Panel session 1

Making a Lasting Impact in Women's Health

Industry Sector: Women Health

Since the term FemTech was coined by Ida Tin in 2016, there has been a proliferation of women's health-related companies. As this momentum continues to build amidst a capital-constrained environment, many early innovators are left questioning how to make the leap from a fast-paced startup to longer-term growth. In this discussion, we will explore what actions FemTech companies, investors, and ecosystem players can take in order to translate the power of new technologies to make a sustainable impact in women's health. 

Priyanka Jain | Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Evvy

Priyanka is the co-founder & CEO of Evvy, where her mission is to close the gender health data gap. Evvy is unlocking precision female healthcare through researching novel female biomarkers, starting with the vaginal microbiome. Before founding Evvy, Priyanka was Head of Product at pymetrics, a startup using behavioral science and AI to make talent matching more effective and fair. She is also a spokesperson for the United Nations Foundation's Girl Up Campaign and on the Innovation Board for the XPRIZE Foundation. She received her B.S. from Stanford University, where she was a Mayfield Fellow and President of Stanford Women in Business.

Anula Jayasuriya, MD, PhD, MBA | founder and Managing Director, EXXclaim Capital

Anula Jayasuriya is a private equity executive and venture capitalist. She founded EXXclaim Capital, an early stage venture fund focused on catalyzing innovation, entrepreneurship and investment in Women’s Health. Anula co-founded the “Evolvence India Life Science Fund”, the first fund in India to focus on health care and invest in Indian pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device and contract services companies. She was a partner with Skyline Ventures in Palo Alto, and with the German/US venture capital firm TVM, in San Francisco. Her prior positions include VP Business Development at Genomics Collaborative Inc., and Vice President, Global Drug Development at Hoffman-La Roche for opportunistic infections in AIDS and Transplantation. Anula received a BA from Harvard, and an MD and PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard Medical School and an MBA from Harvard Business School, as well as a M. Phil. in pharmacology from the University of Cambridge, in England.

Neel Shah, MD, MPP | Chief Medical Officer, Maven Clinic

Dr. Neel Shah, MD, MPP, FACOG, is Chief Medical Officer of Maven Clinic, the largest virtual clinic for women's and family health, and visiting scientist at Harvard Medical School. He is a globally recognized expert in designing solutions that improve health care, and is listed among the "40 smartest people in health care" by the Becker's Hospital Review. His work to build equitable, trustworthy systems of care has been profiled by the New York Times, Good Morning America, and other outlets, and is featured in the documentaries “Color of Care,” produced by Oprah Winfrey, and “Aftershock,” which is currently streaming on Hulu.

Dr. Shah has written more than 50 peer-reviewed academic papers and contributed to four books, including as senior author of Understanding Value-Based Healthcare (McGraw-Hill), which Don Berwick has called "an instant classic" and Atul Gawande called "a masterful primer for all clinicians." Prior to joining the Harvard faculty, Dr. Shah founded Costs of Care, an NGO that curates insights from clinicians and patients to help delivery systems provide better care. In 2017, he co-founded the March for Moms Association, a coalition of more than 20 leading organizations, to increase public and private investment in the wellbeing of mothers. Dr. Shah serves on the advisory board of the National Institutes of Health, Office of Women's Health Research.

Stephanie Winans, MBA | Founder and Chief Executive Officer, of Iron Health

Stephanie Winans is a seasoned healthcare entrepreneur passionate about applying creative problem-solving and patient-centric models to deliver better outcomes for patients and clinicians. She possesses diverse experience spanning healthcare (B2C and enterprise), media and technology, and has led two successful healthcare exits. 

Before Iron Health, Stephanie was Chief Growth Officer for BioDigital, a cutting-edge biomedical visualization company, where she managed all aspects of commercialization, revenue, performance and growth. She was also President of Point of Care and Consumer Health at The Wellness Network, leading the company through its acquisition by WebMD in 2021, and was CEO of Bundoo, a maternal health startup. 

Stephanie received an MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and holds a B.S. in Marketing and Psychology from Spring Hill College. She is a Strategic Advisor to WebMD Provider Solutions and BioDigital, and is a Board member of the Next-Gen Board of Advisors for UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, the Center for the Business of Health, 100 Women, and Bridge to Health USA.

Rembrand Koning, PhD | Mary V. and Mark A. Stevens Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School

Rem Koning is the Mary V. and Mark A. Stevens Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. His work explores the drivers of entrepreneurial progress and inclusive innovation. He is the co-director of the Tech for All lab at The Digital, Data, and Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard, where he leads a group of interdisciplinary researchers studying how the rate and direction of science, technology, and startups can be accelerated and shifted to better benefit women, minority groups, and people in emerging and developing countries.

He co-leads the Conference on Field Experiments in Strategy (CFXS), is an associate editor for Management Science, and is an invited researcher at J-PAL’s Science for Progress Initiative (SfPI). He teaches a new semester-length second-year elective course at HBS, Strategy for Entrepreneurs (SFE), that blends case discussion and hands-on exercises to help students discover and test startup ideas that the market has missed.

Rem earned degrees in mathematics and statistics from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received a Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship. He teaches entrepreneurship, strategy, and general management to executives, MBA students, and scientists. His work has been published in Science, the Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Research Policy, Organization Science, and the American Sociological Review. It has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, STAT News, Nature, Vox, and the New York Times.