Who we are

Steven Collens is CEO of MATTER, the premier healthcare incubator and innovation hub. MATTER opened in February 2015 and nurtures entrepreneurs and innovators building next-generation health IT, medical device, diagnostic and biopharma technologies. MATTER has worked with more than 800 healthcare technology ventures and the company partners with dozens of industry-leading companies, health systems and universities.

Prior to assuming his current role, Steven was senior vice president at Pritzker Group, the investment firm led by Tony and J.B. Pritzker. In that capacity, he led the team that created 1871, Chicago’s center for digital startups, which became the top-ranked business incubator in the world in 2018. He previously worked at Abbott in a variety of domestic and international functions, including product management, policy and public affairs. In 2005, Steven helped found ConstantWellness.com to give patients control over their health data and allow healthcare providers to coordinate care of their patients. Prior to Abbott, Steven served as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Carol Moseley-Braun.

Steven holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis. He chairs the board of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and serves on the boards of 1871 and the Chicago High School for the Arts. He is a member of ChicagoNEXT, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s council on technology and innovation, a Leadership Greater Chicago fellow, and a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and the Commercial Club of Chicago.

Amanda is MATTER’s technology product lead. In this role she works collaboratively across departments, developing new internal technology products to drive efficiency. She’s a self-proclaimed ops and data geek, with experience in fintech startups. Her last role was at AM Money, a Chicago-based startup building social impact financial products to make college more affordable and accessible to low-income students and their families. Amanda holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Illinois in Mathematics, and teaches yoga after work.

As a partnerships manager, Casey supports our corporate partners as they expand innovation within their organizations. Prior to joining the partnerships team, Casey was the events manager at MATTER – in that role she led the production and execution of MATTER’s many events. Before joining the MATTER team, she worked in marketing and communications at the Dermatology Foundation for two years, furthering her affinity for the healthcare space. Casey graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a bachelor of arts in journalism and a certificate in gender and women’s studies. There she excelled in multiple internships with Madison area nonprofits, fostering her love for bettering the world and helping others.

Charlene is the VP of operations at MATTER. In this role, she champions MATTER’s company-wide strategic initiatives and finds ways for MATTER to continuously improve and evolve. She works to align the MATTER organization and promotes operational process effectiveness, enabling our teams to focus on delivering value to the MATTER community.

Coming from a management consulting background, Charlene brings experience managing cross-functional programs and leading teams from planning through to execution. Prior to joining MATTER, she spent four years guiding clients through performing due diligence and executing complex merger and acquisition deals. In this capacity, she has represented clients from both the buy side and sell side of transactions. Charlene also brings deep operations and supply chain expertise, and previously also spent four years advising on end-to-end operational excellence for both manufacturing and service companies. She is an APICS Certified Supply Chain Professional.

Chris is the director of venture acceleration at MATTER. As a leader on the team, Chris provides guidance and support to startups in bringing their solutions to market. In doing so, he aims to accelerate the advancement of breakthrough technologies and allow them to gain significant market traction where they can meaningfully affect patients’ lives.

Prior to joining MATTER, Chris served as a senior director at Sg2 where he provided guidance and led the development of digital health strategy for C-suite leaders in the health industry. He also interpreted the impact of emerging technologies on the healthcare landscape and advised U.S. and international organizations on how to best leverage these offerings within their broader enterprise strategy.

Chris was also a key member of Northwestern Medicine’s innovation team, leading the development and execution of pilots and projects focused on integrating technologies into clinical service lines in inpatient and outpatient settings. These far-reaching initiatives impacted important strategic areas, including patient experience, access to care, clinician experience, care coordination, and chronic and complex care management. Previously, he worked with the Cleveland Clinic/Notre Dame Alliance program to lead a team in developing the comprehensive business plan for a predictive analytics software tool. This solution will allow organizations to more accurately allocate resources to patient populations in need, as well as provide preventive care to patients at risk.

Chris received his MBA from the Mendoza College of Management at the University of Notre Dame and his BS from the University of Massachusetts.

Colleen is the director of marketing. She leads the strategy behind intentional, meaningful experiences for every MATTER venture, partner and community member. Previously, she managed marketing and operations for Advocate Health Enterprises (AHE), a subsidiary of Advocate Health that strategically invests in and acquires consumer health and wellness companies to advance innovative solutions that go beyond traditional clinical care. Colleen led marketing diligence and integration for two acquisitions, developed and launched go-to-market strategies for internal startups and streamlined AHE’s brand to strategically align with the broader organization. She also consulted with AHE’s portfolio companies on key marketing initiatives and collaborated across service lines and companies to stand up pilots, marketing campaigns and new product and service offerings.

Prior to her experience in healthcare, Colleen worked in a variety of industries including hospitality, events, travel and consumer packaged goods. She has also spent time in marketing agencies and as an independent consultant. She received her bachelor of arts in advertising from Marquette University.

