To our Theia Community:
In 2020, we founded Theia, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization committed to empowering and inspiring women in healthcare. As 2021 comes to a close, we would like to celebrate and reflect upon the first full year of our organization.
We would like to thank our core team members Ellie Park, Luiza Perez, Shilpa Ghatnekar, Amy Chen, Ameena Kapadia, Aseem Jain, Anna Kroner, Katie Donahey, Nikita Gupta, Onyinye Okoli, Sahi Akasapu, Sara Wetzler, and Heidi Christine, for their dedication to and love for Theia. We thank our podcast guests for taking the time to share their expertise, wisdom, and stories with our community. Finally, we would like to express our appreciation for our community members for their engagement with Theia.
This year, we recorded 18 podcasts and released 26 episodes. Our 2021 podcast guests showed the many different reasons to get involved in addressing healthcare’s deep-seated challenges. For Alyssa Jaffee with 7wireventures, “It’s really about how we can give people access to information and resources to improve their own health outcomes.”
Rui Jing Jiang is motivated to end blindness in glaucoma patients as CEO and co-founder of Avisi Technologies, which is developing an ocular implant. With IndieBio, Dr. Jun Axup works to make entrepreneurs of scientists by investing in biotech companies. Robin McIntosh is fueled by her personal experience with substance use disorder to generate digital therapeutic programs and precision prevention models for addiction recovery and wellness at WorkIt Health.
Many incredible solutions were developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Andrea Ippolito launched Simplifed in 2020, after noticing the lack of resources for women breastfeeding during the pandemic.
“It is your right to have access to lactation support according to the Affordable Care Act… We created a platform to increase access to lactation consultants, especially during COVID.”
Through the COVID-19 Health Literacy Project, Pooja Chandrashekar produced fact sheets in countless languages to combat mistrust in the COVID-19 vaccine, finding that “when [leaders and organizations] bought into the materials, their communities bought in.”
Many more of our guests have also provided us with pearls of wisdom about building a successful team. Leila Strickland advises, “You need to find other people who share your vision, share your passion, and can bring skills that you don’t have.” Vernita Brown adds to this point on diversity within a team:
“For me, a homogenous group is not going to be a winning group, because I know I don’t know everything.”
In terms of leadership, Dr. Sachin Jain reflects, “I think an effective leader has to be willing and able to make unpopular choices. The quest for buy-in is a quest for static equilibrium. We need to speak truth to power, acknowledge trade-offs, and mistakes.”
Our guests also advised us on developing a product or solution in the healthcare space. For Dr. Vivian Lee of Verily Life Sciences, “you have to have a very clear vision.” For Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram, founder of Proximie, “It is about developing a solution for an existing problem and not about developing a solution and trying to fit it [to] a problem.” In doing this, Dr. Sara Nayeem finds, “You have to really think through what is the killer experiment, as we call it, that tells you, ‘Yes, this is worth going forward.’”
You need to consider your stakeholders throughout the process. For Alva Health — co-founded by Dr. Sandra Saldana — this meant partnering with an assisted living facility in the development of its stroke detection wearable, to better understand the needs of product users. Finally, Dr. Jerrica Kirkley of Plume reminds us that involvement in healthcare entrepreneurship “needs to come from a heart-forward place — especially when working with vulnerable populations that have historically faced disparities in healthcare.”
Once you’ve created your product — in the words of Dr. Lisa Levine — you must “test, test and test, pilot, and try to break any system or any solution that you are using or you are developing before you go live.”
Knowledge is one of the keys to producing and enhancing a healthcare solution. Dr. Vineeta Agarwala of Andreessen Horowitz encourages, “…[do] not be afraid to move between different fields and different industries…realize and embrace the fact that what you learn in one setting might actually be really relevant and a superpower in another setting.” Dr. Natalie Ma of Felix Biotechnology advises:
“Learn enough to become dangerous.”
Lastly, many of our guests recognized the challenges of being a female entrepreneur in today’s world. Angela Lee of 37Angels spoke of her experiences with these challenges: “I was 28 when I started angel investing, and I’m an Asian woman, and I walked into rooms, and nobody looked like me. I mean, I literally got asked if I was lost, I was asked whose money I was investing.”
Dr. Dana Kanze focuses on achieving gender parity in VC and entrepreneurship, and Arlan Hamilton founded a venture capital fund to decrease funding disparities, investing in founders who are of color, women, and/or part of the LGBTQ+ community. She says, “I reassure them that they do not need to sell me on them, they don’t have to sell me on why they should be in this room.” Noting the underrepresentation of certain groups within these spaces, Dr. Kanze says, “Creating awareness and calls to action is now more important than ever.” These calls to action may be for men. For Bunny Ellerin, co-founder and President of NYC Health Business Leaders, “Men have to be part of the solution if they have been part of the problem.”
But, the challenges were not brought up without encouragement. To the people engaged in these spaces, Dr. Sejal Hathi advises, “It is very easy to believe you are not enough and that you won’t be able to accomplish your goal due to lack of resources, intelligence or luck. But I would say that the biggest accomplishments come from making those baby steps every day.”
Dr. Lara Devgan, plastic surgeon and founder of her own luxury medical-grade skincare line, emphasizes the value of mentorship in overcoming these challenges and making these accomplishments: “I have a million mentors and people I’ve looked up to…but we can all be that for other people too.” As Dr. Seema Yasmin phrases it,
“You can persevere, but not without community.”
We hope that these pearls from our podcasts inspire you as we head into the new year, and know that Theia will support you in your healthcare venture! We are thrilled with the progress Theia has made this year and look forward to continuing to curate and share with you resources on entrepreneurship, investing, mentorship, and so much more. Happy holidays, and we hope you have a healthy and happy 2022.
Best,
Sumun Khetpal, Irene Park, Shabnam Eghbali
Theia co-founders
