Tech Tonics

Inspired by health technology from the age of five, Griffin Weber has pursued this passion both doggedly and joyfully. Now an associate professor of medicine and bioinformaticist at Harvard, Griffin spends his days doing what he loves, leveraging technology to pragmatically improve the health and the care of patients. Griffin grew up in Virginia, the […]

Matt Wilsey grew up wanting to serve.  He spent his early career in government working for both blue and red administrations, but was eventually lured back to where he grew up–Silicon Valley—to join the tech scene, and helped start and lead several successful tech companies, including Zazzle and CardSpring (sold to Twitter).  Along the way […]

Amy Emerson, CEO of MAPS Public Benefit Corp. (MAPS), grew up in Kodiak, Alaska and fell in love with both animals and science as a child.  Later in life, when considering veterinary school, she realized that she loved biology but hated math – she would rather live in the wilderness on a lake and look […]

Stacy Feld had settled into a satisfying career in biotech business development when she accidentally found her way into a meeting with Genentech’s CEO and a tiny startup company called 23andMe. The moment sparked a sudden realization that the best life science innovation would be focused around the consumer and a career finding ways to […]

A Jersey girl drawn first captivated by engineering while in college at Dartmouth, Ariel Dowling went on to pursue her PhD at Stanford, exploring the use of wearables to anticipate and prevent knee injuries. After several experiences at tech-focused startups, Ariel has more recently found a home — and a calling — as a digital […]

A self-described “nerdy” kid from a working class family in a bedroom community of “The City,” on the South Shore of Long Island, Paul Bleicher trained as a physician-scientist, and was heading towards a career in academic medicine when he boldly decided to pivot to industry, where he’s enjoyed a remarkable and storied career in […]

Dr. Sally Shaywitz – Yes, she is David’s mom – has brought an entrepreneur’s mindset to her life’s work in dyslexia, recognizing the condition as a prevalent and underappreciated need, then working tirelessly to advance the science and enact the policy required to fully unlock the potential within so many brilliant individuals.  Sally has helped […]

Matthew Zachary, CEO of Offscrip Media  has had multiple careers despite the fact that he shouldn’t have had any.  He had studied to be a concert pianist and composer and conductor through college, but at the age of 21, on his way to study in a USC graduate music program with Hans Zimmer, he was diagnosed […]

Kevin Lyman was once the world’s highest ranked Warlock in Worlds of Warcraft and a professional Halo2 player. But that wasn’t his original plan. In fact, growing up in New Jersey, Kevin always wanted to be a scientist, even before he was sure of what that meant. While a student at Renselaer Polytechnic, Kevin took […]

Diana Brainard’s passion for understanding our stories and experiences initially led her to study comparative literature in college; but sometime during her junior year abroad in Lyon, she realized she could pursue her passion through medicine, a journey that’s taken her from academic infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital through her current role as Senior Vice […] The post Tech Tonics: Diana Brainard - A Passion for Patients, A Talent for Leadership first appeared on Connected Social Media.

Geeta Nayyar started off wanting to be a teacher, but then decided “science is the answer to everything” and became a doctor. Today she is the recently-appointed Executive Medical Director at Salesforce and gets to do both, which is her dream come to life. Geeta’s parents were both MDs and her two brothers are both […] The post Tech Tonics: Geeta Nayyar, Executive Medical Director, Salesforce first appeared on Connected Social Media.

Ken Mandl has a gift for listening to other people, whether they’re mentors offering the advice that shaped his career in pediatrics and informatics at Boston’s Children Hospital and Harvard Medical School, or helping physicians and patients learn from each other by making it easier for them to share information.  He’s a pioneering leader of […] The post Tech Tonics: Dr. Ken Mandl - Forging Connection Through Technology first appeared on Connected Social Media.

John Groetelaars learned to work with his hands on his family’s vegetable farm, but he realized early that he was more interested in using those hands to build motorcycles and mechanical devices. He followed his inclination first by helping manufacture engines and axles after earning his engineering degree through the GM Institute; he later transferred to […] The post Tech Tonics: John Groetelaars - Connecting MedTech to the Digital World first appeared on Connected Social Media.

With a knack for engineering and a passion for patients, Andrew Trister career has taken this Jersey boy from radiation oncology to Apple to his current role at the Gates Foundation, where he’s spearheading their efforts to leverage technology to improve the health of people around the world. Andrew – like E Street drummer Max Weinberg — […]

Growing up in a small town in Iowa, Jill Hagenkord never imagined herself as a doctor, or scientist, or entrepreneur – yet she became all three, blazing her own path and charting for herself a captivating personal and professional journey. Jill’s childhood was especially difficult; her parents divorced when she was ten, leaving Jill and her siblings struggling to […]

Arnaub Chatterjee comes from a long line of physicians, and in his youth, assumed he’d follow the family tradition.  At college at the University of Michigan, he pursued a well-traveled path towards medicine, graduating with a degree in cell and molecular biology.  But then his heart wandered, and ultimately he found himself having a difficult […]

