Health Tech: Maria Clara Mesa On How Alternova’s Technology Can Make An Important Impact On Our Overall Wellness

An Interview With Dave Philistin

Embrace diversity: this is self-explanatory, a company that embraces diversity and brings in people from different backgrounds, different mindsets, will create an environment where nothing is taken from granted, where innovation is the constant and where empathy and listening are skills that are naturally nurtured.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Maria Clara Mesa.

Maria Clara is a Colombian purpose-driven entrepreneur, passionate about understanding the human condition and developing technology solutions to help humans thrive. She is a partner at Alternova, a software company focused on the development of interactive digital health products and platforms, working with Stanford, MIT, UCSF, Takeda and startups from early stages.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

My name is Maria Clara Mesa Abad, I was born in Medellin (Colombia) in a warm and loving family which is my greatest treasure. I was lucky enough to have many opportunities growing up: proper nutrition, education and heroes to look up to (starting with my mom and dad that today dedicate their lives to philanthropy) in a country where a lot of people live under the poverty line. Being aware and thankful for the opportunities I’ve had is what fires my purpose to make a difference in the world in an exponential way.

I did law and business as an undergrad in Colombia and then I moved to San Francisco where I went through 2 master’s degrees in international business and business analytics. During my career I’ve explored different industries and ended up falling in love with tech, especially with its potential to positively impact the world by empowering humans to thrive and to become better versions of themselves.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

The funniest and most beautiful thing that has happened to me is that I ended up partnering with my high school friends from Colombia during an internship I did during my master’s degrees in San Francisco.

I came to San Francisco with the idea to finish my master’s and find a tech company to work for and explore possibilities from there. During my studies, I had the chance to do a couple of internships, one of them was with a group of angel investors. I hunted for companies (investment opportunities for the group) and I also helped them build a boutique acceleration program for international companies that wanted to expand to the US market. As part of the process of building the program, I had discussions with many Tech entrepreneurs (in Latin America primarily) to identify specific needs they’d have to successfully enter the US market. During that process, I thought about Alternova because the founders are my close friends, and I knew that they were looking for opportunities to enter the US market.

I mentioned Alternova to the angel investors I was working with, and they showed interest in exploring if Alternova could be the company to test the model of the accelerator they were building (the MVP). My friends (now my partners) came to California to meet my bosses and they decided to offer Alternova the opportunity to be the first company to enroll in the program. Right after that meeting, I went back to Colombia for a couple of months (vacation between my 2 masters) and during that time we started working on a couple of projects together. At the end of that vacation period, I had a conversation with my friends, and they offered me to be a partner of the company with the responsibility to grow Alternova in the US.

So, I ended up partnering with my lifetime friends and it has been the best decision I’ve ever made.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I am grateful to many people that have inspired and believed in me during my path through life. I would highlight my parents who have allowed me to be myself and have inspired me with their example.

Growing up I always wanted to be a musician; my mom plays the guitar and there are many artists in my family (writers, sculptors, movie producers, poets, etc) so I was born listening to my mom sing and play the guitar for me and my sister. I learned to play the piano, the drums, the base and the guitar, and my parents always encouraged my talent. Therefore, early in my high school years I wanted to be a musician (I wanted to go to Cuba to study percussion) and my parents always said: if this is what makes you happy, go for it, and if we can support you, we will.

Later, I changed my mind and wanted to become a doctor, then an engineer and I ended up being a lawyer. My parents always allowed me to explore and make my own decisions, and they always made me feel empowered and supported.

Besides supporting me in my professional, academic and hobby explorations, I grew up in a loving environment, where I learned how important and life changing it can be to have a family that allows and encourages you to be your real self with no judgment, and that empowers you with great values. This will guide my relationship with my own kids for sure.

My parents have always taught me to be generous with everyone around me, and I’ve learned that through their own example. Today they dedicate their life to philanthropic endeavors. Consequently, I feel responsible to continue their legacy and positively impact the world on a bigger scale through technology.

Besides my family, I’ve received continuous support from PROCOLOMBIA, the agency in charge of promoting Colombian goods and services internationally. They’ve been great advocates of Alternova’s success, by sponsoring us on international events, by providing learning opportunities such as softlanding programs, by giving us their media support and by referring us to potential clients and opportunities. A great resource for Colombian entrepreneurs.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Something that has systematically made my life better is being aware of the power of my own beliefs. What we believe (as entrepreneurs and as humans in general) is what reality shows us. The power we have to manifest the stories that we tell ourselves is infinite if we build that story with the right beliefs. If I believe I will build a sustainable and impactful company, my words and my actions will make it happen. I’ve learned this lesson through my own experience and through the spiritual and business guidance I’ve received from my family and my coaches.

Being aware of how important it is the story that I create about myself and the reality around me, has helped me enjoy and navigate uncertainty every day in a better way. Our beliefs are the structure of that story (seeds that we plant) and our imagination (which is more powerful than knowledge) is what makes that story evolve with time.

