Alyssa Jaffee is a Partner at 7wireVentures where she focuses on investments in digital healthcare and technology-enabled services that empower consumers to be better stewards of their health in today’s changing healthcare ecosystem. Alyssa sits on the board of Ayogo Health and Higi and is a board observer with Zerigo Health, NOCD, Jasper Health, and RecoveryOne. Alyssa’s prior experience in venture capital includes her time as an investor at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Hyde Park Angels, one of the Midwest’s largest angel organizations, and Healthbox, an early-stage healthcare innovation firm, supporting their accelerator program called the Studio. Alyssa is also a Co-Founder of TransparentCareer, a 2016 NVC winning company focused on helping people make more data-driven career decisions. Alyssa holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago – Booth School of Business.

In this episode, Alyssa discusses her career path into digital healthcare investing and what she looks for when making investments. 

Dr. Lara Devgan is a top board-certified New York City plastic surgeon and the founder and CEO of luxury medical-grade skincare line Dr. Devgan Scientific Beauty. She is an international lecturer, a renowned industry consultant, a classically trained artist, and an expert in plastic surgery and injectables for the face, breasts, and body. She is the former Chief Medical Officer of RealSelf, the largest online aesthetics community where consumers learn about cosmetic treatments and connect with doctors and other clinicians.

Dr. Devgan is a medical expert for ABC News, an editorial consultant for The Lancet, a nationally and internationally invited lecturer on surgical topics, and an advisor on plastic surgical issues for Gerson Lehrman Group, Guidepoint Global, and Medefield. She has established herself as a key opinion leader within plastic and reconstructive surgery on social media, accruing nearly half a million followers on Instagram. Her brand, Devgan Scientific Beauty, has been featured in Glamour Magazine, Forbes, Allure, Harper’s Bazaar, and Elle Magazine.

Dr. Devgan pursued her undergraduate degree at Yale, medical school at Johns Hopkins, and plastic and reconstructive surgery residency at Columbia and New York Presbyterian Hospital. In this podcast, we learn about Dr. Devgan's path to plastic surgery and entrepreneurship, building her world-renowned luxury skincare brand.

Robin McIntosh is a designer, author and social impact entrepreneur. She has founded multiple companies, and has worked across startups, brands, and business communities over the past decade, with a focus on the arts, health and wellness. Currently, she serves as co-founder and co-CEO of Workit Health, where she and her co-founder Lisa McLaughlin develop digital therapeutic programs and precision prevention models for addiction recovery and wellness. Workit provides home-based detox and rehab services and guides individuals from high-risk substance use to a healthy thriving lifestyle through a 90-day program of weekly interactive lessons, tailored content, and personalized interactions with coaches and clinicians. McIntosh shares her journey to entrepreneurship, what it was like building WorkIt Health, and provides advice to female founders on fundraising. 

Dr. Lisa Bard Levine served as the former CEO of The MAVEN Project, a telehealth nonprofit that supports primary care providers in delivering comprehensive care to vulnerable patients at community health centers across the country. Her team recruits and retains experienced volunteer physicians who work closely with front line providers to educate, advise, and enhance local care capacity through provider-to-provider consults, one-on-one mentoring, and customized education sessions. Founded by alumni leaders from Harvard, Stanford, UCSF, Yale, and Tufts, The MAVEN Project’s physician volunteers now represent over 40 medical specialties at over 90 community clinic sites for 765,000 patients. Dr. Levine shares with us her experience building the MAVEN Project and how we can enhance delivery of comprehensive care to the most vulnerable patient populations.

Vivian S. Lee, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A, is President of Health Platforms at Verily Life Sciences, an Alphabet company whose mission is to apply digital solutions that enable people to enjoy healthier lives. A passionate champion of improving health in the U.S. and worldwide, she works closely with Verily’s clinical and engineering teams to develop products and platforms that support the successful transformation of health systems to value and advance the co-production of health with patients, caregivers, and communities. Wearing many hats as a President of a tech company, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and an author, Dr. Lee shares her journey, the work underway at Verily, and how we can improve healthcare delivery in the US.

Dr. Leila Strickland is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of BIOMILQ, a women-owned, science-led, and parent-centered infant nutrition company based in Durham, North Carolina. With her co-founder, Michelle Egger, Dr. Strickland is disrupting the over $65 billion infant formula market through culturing mammary gland cells in a lab. Despite its recent formation in January 2020, BIOMILQ has caught the eye of Bill Gates, who bought a $3.5 million stake in June 2020, as well as Breakthrough Energy Ventures, composed of investors such as Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Ma, and Michael Bloomberg. In June 2021, the company announced that they have successfully made the world’s first cell-cultured human milk from mammary cells outside of the breast. Their 100% human milk contains the majority of nutritional complexities of breastmilk, with the practicality of formula.

Vernita Brown is CEO of Natalist, a venture-backed women’s health startup focused on supporting women from concept to conception. Their fertility products and resources are backed by science with a net-zero plastic footprint. Prior to Natalist, Vernita spent a decade working with organizations and businesses like Teach for America and United Way in positions of leadership, asset management, program development, recruitment, and culture building. Vernita shares with us the origins of Natalist, including principles of leadership and team-building, and how to thrive in the femtech space, including approaches to pitching women’s health products to male investors.

Arlan Hamilton is founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital, a venture fund dedicated to minimizing funding disparities by investing in high-potential founders who are people of color, women, and/or members of the LGBTQ community. Since its founding in 2015, Backstage has invested more than $20 million in more than 180 companies with plans to raise up to $30 million for its newest fund. In 2018 Arlan co-founded Backstage Studio which launched four accelerator programs for underestimated founders in Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and London. Arlan’s book "It's About Damn Time" published in May 2020 chronicles her journey from being homeless in SF to running a multimillion-dollar investment fund and the lessons learned along the way. Arlan touches on her journey founding Backstage Capital; discusses how biases lead investors to think that a pipeline problem is the cause for <10% of funding going to underrepresented founders; and provides advice for underrepresented founders on being your authentic self.

Vineeta Agarwala, MD, PhD, is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and adjunct clinical professor in the Division of Primary Care and Population Health at Stanford. She previously worked as a management consultant at McKinsey and as a Director of Product Management at Flatiron Health. At a16z, she works with companies seeking to improve how drug development and patient care delivery is done. We discuss with Dr. Agarwala the importance of adopting a “continuous learner” mindset, how to make the jump from academia to entrepreneurship, and trends in biotech and health tech, including a DoorDash-infrastructure for healthcare delivery.

Sachin Jain, MD, MBA is President and CEO of SCAN Group and Health Plan, where he is charged with leading the organization’s growth, diversification, and emerging efforts to reduce healthcare disparities. Previously, Dr. Jain was President and CEO of CareMore and Aspire Health, innovative care delivery systems with > $1.6B in revenues serving 200,000 Medicare and Medicaid patients and 2500 associates in 32 states. He pioneered the first clinical program in the world focused on social isolation. We discuss with Dr. Jain his thoughts on effective leadership, what it really means to tackle social determinants of health to reduce healthcare disparities, and how men can be allies in the efforts to achieve gender parity in healthcare leadership.