Madeline Bell is one of those people who decides what they want and does what it takes to make it happen. She grew up wanting to be a nurse, wanting to work with children and ultimately deciding she wanted to lead. She has achieved all three of these things and so much more. Today Madeline […]

Since March 23, 2020, Dr. Patrick Hines, physician, scientist and entrepreneur has spent most of his time between the Detroit Children’s Hospital and a nearby hotel room, where he stays to minimize COVID-19 risk to his family.  He occasionally drops by to participate in movie night from a backyard chair while his wife and kids stay […]

As a boy, Craig Lipset thought he wanted to become a doctor – but over time, he came to appreciate that his real interest was, as he put it, engaging in the spirit of medicine at the population level – a pursuit that ultimately brought him to the forefront of digital health at Pfizer, establishing […]

For 20 years, advocates of telemedicine have been trying to break through to common usage. For all of modern human history, those with mental health challenges have held back from seeking treatment due to the stigma associated with doing so. And then, a Chinese bat opened the flood gates. Today we are seeing record usage […]

A brilliant and creative cardiac surgeon who went on to become the brilliant and creative CEO of the Cleveland Clinic for 14 years, Dr. Toby Cosgrove surprised many when he was invited back to his alma mater, Williams College, to give a convocation address. As his topic he picked: failure.  In our latest episode of Tech Tonics, we learn […]

A childhood fraught with illness, loss and uncertainty drove Torrie Fields to an adulthood focused on making these experiences better for others.  Torrie sincerely believes that we are all here for a reason and that her reason to is help people have more dignified, less painful experiences at the end of their lives. Having learned early in […]

Dr. Laurie Zephyrin was disappointed to learn that a less-than-rock-star voice was going to stand in the way of her career as a singer, but fortunately she locked onto her healthcare destiny in her teens.  A formative moment in high school set Laurie Zephyrin in the direction of public health and she has never looked back. This […]

Taking on challenges is nothing new for Dr. Lynda Chin. It started with learning English well enough in a couple of years to graduate valedictorian of her high school, evolved to a distinguished career as a physician-scientist and then full professor at Harvard & the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and ultimately led to her current role […]

Seth Feuerstein’s grandfather was a physician and his parents were both attorneys, so naturally his parents thought he would become…a comedian!  While that didn’t come to be, he did end up as both a doctor and a lawyer who practiced neither discipline full time.  Instead, Seth combined his skill sets to serially create new behavioral […]

After escaping the revolution in Iran, Sean Khozin found his way to the United States, harmonizing his passion for patients and data into a career that’s led him into startups, the FDA, and most recently J&J, where he’s now Global Head of Data Strategy – all while pursuing his love of music. The phrase “it’s […]

Matthew De Silva was a macro finance guy working for Peter Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium Capital, when a family illness profoundly changed the course of his career, leading him to found Notable Labs, a Bay Area startup that aspires to identify better treatments for patients. Matthew had a busy childhood.  Born in Ontario, Canada, his family moved to […]

Many people have heard of Nancy Schlichting, as she has been part of the fabric of the U.S. healthcare system for nearly 40 years. She has built a long and amazing career as someone who takes chances, makes unconventional choices and leads with her conscience. While her path to success wasn’t always easy, she learned […]

A physics and math wonk from MIT, Jim Manzi figured out early in his career that he loved the application of pragmatic, quantitative approaches to solve pesky real-world business problems, including today, challenges faced by life science and healthcare organizations. Jim’s early life sounds like a Springsteen song, and indeed, he grew up less than 10 feet […]

Like many entrepreneurs, he was born with the itch. Jason Lehmbeck grew up around his father and grandfather, both entrepreneurs in their own areas of expertise– dad was a geologist who worked with the mining industry and grandpa had a butcher shop.  He knew that his destiny was to be “one of those guys who […]

Shamiram “Shami” Feinglass, MD, MPH, should have been a born again flower child.  She spent her childhood among the San Francisco royalty that defined the 60’s and 70’s rock and roll culture here in the City by the Bay.  Her single mom raised her while helping found the legendary Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, which was Shami’s first exposure […]

Born and bred in Mill Valley, California, where we record our podcast, Sam Brasch saw himself as a modern-day Alex P. Keaton – he just wanted to be a business man. He was “that kid” who was reading the Lee Iacocca biography in 4th grade while the other kids played soccer and kickball. Sam got […]

Stanford professor Kari Nadeau lives the life, some would say the dream, of what Judah Folkman has called the inquisitive physician, integrating her deep knowledge of chemistry, her experience in biotech drug development, and her clinical acumen and deeply-felt compassion for patients to bring the best of medicine and science to children and adults with food […]

David Altshuler was living the academic dream as professor and human geneticist at Harvard and MIT, where he was co-founder and Deputy Director of the Broad Institute.  Yet in December 2014, he left this life to join Vertex, in continued pursuit of his translational vision. Born in upstate New York, David moved to the Boston area when […]