Elle is the venture acceleration program associate at MATTER. She is responsible for helping our startup companies take advantage of our resources and network. Striving to drive our community of startups toward success, Elle will work closely with our startups to facilitate connections between our corporate partners, network of mentors, advisors and investors.

Prior to MATTER, Elle graduated from the University of Missouri - Columbia earning a degree in Health Science with an emphasis in Leadership & Policy. Her passion for healthcare and innovation brought her to MATTER as a summer 2019 intern. Since then Elle has worked with Chicago-based behavioral health startups.

When she is not working with our startups, Elle enjoys spending time with her dog, baking bread, and reading.

Garrison is a marketer and communication professional focused on seeking out and meeting audiences where they are. As associate communications manager, Garrison is responsible for developing and delivering engaging content to the MATTER community.

Prior to joining MATTER, Garrison spent three years in the federal government. He held a variety of roles with the U.S. Small Business Administration and U.S. Census Bureau while completing the federal government’s flagship leadership development program, the Presidential Management Fellowship. During this time, he worked on a number of projects including email marketing for the 2020 Census and outreach driving small business participation in federal contracting.

Garrison graduated from Colorado State University with an M.A. in communication studies. He also holds a B.A. from Ripon College in communication studies.

While he is not working on content, Garrison enjoys numerous hobbies including brewing beer, half-marathon training, sports card collecting and cooking.

Jeana is the senior director of partner engagement at MATTER. Her work focuses on successful programs at the intersection of healthcare and innovation. She has been central to the development of the MATTER accelerator framework and has deployed over 45 separate programs since 2018. She also led the marketing team, and has a strong background in multi-channel promotion.

Prior to MATTER, she ran her own consulting services company with clients throughout the tech and healthcare sectors. Jeana served as the operational lead at a San Francisco based agency working on programs for remote patient monitoring, telehealth products and robotic surgical systems. She also directed cross-functional teams at Meredith’s marketing division, MXM (formerly Big Communications), on more than 26 pharmaceutical and payer launches.

Jeana holds a bachelor of arts in sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park and is a member of the Healthcare Businesswoman’s Association.

Joe joins MATTER as VP of Strategic Partnerships- working to expand the MATTER community through engagement with established businesses and organizations. Prior to joining MATTER, Joe was SVP of Client Solutions at machine-learning pioneer Ditto Labs. There, he worked with MIT-trained engineers to integrate cutting edge computer visioning solutions with leading technology from partners such as Oracle, Teradata and IBM. Joe was the first industry expert hired by healthcare and direct marketing agency BIG Communications, now part of media giant Meredith Corporation, to run global sales efforts and expand BIG’s offerings. Joe has launched over 30 products and devices over his career, gaining valuable insights on the most effective ways to commercialize. Joe began his career at Pfizer, working in sales and marketing for some of the world’s most recognized brands, such as Lipitor and Viagra. An entrepreneur himself, Joe co-founded San Francisco-based BrandForce Health- a company that launched some of the first connected, wireless health products in conjunction with AT&T, CVS and NantHealth.

Kaitlyn is the venture acceleration program coordinator at MATTER. She is responsible for providing daily oversight of administrative and operational tasks of the venture acceleration team. Prior to joining the venture acceleration team, Kaitlyn was a spring 2022 intern at MATTER. In this role, she collaborated across all MATTER departments to complete a variety of tasks and projects to support the MATTER team and their goals.

Kaitlyn graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a Bachelor of Science in Healthcare Administration. In her free time, Kaitlyn likes to read, refurbish thrifted furniture and try new TikTok recipes.

As the partnerships manager at MATTER, Katie is responsible for building strategic relationships with partners that create reciprocal value. She works to help partners source new technologies, build innovation capacity and solve complex problems. Prior to MATTER, Katie worked in corporate partnership development at mHUB, an innovation center for manufacturing and hardtech. Prior to mHUB, Katie managed national sponsorships at Tribune Publishing and was part of the team at Jack Morton Worldwide where she coordinated experiential marketing campaigns for General Motors. Katie graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in Marketing.

Kay is the events associate at MATTER. She oversees the development, coordination and execution of MATTER’s diverse events.

Since joining MATTER in 2020, Kay has led virtual, hybrid and in-person events for the MATTER community. From showcases, panels and demo days, Kay runs events to bridge the gap between partners and entrepreneurs in the healthcare ecosystem.

Prior to joining MATTER, Kay was a corporate events intern at MxD. She has also worked in the outdoor recreation industry for five years, leading challenge course and group development programs that challenged participants’ perspectives with an emphasis on group cohesion.

Kay graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a B.A. in advertising and public relations and a marketing minor. In her free time, Kay likes to draw, hike, read and travel.

Michael is our events and marketing coordinator at MATTER. He is responsible for arranging and supporting MATTER’s vast events for its members and partners.

