AARP Innovation Labs’ Rick Robinson, VP of Product Development, and Sasha Spellman, Startup Collaboration Director, discuss their 9-month journey since launching The AgeTech Collaborative™. Connecting industry leaders, investors, test beds, business services and startups, the platform generates big new ideas and sends thriving products into the $8 trillion age-tech economy.

About Rick

Rick Robinson is VP of Product development at AARP Innovation Labs. He has been VP of Startup Engagement at Innovation Labs since 2018, where he leads a team working with disruptive startup companies to develop impactful age-tech solutions. The Lab was recognized by Fast Company magazine in 2020 as one of 10 most innovative teams.

Rick has been a digital media executive, successful startup founder, and product leader creating customer experiences for the world's largest media companies and nimblest startups including Urgent.ly (co-founder), Digital City, AOL, AOL Time Warner, Webs.com, Sprint/XOHM, National Geographic Digital and Politico. He has spoken in the mobile, local, and social spaces at the United Nations, CES, SXSW, CTIA and has been cited by a variety of publications including The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

About Sasha

Sasha Spellman is the Startup Collaboration Director at AARP Innovation Labs. In this role, Sasha is leading the efforts for the AgeTech Collaborative™ - a B2B community platform designed to support the age-tech ecosystem to connect innovative early-stage startups with investors, testbeds, corporations and more.

Prior to AARP, Sasha was at Consumer Technology Association where she fostered entrepreneurship and growth of small business by managing the startup program at CES called Eureka Park. She helped grow investment of early-stage startups from 100 startups at CES 2012 to over 1200 startups at CES 2020.

Key Takeaways