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WHO WE ARE
MyHuddle was co-founded by Christina VandenBerg, a former D1 Athlete at Harvard, and her husband, Curtis VandenBerg, a Pediatric Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Surgeon. Based on their personal and professional experiences with injury, they became inspired to address the often overlooked mental side of injury and build a solution specifically made for today's high school athlete and their parents. MyHuddle was born.
Together with a team of top athletes, sport psychs, coaches, and sports medicine providers, MyHuddle is on a mission to help injured athletes and their parents bounce back better from injury with guidance and resources at their fingertips. If you'd like to be part of this mission or learn more, we'd love to connect! Email our team at hello@joinmyhuddle.com.
Christina Hagner VandenBerg
CEO & Co-Founder
Christina is a former college athlete who is passionate about using her background in technology to improve the health and well-being of student-athletes. This passion is rooted in her own experience as a high school athlete and Division 1 soccer player at Harvard. From battling injuries and losing streaks, Christina went on to lead her team in goals, be named Harvard’s ‘Breakout Female Athlete of the Year,’ and help her team win back-to-back Ivy League titles. Realizing that investing in the mental side of her training and health was the difference maker in her performance, Christina became invested in making mental support and training accessible to all athletes. Prior to MyHuddle, Christina spent a decade working in tech and sports at Fortune 500 companies and fast-growing startups, from ZipRecruiter to TeamSnap to Under Armour Connected Fitness. She holds an MBA from Stanford where she served as a Graduate Student Mentor to Varsity Athletes and today serves on the Harvard Soccer Alumni Board.
Curtis VandenBerg, MD
Co-Founder
Curtis is an Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Surgeon at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Growing up as a multi-sport athlete and captain of his high school football and baseball teams, the draw to help young athletes was magnetic as he progressed through medical training. After his residency in orthopaedic surgery, Curtis completed two years of advanced fellowship training in sports medicine and pediatric orthopaedics. During this time, he served as a team physician for the football and gymnastic teams at his alma mater, the University of Michigan, and treated a variety of athletes - from D1 superstars, to high school athletes, to weekend warriors. With all these patients, he began to see a common theme: the mental and emotional side of injury recovery was often just as difficult as physical recovery. Realizing that few resources were available, Curtis became inspired to do more to help athletes and the journey to MyHuddle began. In his practice today, Curtis serves pediatric and young adult patients across the Denver Metro and is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery at CU School of Medicine.
MyHuddle Specialists & Advisors
Katie Brooks
A former two sport Division I athlete and two-time World Cup medalist in lacrosse, Katie takes a holistic approach working with student-athletes and teams to optimize health, wellbeing and performance. She attained a master’s in Mental Health Counseling from Boston College, along with certifications in nutrition and mindfulness, and believes that the different areas of health are not mutually exclusive, leading to a whole-human approach for helping athletes grow and thrive.. Katie believes that sports are a platform for developing life and leadership skills, and she is committed to guiding athletes along their journeys on and off of the playing field.
Kelley Castle
Kelley is a Mental Performance Coach, with a specialization in working with athletes competing or pursuing competition at the Olympic level. She approaches athletes as people first, working from a foundational framework that what we do comes out of who we are, and that athlete performance is tied to athlete well-being. She has her Master of Science in Sport and Performance Psychology, with a focus on multicultural counseling in sport.
Karelle Edwards
Karelle is a professional 100-meter-hurdler and a 5X Team Canada member. Her journey has been far from linear. In 2008, she suffered a back injury that kept her off the track for 3 years. Despite an orthopedic surgeon telling her to "pick up a new hobby because she would probably never run again", she made a successful return to the track in 2012. She has a BSc with a specialization in Human Kinetics and a MA in Counseling Psychology. She is now currently working towards her license as a Mental Health Counselor and becoming Certified Mental Performance Consultant.
Tim White
Tim is a former athlete who played as many different sports as he could growing up. His experiences in sport led him to degrees in athletic training and then sport psychology.
He works with athletes at the high school, college, professional, and Olympic level. Not only does Tim help athletes learn how to mentally perform their best, he also helps injured athletes recover mentally from injuries, surgery, and lengthy rehabilitations so that their mind can be just as ready as their body when they start to play their sport again. He holds a PhD in counseling psych with an emphasis in sport, an MS in sport psychology, and a BS in athletic training.
Lauren Williams
As a former elite athlete, playing Ice Hockey at both the college (NCAA DI) and professional levels, Lauren bring a combination of experience and expertise into her work. Her goal as a coach is to help athletes unlock the next levels of their performance by integrating top notch mental skills work and brain training to help athletes discover their passion for achieving their goals while learning how to live life with a positive mindset. Lauren holds a Masters of Education in Counseling with a focus in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.