Connected to this beautiful power that us humans have to manifest what we believe in, I picked a couple of quotes that resonate with me. Reinforcing this learning has led me to build a big vision that is manifesting in every angle of my life, which is guided by my desire to impact the world exponentially (and the close people around me) in a positive way.

“Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.” — William Shakespeare

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

“The moment you take responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you can change anything in your life.” — Hal Elrod

Gratitude, and the power it has, has also been eye opening and a source of joy for me. If you practice gratitude and appreciate the opportunities, the relationships and the challenges life bring, a virtuous spiral is created and the things you hope for (what you believe in) will come without forcing them. I’ve learned about the power of gratitude through neuroscience and through my own experiences. Related to this, I picked this quote.

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” — Melody Beattie.

You are a successful business leader. Which three-character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1. Self-awareness: being able to observe with curiosity and compassion my thoughts and my feelings helps me understand who I am, my strengths and weaknesses, in order to be a better version of myself every day.

This trait is fundamental for a business leader, in my opinion, and has been instrumental for me to know what I bring to the table (and the gaps that I have) and to value what others bring in business. This is the base, the pillar of a joyful and successful life, understanding who we are, which is the first step to acknowledge what is our purpose in this life. Being aware of my beliefs, the traits I want to have, my passions and the problems I care about has led me to make sure that every endeavor (professional and personal) I embark on needs to be aligned with my purpose. Being self-aware helps me simplify my life (reduce the number of decisions I need to make every day because I know my filter) and helps me say no to things that don’t align with my purpose.

Self-awareness is also the first step for being an empathic leader and for learning how to build healthy, reciprocal and fruitful relationships with peers, partners, clients, etc.

2. Vulnerability: Being my authentic self and being confident to expose my emotions. Being myself is what has allowed me to accelerate the growth of my business. Building honest relationships with people creates trust faster and helps me truly enjoy my “work”. Acting like someone I’m not has never led me to anything good.

3. Humility: To be humble is to be grounded in who I am, it means I am responsible for becoming what I am meant to become. I believe this is a must if I want to be a leader that impacts millions, never forgetting I didn’t start where I am and recognizing I can always learn something new. Connected to this, working on my capacity to listen intentionally and to speak from my heart is something a good leader cannot survive without.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on our wellness. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?

Alternova wants to build healthcare experiences that are fun and wants to contribute to healthcare democratization.

Today, we are a trusted software development partner for reputable universities and research centers, for hospitals, for pharma companies and for a varied pool of digital health startups disrupting the healthcare industry. We offer our clients agility because we develop their products with the highest standards, which allows them to focus on their strategy and their growth, while we take care of the development of their products.

It isn’t fun to go through many healthcare experiences (specially for patients, but for all stakeholders in general). Healthcare hasn’t been focused on creating flows and experiences centered on the user, and that is starting to change. In an industry where we are all clients, this should be a priority, and this is the problem Alternova wants to contribute to solve.

Alternova’s partners come from the video game world (as developers and as players) and we bring engagement mechanics to every healthcare product and platform we build for our clients.

In Alternova, we believe that technology has the responsibility and should be used to democratize access to healthcare. In mental health for example, where we have good experience, technology can scale and reduce the cost of having access to proper diagnosis and intervention of different mental health conditions. We are developing several apps and games used to diagnose and intervene in conditions like depression and Alzheimer’s, giving patients access to data driven and personalized solutions for their conditions.

With a team of clinicians from Stanford, we’ve been creating a set of tools to democratize the development of digital health apps, that today is timely and costly. Our framework is called CardinalKit and is available for digital health innovators to build applications from scratch, reducing the barrier to enter the industry.

How do you think your technology can address this?

From the Alternova side, by building applications that are fun, easy and engaging for different stakeholders in healthcare to use. By helping our clients figure out what is the most effective way to solve healthcare pain points using engaging technology.

From CardinalKit’s side (the framework for healthcare innovators we’ve created), by providing healthcare innovators with a set of tools to easily build digital health applications and research projects from the ground up, from the app itself to storing collected data in the cloud and visualizing it in a dashboard. CardinalKit is basically a pre-built starting point to kick off and enhance your app, medical device or research project in weeks, not years, making it way easier to build a healthcare product.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

Alternova’s partners have always been passionate about video games and the power they have to collect data from its players. The founders of the company started developing technology powered by gaming engines in different industries and ended up bumping into healthcare and realizing that the knowledge Alternova has can generate a great deal of positive impact in healthcare, so the company found ist purpose and its soul in this industry, solving more meaningful problems than just pure entertainment.