Prior to joining MATTER, Michael was a marketing intern for 33 Realty, as well as a digital and video intern for the Milwaukee Bucks. Both of these roles consisted of the creation and management of social media content. In addition, he has event management experience through his university’s sporting events. Michael brings high attention to detail and a creative mindset to the MATTER team.

Michael graduated from Marquette University with a bachelor’s of arts in digital media and a minor in advertising.

Noelle is a Chicago native who graduated from Kalamazoo College in 2012 with a major in biology and a minor in art. During her junior year, she studied and lived abroad in Ecuador for 6 months. While in college she held a leadership role on the Student Activities Committee and was a senior resident assistant. After college, she learned HTML/CSS and UX Design at The Starter League, later becoming Start League’s office manager. Before joining The Starter League team, she worked at The University of Chicago Survey Lab administering surveys via phone in English and Spanish.

As a partnerships manager, Olyvia supports our corporate partners as they expand innovation within their organizations. Olyvia has a focus on advancing health equity within the health innovation space.

Prior to joining MATTER, Olyvia was the Manager of Public Health Activities at the Illinois Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics (ICAAP), where she developed and implemented state-level and local initiatives to improve the health and lives of children and families in Illinois. In addition to a public health background, Olyvia also has extensive experience in the community/social justice field and was a past Albert Schweitzer Fellowship recipient.

She remains active in and outside of work, being heavily involved in community-centered programming to increase health equity and equality.

Olyvia graduated from DePaul University with a B.S. in Health Sciences and minors in Sociology and Communication Studies. Olyvia continued her education at Benedictine University graduating with a Master’s in Public Health and a Master’s in Business Administration (MPH/MBA).

When not working Olyvia loves traveling and exploring new places.

Pete is a product developer currently helping maintain and improve MATTER’s website and online offering. Prior to working with MATTER, Pete helped engineer & manage software products at Helpful Human, a Seattle based digital agency. Among a variety of retail and marketing sites, he helped build a platform designed to help Seattle area doctors and their patients find healthy resources in their communities. Pete loves building simple and intuitive software that solves meaningful problems. Pete previously studied music at the University of Southern California and product development at Chicago’s Starter League.

Sam is a senior partnerships manager at MATTER. She is responsible for bridging the gap between partners and entrepreneurs in the MATTER workspace. Working with the partnership team, she strives to help partners get the most out of their relationship with MATTER to help with new technology, facilitate different programs and build innovation within organizations.

Sam’s background in the healthcare field started with a health sciences degree from Ohio State. While in college, she worked at a physical therapy clinic as an office coordinator and exercise technician. She used this experience to transition to the health tech world and worked for four years on the training team for Allscripts’ Ambulatory Product TouchWorks. She also ran the GiveBack Program at Allscripts for their headquarters office, planning the philanthropic and fundraising events the company took part in each year.

Schnaude joins MATTER as the venture acceleration manager, working closely with startups to support their overall experience. She is responsible for connecting startups to the appropriate resources necessary to gain traction in the market and helps drive startups to success by facilitating connections with MATTER’s network of mentors, investors and corporate partners. She aims to lead and grow business relationships within the organization as well as across entities to create value and garner a competitive advantage. Using the appropriate strategic approach, Schnaude manages alliances, ecosystems and other collaborations to effectively reach the goals of the alliance and to produce key deliverables. She hopes to dislodge the bottleneck of innovation from academia to market and is committed to building the Midwest healthcare ecosystem in an inclusive and diverse way by increasing access through mentorship and advocacy.

Schnaude earned her PhD in neuroscience from Northwestern University in 2022. She began her career outside of academia as a life sciences entrepreneur who leveraged her scientific expertise and strong analytical skills to identify, evaluate and prioritize translational biomedical technologies based on their scientific merit and commercial potential.

Prior to MATTER, Schnaude was an entrepreneurial fellow with the Chicago Biomedical Consortium where she evaluated 20+ candidate technologies across biomedical platforms from Chicagoland universities for potential commercialization opportunities and worked closely with university faculty to develop, refine and implement non-dilutive awards focused on accelerating the translation of these transformative biomedical technologies.

When Schnaude is not advocating for health equity initiatives, she loves to dance, do martial arts and watch anime.

Shannon (she/they) is a marketing communications professional who believes that meaningful storytelling and relationship building are the building blocks of a successful brand. As an Associate Content Marketing Manager at MATTER, Shannon is dedicated to nurturing MATTER’s ever-expanding digital presence.

Before joining MATTER, Shannon worked as a psychotherapist and mental health educator, specializing in counseling those who have experienced grief and loss, providing support for service and arts industry workers and addressing LGBTQIA+ issues. Prior to transitioning into the healthcare sector, Shannon held various digital marketing positions in the hospitality and music industries, accumulating a diverse skill set in content creation, social media management, public relations and email marketing. Currently, Shannon is focused on broadening their expertise in user experience design to become a more inclusive marketer.

Shannon holds an M.A. in forensic psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and a double-B.A. from DePaul University, with majors in journalism and media/cinema studies.

