Linda Nkechi Umegboro, Founder at CheckInAI: Using AI To Detect Emotional Distress

In this exclusive interview, Linda Nkechi Umegboro, Founder and Product Manager of CheckInAI, shares how her award-winning academic research inspired an AI-powered platform that helps researchers ethically support participants after emotional interviews.

Combining her background in human resources, research ethics, and product innovation, Linda is building technology that blends empathy and intelligence, using AI to detect emotional distress and enable humane follow-ups. From her CIPD-recognised dissertation to winning the Trailblazer in Tech Award (2025), Linda’s journey embodies how purpose-driven innovation can transform the way research is conducted, ensuring that behind every dataset, a human story is cared for.

Tell us about CheckInAI.

CheckInAI is an AI-powered emotional well-being platform designed to make qualitative research more ethical and humane. It allows researchers to send automated, post-interview check-ins to participants, asking how they’re feeling after sharing their stories. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), the platform analyses participants’ responses, detecting signs of emotional distress and prompting the researcher to follow up responsibly.

At its core, CheckInAI bridges a long-standing ethical gap in research: what happens after the interview ends. Participants often share deeply personal experiences, sometimes leaving them emotionally drained or vulnerable. CheckInAI is empathy at scale. It uses technology not just to collect data, but to care. We recently launched our web-based app for early testers and academic researchers, marking a huge milestone in our mission to bring emotional intelligence into research design.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

The idea was born out of my own research journey during my Master’s in Global Human Resources Management at the University of Roehampton in London. I interviewed retail employees about job turnover and emotional burnout. Some of those interviews became deeply personal; a few participants broke down as they shared how undervalued and exhausted they felt.
After those sessions, I often found myself wondering, “Are they okay?” I had captured their stories, but I had no ethical or technological way to check in on them emotionally. That question lingered even after my dissertation was recognised with the CIPD Best Dissertation Award in 2024.

A year later, as a Research Assistant working on a project about unpaid labour and mental health among NHS nurses, I witnessed the same emotional intensity during interviews. That’s when I decided to build something practical, a tool that allows researchers to ethically care for participants beyond the interview.

I wanted a solution to merge my background research ethics, product management and human resources into something meaningful.

Tell us about your core product and its launch.

Our flagship product, the CheckInAI App, was officially launched this month. It’s a web-based application designed to automate the process of post-interview participant care. It enables two user types – researchers and participants – to interact through automated post-interview emotional check-ins.

Researchers can create projects, send emotional check-ins via email or SMS, and receive real-time insights on participants’ well-being. The app’s sentiment engine classifies participants’ responses as positive, neutral, or negative and alerts the researcher when someone may be distressed.

We have built GDPR compliance into the system, ensuring participant consent and data security at every step. For our pilot users, mainly university researchers and social scientists, CheckInAI is already transforming the ethics of qualitative research.

The beauty of CheckInAI is its dual nature; its tech-enabled empathy. It uses AI not to replace the researcher, but to remind them of their human responsibility to care for the people whose stories they study. This launch isn’t just about releasing an app. It’s about starting a conversation on how AI can make research more humane.

What most excites you about the tech-for-good industry?

AI is often associated with automation, prediction, or replacing human tasks, but what excites me is its power to amplify empathy. With tools like CheckInAI, AI becomes a bridge between technology and humanity.

We’re showing that algorithms can help researchers be more ethically attentive. This kind of work sits at the intersection of AI ethics, digital innovation, and social good, an area that’s still underexplored.

I’m particularly inspired by the UK’s tech-for-good ecosystem, where founders are building products with purpose. It’s a reminder that innovation isn’t just about speed or scale, it’s about impact.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome along the way?

Building a socially responsible AI product with limited funding has been challenging. Unlike traditional startups that chase quick monetisation, CheckInAI’s focus has always been ethical innovation, designing something that makes research safer and more compassionate.

As a solo founder, building this kind of product, I had to wear many hats: designer, researcher, and product manager, all while self-funding the prototype.
Another challenge was finding developers who understood the nuance of ethics in research, not just the code. Translating something emotional into a technical system required patience and clarity.

There were times I doubted whether people would take the idea seriously. But every time a researcher or participant shared that they wished such a tool existed earlier, it reminded me why we’re building it.

What is your number one piece of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?

Start where you are. Your lived experiences, ones that you felt deeply, are powerful data points. For me, CheckInAI wasn’t born from a corporate lab; it came from my dissertation interviews and human interactions.

Entrepreneurship in tech isn’t only for coders; it’s for problem-solvers. If you can identify a gap and have the courage to test an idea, that’s your foundation. Surround yourself with mentors and never underestimate the value of storytelling. People connect more with why you’re building than what you’re building.

What can we hope to see from CheckInAI in the future?

We’re expanding rapidly after our official launch. The next phase of CheckInAI includes integrating APIs with survey platforms, building an emotional well-being dashboard for universities and NGOs, and opening our platform to more researchers globally.

Our pilot users have already described CheckInAI as “a missing ethical layer” in qualitative research. That feedback has strengthened our vision: to embed emotional aftercare into the global research process.

Long-term, we want to see CheckInAI influence ethical research standards, ensuring that care continues even after the recorder stops.

The CheckInAI app is now live for pilot researchers and early adopters. Visit www.app.checkinai.tech to learn more or request early access.