The Health Technology Podcast

Lisa Suennen: Leadership by Women in Healthtech

Lisa Suennen, Leader, Manatt Digital & Technology

Lisa Suennen is the leader of Manatt Digital and Technology and the firm’s venture capital / emerging companies practice. With more than 30 years’ experience as an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, board member and strategic advisor, she has focused broadly on new technologies and how they are transforming businesses. She has spent much of her career helping companies adopt and leverage digital technologies, develop strategies for growth through innovation and investment, and build strong collaborations between established players and entrepreneurs. Lisa heads the firm’s digital and technology businesses as well as the firm’s venture capital fund. She also works closely with Manatt Health, engaging with payers, health systems and companies to provide strategic advice on innovation, digital strategy and growth.

Lisa previously served as managing partner of Venture Valkyrie LLC, an advisory firm focused on helping healthcare organizations adopt venture capital and innovation programs and develop new business creation models and digital health strategies.

Lisa spent the past 20 years as a venture capitalist, first as a partner with Psilos Group, then leading the healthcare fund at GE Ventures. Prior to that, she was part of the leadership team that built Merit Behavioral Care, an $800 million behavioral healthcare company, guiding it through its successful IPO and exit. Her earlier career focused on product management and marketing in the technology sector.

Lisa currently serves on several private company boards and chairs the advisory board of the NASA-funded Translational Research Institute for Space Health. She is also on the faculty at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and is cofounder of CSweetener, which matches women in and nearing the healthcare C-suite with mentors.

Additionally, Lisa writes the Venture Valkyrie blog and hosts the Tech Tonics podcast.

 

Kareem Barghouti: Cancer Immunology & the Microbiome

Kareem Barghouti, Co-Founder, VastBiome

Kareem Barghouti is co-founder of VastBiome, a company that partners with scientists conducting clinical trials aimed at elucidating the influence of the microbiome on response to therapy. With an undergraduate degree in biology from UC Irvine and an MBA from Duke University, Kareem worked at Google for six years before taking a Biodesign Fellowship at TMC Innovation Institute and co-founding VastBiome.

Rachel Kuperman: Predicting Epileptic Seizures in Children

Rachel Kuperman, MD, CEO, Eysz, Inc.

During Dr. Kuperman's 10 years at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, Oakland, she developed the epilepsy program by focusing on excellence in clinical care, and research. She stepped back to focus on developing Eysz. Eysz comes out of her clinical work to help parents, caregivers and physicians quantitate the burdens of epilepsy: seizures, side effects and cognitive effects. The goal of Eysz is to improve the lives of people with epilepsy by leaving no seizure, side effect or complication undetected.

Holly Rockweiler: A Non-Hormonal Treatment for Vaginal Dryness

Holly Rockweiler, Co-Founder & CEO, Madorra

Holly Rockweiler is co-founder and CEO of Madorra, a women’s health company dedicated to changing the treatment paradigm for vaginal dryness.

Rockweiler co-founded Madorra three years ago as a spin-out of the Stanford Biodesign Fellowship. Prior to Biodesign, she worked as a senior research scientist in the Cardiac Rhythm Management division of Boston Scientific. There, she co-developed a new sensing algorithm for cardiac resynchronization therapy that enables more efficient care for patients living with heart failure. Her work has led to 15 pending and issued patents. Rockweiler holds a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science in biomedical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis.

Matt Likens: Preventing Brain Cancer Recurrence with GammaTiles

Matthew Likens, President and CEO, GT Medical Technologies

Matt Likens is currently president and CEO of GT Medical Technologies, Inc., inventors of Gammatile(TM) Therapy, with a corporate purpose of "Improving the Lives of Patients with Brain Tumors". Previously, he held the same position at Ulthera, Inc., which grew from start-up to over $100M in revenue before being sold to Merz Pharma in July, 2014, for $600M. Prior to that, Matt began his career at J&J before spending the bulk of his career at Baxter Healthcare International, where he held ascending levels of responsibility, culminating in positions as President Biotech North America and President of Renal Dialysis in the U.S. He is a board member of privately-held Luma Therapeutics where they are commercializing their novel and effective approach to use UV light and coal tar patches to treat psoriasis, and publicly-traded CHF Solutions, which sells the AquaDex System to effectively reduce fluid overload in patients. He is a past winner of the Ernst &Young Mountain and Desert Region Entrepreneur of the Year award, is an active member of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council Healthcare Advisory Committee, and also is a member of the City of Mesa Economic Development Council. Matt remains active with his alma mater, Kent State University as a member of their College of Business Administration Advisory Board.

