Madeline Dangerfield-Cha

Co-Founder and Co-CEO Mon Ami

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Madeline Dangerfield-Cha is a co-founder and co-chief executive of Mon Ami, a San Francisco Bay Area software company that has become a system of record for the public agencies that deliver aging and disability services in the United States. Founded in 2018 as a consumer marketplace pairing college students with isolated older adults, Mon Ami now sells enterprise software to Area Agencies on Aging, State Units on Aging, intellectual and developmental disability programmes, long-term care ombudsman offices and Medicaid home- and community-based services programmes, unifying case management, assessments, information and referral, provider billing and Older Americans Act compliance reporting in one platform. The shift reflects a judgement Dangerfield-Cha and her co-founders reached from the field: the constraint on good eldercare was less the supply of willing companions than the condition of the administrative systems the agencies were forced to work in.

Career Highlights

• Co-founded Mon Ami in 2018 alongside Joy Zhang and Steve Fram, and has led the company since.
• Led the company’s pivot from a direct-to-consumer companionship marketplace to enterprise software for government aging and disability agencies.
• Raised a $3.4 million seed round in October 2019 led by Freestyle Ventures and Cowboy Ventures, with participation from Maverick Ventures, Felicis Ventures and angel investor Bruce Dunlevie.
• Opened Essence Digital’s Singapore office and grew the regional team from four people to more than 100 in roughly three years.
• Co-authored a Stanford Social Innovation Review piece with Joy Zhang on technology’s role in addressing loneliness and reshaping eldercare.
• Mon Ami’s early consumer service drew national attention, including a Good Morning America segment.

Professional Journey

Dangerfield-Cha began her career in education and marketing after graduating from Columbia University, then moved into digital media and analytics with the agency Essence. Her formative professional assignment was in Asia, where she opened and built out Essence Digital’s Singapore office, holding roles from digital media planning through Director of Analytics and scaling the regional team from four people to over a hundred across about three years. That experience — building an operating business from nothing in a new market — is the through-line to what she did next.

She left for the Stanford Graduate School of Business, earning her MBA in 2018. There she met Joy Zhang, who had volunteered in hospice and dementia care since high school and had worked on the World Health Organization’s aging team in Japan; the two had first met on a trip to Lake Tahoe shortly before the programme began. Together with Steve Fram, who had co-founded Caring.com after losing his mother to Alzheimer’s disease, they interviewed more than 150 older adults and members of their support networks, and in 2018 founded Mon Ami — French for “my friend” — launching a paid service in the San Francisco Bay Area that paired college students with older adults and people living with dementia and disabilities for in-home visits and mentally engaging activities.

The consumer service attracted funding and press, including a $3.4 million seed round in October 2019 and a Good Morning America profile. But in working alongside the public agencies that coordinate care for older adults, the founders found a second and larger problem: the agencies themselves were running on inadequate, fragmented systems, re-keying data between spreadsheets and legacy tools rather than spending time with the people they served. Mon Ami rebuilt around that problem, becoming a software vendor to the aging and disability services sector rather than a marketplace for companionship.

Under Dangerfield-Cha and Zhang, Mon Ami’s stated ambition is to become the largest social care technology company in United States healthcare, and specifically to serve as the system of record for state Medicaid and aging departments in half the states within a decade. The company’s investor base has broadened accordingly, adding Pivotal Ventures, Westbound Equity Partners, City Light Capital and HearstLab among others.

Education

Columbia University

Bachelor of Arts. Sources disagree on the field of study and none is asserted here.

Stanford University Graduate School of Business

Master of Business Administration, 2018