Outside of work, Shannon enjoys captivating books, well-made negronis and lengthy bike rides.

As finance associate at MATTER, Shaquela manages and oversees all financial operations. In this role, she works closely with MATTER leadership to support business development and help create and implement long-term financial planning, reporting and strategy.

Shaquela brings more than 10 years of experience in accounting leadership roles and more than 20 years with small businesses including taxing districts, healthcare organizations, service organizations and non-profits. Shaquela received her MBA with a concentration in accounting from DeVry University and her bachelor’s in business management from Western Illinois University.

Adam Hanina is the CEO and founder of Dandelion, a neurocoding company creating the world’s first Programmable Therapeutics™ platform to treat the brain. Previously, Adam founded AiCure, a venture and NIH-funded advanced data analytics and computer vision company selling to the top 30 life sciences companies. As CEO, he grew the team to 100 people and sales into eight digits.

Adam has invented platform technologies ranging from AI-patient monitoring to fractal barcodes and holds over 70 awarded patents where he is listed as the primary inventor. He has raised over $52M in capital in addition to $7.3M in NIH funding. In parallel to multiple scientific publications in the field of artificial intelligence and patient monitoring, Adam has been invited to speak in the U.S. and globally at CES, BIO, DIA, WHO, Wharton, FT, Cooper Union, MIT, etc. His contributions to the life sciences have been recognized by multiple awards, including the PharmaVOICE 100.

He holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, an MPhil from Cambridge University and a BA with honors in physics and economics from Brown University.

Jason Smith is a leading-edge technologist and executive with more than 20 years of industry experience. He has held positions in early stage companies, large multinational corporations and venture capital incubators yielding a rich professional background. In his roles such as CEO, chief product officer, VP of corporate development, VP of product and chief architect, he has been responsible for the management of various functional areas including strategy, product development, technology and operations. Jason has successfully built and sold multiple early stage companies and services firms to large global organizations.

Jason has successfully driven the licensing of technologies and intellectual property to companies ranging from medium-size enterprises to the Fortune 500. The licensing includes his own IP contributions, which have been granted multiple domestic and international patents in the fields of bioinformatics, high-speed computation, video, graphics architecture and security.

Jason brings extensive experience in building and growing startups, technology service firms and product development organizations. He helps focus companies to understand who their customers are, what products should be built to meet their customers’ needs and how to get the product into customers’ hands.

Jason is an angel investor and active startup mentor.

Pamela York is a serial entrepreneur, venture capital investor, and business executive, with extensive success from launch to exit in healthcare and technology companies. She is a co-founder and managing partner of Capita3, an early stage venture capital firm focused on healthcare innovations.

Previously Pam was a co-founder of two VC-backed startups each with exits, and an inventor on a dozen patents commercialized in three technology platforms. Pam then shifted her focus from entrepreneur to investor and has helped build innovation pipelines and drive capital formation across the U.S. As part of this transition, she managed a large life sciences intellectual property portfolio and led or invested in 100 deals with 15 exits to date, including 4 IPOs. She’s also helped launch several venture funds and is a mentor for Revolution Ventures and an advisor to Medical Alley. Pam was named mentor of the year for UnitedHealthcare Techstars and serves on numerous boards.

Additionally, Pam has 20 years of experience in transformational leadership development and she’s featured on TED Talks and the Audible Motivated to Lead channel for her novel startup CEO accelerator work. She’s been adjunct faculty teaching the NSF I-CorpsTM lean startup programs to faculty and graduate students and taught lean startup principles to Saudi Arabian women leaders. She has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from University of Illinois and completed a private equity financing program at Wharton.

Adam Holyk is a senior-level strategy and marketing executive, advisor and educator with extensive experience leading transformational change across consumer and healthcare businesses.

Most recently, Adam led strategy and development for Walgreens, identifying new opportunities and prioritizing investments to transform Walgreens into a community healthcare leader. Prior to leading strategy, he served as chief marketing officer, where he had responsibility for Walgreens marketing, creative, digital and brand strategy. Adam’s team successfully repositioned Walgreens’ iconic 100-year-old brand and was recognized as one of the “most loved brands in America.” He joined Walgreens in 2011, launched the largest consumer loyalty program in the United States and built the company’s data analytics capabilities. Earlier, he also led corporate strategy focused on healthcare partnerships.

Prior to Walgreens, he was vice president for dunnhumby, a leading data science and marketing consultancy based in New York. Earlier, he served as vice president for Shoppers Drug Mart in Toronto, managing its loyalty program and customer marketing. Adam started his career at Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada’s largest food distributor.

He is currently an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School for Journalism, Media & Integrated Marketing Communications.

Adam holds a master of business administration from York University’s Schulich School of Business. He earned his juris doctor from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto and a bachelor of arts from the University of Guelph.

