Spotlight on Women in Health Ventures

We are thrilled to have Dr. Kameron Matthews on the podcast today. She is the Chief Health Officer at Cityblock Health, where she leads the clinical strategy and operations for a rapidly growing company that provides innovative, personalized, and accessible care to individuals and communities with complex health and social needs. She has over 15 years of experience as a board-certified family phys...

Dr. Mireille Kamariza is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at UCLA and co-founder and CEO of OliLux Biosciences, a company dedicated to providing low- cost, portable and reliable diagnostic devices in low-resource settings. She is a chemical biologist with expertise building diagnostics tools against infectious organisms. With a background in chemical biology and infectiou...

We are so excited to invite Naama Stauber Breckler, a software engineer and a product manager turned healthcare entrepreneur who has founded 3 prior companies and has now started Better Health. Better Health is a healthcare company providing a digital care solution that bundles peer support, education, and delivery of medical supplies to patient’s homes. Through her work, Naama aims to tackle gaps...

Dr. Lyndsey Harper is an enthusiastic and passionate women's health advocate, a Board Certified Ob/Gyn, Associate Professor of Ob/Gyn for Texas A&M COM, a Fellow of The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and a Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health. Dr. Harper is the founder and CEO of Rosy, an award-winning women’s health technolo...

Priyanka Jain has always been passionate about leveraging data to improve outcomes for women. She is co-founder and CEO of Evvy, a company focusing on closing the gender health gap by discovering female-specific biomarkers, starting with the vaginal microbiome. Evvy has the metagenomic sequencing  vaginal health test and offers care based on the discoveries to diagnose, treat, and predict risk for...

Rachel Trobman is founder and CEO of Upside Health, a digital health company transforming the way chronic pain is assessed and treated through remote physiologic monitoring, therapeutic monitoring, and behavioral health integration. Prior to Upside, she worked in news production and content development, working for NY1, the New York Times and NBC News. During our conversation, Rachel details her p...

Dr. Hillit Meidar-Alfi is founder and CEO of Spatially Health, a tech start-up in spatial analytics and location-based services to analyze the relationship between communities and health care outcomes. The platform’s proprietary models leverage location intelligence and spatial analytics that go beyond ZIP codes and provide granular patient insights at the hyper-local level. Spatially helps identi...

Dr. Sheila Gujrathi is a physician-executive with a deep track record in translational science and drug development. She currently sits on the board for Ventyx Biosciences, IMMPACT Bio, ADARx Pharmaceuticals, and Janux Therapeutics and is prior Venture Advisor at OrbiMed and prior chair of Turning Point Therapeutics. She is co-founder and former CEO of Gossamer Bio, a clinical-stage biopharmaceuti...

We are very excited to welcome Linda Kim to the podcast. She is a practicing Harvard-trained psychiatrist and therapist with extensive executive healthcare leadership experience. Linda is the co-founder and CEO at Moon Mental Health and Founder of LuvLuk. Moon Mental Health is a holistic experience of mental health care for women and their loved ones, by women, serving women throughout their lifes...

March is Endometriosis Awareness Month and this week we are very excited to welcome Margaret Melville to the podcast. Margaret is a Board Certified Patient Advocate and Founder and CEO of Lasa Health, a digital health platform for patients with chronic conditions, starting with endometriosis. She previously worked for USAID's Global Health Center for Innovation and Impact and has a Masters in...

Eriona Hysolli is the Head of Biological Sciences at Colossal Biosciences, a breakthrough biosciences and genetic engineering company focused on developing radical new technologies to advance the fields of de-extinction, species preservation and human healthcare through genomics. In January 2023, the company secured an oversubscribed $150M Series B financing led by the United States Innovative Tec...

Jingyun Fan is CEO and co-founder of Shuni, a company that provides CBT-I coaching for insomnia. Prior to Shuni, Jingyun was an AI research scientist at Accenture and a data scientist at Hello, the company behind the bedside sleep tracer Sense. This episode was recorded in September 2022. Since the interview, Jingyun and her team have decided to wind down operations of Shuni. Nonetheless, Jingyun...