 

Dorna Hakimi: Bootstrapping Resorbable Drug Delivery at Bioinspire

Dorna Hakimi, PhD, Founder & CEO, BioInspire Technologies

Dorna Hakimi, PhD, is CEO of BioInspire Technologies, a Palo Alto startup whose core technology is a bioresorbable, biocompatible medical film that can deliver therapies to specific locations.

BioInspire has developed a flexible, therapeutic film made of human plasma fibrinogen, a naturally occurring protein. The film can be easily placed on surface tissue or delivered to a remote tissue using non-invasive delivery tools.

Originally from Iran, Dorna completed a PhD at the University of British Columbia. While a graduate student, she began working at MIV Therapeutics, where she continued after earning her doctorate. She held positions at Medlogics Device Corporation and Osseon Therapeutics before founding BioInspire in 2009.

 

 

Caroline Corner: How to Position Your Story for Financial Audiences

Caroline Corner, PhD, Managing Partner, Westwicke Partners

Caroline Corner, Ph.D., joined Westwicke Partners in 2016 as a Managing Director leading our San Francisco effort in Medical Technology. Caroline’s focus is working with both public and private companies in the medical device and diagnostics areas. Her expertise and extensive C-level industry relationships stem from more than 12 years working in sell-side equity research, various roles within device and healthcare companies, as well as her academic training in biochemistry, engineering and nanobiotechnology.

Niquette Hunt: Candesant's Topical Device to Treat Excessive Sweating

Niquette Hunt, CEO, Candesant Biomedical

Niquette Hunt, CEO, has over twenty-five years’ experience in developing, launching and commercializing 20+ products across multiple verticals in the consumer medicine market. Every business she managed increased sales, profits and/or market share. Before founding Candesant, Ms. Hunt charted the commercial strategy at Revance Therapeutics and helped raise over $250 million in the 2014 IPO and follow-on financing.

Steve Axelrod: Wirelessly Monitoring the GI Tract at G-Tech Medical

Steve Axelrod, PhD, President & CEO, G-Tech Medical

Steve received his Ph.D. from Yale in Elementary Particle Physics and did his post-doc in the same field at Stanford. He worked at Measurex-Honeywell for 15 years where he was Director of Measurement System and Hardware Engineering. In 2003 he entered the medical device field, and helped develop and commercialize the Xoft Axxent microTube and radiation therapy delivery system. Steve has led teams delivering numerous best in class systems and devices in both medical devices and industrial automation. Some examples are nuclear basis weight, X-ray and infrared absorption sensors, Large scanning frames, fast high channel count data acquisition systems, skin and vaginal applicators for radiation therapy, high precision measurement systems for characterizing and testing system and device performance. Steve has been CEO of G-Tech since November 2011. This project combines his experience leading high performance R&D teams, his passion for medical devices and his expertise in creating sophisticated measurement systems.

Jonathan Coe: Making the Switch from Engineer to CEO at Prescient

Jonathan Coe, Co-Founder, President & CEO, Prescient Surgical

With more than a decade of experience in the medical device industry, Jon is both an inventor and a leader. Before co-founding Prescient Surgical as a Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellow, Jon held a range of roles in engineering, marketing, and leadership in the surgical instrument divisions of Johnson & Johnson and Covidien. He is an inventor on 25 issued patents and successfully launched four major products in bariatric, general, and natural orifice surgery, and surgical oncology. He also started two interventional cardiology companies, Metavention and Gradient Therapeutics, and led the IP, technical, and pre-clinical efforts at Metavention through a successful Series B investment. Jon holds SB and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and Georgia Tech, respectively.