Hassan has over 25 years of experience driving innovation within employer health benefits plans and advocating for the connection between the health of the workforce and the performance of a business. Passionate about disrupting the status quo in how employers deliver healthcare benefits to their workforce, Hassan has led the transformation of health benefits strategies at multiple Fortune 500 companies, including US Foods, Kraft, Mondelez and Ford. In those roles, Hassan drove innovative solutions by being the first to implement many new benefit design features and digital health solutions, all of which are now broadly used by employers across the globe.

Today Hassan is focused on building new high-value digital healthcare solutions for employers in an effort to improve the health of their employees, reduce health expenses and improve the patient experience. He serves as a consultant to numerous digital healthcare companies, providing guidance on the design and development of new employer-facing healthcare products as well as tools to ensure their success, including commercial strategy, channel development, marketing, pricing and partnerships. He also serves as an advisor to the Employer Health Innovation Roundtable (EHIR), a coalition of large employers seeking innovation in the global health benefits space. In that role, he provides guidance to employers seeking new solutions as well as to innovators seeking to enter the employer benefits market.

Hassan’s deep understanding of the healthcare system began when he was working at both a provider and payer, first by managing outpatient clinics at Ascension St. John Hospital in Detroit followed by a position developing provider network strategies at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. After serving in those roles, he worked as a benefits consultant at WillisTowersWatson assisting employers develop strategic approaches to their healthcare benefits.

Hassan has an MPH, MHA, MBA, MA and BA from the University of Michigan. He also has a JD from the University of Detroit School of Law.

John Achoukian is an experienced healthcare strategist with a track record of developing and implementing successful provider and payer solutions for interoperability, quality improvement, risk adjustment and patient engagement. He has worked with large healthcare organizations such as Dignity Health and UnitedHealth Group as well as health tech startups to help improve patient outcomes, increase efficiency, reduce costs and ensure regulatory compliance. John’s passion is working collaboratively with stakeholders across the healthcare industry to achieve common goals.

Marco is heading acceleration, insights and open innovation at Roche Diabetes. He leads a team that is responsible for insights discovery and validation of customer opportunities across patients, healthcare professionals and payers. After establishing Roche’s customer opportunity portfolio, Marco has implemented a lean strategy process and led the development of several business unit strategies.

After establishing a lean strategy as a competency to inform investment decisions, Marco has led the design and implementation of an internal accelerator program to validate strategies by enabling corporate venture teams to incubate and accelerate business models.

In 2018, Marco led Roche’s ambition to establish open innovation with the goal to accelerate value creation for patients together with startups. Prior to his current role, Marco held various positions at Roche in the R&D organization in Switzerland and Germany developing and launching drug delivery devices. He spent six years in San Francisco, building up Roche’s corporate incubator team with the objective to identify new growth opportunities in Type 2 diabetes. Marco’s areas of expertise include insights discovery, customer opportunity development, lean strategy development, corporate venture design and acceleration, product development, organizational development, training, coaching and mentoring.

Mark’s career in healthcare has taken him from a combined MD-PhD concentrating on applied mathematical applications in cardiology, to private practice as a clinical cardiac electrophysiologist, elected medical staff leadership roles, the Chief of Quality of the Piedmont Heart Institute and most recently the Chief Medical Officer of Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, from which he recently retired.

His particular focus during his time as a medical administrator has been to understand the environment of healthcare delivery, whether in the office, the hospital or with the patient at home, and work to engineer that environment to better deliver the care that will result in higher value: improved outcomes, efficiency and satisfaction, with reduced errors and reduced cost.

Matt is the operating partner at Wave Strategy, a healthcare innovation consultancy, that provides strategic guidance to healthcare organizations and accelerates the commercial pathway for cutting-edge technologies through strategic enterprise partners, healthcare systems, industry influencers and entrepreneurs.

Prior to Wave Strategy, he began his career in healthcare innovation at Cleveland Clinic Innovations (CCI), where he spent seven years translating medical breakthroughs into patient-benefiting products that reached the commercial market. As the director of inventor services, Matt established and implemented a process that was used to evaluate early stage technologies and usher them toward a commercial outcome. At CCI, Matt also held the position of director of business development, where he aided startups with IP strategy formulation, product development guidance and value proposition refinement.

Matt also served as a naval officer at several commands throughout the world. As a naval officer, he served as executive officer of the Military Sealift Command in Diego Garcia, program manager for the V-22 Osprey in Philadelphia and contract administrator for Forward Operating Base, Camp Leatherneck, in Afghanistan.

Matt also plays a role at the following organizations: board of directors for Challenge America (president) and NE Ohio Naval Academy Association (trustee). Matt received a bachelor’s in political science with a focus in engineering, math and science from the United States Naval Academy and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University.

Michelle Hoffmann, PhD has been serving since August of 2021 as the executive director of the Chicago Biomedical Consortium (CBC), a consortium of biomedical researchers across Northwestern, the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Chicago that is generously supported by the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust. The CBC’s mission is to stimulate collaboration among scientists to accelerate discovery that will transform biomedical research and improve the health of humankind. Prior to this role, from 2019-2021, Dr. Hoffmann was the senior vice president of deep tech at P33, a privately funded nonprofit charged with elevating Chicagoland’s innovation economy and driving inclusive economic growth.

