Building the Invisible Infrastructure of Care, Together
Table of contents
Sheila Lirio Marcelo
This story is part of the Architects of Impact series, highlighting stories of innovation that demonstrate how our Community is mobilizing to ensure a world that works for all people and the planet.
Long before the “care economy” became a global conversation, Sheila Lirio Marcelo understood a quiet truth: behind every thriving career, every growing company, and every functioning society is an invisible system of care. For millions of families, that system simply didn’t exist yet.
She devoted her life to changing that. Her work has always lived at the intersection of empathy and infrastructure, turning deeply personal challenges into scalable systems that support families and strengthen economies.
From Personal Problem to Global Platform
By the time Sheila founded Care.com in 2006, she had already lived the problem firsthand, juggling the pressures of school, work, and family while trying to piece together reliable support. What felt like a personal challenge turned out to be a massive systemic gap.
Instead of accepting the status quo, she built a solution. Care.com started as a trusted marketplace for childcare, senior care, and household support, but it became something far larger: shared infrastructure used by millions of families worldwide. Sheila took the company public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 as the first Asian American woman founder to do so, and led it through a $500 million acquisition by IAC in 2020.
What began as one mother’s search for reliable care became a platform that fundamentally reshaped how families and employers think about caregiving.
Sheila’s message was clear and consistent: when support systems for families fail, women leave the workforce, productivity declines, and inequality deepens. Care is not a social side or “women’s” issue; it is economic infrastructure.
Building the Next Generation of Support for Families
After Care.com’s acquisition by IAC in 2020, Sheila didn’t step away from the problem. Instead, her focus sharpened.
Today, as Co-Founder and CEO of Ohai.ai, she is building the next-generation family infrastructure using generative AI. Ohai helps families manage the mental load of running a household, an invisible layer of labor disproportionately carried by women, giving families something they rarely have enough of: time.
Alongside this work, she has helped champion new funding models to support families during early parenthood, recognizing that time, financial stability, and community are deeply interconnected.
This was clear at Melinda French Gates’ 2024 Care Summit, where the scale of what Sheila helped catalyze was on full display. The conference was filled with founders, investors, and leaders dedicated to the future of care, when just 20 years before, Sheila was trailblazing the path to the care economy.
Across every chapter of her career, the pattern is clear: Sheila builds systems that make care visible, valued, and scalable.
A Convener and Catalyst by Instinct
When Sheila first began this work, the care ecosystem barely existed. Now it is a global movement, and its growth has only clarified how much more the work demands. Collaboration across technology, policy, philanthropy, and business is no longer aspirational. It is the baseline, and Sheila is already building the connective tissue to make it possible.
What makes Sheila distinctive is not only what she builds, but how she builds it.
Whether hosting founders and investors through her “Care to Gather” series, surrounding women entrepreneurs with the mentorship and capital they need to scale, or helping co-found The Asian American Foundation to mobilize $1 billion in commitments when anti-Asian violence demanded an institutional response, the pattern is the same: she sees what the moment requires and builds the room to meet it.
As a member of Forward Global since 2020, Sheila brings that same conviction to the Community, connecting members across sectors, introducing collaborators who might never have met otherwise, and helping bold ideas find the relationships they need to grow. In a world that often celebrates individual achievement, she consistently invests in collective progress.
Whether engaging with entrepreneurs abroad, hosting gatherings at home, or building new platforms, she brings intellectual rigor and human empathy to every room she enters.
Sheila’s journey, from the daughter of immigrants to earning a Harvard JD-MBA and building companies that serve millions of families, tells one story of success. The more revealing story is how she continues to show up: as a builder, a convener, and a catalyst for collective progress.
The future of care isn’t something one person builds alone—it’s something we build together.