Kristin Apple is a healthcare leader and brand strategist, and is President of Linus, an insights, strategy, and innovation consulting firm that helps companies in health, wellness, and life science industries. She has worked on the client-side and as an advisor to the world’s largest consumer healthcare, pharmaceutical, and CPG companies for over twenty years. Prior to LINUS, Kristin built and le...

Ashlee Wisdom is co-founder and CEO of Health in Her Hue, a digital platform connecting Black women and women of color to culturally sensitive healthcare providers, content and community. Ashlee is a public health innovator, committed to dismantling racist systems to achieve a more equitable healthcare landscape. Prior to Health in Her HUE, Ashlee worked for an advisory firm, Junto Health, as the...

Kristina Saffran is the co-founder and CEO of Equip, a virtual program that delivers modern eating disorder treatment through family-based care that promises lasting recovery at home. Prior to Equip, Kristina founded Project HEAL, a leading grassroots eating disorder non-profit dedicated to treatment access. Kristina is an Ashoka Fellow, a Forbes 30 under 30 social entrepreneur, and a Facebook Com...

Cindy Adam is co-founder and CEO of Choix, a telemedicine clinic providing sexual and reproductive healthcare in California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, and New Mexico founded in 2020. Choix provides professional and private abortion care to folks seeking to safely end a pregnancy from the comfort of their own home. Choix has been featured in USA Today, Insider, Fast Company, among many other news...

Today we welcome Dr. Marla Dubinsky who is the Co-Founder for Trellus Health, the first resilience-driven connected health solution for Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Dr. Dubinsky is the Chief of the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology at the Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital and is the Co-Director of the Susan and Leonard Feinstein Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Center at Mount Sinai. H...

Dr. Mimi Winsberg is co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Brightside Health, a telehealth startup focused on delivering life-changing mental health care. A Stanford-trained psychiatrist with over 25 years of clinical experience, she was previously the on-site psychiatrist at the Facebook Wellness Center. Dr. Winsberg appears regularly on Good Morning America, and her work has been featured in H...

Jennifer Steiner is the Chief Executive Officer of Lightfully Behavioral Health, which provides primary mental health treatment to commercially insured clients. Lightfully is one of the first behavioral health organizations built around Processed-based Therapy, a framework that delivers more personalized and holistic care. Previously, she was the Chief Executive Officer of Alsana, an Eating Recove...

Julia Bernstein is a former consultant turned healthcare strategy and growth leader, currently working as General manager of Platform at Thirty Madison, the virtual specialized care platform mixing direct-to-consumer and reimbursable models. Thirty Madison includes companies like Keeps, a men’s hair loss solution, Cove, focusing on migraine care, and Evens for GI symptoms, and Picnic, for allergie...

Mary Ray, COO and co-founder of MyHealthTeam, has a deep understanding of consumers, contributing to her success in growing innovative companies from incubated new ventures at public companies to ‘traditional’ start-ups. Drawing from her personal experience with friends and family living with chronic conditions, she empathizes with the loneliness of these experiences, leading her to co-found MyHea...

Today we will be talking with Alessandra Henderson, the Co-Founder and CEO of Elektra Health, the next-gen healthcare platform to smash the taboo surrounding menopause. Elektra health offers evidence-based education, care, and community for women going through various stages of menopause. Elektra Health has been featured in leading publications including Fast Company, Forbes, Techcrunch, and more...

We have an exciting episode ahead. We are joined by Jessica Bell van der Wal, co-founder and CEO of Frame Fertility, as well as with one of her seed investors, Margaret Malone from Flare Capital. They will each share their perspective on the fundraising process and the relationship between entrepreneur and investor after the round closes. Jessica Bell van der Wal has ~20 years of experience as a c...

Dr. Nina Vasan is a psychiatrist, entrepreneur, and pioneer in digital mental health innovation. Dr. Nina Vasan is the Chief Medical Officer at Real, a mental health care company building a new therapy model. Through a monthly membership model, Real helps members access high quality mental health care through a suite of on-demand tools including their core product, Pathways. Each therapist designe...

Today we get to talk to an innovator who is changing the field of female sexual health. Daphne Chen is the cofounder of tbd health, an at-home screening platform for sexually transmitted infections made for women. Chen pursued her undergraduate degree at Princeton and received her MBA from the University of Pennsylvania. Daphne Chen is utilizing her skillset from her previous strategy consultant a...