IT’S ON MY CALENDAR 

Speech pathologist turned app founder Amy Briggs helps busy parents stay on top of their schedules.

When it comes to trying something new, some of us stick a toe in the water, shudder, and beat a retreat toward dry land. Others shiver but keep going. Pediatric speech pathologist Amy Briggs was no tech wiz when she set to work devising Aviva, a new virtual assistant scheduling app, yet she didn’t towel off until she achieved her goal. “I never had a career aspiration to build an app,” she says. “What I had was a problem I couldn’t stop thinking about, a strong pull to solve it, and a novel idea for a solution.”

In 2021, Briggs made the leap from school-based speech pathologist to private practice and was struck by the stress parents faced in the age of COVID. “I got a real view of what life was like for the families I supported,” she recalls. “I often found parents apologizing for falling short of perfection—for messy homes, imperfect snacks, and missed appointments. They were all describing the mental workload of the increasingly high bar for modern parenthood in a system with little support. I was moved by the disparity between what I saw—incredibly loving and engaged parents moving mountains for their children—and the way these same parents regarded their own parenting. That lit a fire in me to do something on a bigger scale than I could as a clinician, to lift this burden off parents’ shoulders.”

Well aware of the learning curve she faced (she had never written a line of code, yet aspired to launch a technical product heavily underpinned by AI), Briggs joined a WMNTech cohort at 1871, a local tech incubator. “I upskilled myself by learning every low-code and no-code tool I could get my hands on. Through the early mentoring conversations I had and my own tinkering, I eventually came up with a very simple ‘alpha’ version of Aviva that I built myself and could test. I invited users in for two-week trials, tracked their feedback closely, iterated and improved the product, and started wireframing my idea for the app.”

That initial user feedback was clear; parents felt relieved, feeling they had a safety net using Aviva. “The most exciting part was the time they were saving, an average of four hours per week,” says Briggs. “That’s when I knew I had to build a version of Aviva that could scale. I hired a developer and haven’t looked back since.”

A virtual scheduling assistant designed specifically for parents, Aviva connects with Gmail and Google Calendar and turns emails into events automatically, even if an email is never opened. From there, Aviva flags event conflicts and anticipates needs with automatic reminders, such as birthday gifts for parties your kids are invited to, or a heads-up about schedule changes. Everything Aviva adds to your calendar is visible in the app, and anywhere else you see your Google calendar (iPhone calendar app, Google Calendar app, Skylight calendars, desktops, laptops, etc).

“Aviva is unlike any other tool on the market,” says Briggs. “It’s not just a calendar; it actually does the full job of scheduling for you. When I did initial market research, I found that so many of the options for family scheduling support made an unfulfilled promise to users: start using this product, and your mental load will be lighter. The truth is, these products give users a big, new, invisible job to manage. Users must find important events in their emails, send them into the app, keep their calendars updated, and share them with family members. That represents hours of time that parents don’t have to give.”

Briggs came up with the idea for Aviva in April 2024, built the alpha in September 2024, began beta testing the built app in June 2025, and launched the app publicly in September 2025. Looking back, she is delighted that the initial dip turned into a deep dive. “I’m a mom myself, and I know parents have no time to waste. If Aviva is doing its job, parents get more time for the things that I know matter for families—connection, shared experiences, and joy in the everyday moments of life. Parents need and deserve this kind of support, and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to offer it to them.”

For more information, visit withaviva.com.