Innovate and Elevate

Hair loss affects millions of people, yet most conversations begin only after thinning becomes visible. In this episode of Innovate & Elevate, Sharon Kedar sits down with board-certified dermatologist and hair health expert Dr. Doris Day to explore why the future of hair health may depend on earlier intervention, better understanding, and new scientific breakthroughs. Together, they discuss th...

Sepsis remains one of medicine's most difficult diagnostic challenges, where every hour can impact patient outcomes. In this episode of Innovate & Elevate, Sharon Kedar sits down with Dr. Tim Sweeney, Co-Founder and CEO of Inflammatix, to explore how advances in artificial intelligence, host-response diagnostics, and precision medicine could transform the way clinicians detect infection and cr...

What if some forms of hearing loss do not appear on current hearing tests at all? In this episode of Innovate & Elevate, Sharon Kedar sits down with neuroscientist, engineer, musician, and Carnegie Mellon Dean Dr. Barbara Shinn-Cunningham to explore how the brain processes sound and why hearing is far more complex than simply detecting noise. Together, they discuss hidden hearing loss, the “co...

What happened in 1993 still affects medicine today. That was the year women were required to be included in NIH-funded clinical trials, a shift that helped begin correcting decades of male-centered medical research. In this powerful conversation, Sharon Kedar CFA sits down with Jessica Federer, former Chief Digital Officer at Bayer and Managing Director of The Women’s Health Fund, to explore why t...

What does it really take to build a healthcare company that lasts? In this episode of Innovate and Elevate, Sharon Kedar sits down with Amir Dan Rubin, former CEO of One Medical and Stanford Medicine, to unpack a 30-year journey of building in healthcare. From early ideas around telehealth in the 1990s to leading One Medical through its $3.9 billion acquisition by Amazon, Amir shares what most peo...

In the opening episode of Season 3, host Sharon Kedar speaks with Dr. Mike Rubin about following scientific curiosity across disciplines. Mike reflects on his early training in medicine, his decision to leave clinical practice, and how that transition led him into science-driven venture capital. Rather than framing career change as failure, this conversation examines coherence, preparation, and se...

Welcome to Innovate & Elevate , hosted by Sharon Kedar, Managing Partner at Northpond Ventures. Each episode features conversations with the innovators, physicians, scientists, founders, investors, and industry leaders advancing the future of human health. From groundbreaking diagnostics and medical technologies to longevity science, women's health, preventative medicine, healthcare investing,...

On this episode of Innovate & Elevate , Sharon speaks with Dr. Erin Duralde , Medical Director for Women’s Health and Menopause Care at One Medical, about a question that keeps coming up in midlife healthcare: now that we know more, where do people actually go for menopause care? Recorded shortly after the FDA removed the long-standing black box warning on estrogen therapies, this conversation...

On this episode of Innovate & Elevate, Sharon sits down with Dr. Corinne Menn, an OB-GYN, menopause specialist, and breast cancer survivor, to unpack one of the most misunderstood topics in women’s health: the relationship between breast cancer risk and hormone therapy. Recorded eight days after the FDA announced it will remove the long-standing black box language on hormone therapy, this conv...

Why do only 5% of women in America use hormone therapy today, when so many did just two decades ago? In this special live episode, host Sharon Kedar sits down with Dr. Kelly Casperson, urologist, author, and leading voice in women’s health, to unpack the truth about hormone replacement therapy (HRT) — and how one misleading press release in 2002 changed everything. Dr. Casperson explains what real...

What happens when a successful professional is dismissed by her doctor, given sleeping pills for severe perimenopause symptoms, and instead decides to launch a company to help change women's healthcare forever? In this conversation, host Sharon Kedar welcomes Midi Health ’s CEO Joanna Strober, who shares her personal story of being dismissed by her doctor and her mission to fix the women's health...

What if aging wasn't about being discarded, but about reclaiming your dignity and power? In this powerful episode of Innovate and Elevate, host Sharon Kedar sits down with her personal doctor, Dr. Rachel Rubin, a board-certified urologist and sexual medicine specialist. Dubbed "The Women's Dignity Doctor" by Sharon, Dr. Rubin is on a mission to fix the menopause care crisis by educating both patie...

