DECEMBER 20, 2025

ANN MARIE FLUSCHE - HEAD OF GROWTH & STRATEGY

<aside> 🔖 A conversation with Ann Marie Flusche

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When I started medical school, I quickly noticed a pattern in our class GroupMe chat. Every few days another message would pop up: a resident or attending physician asking if anyone could babysit their kids that weekend, or help with after-school pickup on Tuesday, or cover an evening when their usual childcare fell through.

The requests kept coming – sometimes multiple in a single day – and I realized we had a real problem hiding in plain sight.

The Challenge I Saw

On one side, you had incredibly busy healthcare professionals – residents working 80-hour weeks, attending physicians balancing patient care with parenting – desperately trying to patch together reliable childcare. They were posting in a student GroupMe, hoping someone would see their message among the dozens of other class announcements, memes, and study tips.

On the other side, you had medical students (myself included) struggling with a financial reality that doesn’t get talked about enough: we’re accumulating six figures of debt while being too busy for traditional part-time jobs. Our schedules are unpredictable, our study demands are intense, but we still need to find ways to cover rent, groceries, and daily expenses.

And here’s what struck me most: so many of us grew up babysitting. We’re caregivers at heart - it’s why we chose medicine in the first place. We genuinely enjoy working with kids, and we’re looking for flexible ways to earn money that fit our chaotic schedules.

The Solution Was Obvious

Two groups that needed each other were working in the same building complex but connecting through an inefficient GroupMe chat that was easy to miss and impossible to organize.

That’s why I helped create Students Who Sit.

We needed a dedicated platform that could match students seeking flexible babysitting work with families who understood their schedules and constraints. No more scrolling through days of GroupMe messages to find childcare requests. No more parents wondering if their message even reached anyone.

More Than Just Babysitting

What started as a practical solution has become something more meaningful. Medical students get to build relationships with the physician families who are just a few years ahead of them in their careers. We get mentorship, insight into what life after residency looks like, and yes – flexible income that helps offset our massive loans.

The physicians get reliable, trustworthy childcare from people who understand the unpredictability of medicine and who genuinely care about helping. And the kids? They get engaged babysitters who are patient, responsible, and who can expertly explain the Krebs cycle if homework help is needed.

Students Who Sit turned an inefficient system into a real community – one that makes life a little easier for everyone involved.

Get in touch with Ann Marie here - Linked In or email [email protected]