?

Evaheld was cofounded by Michelle Gomes and Michelle Costa. Michelle Gomes brings community leadership, compassionate communication, and practical legacy-planning experience, while Michelle Costa brings the urgency of personal dementia loss and the need to preserve voice, memory, and identity before those chances disappear. Together, they shaped Evaheld into a deeply human digital legacy platform.

Why the cofounders' lived experience matters most today

People usually ask who cofounded Evaheld because they want more than two names. They want to know whether the platform was built by people who understand grief, care, family hesitation, and the difference between storing files and preserving a person. In Evaheld's case, the answer is yes. The company was built by two women whose backgrounds meet at a practical, emotional point: helping families keep connection, clarity, and continuity when life feels uncertain.

That matters because legacy work is rarely only administrative. Families often come to this topic after illness, after a scare, or after realising they have delayed important conversations for years. A founder story grounded in lived experience can tell readers whether the product grew from a real need or from abstract market logic. The wider context sits in Our Story and in the answer explaining how Evaheld got started, but the short version is that the cofounders each saw avoidable regret and decided to build around preventing it.

Knowing who leads the company also helps people judge tone. Evaheld speaks in a calm, warm, organised voice because its cofounders understand how fragile timing can be. They know that families may need help capturing stories, organising wishes, and making practical information easier to find without turning a sensitive moment into something clinical. That human tone begins with the cofounders themselves.

How Michelle Gomes shaped Evaheld's caring approach

Michelle Gomes brings the part of Evaheld that helps people feel safe enough to begin. Her background includes helping terminally ill people create content for loved ones, which means she has worked close to the moments when people ask the hardest questions: what should I say, what should I leave behind, and what will comfort my family when I am no longer here? That kind of work requires tact, patience, and an ability to make emotionally difficult conversations feel possible.

Her community-building work sharpened the same instinct. During COVID, the Newtown Blessing Box became more than a practical initiative; it showed that people often seek recognition and connection as much as they seek resources. That insight carries directly into Evaheld. The platform is not designed as a cold repository. It is designed to support a person who wants to record values, memories, and guidance in a way that still feels like them. You can see that philosophy reflected in the Story and Legacy Vault, where memory preservation is structured without losing emotional warmth.

Michelle Gomes's influence also appears in the company's broader message about legacy. Evaheld does not treat a family story as an optional extra after the serious planning is done. It treats story as part of serious planning because people make sense of care, identity, and belonging through narrative. That perspective aligns with Evaheld's published thinking on what family legacy looks like today, where legacy is framed as living context rather than a final summary.

How Michelle Costa shaped Evaheld's deeper urgency

Michelle Costa brings a different but equally important force to Evaheld: the knowledge of what it feels like to lose someone and wish you had preserved more while you still could. After her father's long journey with dementia, she was left without the voice recordings and moving images that would have helped her and her children remember him more vividly. That experience did not create a vague interest in memory keeping. It created a precise understanding of regret.

Her contribution to Evaheld is therefore rooted in timing. Families often assume there will be more time to ask questions, record stories, or capture the small details that make a person unmistakably themselves. Dementia, progressive illness, and sudden decline can close that window much faster than people expect. Michelle Costa's perspective keeps Evaheld focused on starting early, even imperfectly, because later may look very different from what a family imagines.

Why dementia changes legacy timing for many families

Organisations such as how dementia gradually affects memory and communication and the how dementia affects memory and behavior explain that dementia gradually affects memory, communication, behaviour, and decision-making. For families, that means delay has a real cost. The story you plan to capture next year may become harder to tell. The preferences you assume a loved one can explain later may become less accessible. Michelle Costa's lived experience gives Evaheld credibility here because she understands that legacy work can be urgent long before end-of-life planning formally begins.

That urgency is one reason Evaheld's educational content often encourages simple early actions. A short recording, a timeline of major life events, or a values-based reflection can preserve far more than people realise. Resources such as creating a milestones timeline and letter to your younger self prompts are useful precisely because they lower the barrier to starting.

Why missing voice and video can deepen grief later

Many people only understand the value of voice and movement after loss. A photo can be precious, but it does not carry cadence, humour, expression, or the small rhythms that make someone feel present. Michelle Costa's experience reminds families that preserving identity is not only about facts. It is about sound, presence, gesture, and the private meanings attached to everyday memories.

