Kicking off this Inspiring Women collaboration highlighting several of the extraordinary women leaders in the 7Wire Ventures family.

As a seasoned healthcare executive, entrepreneur, and previous government servant, Lori is familiar with the need to address healthcare problems at scale.  Given the tsunami of need, Lori created Caraway to redefine healthcare for an entire generation, the GenZ population.  Caraway is focused on healthcare delivery of this population with an approach that makes sense for this first generation of digital natives. Bringing together a virtual approach of on-demand care where “no question is too small”, Caraway is bringing evidenced based solutions to this population.

Hear Lori talk about:

Guest Bio:

Seasoned healthcare executive with 25+ years of experience in healthcare and health tech as an entrepreneur, operator and government leader.

Lori is the CEO and co-founder of Caraway, a women’s+ digital healthcare company taking on the societal and medical imperative of caring for college students by providing integrated mental, reproductive and physical healthcare. Previously, she was co-founder and president of HealthReveal, a clinical artificial intelligence (AI) company dedicated to combating chronic disease, which was recently acquired by Accolade (NASDAQ: ACCD), a personalized healthcare and benefits company providing millions of people and their families with exceptional healthcare.

Previously Lori held a series of leadership positions with growing health tech firms:

Additionally, Lori is known for bringing her entrepreneurial spirit and deep industry expertise to the government realm as senior advisor to nation’s first health IT Czar and New York state’s first deputy commissioner of health IT transformation, NYS Department of Health.

Lori currently serves on the board of Sanctuary for Families, a human rights organization dedicated to addressing domestic violence, sex trafficking and other forms of gender violence.

Laurie McGraw is speaking with the Inspiring Women co-founders of Iron Health at HLTH 2023: Stephanie Winans, CEO, Kristina Furlan, Chief Product Officer, and Susanna Wiborg, Chief of Staff.

This is the finale episode of this Inspiring Women collaboration highlighting several of the extraordinary women leaders in the Redesign family.

Each of these founders came to Iron Health to improve equity, access, and outcomes across women’s health.  And to raise the bar. In the US, women have worse outcomes than in any other developed country.  Primary care is part of the issue.  Only half of US-based women see a primary care physician regularly.  Growing mental health issues also play a factor as are the severe shortage of healthcare professionals in these areas.

The bright spot (and opportunity) is that most women see their OBGYN for an annual checkup.  These specialists are now becoming the go to resource for women to handle their broader primary care needs.  Additionally, they are handling mental health issues.  84% of OBGYNs are now prescribing psychiatric medications.

Enter Iron Health, the virtual practice extension of an OBGYN.  This company came out of stealth in March of 2023 and in just six months is working with over 50 OBGYNs across four states.  Early feedback is positive for both patients and providers.

Stephanie, Kristina, and Susanna also talk about what it means to build a purposeful leadership team, mostly women, who have not worked together before.  Energy; excitement; leading by example; not having to compete for the one available seat at the table were some of the comments from this “Badass” team.

Their closing advice? Ask for the informational interview.  Surround yourself with allies. And this call to action:  If we are going to close the gender gap in leadership, Stephanie asks all women leaders to find a woman and mentor her.

Guest Bios:

Stephanie Winans, CEO

Stephanie Winans is a seasoned healthcare entrepreneur passionate about applying creative problem solving to deliver better outcomes for patients and providers. She possesses diverse experience spanning both B2C and enterprise healthcare, media, and technology. Prior to Iron Health, Stephanie was the Chief Growth Officer at BioDigital, and led two successful healthcare exits at The Wellness Network (acquired by WebMD) and Bundoo, a maternal and infant health startup (acquired by Wafra Partners). Stephanie received her MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and holds a B.S. in Marketing and Psychology from Spring Hill College.

Kristina Furlan, Chief Product Officer

Kristina Furlan is a driven business leader with over 16 years of experience developing and commercializing digital health solutions. Prior to Iron Health, Kristina led two successful internal startups at Philips and held product leadership roles at Stryker and St. Jude Medical. Kristina has a Masters in Science and Bachelors in Science from Texas A&M University.

Susanna Wiborg, RN, MBA, Chief of Staff

Susanna Wiborg is an innovative leader with a diverse background having worked as a nurse, hospital administrator, consultant, and in data/tech. Prior experience includes leadership positions at Penn Medicine, Lumere, Sg2, and Northwestern Medicine. Susanna received her MBA from Kellogg School of Management and holds a BSN and BSE from the University of Pennsylvania.

Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Kathy Kaluhiokalani, Founder and CEO of Pip Care at HLTH 2023.

