Hi, I’m Lisa Suennen. Here is my background:
Lisa Suennen is a venture capital investor and healthcare industry advisor. She has worked broadly across the fields of healthcare IT, medical technology, healthcare services and especially where these fields converge in digital health.
Lisa’s primary role is as Senior Managing Director of GE Ventures. In this role she is responsible for leading GE Ventures healthcare venture fund.
Lisa is also Managing Partner of Venture Valkyrie, LLC, a media/publishing firm, and a Founder of CSweetener, a not-for-profit organization that uses technology and know-how to connect women new to and nearing the C-Suite with female and male mentors who have been there and a have a desire to give back.
Lisa’s areas of focus are healthcare IT, healthcare services and their points of intersection with medical technology and biotech (and particularly where these worlds collide in digital health). The goal of her work is to foster high quality investment and innovation strategies that capitalize on the significant opportunities presented by today’s evolving healthcare system.
Lisa has served on numerous private, public and not-for-profit boards of directors throughout her career and is currently a Board Member of Evidation Health, Health Reveal, Gravie, and the Dignity Health Foundation.
Lisa is also currently a member of the Advisory Boards of the the California Health Care Foundation Innovation Fund, the NASA Translational Research Institute, and HealthXL, an international digital health partnering organization. In 2018, Lisa was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the Advisory Council of State of California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine.
Lisa is a member of the Editorial Board of Health Transformation, a peer-reviewed journal about the changing healthcare system. Lisa previously served as a member of the Advisory Board of the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator Investing in Innovations program.
Lisa is also a Fellow of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute’s Health Innovators Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
In 2018 Lisa was named Top Digital Health Evangelist by Goldman Sachs, Rock Health, Fenwick and West & Square 1 Bank, and the fund she leads for GE Ventures was named the most prolific corporate venture fund. She was also named #2 in the Global Corporate Venturing list of 100 Rising Stars, which designates the top 1% of the corporate venture capital industry chosen from 100 corporate venturing units.
In 2017 Lisa was named to Becker’s Hospital Review as one of 110 women to know in medtech. In 2015, Lisa was proudly featured as a Tech Superwoman in this Forbes article. She was also named to Onalytica’s List of Top Digital Health Influencers and Brands in 2015 and 2016. In 2014 Lisa was named as one of the Top 50 People in Digital Health by Rock Health, Goldman Sachs, Fenwick & West and Silicon Valley Bank and also as one of 5 Disruptive Women to Watch in 2015 by Disruptive Women in Healthcare . In 2013 Lisa was named to the Healthcare IT News HIT Top 100 List. In 2011 Lisa was the recipient of the Director of the Year Award (Companies in Transition) from the Corporate Director’s Forum. In 2011 she was also was awarded the U.C. Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies Outstanding Alumni Award.
Lisa writes a widely read blog on healthcare and healthcare investing found here at www.venturevalkyrie.com. Lisa is proud to note that this blog has been highlighted on the Forbes/Women 2.0 VC Women Who Blog List, on MedCity News’ list of 12 powerful female voices in healthcare innovation and social media, and on Health IT News’ list of the Top 10 bloggers to follow on Twitter.
Lisa is also the author, along with Dr. David Shaywitz, of the book Tech Tonics: Can Passionate Entrepreneurs Heal Healthcare with Technology, published in 2013 by HyperInk Press and available at Amazon.com. Together Lisa and David also produce a very popular twice-monthly podcast, also called Tech Tonics, focused on the intersection of the people and passion behind digital health. The podcast can be found HERE on iTunes
From 1998-2014 Lisa was a partner of Psilos Group, a healthcare-focused venture capital firm. Lisa headed Psilos’ West Coast office since the firm’s founding in 1998 and focused on the healthcare information technology, healthcare services, medtech and digital health sectors.
Prior to Psilos, Ms. Suennen was at Merit Behavioral Care (formerly American Biodyne, Inc.), where she held various senior executive roles including Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Senior Vice President/General Manager of the Public Sector Division (a $300 million business unit) and Senior Vice President of Pacific Region Operations. Lisa joined Merit in 1988 while still in its early start-up period and, during her nine-year tenure, played a key role in its growth to an $800 million revenue/year company. While at Merit, she also participated in the acquisition and integration of regional managed care companies, the company’s IPO in 1991, and the company’s sale to Magellan Health for $800 million in 1998.
Previously, Lisa served as Worldwide Product Manager for INGRES/Relational Technology, Inc., a relational database company, where she has responsibility for development, marketing and distribution for the company’s UNIX PC software product. Prior to INGRES, Lisa served as Director of U.S. Market Development and as a Manager, U.S. Government and Industry Relations for X/Open, an international computer industry standards setting and lobbying consortium. Earlier, Lisa spent several years at Regis McKenna, Inc., an international high technology marketing and public relations firm, responsible for government relations and public relations strategy for client companies in the software and healthcare areas.
Lisa holds an M.A. in political science, a B.A. in political science and a B.A. in mass communications, all from the University of California, Berkeley. Lisa is on faculty at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business where she teaches MBA classes on healthcare venture capital and the changing healthcare economy. She is also a frequent lecturer at Stanford University and other professional institutions. She is a sought-after speaker at a broad range of industry and private healthcare and investing venues.
Some Recent Press:
CNBC: 11 women who prove that health tech investing isn’t a boys’ club
NASDAQ: Meet a VC – Lisa Suennen
Oliver Wyman Health – Q&A with Lisa Suennen
How CSweetener is Helping Women Healthcare Leaders Succeed
About the Venture Valkyrie Blog
I started the Venture Valkyrie blog to have a forum to talk about my thoughts about our changing healthcare system as well as the private equity/venture capital field in which I work.
I also like to write about innovation and entrepreneurship generally and the evolving world of health tech and its points of intersection with medtech and biotech. I have a particular interest in how women fare in my fields of interest, as this topic can certainly be interesting at times. I have worked in the healthcare field as an entrepreneur, operator and investor longer than I care to admit.
I strive to bring good information combined with humor, as it can make essays about some very dry subjects worth reading all the way to the end. Plus I can’t help myself but to point out the humor in my field of work – sometimes you can’t make up things that are more ridiculous than what healthcare and/or venture capital come up with on their own. Everything in the blog and on my podcast is a product of my own thinking and does not represent any other organization with which I am affiliated.
Contact Lisa
Lisa can be reached at lisasuennen@venturevalkyrie.com or through the comments section of this blog or you can follow me on Twitter @venturevalkyrie or find me here on LinkedIn. Thanks for reading!
