In this special live episode of Leadership Rounds in Nashville, TN, Dr. Reena Pande sat down with renowned physician, bioethicist, and healthcare policy leader Dr. Zeke Emanuel for a wide-ranging conversation on wellness culture, AI in healthcare, chronic disease management, empathy in medicine, and the future of clinician leadership.

Drawing on themes from his newest book, Eat Your Ice Cream, Zeke challenged today’s obsession with optimization, arguing that meaningful relationships remain among the strongest predictors of health, longevity, and happiness… not endless self-tracking and data collection.

The conversation also explored how artificial intelligence may fundamentally reshape healthcare delivery and what future clinicians must learn in an increasingly digital healthcare ecosystem.

Topics & Takeaways

• The “wellness industrial complex” and optimization culture
• Loneliness, friendship, and longevity research
• Why social connection impacts physical health
• AI vs. physicians in diagnosis and chronic disease management
• The future of empathy in medicine
• Medical education reform and clinician EQ
• Chronic disease, value-based care, and healthcare innovation
• What future healthcare leadership requires

Chapter Markers

00:00 — Meet Dr. Zeke Emanuel

02:20 — Why he wrote Eat Your Ice Cream

07:10 — Wellness culture, optimization, and narcissism

10:04 — The science of friendship and longevity

14:29 — Why talking to strangers matters

19:06 — Exercise, VO2 max, and wellness myths

24:04 — AI’s future role in healthcare

31:11 — How medicine and medical education must evolve

36:07 — Audience Q&A: empathy, AI, and multidisciplinary care

46:14 — What future physicians will need most

50:21 — Zeke’s “wellness trifecta” for a meaningful life

What does it take to move AI in healthcare from promise to real-world impact?

In this episode of Leadership Rounds, Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, Chief Medical Officer at Aidoc and former President of the American Medical Association, joins Dr. Reena Pande to explore the future of clinical AI.Drawing on experience across clinical practice, national policy, military leadership, and health technology, Jesse shares why he made the transition from influencing healthcare at scale to building it directly, and what it will take to deploy AI that actually improves outcomes.

Topics & Takeaways

• The critical distinction between clinical AI and administrative AI
• Why most health systems struggle to implement AI effectively
• The role of clinician leadership in product design and deployment
• How leading organizations are scaling AI across entire systems
• Why trust, workflow integration, and architecture (not algorithms) determine success

🔔 Subscribe to Leadership Rounds for more candid conversations with the leaders redefining healthcare.

More on Jesse: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doctorjesse/

More from Reena: 

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reenapande/

- Substack: https://reenapande.substack.com/

📍 Learn more at Oxeon.com

#leadershiprounds #prescribingleadership #conversationswithclinicians #clinicians #leaders #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #healthcare #healthcareexecutive #clinicianexecutive #entrepreneurship #health #innovation #healthcareinnovation #clinicianleadership #digitalhealth

In this special season recap, Dr. Reena Pande reflects on the defining lessons and leadership insights from the first year of Leadership Rounds, featuring conversations with some of healthcare’s most influential clinician leaders, operators, and policymakers. From Neel Shah of Maven to Microsoft’s Mary Presti, these candid discussions about the future of care delivery helped lay the foundation for an exciting new season to come that will kick off with a series of episodes focused on the rapidly evolving world of healthcare AI.

Mary Presti (Microsoft) joins Dr. Reena Pande to explore how AI is moving from pilot to enterprise-scale in healthcare and why workflow, trust, and clinician adoption will determine what succeeds. As a senior healthcare technology executive at Microsoft and former bedside nurse, Mary brings unique experience spanning clinical care, consulting, pharma, and health tech, and offers a grounded perspective on how AI is evolving from early experimentation to enterprise-scale deployment. Together, Mary and Reena explore where AI is delivering real value today and why the biggest opportunities are not in diagnostics or drug discovery, but in reducing friction across everyday clinical workflows, leading Mary to share why she believes the future of AI in healthcare depends less on technology itself and more on trust, governance, and change management.

Topics & Takeaways

• Why 2026 will mark the shift from AI pilots to enterprise-scale deployment
• The concept of “surround care” and where AI is delivering immediate ROI
• How ambient AI and copilots are reducing documentation burden
• Why clinicians must play a central role in AI design and deployment
• The emergence of new roles like clinician, prompt engineers, and AI governance leaders
• Why trust, adoption, and workflow design (not technology) are the true bottlenecks
• How AI can restore human connection in care delivery

🔔 Subscribe to Leadership Rounds for more candid conversations with the leaders redefining healthcare.