What if everything you thought you knew about testosterone was completely wrong? This episode of Innovate and Elevate features a groundbreaking conversation with Dr. Kelly Casperson, a renowned urologist and women’s health advocate who is rewriting the narrative around testosterone and women. She makes a compelling case for why testosterone is not just for men and why it is so much more than just...

Aging is inevitable, but decline is not. This episode of Innovate and Elevate features a powerful conversation with Dr. Vonda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon and advocate for aging with power. She makes a compelling case for women to take control of their health long before menopause, starting in their 30s and 40s, or even earlier. Using the moving story of her patient, Miriam, who suffered a preven...

In this episode of Innovate & Elevate, Sharon Kedar is joined by Carolee Lee, Founder and CEO of Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM). Carolee shares her journey from fashion entrepreneur to women's health trailblazer, highlighting how her experience building a global jewelry brand led her to recognize the critical need for change in women's health funding and research. The conversation delves...

In this episode of Innovate and Elevate, Sharon is joined by Shelley Zalis, Founder and CEO of The Female Quotient, a media and experience company that advances gender equality in the workplace. Shelley is a pioneer in online research and the first female chief executive ranked in the research industry's top 25. The importance of mentorship and community building is a central theme of Shelley’s ca...

In this episode of Innovate and Elevate , Sharon Kedar is joined by Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, the inaugural director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a government agency designed to drive high-impact health innovations. Appointed by President Biden in 2022, Dr. Wegrzyn shares her deep experience in both synthetic biology and biosecurity, drawing from her work at DARPA, IARPA,...

In this episode of Innovate and Elevate , Sharon welcomes Lucy Pérez, a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company and Coleader of the McKinsey Health Institute. Lucy is also coauthor of the groundbreaking report, "Closing The Women's Health Gap: A $1 Trillion Opportunity to Improve Lives and Economies," copublished with the World Economic Forum. Sharon and Lucy discuss the report’s key findings and...

In this episode, Sharon is joined by Erin Lambroza, Vice President of L Catterton, a consumer-focused private equity firm. Erin holds Director roles on the boards of Alice Mushrooms—a functional health supplement business pairing chocolate with the power of adaptogens from legal mushrooms; an unannounced beauty and wellness platform providing solutions to women who are navigating menopause; and Yu...

In this episode, Sharon is joined by Dr. Natalie Bello, Director of Hypertension Research, Staff Physician and Associate Professor of Cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. After learning that 80% of heart disease is preventable in medical school, Dr. Bello decided that focusing her career on helping people stay healthy, optimize their risk factors, and live long lives was an easy choice to ma...

In this episode, Sharon is joined by Dr. Donald Ingber, Founding Director at Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.  Dr. Ingber’s commitment to following his passion has led him to countless medical and technological breakthroughs, including organ-chip technology. These incredible chips recreate the structure and function of human organs. Drugs can be admi...

Dr. Canan Dagdeviren is Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Director of the Conformable Decoders research group at the MIT Media Lab.  In this episode, Dr. Dagdeviren shares the incredible story behind the lab’s wearable, conformable ultrasound breast patch that enables standardized and reproducible breast imaging. They’re developing...

On this episode of Innovate and Elevate, Sharon is joined by Dr. Rachel Brem. Dr. Brem is board-certified in Diagnostic Radiology. She is a Professor of Radiology, the Vice Chair of Radiology, and Director of Breast Imaging & Intervention at The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences. In this conversation, Dr. Brem shares how to understand your risk for breast ca...

On this episode of Innovate and Elevate , Sharon is joined by Dr. Janet Storella, Medical Director of Breastlink Maryland at RadNet. Dr. Storella is a breast imaging specialist and a board-certified diagnostic radiologist with over 40 years of radiology experience.  In this conversation, Dr. Storella shares deeper insight into the practice and art of mammography, contemporary issues in the fi...

On this episode of Innovate and Elevate, Sharon is joined by Dr. Kathyrn Rexrode, Chief of the Division of Women’s Health in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  In their conversation, Dr. Rexrode discusses the progression in her career from experiencing imposter syndrome to stepping into her confidence and authority...