From Diagnosis to Innovation: The Story Behind Cooler Heads

Cooler Heads is filling a gap that our founder painfully lived through in 2016. 

When our CEO and founder, Kate Dilligan, was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was suddenly pushed into a world of treatment decisions, side effects, and uncertainty. Like many patients, she focused on survival. But she also experienced firsthand how chemotherapy impacts not just the body, but identity, confidence, and daily life.

Hair loss during chemotherapy is often described as a side effect. In reality, for many patients, it can be one of the most visible and emotionally difficult parts of treatment. It can feel like a loss of privacy. A loss of normalcy. A loss of control.

Determined to preserve her hair, Kate chose manual cold caps. The process was logistically complex, required constant cap changes and came at a significant financial cost. Kate worked throughout treatment, and as an executive, she didn’t want her health to become a topic of conversation among her team. She wanted to compartmentalize being a cancer patient from the other aspects of her life.  Keeping her hair allowed her to maintain who she was at work and be a patient when she was at treatment or with her medical team. 

Through that experience, Kate saw a clear gap in cold capping. Cold caps existed, but the process was not simple or widely accessible. She believed it could be better.

Cooler Heads was founded with a clear mission: to make scalp cooling the standard of care for both men and women. What began as one woman’s personal experience became a commitment to reimagining supportive cancer care. Today, Cooler Heads partners with oncology practices across the country to help patients preserve their hair and, for many, a sense of self during chemotherapy.

Kate’s story is not just about starting a company. It is about understanding the emotional weight of a cancer diagnosis on patients and their loved ones. It is about recognizing that cancer care should support the whole person in all aspects of their lives.