Sheila Lirio Marcelo

Sheila Lirio Marcelo (born 1970) is a Filipino-American entrepreneur. She is the Founder, Chairwoman and CEO of Care.com, the world's largest online destination for finding and managing family care.

She is a Henry Crown Fellow with the Aspen Institute (Class of 2012) and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2011. Marcelo is the youngest recipient of the Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Award (2014) and received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from her alma mater, Mount Holyoke College.

Marcelo is an active Filipino-American philanthropist supporting Filipinos and Filipino-Americans and is on the Board of Trustees of the Philippine Development Foundation (formerly the Ayala Foundation), a non-profit that works with the Philippine government on education, innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives.

Marcelo was born and raised in the Philippines, growing up in an entrepreneurial household that was involved in a number of businesses from coconut mills to mango and banana plantations to transportation and coal production. Part of her early childhood was spent in Houston with her five siblings. When Marcelo was 11, she attended Brent International School in Baguio.

She graduated magna cum laude from Mt. Holyoke College with a degree in Economics and received M.B.A. and J.D. degrees, with honors and the Dean's Award from Harvard University. It was during her undergraduate years at Mt. Holyoke that Marcelo had her first child, Ryan; her second son, Adam, was born right after graduating from Harvard Business School. While attending Harvard she also spent 30 hours a week on community activities, worked on several campus businesses and provided consulting services for the design of Harvard's Spangler Center.

Prior to founding Care.com, she served as a consultant at Monitor Company, Pyramid Research and Putnam, Hayes & Bartlett, a teaching fellow at Harvard Business School, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing at Upromise, an online service helping families save money for college, Vice President and General Manager of TheLadders.com, an online service helping people find jobs and entrepreneur-in-resident in the Boston office of Matrix Partners.

She currently lives in Weston, Massachusetts with her husband and two sons.

Marcelo's initial care challenge came after she had her first child, Ryan. She was a college student and immigrant, and didn't have family nearby as a support system. While helping care for her second baby boy, her father suffered a heart attack and she struggled to find care for him, as well as child care for her two sons. Marcelo realized there was a need in the market to help familiesfind care. Marcelo waited five years to launch a startup because she wanted to get more operational and managerial experience and make sure her family was ready.

Care.com helps families find child care, senior care, special needs care, tutoring, pet care, housekeeping, etc.

The company went public January 24, 2014. From its founding in 2006 through August 2012, Care.com had raised more than $111 million in venture capital from investors, including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. Marcelo is one of the few female technology entrepreneurs to raise more than $35 million in venture capital funding. Today the site has more than 17.8 million members, spanning 16 countries.

In August 2019, Care.com announced that Marcelo would transition from being CEO to being Execute Chairwoman.

Marcelo has appeared on several prominent news shows including NBC's Today Show, CBS's The Early Show and ABC News Now and in media outlets such as Forbes, Bloomberg and CNBC.com.

She was named one of the top 40 entrepreneurs under 40 years of age by the Boston Business Journal (2009), one of the 10 most powerful women entrepreneurs by Fortune Magazine (2009), one of the 10 most powerful women in Boston Tech by The Boston Globe, to The Aspen Institute’s 2012 Class of Henry Crown Fellows, a "Tech Luminary Innovation All-Star" by the Boston Business Journal (2012), and one of The Boston Globe's 100 Innovators of 2013.In 2010, she received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In 2011, Marcelo was awarded a Marshall Memorial Fellowship and named as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In 2013, she was inducted into the Academy of Women Achievers by the YMCA.)In 2014, Marcelo received the prestigious Harvard Business School alumni award, "for her achievements as founder, chairwoman and CEO of Care.com". She is the second Filipino alum, after Jaime Zobel De Ayala, to be honored with this award.Also in 2014, she was bestowed one of the highest honors for Filipinos, the Filipino Heritage Award or Pamana ng Pilipino from President Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines for her "excellence and distinction in the pursuit of [her] work or profession."In April 2015, Marcelo received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Mt. Holyoke College.

Marcelo has spoken alongside President Obama at the White House Summit on Working Families (2014), with global political and business leaders at The World Economic Forum (2013, 2015), and to emerging female leaders at Harvard University (2013) and CEOs at Northeastern University (2013).

Marcelo is a Board Trustee of the Philippine Development Foundation (formerly the Ayala Foundation), a non-profit that works with the Philippine government on education, innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives. She was a finalist judge for Harvard Business School's annual business plan competition in 2012 and was an adviser to the school's Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship. In 2012, she was a mentor to the winning team in Hack2Hatch, a competition for entrepreneurs in the Philippines.

Marcelo also launched WomenUp.org, an organization that aims to increase women's role in the global economy by providing leadership training, mentorship and support to girls and women through every stage of their lives and careers. In the summer of 2013, WomenUp partnered with Care.com and The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) to run a two-week leadership camp for 7th and 8th grade girls. WomenUp and Care.com also sponsored a business plan competition for female entrepreneurs in August 2013. Women Up has also held female leadership training programs in the United States, Brazil, and the Philippines.

Marcelo also co-founded Landit.com, a website dedicated to help women seeking to move their career forward.

• Women Up: Sheila Lirio Marcelo, World Economic Forum, April 2013
• Sheila Lirio MarceloVideo produced by Makers: Women Who Make America, May 2015
• PandoMonthly Fireside Chat with Sheila Lirio Marcelo, June 2015
• Speech at the National Partnership for Women & Families Annual Luncheon, June 2015
• Speech at APEC SME Summit, November 2015.

While working as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Venture capital firm Matrix Partners, Marcelo met with the founders of Sittercity.com and Sitters.com, two existing websites for finding caregivers, in order to discuss a potential investment and bringing Marcelo in as CEO.Matrix Partners did not invest in either firm and months later Marcelo would found Care.com.

Mike Cravens, the founder of Sitters.com, has alleged that Marcelo "used that information to jump-start Care.com". Anne Raimondi, a spokesperson for Matrix, responded that: “We can appreciate that the companies in question do not like competition, but we do not believe that their claims of unfair treatment are at all merited because both Sheila and we said from the earliest discussions with these companies that we were considering competitive options and not to share any information with us that they were not comfortable sharing.”