This is the next episode of this Inspiring Women collaboration highlighting several of the extraordinary women leaders in the Redesign family.  Pip Care was launched out of the Redesign process to address support for patients before, during and after surgery.  Kathy has such a clear vision and leads with purpose and intensity, coupled with perspective and a sense of calm that she attributes to this NOT being her first rodeo as the Chief.

Hear Kathy talk about:

Guest Bio:

Kathleen Kaluhiokalani has been characterized as a leader with “flawless execution, innovation, and grit, who approaches obstacles with a vision of sustainable, long-term success in mind.” Her distinguished career is in steering healthcare business organizations to their next level of success. This is accomplished through explosive growth, performance turnarounds, business and culture transformations, corporate rebranding, and restructuring organizational matrix. Her expertise is in vision and execution, being able to see the big picture and immediately identifying the path to reach the objective, while building and empowering top-talent to partner and capitalize on the opportunities presented. She develops strategies that drive revenue and fuel profit growth, navigating complex business challenges and delivering effective solutions, and leveraging people, process, and technology to achieve key business outcomes.

Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Rachael Jones, Founder and CEO of Syntax Health at HLTH 2023.

This is the next episode of this Inspiring Women collaboration highlighting several of the extraordinary women leaders in the Redesign family.  Syntax Health was launched out of the Redesign process and Rachael could not be more excited to talk about the company, how data and analytics support the industry’s move to Value Based Care.  And then of course, what it really means to be part of the 1% club…. meaning, the few African American women who are also CEOs.

In this episode you will hear Rachael talk about the move to Value Based Care, true value based care.  The importance of understanding all of this data means the opportunity to determine, up front, best fit delivery models to achieve best clinical outcomes. It takes all of seconds to hear Rachael’s depth of expertise and excitement about data analytics, understanding how to use data to reduce time to provider contracting and to provide a much better understanding of how the finances will work in VBC. Today, the move to VBC (imperative in her view) is that it is too complicated.  She doesn’t have simple answers. but she does have the tooling and understanding to do dynamic negotiation of contracts at the most effective stage – the beginning.

When talking about her own ascent to leadership, Rachael took the step to CEO with a clear vision of her why.  Wanting autonomy to scale her grand vision, building her own team, and leaning into a clear strength of hers – having significant impact and leaving a legacy.  There is no better space for this than in healthcare.

When Rachael shares her leadership journey, it has the appearance of a smooth trajectory to the top (haha).  She shares a bit of behind the scenes of what it took to get here.  This includes a strong core of support.  For her, it’s family first that provides grounding and an escape when needed.  Professional groups are valuable, supportive, help expand perspectives.  But there is nothing more valuable than the lived experience of very tough moments.  The times when the heads-down, just work “twice as hard” approach was a miss in terms of reading the room when leadership changed (and so did support for her project).  And with great challenge, Rachael also knows this is the calling of leadership.  She calls it the need for Grit and Grace.  She adds (importantly), and a little bit of “SuckItUpNess”.

Best advice for other women leaders?  Claim credit.  And if that does not feel natural (and very often, it does not), write it down in your own personal Win log.

Guest Bio:

Rachael Jones is the Co-founder and CEO of Syntax. Syntax is a SaaS-based enterprise tool that helps payors and providers model out their value-based care contracts. Rachael is an award-winning healthcare executive, bringing over 20 years of experience transforming healthcare through strategic leadership, operational oversight, product strategy, P&L management, and data-driven analytics.

Rachel joins Syntax after serving as SVP of Performance Analytics & Quality at Cotiviti where she led a team that updated, refreshed, and delivered industry-leading, flagship healthcare analytics tools and AI solutions. She also held several leadership positions at Anthem, HealthFirst and the TriZetto Group. Rachael is passionate about paving the way for a smoother journey to value-based care by allowing health plans to transition from simply reporting quality measures to driving the purchase, delivery, and utilization of higher-value healthcare.

Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Brenda Schmidt, Head of Enterprise Growth at Redesign Health at HLTH 2023.

In collaboration with Redesign Health, Laurie is speaking with several of the extraordinary women leaders in the Redesign family.  This first collab conversation is with Brenda Schmidt.  Brenda joined Redesign after a substantive career in healthcare as an executive, builder of companies, venture studio chief, board member….the list goes ON.  She self describes as an “INTRApreneur”, a hand raiser when it came to opportunities along the way that allowed her to learn.  The consistent career thread is curiosity.  And with all that learning, comes the desire to give back, share with others and work with companies to accelerate their opportunities for growth and impact.

