Tech Tonics

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 [See the full post…] Related Posts:Tech Tonics: Sek Kathiresan, When The Genetics of Heart Disease Becomes Intensely PersonalTech Tonics: Karen Hong, Turning Grad School Pain To VC GainTech Tonics: Glenn Pierce, All InTech Tonics: Chris Gibson, Free Range InnovatorTech Tonics: Tanisha Carino

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 [See the full post…] Related Posts:Tech Tonics: Sumit Nagpal, At the Crossroads of Tech and HealthcareTech Tonics: Navigating the Healthcare Highway with Megan Callahan, Lyft’s Head of HealthcareTech Tonics: Glenn Pierce, All InTech Tonics: Chris Gibson, Free Range InnovatorTech Tonics: Deneen Vojta - Skating to Where the Healthcare Puck is Going

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 [See the full post…] Related Posts:Tech Tonics: Sumit Nagpal, At the Crossroads of Tech and HealthcareTech Tonics: Chris Gibson, Free Range InnovatorTech Tonics: Navigating the Healthcare Highway with Megan Callahan, Lyft’s Head of HealthcareTech Tonics: From Maine to Mainstream - The Noah Craft StoryTech Tonics: Katherine Chou - How A Quintessential Googler Wraps Her (Deep) Mind…

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 [See the full post…] Related Posts:Tech Tonics: Sumit Nagpal, At the Crossroads of Tech and HealthcareTech Tonics: Chris Gibson, Free Range InnovatorTech Tonics: Jack Barrette - Turning Patient Expertise into ActionTech Tonics: Carolyn Magill - May the Fast, Steep Road Rise Up to Meet You!Tech Tonics: Molly Coye’s 360 View of the Healthcare System

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 [See the full post…] Related Posts:Tech Tonics: Sumit Nagpal, At the Crossroads of Tech and HealthcareTech Tonics: Chris Benko, From Fortune 100 to Fortune SeekerTech Tonics: iRhythm's Uday Kumar… What Makes Him TickTech Tonics: Diego Miralles - Physician, Scientist, Drug Developer, HumanistTech Tonics: Katherine Chou - How A Quintessential Googler Wraps Her (Deep) Mind…

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 [See the full post…] Related Posts:Tech Tonics: Scott Barclay of Data Collective, Journeying Down the Data StreamTech Tonics: Molly Coye’s 360 View of the Healthcare SystemTech Tonics: Deneen Vojta - Skating to Where the Healthcare Puck is GoingTech Tonics: Carolyn Magill - May the Fast, Steep Road Rise Up to Meet You!Tech Tonics: Vishal Gulati, VC and Agitator By Nature

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 [See the full post…] Related Posts:Tech Tonics: Andy Coravos, Championing Responsible Digital MedicineTech Tonics: Daphne Koller - Guiding Health From AI to Actual IntelligenceTech Tonics: Susan Desmond-Hellmann, The Inquisitive LeaderTech Tonics: Katherine Chou - How A Quintessential Googler Wraps Her (Deep) Mind…Tech Tonics: Stephanie Tilenius - Work, Not Worry