About My Family Story Vault
The Origins
In 2013, my grandmother started showing early signs of dementia. She was born in 1923, grew up during the Depression, married during World War II, and had lived through more history than most people could imagine. One of my earliest memories was her promising to take me on a trip to the moon! My mom wanted to capture her stories before they were gone, so I bought her a digital audio recorder and showed her how to use it.
For years, my mom recorded grandma's stories and asked me to back up the audio files. There were hours and hours of them. She had this beautiful idea to transcribe everything and turn it into a physical book the family could keep, but the sheer volume made it impossible. The recordings just sat there.
During the pandemic, I finally did something about it. I built a simple app called Indelible Life, uploaded many of the audio files with auto-transcriptions I created using early Google transcription software, and shared it with my mom, my sister, my aunts, and all the cousins. Nothing fancy. But for the first time, the whole family could hear grandma's stories in her own voice, leave comments, and add their own photos and memories.
After the pandemic, other work took over. But I never stopped thinking about what that little app had done for our family, and what it could do for others.
In April 2025, I decided to build it properly. Nine months later, My Family Story Vault launched. What started as a way to save one grandmother's voice grew into a full platform where any family can create tribute pages for a loved one, build out their family tree, share private stories and pass down their loved one's stories so future generations can experience their life. The technology is far more sophisticated now, but the reason behind it hasn't changed at all.
My Family Story Vault is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, connecting families across the world. The platform is built on Google Cloud infrastructure, designed to keep family stories safe, private and accessible for generations to come.
The Team
My Family Story Vault is founder-led and intentionally lean.
Chris Hammersley — Founder
Chris holds an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School (Magna Cum Laude) and a B.A. in Communication: Film & Video from Loyola University Chicago (Cum Laude), giving him a formal academic foundation in both storytelling craft and media theory that shapes everything he builds.
That background shows up consistently across his career. He produced and directed a feature documentary about his father walking across the United States. He produced the full development package for an indie feature dance film, including its website and teaser. He built an interactive 3D world to showcase the journey two movement artists took when working together remotely to create a performance piece. Across more than two decades, the thread running through nearly every project is the same: finding the right medium to tell a story that matters.
The other constant has been technology. Not technology for its own sake, but as a tool to solve a specific problem. Early in his career he led R&D at B&H Photo Video, building a next-generation customer retention solution. He co-founded a NYC startup that combined search technology with behavioral analytics, partnering with vendors later acquired by Adobe and Aptean. Lately, he's built web solutions and managed GTM strategies for a variety of startups and medium-sized businesses. Each time picking whatever tech stack fits the problem.
When he built the first version of My Family Story Vault's predecessor in 2020, he used early Google transcription software to make certain features work. When he rebuilt it in 2025, he used Google Cloud. He's always found the best available tool and learned to use it effectively.
The Technology
From day one, My Family Story Vault has been built on Google Cloud. We use Google Cloud Storage as the backbone of our media infrastructure, storing TB's of photos, videos and audio recordings from families that trust us to protect these media-based assets for generations to come. Google Cloud let's us deliver our family memory preservation solution at scale.
This isn't a platform where families upload a few snapshots. These are irreplaceable family archives, often spanning decades of memories. The reliability, security and global reach of Google Cloud is exactly the kind of foundation this kind of responsibility requires.