Hear Brenda talk about:

Brenda’s closing advice for aspirational women is to surround yourself with those folks who can help you, forget about the imposter syndrome, and become resilient to hearing no…no is just a pathway to yes!

Guest Bio:

Brenda Schmidt, Head of Enterprise Growth, Redesign Health

Brenda is a proven innovation leader focused on go-to-market speed and growth of healthcare technology and technology-enabled services startups. Brenda founded Viridian Health and Solera Health to create new models for whole-person care. She also led Coplex, a venture studio partnering with health systems to validate, design and launch new healthcare companies. 

Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Chelsea Clinton.

What an honor to speak with Chelsea Clinton at the HLTH 2023 conference in Vegas. Despite thumping music and flashing lights, Chelsea didn’t miss a beat to focus on the important space of healthcare and use her platform to address inequities.

Hear Chelsea talk about:

….and one last special shout out to my very own daughter Chelsea.

To Chelsea Clinton, thank you for this conversation.

Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Lisa Suennen, veteran healthcare leader and commentator.  Also, founder of CSweetner, now a part of HLTH supporting the advancement of women in healthcare.

Kicking off HLTH 2023, Lisa provides her views on 5 key topic areas at the conference – what’s exciting and where we might be a bit more skeptical. Hear Lisa’s Hot Takes on:

Of course, we had to close out on the state of play for women in healthcare.  I forced Lisa to choose something positive to highlight.  Harder than it should have been!  The pockets of progress are there , but she was quick to point out that women have still lost more of the jobs of late and recent reports on the state of funding which show further declines in progress.  Sticking with the positive though, Lisa highlights the new focus and investment in Women’s Health.  Promising indeed!!

Thank you Lisa for sharing these views and pointing out some of the key topic areas for HLTH 2023.

Guest bio:

30+ Years of Healthcare and Team Leadership – living in the center of the Venn diagram between healthcare, entrepreneurship, and technology. Very comfortable coloring outside the lines.

I love to lead and work alongside creative, exceptional talent to build high value healthcare enterprises that thrive in a transforming world.

I have worked in and/or with all sides of the healthcare continuum (digital health/health IT/payer/provider/ health services /medical device/pharma); I have also worked on multiple sides of the business equation (executive/operations leadership, venture investor, strategy consultant, board member). As such, I think of myself as having a sort of Rubik’s Cube of healthcare knowledge that I can apply to new situations in a highly flexible way. From a practical standpoint, it means that I have an unusually broad perspective on the interplay among the different healthcare disciplines, the economics that drive them and the incentives that make buyers/decision-makers pay attention.

I combine that knowledge with a broad skill set in executive and operational leadership, strategy/BD, sales & marketing, partnering, and fund-raising to deliver results, whether it’s launching a new company or product, developing new go-to-market and partnering strategies, building a team and ensuring esprit de corps, accelerating growth in existing and/or new markets or raising capital. I’m keenly aware of the need for balancing strategy with the pragmatic realities of money and markets – a need that applies across early stage, growth and established companies. I draw energy from things that are new, different, transformative but also actionable.

What I’ve Done: Executive/Operating Leadership, Venture Capital Partnership (Corporate Venture and Independent Funds), Strategy Consultant, Board Member, Advisor to companies large and small

Other Activities: Advisor to Startup Companies, Venture Valkyrie blog (http://venturevalkyrie.com), Faculty at UC Berkeley/Haas, Frequent public speaker. Founder, CSweetener.org

Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Elisabetta Bartoloni, a Heidrick & Struggles Partner and leader of the Americas Global Markets Practice.

In our post-pandemic workplaces where opportunities to advance to leadership have changed,  who better to speak with than Elisabetta Bartoloni from Heidrick & Struggles to understand the 2023 state of play for women in the workplace and the opportunities (and headwinds that remain) for advancing to leadership.

Leadership opportunities for women align with the key skills for today’s most successful leaders – empathy and inclusivity.  These styles tend to be more female forward and are harder to learn.  There has been a lot of investment in unconscious bias training and focus on honing these skills – but it simply has not worked.

Research also indicates that CULTURE has moved to the top slot for the drivers of performance (above strategy, operating model, and talent).  Also (and perhaps not surprising), companies with the highest scores on culture (where employees feel a sense of belonging….ability to show up as their authentic selves…), these companies financially outperform other by 2x.

Elisabetta points out that there has been progress of women advancing in leadership.  The missing link remains in advancement to positions that own P&L’s.  Her advice to others is to jump at those opportunities to have responsibility for the financial performance of a business, project, or unit.

Elisabetta also walks the walk with her efforts on the internal company Women Inspired Network and other external organizations that support girls seeing a path for themselves into leadership.  We continue to have a LOT of work to do to address gender parity in the workplace.

