Erin Hennessy, LMT, BA, MS started giving and receiving massages as a child amongst her family and friends. As a junior in high school, she took an adult education class with a massage school that introduced her to the basics of a full body massage and the idea that massage therapy is a career. The Red Mountain Institute of the Healing Arts in Birmingham, AL changed the trajectory of her life during those evening classes at the age of 17.

Her father was adamantly opposed to her going to school for massage, but her mother insisted it was a good idea to have a better income (although that was questionable, ha!) and hands-on experience until she finished the undergraduate and graduate work required to become a physical therapist. With her mother’s assistance, she began the program during the last week of her high school education.

Upon finishing the massage program and taking the national exam to become a licensed massage therapist, she went to the University of Alabama with a double-major in Anthropology and Psychology, planning to either become a physical therapist or a psychologist. 

In the end, she graduated with a B.A. in Anthropology, and fulfilled the requirements and started the Occupational Therapy program at the U. of AL-Birmingham. It was there that she gained some confidence that she was smart enough to pursue a career in technology. She was fascinated by the idea of helping people with disabilities by designing assistive technology.

She moved to Atlanta and started her M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction at Georgia Tech because they had a department for assistive technology. The program turned out to focus mostly on websites and app design, and the philosophy of design – how to do design thinking – and focus on your users – for anything you build. It wasn’t the type of program to land you a job with technical skills ready to go.

Luckily, she did finally get a job at a psychology clinic that developed virtual reality games for education and therapy. She had previous experience working in psychology clinics, she was good at organization and project management, and when she’s determined to learn something new, nothing will stop her. She became the company’s expert on the AI writing tool, PullString, and wrote the dialogue for 14 characters in an extensive therapeutic social anxiety training game. 

But the long hours sitting in front of the computer and not interacting with patients or end-users of the product wore her down. She found herself missing the human connection she got from massage therapy. 

And that is how The Snow Monkey Spa came to be.

The challenges of learning business acumen and building a massage museum that requires poring over medical history texts, and the personal drive to learn at least the basics of every massage modality, has been incredibly rewarding for Erin. Not to mention her love for creating unique and therapeutic experiences for her fellow humans – the journey to creating Snow Monkey Spa has been incredible.