Tanisha Carino’s family fled from the Ferdinand Marcos regime in the Phillipines and settled in what she still believes to be the sweetest of homes: Alabama. As she travelled through young adulthood she had her first awareness that many Americans live on the fringe, desperately needing both healthcare and social services.  Since then Tanisha has […]

Physician, scientist, patient, advocate: Glenn Pierce inhabits all four roles, and seems the physical embodiment of the translational impulse, driven by his own experiences coping with severe hemophilia to advance the science – and the policy – he hopes will eventually cure this condition for patients across the globe. While other kids enjoyed carefree childhoods, […]

When Megan Callahan was growing up, she was supposed to end up in healthcare – she didn’t even know there were alternatives. And she has spent her career and life in and around the field in more ways than she ever expected, as both an executive and a breast cancer patient. What she didn’t foresee […]

With confidence he attributes to his free-range childhood, Chris Gibson has followed his instincts and his heart, stepping away from the MD/PhD program in which he’s enrolled to co-found and lead Recursion Pharmaceuticals, one of the buzziest companies bringing AI to drug development. In mid-July, Recursion closed a $121M Series C, bringing their valuation ever […]

Sumit Nagpal was born to a pair of healthcare entrepreneurs and raised in Kashmir, India.  When he was 13, he came to the United States where he saw diversity for the first time.  Sumit followed his parents into the Ivy League, starting at Brown, but left to follow his muse, Steve Jobs, at NeXT, where he worked […]

A computational biologist by training, Imran Haque has managed to achieve the near-impossible: embracing the promise of data science in medicine while retaining his critical faculties.  He may well be just the sort of innovator required at the intersection of medicine and big data. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Imran says he grew up in the sort […]

When Zoe Barry was a kid, she had two things she wanted to be when she grew up, either a veterinarian or “someone who writes checks.” She gave the first a shot and ended up settling on the second.  Today she is CEO of ZappRx and a shining example of how drive and intellect can overcome adversity. […]

In graduate school, Karen Hong’s dream of becoming a biologist crashed into the inconvenient reality that she couldn’t stand working in the lab. Undaunted, Karen, pivoted into venture capital, and hasn’t looked back. As befits a future geneticist, Karen chose her own genes extremely wisely: her dad was a legendary wunderkind in Taiwan who had come to […]

Rebecca Kaul had planned to be a doctor.  But life and the HMO era got in the way.  As a result she went down an entirely different and windy path through chemical engineering, public policy, consulting on information systems and reinsurance.  And together these all led her right back to a different way of contributing […]

A brilliant cardiologist and geneticist, Dr. Calum McRae rose to the top of academic medicine – then decided to reinvent it, from the inside.  He just may be the person to do it. Born on the Isle of Skye off the coast of Scotland, Calum was the son of a physician, and couldn’t resist the call of […]

Dr. James Dromey was supposed to be a farmer in County Cork, Ireland and has the milking experience to prove it. But apparently cows were not his destiny, even though he was a farm family’s only son. Instead, James left the farm for the teeming metropolis of Galway and never looked back. Today he is […]

Andy Coravos left a promising career at a top private equity firm to follow her passion and pursue intensive training as a software developer; she now works on the frontier of engineering and medicine as CEO and co-founder of Elektra Labs, focused on the use of digital measures to support clinical research, and the generation of the […]

Carolyn Magill had planned a life in foreign service or international relations.  But it wasn’t until she found herself at the nexus of healthcare and public policy that she realized she found her home.  She has now traveled through the worlds of pharma, payers, providers and had leadership positions at companies both large and small.  An […]

When she was a kid, Toyin Ajayi’s career goal was to “be the boss of something.” Drawn to power suits and authority, she aspired to become an unspecified boss lady. She may be a boss now, but her authority is well-balanced by a soft side. And Toyin’s path to her current role as Chief Health […]

Allison Kurian never had a chance.  The daughter of two prominent academics, Diana Chapman Walsh the former President of Wellesley College and Chris Walsh, a renowned Harvard biochemist – Allison was destined by genetics and environment, it seems, to become the exceptional scholar and clinician-scientist who she is now. A self-described studious kid, Allison grew up in […]

An unlikely pair, Brian Smith and Jerry Harrison came together over their shared passion for music and science and helping entrepreneurs succeed. Together they are helping healthcare startups find their rhythm and chart a path to success through a new expert crowdfunding platform called RedCrow. Here’s the backstory and it’s a good one: Brian Smith, […]

Her illustrious career has taken her from clinician to biotech executive to university chancellor to CEO of the world’s largest foundation, yet throughout this exceptional journey, Susan Desmond-Hellmann has remained empathetic, inquisitive, and emphatically true to herself. Growing up in Reno, Nevada as one of seven children, Sue was inspired by her father, a pharmacist, and […]