Prior to P33, Dr. Hoffmann spent 15 years helping life sciences companies grow, most recently as a senior vice president at Boston-based Back Bay Life Science Advisors, an integrated strategy and investment firm to global life sciences companies and their investors. During her eight years at Back Bay, Dr. Hoffmann led projects for large, publicly traded companies, as well as small, private, venture-backed healthcare and life sciences companies. Dr. Hoffmann also worked closely with Back Bay’s investment team on two large transactions: an epigenetics platform that was sold to Gilead Pharmaceuticals for $65 million and an agent to combat acute kidney injury that was acquired by AbbVie for $110 million. Previously, she was senior manager, Center for Health Solutions and pharmaceutical market lead, at Deloitte Research.

Dr. Hoffmann also worked for Leerink Swan Strategic Advisors as a consultant/project manager, Capgemini/LECG as a consultant in their life sciences healthcare practice and at Fuld+Company as a senior analyst in Fuld’s healthcare practice.

Dr. Hoffmann earned a PhD in molecular and cellular biology from the University of California Berkeley with Professor Joshua Kaplan and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Brandeis University in the laboratory of Professor Gina Turrigiano.

Mike Abbadessa is an Executive of Medical Affairs, with experience in business and product development utilizing AI solutions for business challenges in the life science industry. His passion for using data to solve real problems coupled with Mike’s medical and scientific training, has enabled a career that spans, health care, pharma and tech.

The journey began in acute-care hospitals, as a pharmacist, director and chief operating officer. He transitioned to pharma as an MSL, Director of field teams, and then Sr. Director of Innovation/ Analytics for medical affairs at Takeda. After his career in pharma and before joining rMark Bio and Within3, Mike expanded his knowledge of field medical’s success factors as a consultant for Tardis (Amplity) and various pharma companies.

He has earned a reputation as a developer of ideas, people, and organizations. Mike’s value proposition is leading and developing teams and organizations to optimize performance to the highest level through quality improvement, continuous learning, and constant innovation.

Mindy most recently served as Chief Marketing Officer at SonderMind, a growth-stage behavioral health company. Prior to SonderMind, Mindy served as Chief Growth Officer at MDLIVE, where she was responsible for sales, account management and marketing and provided leadership on matters related to partnerships, pricing and product strategy, along with responsibility for industry and consumer insights.

Prior to MDLIVE, Mindy was a Group Vice President at Walgreens where she was responsible for driving customer behavior among Walgreens’ 90 million Balance Rewards loyalty program members, as well as the associated sales and profit impacts. Mindy joined Walgreens at the director level in 2011 as a leader on a newly established loyalty team, responsible for launching the program’s ‘points currency’ and for launching B2B and B2C direct marketing and insights functions. Under Mindy’s leadership, the loyalty program impact drove approximately $1BN in revenue (~4% of Walgreens retail sales), while insights and direct marketing businesses delivered over $100M in revenue annually.

Before joining Walgreens, Mindy spent most of her career focused on customer loyalty, insights and personalization; primarily working with retail and consumer goods companies.

Nilima Rajkumar is a healthcare executive with over two decades of experience, 15 years of which have been in the payer space with the Blue Cross and Blue Shield system. Most recently she was vice president of Market Analytics, Products and Solutions at Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), the nation’s largest customer-owned health insurer, which operates as Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas and serves over 17M members.

In this role she provided leadership for the full product portfolio for employers, fully-insured and self-funded, from concept to commercialization including products in the health management, behavioral health, digital health, member engagement and navigation and financial risk management areas. She was also responsible for product management, the development and execution of unique, client-specific requirements for large customers and customer and product reporting and analytics.

Prior to this, Nilima spent several years working in the product area at HCSC. She began her career with the Blue System at the Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) Association where she led strategic assessments for the BCBS Board and initiatives for the Blues. She also spent five years at ZS Associates, a professional services firm working on sales and marketing focused projects with large pharmaceutical companies.

Nilima has a M.S in Information Systems Management from Loyola University Chicago and a BA with Honors in Economics from Delhi University. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two daughters.

Patty Lavely is a 20-year healthcare executive with over 30 years as a technology and operations leader. She has extensive knowledge of the provider side of the healthcare industry. She is a boardroom qualified technology expert (QTE) as certified by the Digital Directors Network. Patty is currently the chair of a non-profit board and has served on several professional membership organization boards. She is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, Private Directors Association and the Digital Directors Network. In her executive roles, Patty has gained significant experience reporting to boards as the CIO and CISO. Patty is the principal consultant for CIO Consulting, LLC.

