About
us.
When we wear giraffe ears all we hear is a beautiful need.
“When COVID hit I was working as the Regional Safety Coordinator at Discount Tire overseeing the Heartland region which stretched from Oklahoma to Iowa. This was a position I filled the last four years of my fifteen year career with the company. I was often thumbing through OSHA safety regulations and accident reports looking for meaningful trends to share with our teams. What I noticed, however, is that we had no meaningful analog for how we were actively caring for the mental health of our employees. The best we could offer was to cover the bill for outside help. None of us were therapists, after all. Yet I could not shake the feeling that it was not enough to simply pay the hospital bill for injuries sustained on the job. Almost all Americans spend more hours of the day with their work family than with their real families. We deserve to learn how to talk to one another in a way that is conducive to the mental health of every party.”
– Nathanael,
Founder
Giraffes have the largest heart of any land animal, they have the best view of the horizon and, sleeping less than thirty minutes a day, they are always aware of their environment.
Giraffe Ears is a fully donation funded response to the global mental health crisis equipping workplaces with transformative communication tools. We believe society has educated us to “sacrifice” our needs for one another rather than to find strategies that include everyone’s needs. We believe that through clear communication we can always discover strategies that serve life for everyone.
OSHA was created in 1971 due to public outcry from the increasing rate of injuries occurring on the job yet workplaces have done embarrassingly little to respond to the growing mental health crisis. Unlike OSHA regulations, however, we believe that mental health is not so easily regulated from the outside. Workplaces must voluntarily decide that mental health is something they would like to take seriously and become open to learning, and sustaining, new communication techniques. Through an initial training period and a perpetual relationship, Giraffe Ears will always be available to help your team navigate the complexity and nuance of diverse situations in a way that serves life for everyone.