More on Mary: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryvarghese

More from Reena: 

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reenapande/⁠⁠⁠⁠  

- Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://reenapande.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠    

📍 Learn more at Oxeon.com

#leadershiprounds #prescribingleadership #conversationswithclinicians #clinicians #leaders #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #healthcare #healthcareexecutive #clinicianexecutive #entrepreneurship #health #innovation #healthcareinnovation #clinicianleadership #digitalhealth

Mandy Cohen and Oxeon’s Dr. Reena Pande unpack crisis leadership, trust-building, and why change management (not technology) will determine healthcare’s future.

In this episode of Leadership Rounds, Dr. Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH—physician, operator, and former CDC Director—dives into exploring what it takes to lead through complexity and build systems that improve health at scale.

Mandy traces her path from early exposure to healthcare’s “broken parts” through her mother’s work in emergency rooms to shaping policy and execution across major institutions. She shares a pivotal patient story that reshaped how she thinks about whole-person health and why leaders must build infrastructure that prevents critical needs from being invisible inside even the most advanced systems.

Together, Reena and Mandy unpack:

• Why trust isn’t a vibe, it’s an operational discipline you can measure

• How to navigate bureaucracy and still execute at speed

• What crisis teaches leaders about teams, decision-making, and accountability

• Why AI won’t be healthcare’s limiter, but change management and trust might be

• How clinician leaders can help set guardrails so innovation earns (and keeps) public confidence

If you’re building, leading, or investing in healthcare transformation, this conversation offers a clear-eyed playbook for mission, margin, and measurable public trust.

🔔 Subscribe to Leadership Rounds for more candid conversations with the leaders redefining healthcare.

More on Mandy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandy-cohen-03aa343/

More from Reena: 

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reenapande/⁠⁠⁠⁠  

- Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://reenapande.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠    

📍 Learn more at Oxeon.com

#leadershiprounds #prescribingleadership #conversationswithclinicians #clinicians #leaders #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #healthcare #healthcareexecutive #clinicianexecutive #entrepreneurship #health #innovation #healthcareinnovation #clinicianleadership #digitalhealth

In this episode of Leadership Rounds, Oxeon’s Dr. Reena Pande sits down with Laura Medford-Davis, MD, MS, a practicing emergency physician and Partner at McKinsey & Company, to unpack one of healthcare’s most urgent leadership challenges: the disconnect between physician leadership ambition and CEO representation.

Laura shares her path from clinical training to health services research, federal policy work, and ultimately McKinsey, where she leads clinician-focused work and co-leads clinical operations. Together, Reena and Laura explore why clinicians are often perceived as “not ready” for top leadership, how that perception becomes self-reinforcing, and what both individuals and institutions can do to build a stronger clinician-to-CEO pipeline.

More on Laura: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-medford-davis/

More from Reena: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reenapande/⁠⁠⁠⁠   

#leadershiprounds #prescribingleadership #conversationswithclinicians #clinicians #leaders #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #healthcare #healthcareexecutive #clinicianexecutive #entrepreneurship #health #innovation #healthcareinnovation #clinicianleadership #digitalhealth

Leadership isn’t always about becoming more confident. It’s about becoming more self-aware.

In this episode of Leadership Rounds, physician executive Dr. Reena Pande sits down with Sheila Gujrathi, MD (multi-time biotech CEO, board leader, and best-selling author) for a candid conversation about leadership beyond credentials. Drawing from her book The Mirror Effect, Sheila shares her journey from academic medicine to McKinsey, Genentech, and the C-suite, unpacking why fear, insecurity, perfectionism, and shame often intensify (not disappear) as leaders rise. Together, they explore how to recognize toxic work environments, negotiate with integrity, and show up fully and authentically, especially when the stakes are high.

A must-listen for clinician executives, founders, biotech leaders, and anyone rethinking what real power looks like.

You’ll learn:

• Why technical excellence stops being enough in leadership roles

• How to recognize toxic work environments (and leave or work to improve them them sooner)

• What executive presence really means (without losing authenticity)

• How to negotiate compensation, authority, and influence without apology

• Why self-awareness is the foundation of real power

🔔 Subscribe to Leadership Rounds for more candid conversations with the leaders redefining healthcare.

Leadership Rounds with Dr. Reena Pande closes out the year with a powerful conversation featuring Rebecca Mitchell, MD, a product leader, global health practitioner, and now co-founder of Scrub Capital, an early-stage venture firm built around the expertise of clinician-operators.

