What Would Lisa Suennen Say?
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, […]
As everyone in healthcare knows, and also every single San Francisco-based Lyft and Uber driver, the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference (“JPM”) was held last week. “JPM” has become a shorthand for the ritual amassing of healthcare life forms in San Francisco that occurs right when your New Year’s Eve hangover is wearing off. It is […]
Axel Heitmueller, Ph.D. grew up in Germany, the son of an engineer. Yet, despite the often discrete intellectual structure engineering can impose, Axel’s personal experiences have taught him how important it is to find comfort with a state of gray. As a transition economist, he has learned that everyone has an opinion; as a caretaker […]
Hi All, every year I like to rip off a holiday song for my closing blog post and this year is no exception. I decided to go with a New Year’s song rather than Christmas (Hanukkah is no good because once you’ve knocked off Dreidel, Dreidel you are pretty much done with the genre). So […]
The article that set me off on this rant—the proverbial straw that broke Lisa’s back– was the one that concluded like this: “Shawarma is the ultimate treatment for depression. No further studies are required to assess its efficacy anymore.” The article was on PubMed after having been published in Neuropsychology International. FYI, Shawarma is not […]
Passionate about the intersection of policy and medicine, Darshak Sanghavi’s career has taken him from pediatric cardiology to the Obama Administration to his current role as Chief Medical Officer of OptumLabs, always seeking to define and improve on one thing in particular: the outcomes that matter most. Like so many origin stories, Darshak’s begins in […]
A new research study, outlined in a Business Insider article, is out that draws a straight-line correlation (implying/suggesting causation) between cat ownership and entrepreneurship. The science goes like this: if you have cats, you come into contact with their poop, which has a particular parasite in it (Toxoplasma Gondii) that can get into and affect […]
An accomplished linguist who planned to take a job after college with a Russian oligarch (but rethought the notion after the man was nearly assassinated), Ari Caroline’s journey has taken him from language to economics to business to his current role as Chief Analytics Officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), where he sees […]
Growing up on Capitol Hill in a Washington, DC political family, Sarah Iselin did the obvious thing, at least to her, by rebelling and going to art school. But when her practical self realized that was going to make for a hard living, she eventually found her way to healthcare through an internship at the […]
You may recall that I started my blog post about going off to find my next work adventure with words of wisdom from Winnie the Pooh. The dude is a total prophet, I tell you (albeit, not gender inclusive). And after less time than I expected, I’m re-invoking Pooh and putting on my Big […]
Lisa Suennen is a venture capital investor and the managing partner of Venture Valkyrie, LLC, which publishes the Venture Valkyrie blog and co-produces the Tech Tonics podcast. She is also co-founder of CSweetener, a women's healthcare mentoring organization.