Most recently, Patty was the vice president, chief information and digital officer for the Health Care District of Palm Beach County. This organization is a special taxing district of Palm Beach County that includes rural healthcare, federally qualified healthcare centers, school nurses for the county, a health plan for the uninsured, a long-term care facility as well as the trauma network. In 2021, she led the technology initiative for a fully digital mass COVID-19 vaccination operation in Palm Beach County, Florida, partnering with a technology firm to develop the software. This initiative administered more than 200,000 vaccines to Palm Beach County residents.

Patty established CIO Consulting in 2011 to provide services as an interim CIO and to extend the reach of existing CIOs. As an interim CIO, Patty worked with investors to develop and implement technology standards for an emerging healthcare system in New Jersey. She also served healthcare organizations in Georgia and Florida as an interim IT leader.

Cybersecurity governance became a focus as the healthcare industry became the target of cybercriminals. In 2014, Patty began the development of a comprehensive cybersecurity program for Gwinnett Health System. She reported to the audit and compliance committee of the board for this function. Prior to 2014, her cybersecurity experience was focused on healthcare regulation.

As the CIO for five premier healthcare organizations over more than 20 years, Patty has significant experience in providing monthly reports to the board and semi-annual education sessions. The scope and size of these organizations and the roles vary from managing a small department of 50 IT professionals to more than 500 IT, imaging, clinical engineering and telecommunication employees with a $100M operating budget.

Patty has been recognized by the Georgia CIO Leadership Association twice as a finalist CIO of the Year and in 2008 as the CIO of the Year for the public/non-profit sector. She was acknowledged by Becker’s Healthcare in 2019 as a CIO to Know and Women in IT to Know.

Paul is a healthcare technologist and strategist specializing in life sciences research and development and digital health. His decade-long journey spans drug discovery through late-stage clinical development, embodying a blend of innovation, process improvements, go-to-market strategies and technology evaluations. These experiences have developed a strong knowledge base of industry limitations and developmental pain points.

Currently at Medable, Paul is a senior director of growth and strategy with financial operational oversight responsibilities. Paul supports internal operational improvements and standardization, commercial market positioning, board reporting and client expansion strategies. Formally at Accenture, Paul spearheaded transformative engagements, driving multimillion-dollar savings and process enhancements specifically within pharma research and development.

Paul’s areas of expertise and support include customer opportunity development with life sciences buyer personas, crafting and communicating go-to-market strategies, patient and site experience, clinical trial technology, regulations and processes, insights discovery and organizational development.

Paul holds a master’s in public health from Johns Hopkins and an MBA and master’s in pharmacology from Loyola University Chicago.

As the leader of Koodoo’s North America practice, Richard has almost 30 years of general management and marketing experience working with medical devices, biopharmaceuticals and technology startups. Before transitioning to the president of Kardian Health at Xandar Kardian, he also served as the chief marketing officer of Hillrom to help drive the transformation from a diversified medical device company to a connected care leader.

Richard is a dynamic and results-oriented senior executive and corporate officer with demonstrated success in P&L management marketing, business development, rebranding, strategic planning, global marketing, research and development and healthcare. He leverages his exceptional leadership and analytical capabilities to build successful healthcare businesses in developed and emerging markets.

Richard earned his bachelor’s in business administration from Brock University and his master’s in marketing and consumer studies from the University of Guelph.

Robert H. Eubanks is focused on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) for the life sciences industry. He has more than twenty years of business consulting and industry experience with approximately eighteen years working with life sciences companies.

Robert works with organizations to help them better understand the capabilities of generative AI and how to leverage the technology to deepen insights, create competitive differentiation and prepare themselves for the future of work, which involves human and machine collaboration.

Robin has over 20 years of experience focused on improving the health and wellbeing of individuals and their families, working with organizations to innovate how healthcare is delivered across all stakeholders. She has both a personal and professional passion for improving the health and performance of teams, organizations, consumers and society by driving awareness of the value of investing in prevention as well as means to optimize or improve all aspects of wellbeing. She has deep expertise in the areas of consumer, employee, member and patient experience, and has worked with companies to truly engage with individuals in maintaining or improving their health. She also has a deep understanding of how healthcare is paid for in the United States and the challenges employers are facing when providing benefits to their employees and their loved ones.

She has expansive healthcare sales, marketing, operations and consulting expertise. Robin has worked at both large organizations and start-ups in the healthcare space. Her career has spanned leadership roles in management consulting at Booz Allen Hamilton, strategy, marketing, sales and market access at pharmaceutical and device manufacturers Abbott and AbbVie, benefits consulting at Willis Towers Watson (now wtw) and customer success at health tech companies Engagement Health and Spring Health.

Robin has a bachelor’s degree in Japanese Language and Culture from the University of Michigan and completed MBA coursework at the University of Illinois-Chicago. She is also studying lifestyle and functional medicine, focusing on the microbiome and its impact on physical and mental health, along with food as medicine. She also earned a certificate from the Cornell Center for Nutrition Studies.