That is why Evaheld's approach extends beyond written notes. Families may want messages for future milestones, stories behind treasured objects, reflections on beliefs, or recordings that grandchildren can revisit years later. Examples such as family tribute letter examples and the memory books and digital vaults comparison show how different formats can preserve different dimensions of a person's life.

Who benefits most from knowing the founders' story

The people most likely to care about the cofounders are not only investors or journalists. They are adult children wondering if a platform will respect a parent's dignity. They are partners trying to start conversations without sounding alarmist. They are grandparents deciding whether their stories are worth recording. They are people living with illness who need a space for both practical guidance and emotional legacy.

For these readers, the founders' story answers a trust question. Michelle Gomes signals that Evaheld knows how to guide tender, often avoided conversations. Michelle Costa signals that Evaheld understands the pain of waiting too long. Together, they make the platform feel relevant to families who need empathy and structure at the same time. This complements nearby pages on what inspired the founders and Evaheld's mission and vision, both of which explain how those experiences became a broader purpose.

It also helps readers place Evaheld within real family scenarios. Someone supporting an ageing parent may care most about preserving voice and identity before decline progresses. Someone organising their own affairs may care more about leaving messages, context, and guidance in one place. Someone thinking about children or grandchildren may want a secure way to pass on stories that otherwise disappear. The cofounders' backgrounds make sense to all of those audiences because their motivations sit where memory, planning, and care meet.

What the two Michelles built together for Evaheld today

The strength of Evaheld is not that each cofounder had the same story. It is that their experiences complement each other. Michelle Gomes contributes community-minded care, communication skill, and sensitivity to how people actually open up. Michelle Costa contributes the sharp practical lesson that opportunities to preserve identity can disappear quietly and permanently. Put together, those strengths produce a platform that encourages action without panic and compassion without vagueness.

This combination helps explain why Evaheld is broader than a memory app and more personal than a document organiser. The founders built a service that holds stories, wishes, context, and family knowledge in one place because real families rarely experience those things separately. If you want a fuller sense of the brand meaning behind that structure, the answer on what the name Evaheld means is a useful companion, as is the page on what recognition Evaheld has received, which shows how that blend of compassion and execution has been noticed externally.

Their joint perspective also keeps Evaheld from becoming performative. The goal is not to pressure people into creating polished legacy pieces. It is to help them start with what they can manage now, then add to it over time. That makes the platform usable for families who are busy, grieving, private, uncertain, or simply not confident writers. The founders built around reality, not ideal conditions.

Which related founder questions should you read next

If you arrived here wanting a complete picture, the most useful next step is to follow the question that matches your real interest. If you care about origin, read the page on how Evaheld began. If you care about motivation, read the page on what inspired the founders. If you care about long-term direction, read the page on mission and vision. Those pages separate cleanly, which is helpful because "who are the cofounders" is a people question first, not a chronology question.

That distinction matters for search intent. Someone asking who cofounded Evaheld usually wants to understand character, credibility, and fit. They want to know whether the company's leaders have earned the right to speak about legacy, planning, dementia, and family connection. Michelle Gomes and Michelle Costa have, but for different reasons, and the strength of the company is that both reasons sit inside the same product vision.

Why Evaheld's founding lens works across generations

Evaheld's relevance is not limited to one kind of household or one stage of life because the cofounders built from needs that appear across cultures and generations: the wish to be remembered accurately, the wish to spare loved ones confusion, and the wish to keep voice, values, and family context available when direct conversation is no longer possible. That is why the founders' story remains globally meaningful. It speaks to grandparents preserving history, adult children helping parents organise, partners planning ahead, and younger families who simply do not want important things left unsaid.

In practical terms, Michelle Gomes and Michelle Costa cofounded Evaheld with a shared understanding that preserving legacy means protecting both the human and the useful. Families need stories, but they also need context. They need tenderness, but they also need organisation. They need a place where memory and planning can live together without either one feeling diminished. That balance is the clearest answer to who Evaheld's cofounders are: two women whose lived experiences turned connection, dignity, and preparedness into the foundation of the company.