Rebecca shares her path from growing up in a rural healthcare desert to working in global health and training at UCSF, where she witnessed firsthand the power of diverse, cross-functional teams through the LifeWrap project, an innovation that has saved mothers’ lives around the world. These experiences inspired her transition from traditional clinical paths into clinical product leadership, where she helped scale high-growth digital health companies serving millions of patients.

In this episode, Dr. Pande and Rebecca explore:

• How clinical training strengthens product, strategy, and operational decisions

• The implicit and explicit biases clinicians face entering tech and executive roles

• Why high-performing teams require both clinician “insiders” and operator/technologist “outsiders”

• The founding thesis behind Scrub Capital and its clinician-builder LP community

• Why embracing technology, product thinking, and business rigor is the future of practicing “at the top of your license”

This conversation is a must-listen for everyone shaping the future of healthcare and care delivery.

More on Rebecca: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccalynnmitchell/

More from me:     

- LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/reenapande/⁠⁠⁠⁠    

- Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://reenapande.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠    

- Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/reena_pande/⁠⁠⁠⁠    

- Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/reena.pande⁠⁠⁠⁠      

🔔 Subscribe to Leadership Rounds for more candid conversations with the leaders redefining healthcare.

📍 Learn more at Oxeon.com

#leadershiprounds #prescribingleadership #conversationswithclinicians #clinicians #leaders #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #healthcare #healthcareexecutive #clinicianexecutive #entrepreneurship #health #innovation #healthcareinnovation #clinicianleadership #digitalhealth

Psychologist-turned-operator Dana Udall (CCO, Nourish) joins Oxeon’s Dr. Reena Pande to demystify how clinician leaders scale distributed care, align clinical quality with business outcomes, and bring an intentional, ACT-informed leadership style to cross-functional teams. She urges clinicians to help inform and govern the next wave of AI-enabled care delivery.

Key Topics & Takeaways

1. From practice to platform: A packed waiting room revealed the limits of 1:1 care and pushed Dana toward scalable, data-driven models (Ginger/Headspace → Included Health → Nourish).
   

2. Intentional > “pure authentic”: Drawing on Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dana favors intentional responses over impulsive “authenticity,” fostering relationships while advancing goals.
   

3. Operating at scale in distributed telehealth:
   

• Design intentional touchpoints from recruiting to QA.

• Build data infrastructure to see quality and act early.

• Treat culture (leader vulnerability, whole-self norms) as a competitive moat.
  

4. Break clinical silos with the “first-team” mindset: Clinical execs must speak Product, Commercial, Finance and be healthcare executives who happen to be clinicians.
   

5. Personal story, public leadership: In sharing her eating-disorder recovery, Dana aimed to reduce shame and inform her work at the mental–physical health intersection (e.g., food relationship + metabolic goals).
   

6. Career navigation for clinician leaders:

• “Always take the call.” Have many conversations with companies, founders, VCs.

• Evaluate mission integrity, leadership chemistry, true clinical quality, traction/runway, and your stage/risk tolerance.
  

7. The future of AI in care delivery: Beyond scribes, AI will influence treatment decisions. Clinicians, ethicists, and legal partners must co-design guardrails to keep patient safety central. 

Dr. William Shrank is CEO of Aradigm, launched in November 2024 and funded by Andreessen Horowitz, a carve-out insurance product for cell and gene therapy aimed at improving access and affordability of transformative therapies. Prior to launching Aradigm, Dr. Shrank served as Venture Partner, Bio and Health at Andreessen. Previously, Dr. Shrank served as Chief Medical Officer for Humana, where his responsibilities included implementing Humana’s integrated care delivery. He previously held the position of Chief Medical and Corporate Affairs Officer, during which time he oversaw government affairs. Dr. Shrank joined Humana from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) where he served as Chief Medical Officer, Insurance Services Division. His prior experience includes serving as Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer, and Chief Medical Officer of Provider Innovation at CVS Health and as Director, Research and Rapid-Cycle Evaluation Group, for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Dr. Shrank began his career as a practicing physician with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School.

In their candid conversation, they explore:

- How an "unplanned" career led to extraordinary impact and continuous growth, and learning

- Why clinicians can't afford to stay on the sidelines

- The reality of transitioning from big corporate roles to startup life

More on Will: ⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-shrank-1a727147/

More from me:

- LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/reenapande/⁠⁠⁠⁠

- Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://reenapande.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠

- Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/reena_pande/⁠⁠⁠⁠

- Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/reena.pande⁠⁠⁠⁠

#leadershiprounds #prescribingleadership #conversationswithclinicians #clinicians #leaders #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #healthcare #healthcareexecutive #clinicianexecutive #entrepreneurship #health #innovation