Seema Kumbhat, MD, is a physician who has served nearly 30 years in healthcare. During this time, she held various leadership positions of increasing responsibility, including chief medical officer for life sciences and post-acute and chronic care delivery organizations. Her leadership career has also spanned healthcare information technology development for Epic, GE, and McKesson and pharma/biologics and medical device development for Merck, Hospira and Fresenius Kabi.

Seema’s key areas of expertise include team building, new product development (pharmaceutical, device and information technology), commercialization, medical affairs, real world evidence generation, education, training and clinical development including trial strategy and execution. Her key therapeutic development, information technology and device areas include oncology, immunology, nephrology, biosimilars, nutrition, surgery, cardiology, benign prostate hyperplasia, osteoporosis and medication delivery solutions in the hospital, clinic and home.

Seema earned her doctor of medicine from the University of Miami Medical School. She completed her surgical internship at Northwestern Medical Center and did residency in surgery at the University of Wisconsin.

Sheetal Sobti serves as system vice president and aging independently category leader for Advocate Health Enterprises, a subsidiary of Advocate Health that advances innovative solutions to address people’s broader health needs. In her role, Sheetal is responsible for building a portfolio of health and wellness companies that enables seniors to thrive independently, comfortably and affordably in their homes.

Prior to joining Advocate Health Enterprises, Sheetal focused on strategy, business development and analytics at Advocate Aurora Health, one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the nation. She also has held various leadership positions at large academic medical centers and medical groups.

A strategic thinker with proven success solving large-scale organizational problems and developing strategic direction, Sheetal earned a bachelor’s degree in speech and hearing from the University of Illinois and a master’s in healthcare administration from The Ohio State University. She is trained in lean management, certified in project management and a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives.

In her free time, Sheetal enjoys doing yoga, watching a Buckeye game and spending time with her family.

Sheryl is an innovation catalyst and a serial entrepreneur specializing in the healthcare and life sciences space. For the past 20 years, she has guided Intermountain Health’s intellectual assets, innovation, ventures and strategy offices to develop programs for passionate innovators (across 7 states and 60,000 employees). She has assisted caregivers across Intermountain Health’s fully integrated value-based organization to build business models and commercialization plans and helped innovators secure funding to de-risk their ideas. Innovations ranged from medical devices to artificial intelligence-based clinical decision support tools and other SaaS-based tools to reduce costs for patients and payers.

Sheryl began her career as a solid surface immunochemical engineer, developing a number of laboratory and diagnostic products that are still on the market today. Her consulting firm provides services for idea evaluation, intellectual property analysis, technology transfer, product development planning, business development and licensing and assistance in litigation cases involving intellectual property. Her clients include universities, early stage startups and large publicly traded corporations. Throughout her career, Sheryl has assisted in the launch of and has served on the boards of dozens of companies and nonprofit organizations.

Sheryl earned her master’s of science in microbiology from UCLA and her master’s of science in management of technology (executive MBA) from the University of Minnesota. She is a certified licensing professional (CLP) with the Licensing Executive Society and has served on the CLP education committee to develop the certification test as well as the review committee for renewing CLP members.

Stephen is passionate about “giving back “to other leaders based on the years of experience and diversity of challenges and opportunities he encountered during his career. Stephen has been in C-Suite roles for 35 years that span operations, strategy, philanthropy and financial leadership. His titles include Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer. In addition, he has been on numerous Boards for both non-profit and for-profit entities.

Stephen’s experience includes national, regional, bicoastal and local healthcare organizations across the country. He also has been in governance and operational roles for insurance companies, startup entities and consulting services. He formalized an organizational diversity program, taught financial analytics and has been a featured speaker on motivation in the workplace and operational innovation for the healthcare industry.

Steve Hamman is a senior-level healthcare executive, advisor and investor with 30+ years proven experience in growing and leading a large health plan organization. He has extensive experience managing a multi-billion dollar P&L with consumer-focused service operations as well as advising private equity and venture capital companies focused on operational due diligence, market assessment, payer relations and value-based strategy.

Steve is the immediate past president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, where he was responsible for the state’s largest health insurer with almost nine million members, $22 billion in revenue and over $40 billion in medical spend. His responsibilities included overall business and financial performance, long-term growth strategy, sales, care management, network/provider contracting, government relations and communications across all commercial lines of business, Medicare and Medicaid.

Steve served in a variety of management roles within Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) during his tenure with the company — which operates Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. Prior to assuming the president role, he served as senior vice president, enterprise network and provider partnerships, where he was responsible for HCSC’s network and provider partnership strategy and investments, provider and network analytics, alternative payment model development, and affordability of care across HCSC’s five markets.

Steve holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and mathematics from Colorado College and a master’s in business administration in information systems from the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University in Chicago. He currently serves on the boards of Special Olympics Illinois, MATTER and New City Church while also actively participating on the healthcare advisory boards for Madison Dearborn Partners, Forge Health, Stellar Health, Carium Health, Rezilient Health, CertifyOS and as an executive in residence for MATTER.