By Rick Morgan – Inno Senior Reporter, Puget Sound Business Journal
Seattle-based child care technology startup Littlebird Connected Care has named Kristie D’Ambrosio-Correll its chief technology officer.
D’Ambrosio-Correll is joining Littlebird from Mirror, the home fitness startup Lululemon acquired for US$500 million in July 2020 and rebranded to Lululemon Studio. She served as CTO since January 2021. Littlebird announced her appointment on Tuesday.
“(CEO Monica Plath) and the team have put Littlebird in position to be the first and only device dedicated to the well-being of toddlers and children under 6 years old. It is as unfathomable that no one is serving that age group today as it is exciting for me to be part of the team,” D’Ambrosio-Correll said in a news release.
The company also named D’Ambrosio-Correll a co-founder and said she will lead its B2B expansion.
D’Ambrosio-Correll was vice president of engineering at Mirror before becoming CTO, according to her LinkedIn page, and spent about five years at the company. Littlebird said in the release D’Ambrosio-Correll ran engineering, product, manufacturing and supply chain at Mirror. She also held multiple engineering roles at the marketing platform Sailthru before joining Mirror.
Littlebird, founded in 2020, makes a wristband designed to track the location of toddlers. In addition to GPS-enabled tracking, the wristband, called the Toddler CareTracker, offers heart rate, sleep and activity data. The wristband doesn’t have a screen, and a child lock ensures only adults can remove it. An accompanying app allows caregivers and parents to communicate and share photos.
Plath in October told the Business Journal Littlebird is aware of the need to avoid arousing anxiety in parents, so the company eschews alerts and focuses solely on providing information for parents. The idea for the company came when Plath, a mother of two, found her toddler was missing from the crib. Everything turned out fine, but Plath wanted a better way to track kids.
“Everything in my house is connected,” Plath said last fall. “I know where my dog is on a walk with Rover and Wag. I know where my friends are. I know where my family is, but my toddler is somehow that last person who isn’t tracked.”
Littlebird has raised US$2 million in pre-seed funding. Former T-Mobile Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter is an investor in the company. In a release, Littlebird said its wristband is currently sold out. Plath added the company plans to announce its seed round and partnerships soon but didn’t provide specifics.
