Heart Investors

Ken Aseme is a seasoned financial services professional and qualified accountant with vast experience working in senior finance roles alternative investment management, fund finance (fund administration, fund formation and fund audit), structured finance, and commercial and consumer banking strategy.

Taylor moved to southern California in 2003 to attend Whittier College. Upon graduating, he became heavily involved in the growing Los Angeles tech community when he co-founded a data marketing platform in 2010. Over the next several years, Taylor developed a passion for empowering entrepreneurs to chase solutions to the systemic problems that face our society. With this mission in mind, he founded ScaleHealth in 2016 and, subsequently, the ScaleHealth Foundation. ScaleHealth's vision is to be the engine of progress by building communication and collaboration between startups, community, and the public sector. Currently, ScaleHealth is opening a 15,000sq ft space in West LA to apply this vision to our region's healthcare sector.

Ann is a serial entrepreneur, author, and cancer advocate. After her own cancer diagnosis in 2014, Ann, who spent several decades as a surgical assistant to a glaucoma specialist, recognized how little she knew about the cancer journey, even with her vast medical background. This raised a question in her mind, “If I found the experience difficult, what must it be like to have no medical background and receive a cancer diagnosis?” This question was the impetus for her to pen, Holy Crap I Have Cancer! Now What? What to Expect When You Weren't Expecting, a book that assists patients, who are newly diagnosed with cancer through their treatment and into survivorship. Ann has spent nearly a decade as the Executive Director of a Phoenix based non-profit, Hearts of Stone, whose mission is “to develop entrepreneurism in at-risk children and to transform the organizations that support them.” Besides her advocacy, Ann is a mom, wife, and caregiver to her elderly parents, and likes to dabble in several different mediums of art. Most recently, she is a co-founder of Cancer Fund.

David is an experienced entrepreneur with over 25 years of start-up experience. Currently, David is the Executive Director of the Innovation Incubator at Cal State Dominguez Hills located in Carson, California. He also has previously been the Executive Director of the ANTPreneur Center at the University of California Irvine – home of the ANTeaters. David himself has direct experience through participation and consulting with several hundred companies, with particular interest in projects that involve overseas components and strategic management needs. Interestingly, he is also a certified Ironman Coach.

Pierre is the founder of Neurara. Neuraura's mission is to unlock safe and effective treatments for brain-related disorders. Neurological, psychiatric and sensory conditions are a global epidemic with a burden on society that is greater than cancer and cardiac conditions combined. Current treatment options are severely limited due to a legacy of stigma, our poor understanding of the brain and practical challenges in targeting drugs, such as the blood-brain barrier. For some conditions, such as epilepsy, surgical intervention is proven to be one the medically proven best options available today. Neuromodulation, or the electrical stimulation of specific neurons, has been shown to be effective at the research level to treat a broad range of conditions including Alzheimer's, addiction, depression and chronic pain. Neuraura will unlock these treatment options by using its proprietary sensing technology to understand the electrical workings of the brain for personalized and adaptive brain care.

John Parker founded Springhood to address the funding gap in child health innovation. He has brought 25 years in the alternative investment industry together with over a decade of philanthropic experience to create a new model using investment dollars to make a difference in the lives of kids. This model has emerged from his work as the Founder and Managing Director of CH Innovations, LLC, a child health venture fund backed by the Charles H. Hood Foundation, where he also serves as a Trustee.

Anthony is a Health innovation investor with 20+ years experience creating, building, and leading early and growth stage companies. He also founded social impact organization, Cancer Fund. Anthony shares his experience and expertise as a fellow heart investor.

Robin is an experienced and innovative professional with an extensive understanding of the oncology and genetics spaces. She founded AliveAndKickn with her husband, 3-time cancer survivor, after he was diagnosed with Lynch syndrome. It's a common but little known hereditary cancer predisposition and they wanted to do something to change that. She has spent the last ten years as Executive Director and co-founder. She has developed AliveAndKickn to focus on providing resources for Lynch syndrome patients and developing innovative tools like The HEROIC Registry to further research. She continues to work towards expanding outreach and education about Lynch syndrome in the clinical and patient communities and to the general public.

This podcast will interview “heart investors” weekly that come from every walk of life – such as individual cancer survivors who are giving back, caregivers who have lost loved ones who are trying to save the lives of others, families who have been burdened with a hereditary disease, entrepreneurs who are tackling major problems, and more. The mission of the Heart Investor Podcast is to learn people's stories and share them to inspire others to do the same. As I've said for many years, “One of the most virtuous things we can do when we go through a difficult experience is to help others who are going through a similar circumstance, or better yet, help others avoid it. If we can inspire more people to become Heart Investors, we will recruit an Army of Innovators to truly create a better world.” We hope you will tune in every week to hear us interview Heart Investors from across the world and learn how you can become one too.