Starting early with girls, providing a company culture of support, community and advocacy, and leading by example  – all so very important.  Thank you Elisabetta!!

Guest bio:

 Elisabetta Bartoloni is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ New York office and sector leader of the Americas Global Markets Practice. She also co-chairs the firm’s Americas Women Inclusion Network (WIN). Previously, she led the Americas Investment & Corporate Banking Practice. She has more than 20 years of experience in executive search.

Elisabetta’s executive search and advisory practice spans from managing directors to functional roles, including CEO and board positions, across investment banking, global and capital markets, and asset management. In addition to working with global financial institutions, Elisabetta has worked extensively with boutique and middle market investment banks and other investment management and fintech companies.

Before joining Heidrick & Struggles, Elisabetta was a managing director at Westwood Partners focusing on investment banking and asset management in the Americas and responsible for the firm’s Latin America executive search practice. Prior to joining Westwood, Elisabetta was a director at J.H. McCann & Company, a boutique executive search firm exclusively serving the financial services industry and a senior associate in the global financial services practice of another global executive search firm. Elisabetta began her career in the financial services industry, having worked as a data research analyst in investment banking at Goldman Sachs.

Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Deepthi Bathina, CEO and founder of RhythmX AI and Healthcare Partner at SAIGroup.

Deepthi’s interest in healthcare is personal.  She lost her grandmother early due to complications from diabetes.  What Deepthi remembers was the lack of understanding of how diabetes could be controlled.  And the suffering, not only in her family but across many other parts of the world.  And she wants to do something about it.

As a teen, she discovered coding – simply magic!! Which is how she feels today about AI and the endless possibilities.  She has recently launched her new company, RhythmX AI. A generative AI-native health company driving a paradigm shift in hyper-personalized care.  Deepthi talks about what it means to provide whole person care.  Using enormous amounts of data to fill in gaps and then provide information within the workflows of clinicians.  Importantly and using her background as the chief product person at a large payor, a key aspect of the platform will be to understand the benefits or gaps in benefits of the patient to address the access and affordability of healthcare.

As we talked about her leadership journey, Deepthi reflects on working with iconic leaders like Jack Welch early in her career and today, Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, founder and CEO of SAIGroup and recently honored on the inaugural TIME100 AI list.  From Jack Welch, she has embraced extreme candor and transparency.  And from Dr. Wadhwani, knowing that the journey of 1000 miles begins with incredibly important first steps.  Also, she knows the problems they intend to solve at RhythmX AI are extremely complex, so the advice to get to the 4mm level of the problem is key.  But advice on networking (pick up golf!!!!), raising a family (take them on the road with you!!), that didn’t work for her, so she did it her own way…. which has seemed to work out just fine.

Deepthi closes our conversation with advice for leaders, and for women leaders in particular.  Simply put, take risks.  Push yourself and aim high.

Deepthi Bathina | CEO and founder of RhythmX AI and Healthcare Partner at SAIGroup 

Deepthi Bathina is founder and CEO of RhythmX AI, a new health AI company driving a paradigm shift in whole-person primary care. The innovative Rhythm AI-powered platform is helping physicians pioneer a new era of hyper-personalized patient care. RhythmX AI is owned by the private equity firm SAIGroup (Symphony AI and Concert AI), one of the largest and fastest-growing Silicon Valley firms focused on enterprise AI. 

Bathina is chair of the board of the Kerry Murphy Healey Center for Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Babson College. She is the former chief product officer at Humana, a Fortune 50 healthcare firm, where she led product development and management of all healthcare solutions for the entire company and led customer success functions across Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial segments. Before Humana, Bathina was general manager of operations for the $1 billion Healthcare Technology Division of Nuance Communications. She is the former head of global operations for the clinical decision support division (UpToDate) at Wolters Kluwer, leading global customer operations in 170 countries.

Inspiring Women and Boulder, Colorado is stop # 9 on the HIT Like a Girl Pod Road to HLTH 2023.  It was planes, trains, and automobiles for founder Joy Rios who journeyed across the country, visiting innovative health tech hubs and speaking with women about some of the most pressing problems in healthcare today.  Along the #RoadtoHLTH23, the ideas flowed freely, as did the laughs, networking and idea sharing.

In Boulder, Colorado, our day began with an early morning and very gorgeous hike, some stretching, and then a joint podcast with Inspiring Women and HIT Like a Girl.  In this special episode, hear Laurie McGraw and Joy Rios talk about:

May this lively conversation lead to many others on the Road to HLTH!!!!!