Our Story
Two heart parents. Five families. One foundation born from lived experience.
How MAJJK Began
We are two heart parents who met the way no one plans to meet - inside the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU) of a children's hospital, each watching our own daughter fight for her life.
What we found there surprised us. Among the fear and the machines and the long, sleepless nights, we found community. We found other families who had been there for weeks, months, even over a year - all navigating the same invisible gaps: no structured mental health support, mounting financial pressure at home, and no roadmap for what long-term cardiac hospitalization actually looks like for a family.
Together with three of those families, we formed something. Five children - M, A, J, J, and K - gave our foundation its name. One of our founding namesakes passed away in September 2025. This foundation carries her memory, and the memory of every child who has fought this fight.
The MAJJK Heart Family Foundation is not built from the outside looking in. It is built from living inside the CVICU walls, walking those halls in a life suspended between hospital and home. We developed our own, make-shift support group. We know what families need because we needed it too.
The Five
MAJJK is named for five children - all part of long-term CVICU inpatient families who lived this experience together. Their stories, and their fight are the foundation of everything we do. One of our five is no longer with us. Her memory drives us forward every single day.
Our Founders
Peter Picone — Co-Founder & Board Chair
Peter is a heart dad who spent over a year inside the Phoenix Children's CVICU with his daughter. During that time, he didn't wait for change to come - he advocated for it. He successfully pushed for exceptions allowing long-term pediatric patients to go outside during RSV and flu season, which at PCH can stretch from October through May. He advocated for dances, game nights, parties, and community events that brought light into the unit. He fought for expanded lunch menus, refrigerators for long-term patient rooms, and the small dignities that make an impossible situation more human. He has been a CVICU Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC) member since January 2025, giving families a formal voice in the care environment they live in. His daughter has lived with HLHS, heart failure, and two heart transplants. There were moments during those times when he understood, with complete clarity, exactly how much was at stake. His professional background in behavioral health and quality improvement gives him an uncommon ability to see both the human and systemic gaps that cardiac families face during long-term hospitalization. That combination of lived experience and professional lens is what drives everything he builds.
Melissa Sachet — Co-Founder & Executive Director
Melissa is a heart mom who has spent years living inside children's hospitals alongside her daughter; first as an infant navigating open-heart surgery and weeks in a medically induced coma, and again years later when a serious complication returned their lives to hospital rooms and uncertainty. When answers weren't available in Phoenix, she traveled across the country by medical jet in search of specialists and advanced procedures that could offer her daughter a different path. When those efforts brought only temporary relief, she continued to live through the fear, the setbacks, and the financial strain of putting your entire life on hold to stay beside your child. In the middle of one of the hardest stretches, she took her daughter to New York City, pushing her through Manhattan in a wheelchair on a trip her daughter still treasures deeply. On April 9, 2025, her daughter received a heart transplant. Today she is a thriving teenager who loves music, singing, school, and making the people around her laugh. Those years taught Melissa what cardiac families quietly endure - parents losing income while living bedside, mental health struggles going unsupported, families navigating impossible circumstances that hospital system was not built to help them with. Those experiences don't leave you. They became the foundation for everything MAJJK does.
Founding Board of Directors
MAJJK is governed by a five-member founding board with expertise across mental health, healthcare, finance, and community engagement.
Peter Picone — Board Chair · Co-Founder
Tom Loschiavo, LPC — Secretary · Licensed Professional Counselor
Kristy Barnes, CFP® — Treasurer · Certified Financial Planner
Gaurav Auditya — Board Member
Final board seat – to be announced soon.
CLINICAL ADVISOR
Dr. Daniel A. Velez, MD, Clinical Advisor, MAJJK Heart Family Foundation
MAJJK is honored to have Dr. Daniel Velez as a Clinical Advisor. A cardiothoracic surgeon with more than 20 years of experience, he is one of the nation’s leading pediatric cardiac surgeons. At Phoenix Children’s, he serves as Co-Director of the Center for Heart Care, Division Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery, and Surgical Director of Heart Transplantation. In 2019, he led the team that operated on the youngest patient in the world to receive a total artificial heart. His clinical expertise, deep connection to the CVICU community, and belief in MAJJK’s mission make him an extraordinary voice in our work.
Phoenix Children's
Our primary partnership focus is Phoenix Children's - specifically the CVICU and Cardiology units where long-term inpatient cardiac families live. Our co-founder is a current CVICU PFAC member, and we are actively building a formal program partnership to embed mental health access and family support directly into the CVICU experience.
We are also proud to work alongside the PCH Foundation, which serves as the fundraising and community partnership arm of the hospital.