One of Alternova’s partners randomly met a principal investigator at Neuroscape (UCSF’s Neuroscience Center, which is still Today Alternova’s client). This PI needed a videogame developer to take over a project (digital therapeutic to diagnose cognition) that a very big videogame company was developing for Neuroscape. He saw potential and expertise in the gaming and data science experience Alternova. This digital therapeutic was our first digital health project. It was successful, we exceeded UCSF’s expectations, so another project came, then another, then another, then further introductions and projects with other healthcare institutions like MIT. As projects grew and we gained more experience, we realized that we had found our true purpose in healthcare.

After a couple of years, we met some bright clinicians from Stanford that had the goal to create an infrastructure to kick off digital health initiatives faster and cheaper, a problem they had evidenced time and time again through their academic and digital health experience, so we joined forces and that’s what CardinalKit is bringing to the industry Today, a set of tools to build a digital health app from the ground up, powered by Alternova + Stanford.

How do you think this might change the world?

Alternova will change the world because we will be the go-to development firm in the digital health industry, adding speed and reliability to the product development process so our clients can focus on what is strategically important, a software company with a process that is designed to building compliant applications, a team of technical people with a great soul that can easily communicate with scientists and clinicians and understand their pain points. A software firm that doesn’t only take software development requests, but that is part of the solution of its clients’ problems, by figuring out the most cost effective, high quality and engaging ways of solving a healthcare problem using technology.

The framework (CardinalKit) we’ve created with Stanford will change the world because it will offer digital health innovators an easy way to build their products from the ground up without investing big amounts of time and money (reducing the barrier for entry to the digital health industry).

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

The power that technology has should be discussed from an ethics perspective. Technology is built by humans, so the values we embed in design and in algorithms should be aimed at building an equitable and abundant society, not at favoring specific groups or interests.

Today, technology we carry all day with us (starting with our phones) has the power to gather data to measure how our brain works, to measure our social behaviors and to predict healthcare conditions. That data should be used to empower the human race to thrive and not to control us (which would be a terrible drawback).

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

1. The people you surround yourself with is what will determine your success: starting with our teammates (Alternauts). What has made Alternova successful is hiring good talent (not only great technically, but awesome human beings that embed their soul in every line of code they build), having great advisors and having great clients (building meaningful and impactful projects with our help) that believe in us and that advocate for our success. Related story, example: In Alternova we hire individuals without work experience when they are still in college, we look for them in rural areas and small cities in Colombia, many of them don’t speak English yet. We have a mentoring program in the company and we teach them all the skills they need until they reach world class standards. This “policy” has allowed us to give our teammates opportunities to grow as we grow and to empower underserved communities with knowledge, contributing to the development of our region (Alternova’s founders are Colombian, very lucky and educated Colombians that want to give back to their country).
2. Pick a meaningful problem to solve and never forget that technology is a means to an end: pick a problem that you’d like to solve and that if you do, you’ll leave the world in a better condition than you found it. Then start thinking about how you can create a solution that is scalable and that positively impacts as many humans as possible. Technology is just a way to do it.
3. Be transparent: with your clients, with your teammates, with the policies and processes you design for your company.
4. Keep your checks and balances: Pick partners and teammates that complement your skills. In my case, I am the kite that flies, and dreams and my partners are the ones that bring to earth those dreams and guide the creation of plans and processes to make them happen. Without them, I am half, they are the ying to my yang.
5. Embrace diversity: this is self-explanatory, a company that embraces diversity and brings in people from different backgrounds, different mindsets, will create an environment where nothing is taken from granted, where innovation is the constant and where empathy and listening are skills that are naturally nurtured.

Alternova’s founders are Colombian, we are privileged people in a country where most of the population lives under the poverty line. We look for new teammates in cities and rural areas in Colombia, where top notch companies usually don’t hire. We hire them when they are still in college, we hire technicians. We train new teammates (assigning them a mentor that is responsible for their success), we teach them different languages (coding languages and English) until they reach a level where any top-notch company would hire them. They start in junior positions, and they start getting new responsibilities as they grow as professionals and as humans. Today, as an example, our CTO and our Project Management leaders are 2 individuals that started as interns in our company, they speak great English and they have a great deal of experience and responsibility in Alternova. We believe this is one of the ways to give back to society, by giving opportunities to great human beings that usually are not considered by top technology companies.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

I would say to them… actively and intentionally take time to stop, embrace moments where you feel “bored” and be with yourself, ask yourself what your reason is for waking up every day. I’d say to them. Life is too short, and money is not enough, but purpose is and money will come. Think about what makes you happy, think about the problems you care about. Think about how you can build a career where you don’t feel you are working, but one where you feel you are truly living every second, surrounded by people you admire and have fun spending time with.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

I have several people I’d like to have conversations with (from the US and outside, the world is larger), I have pictures of them in a spiral guide I read every day:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: One of the feminist authors and influencers I admire the most (Salomé Gómez and Bell Hooks are on my list as well). She speaks in a common language, one that all can understand. I’d like to have a conversation with her about how to raise my children so they can be true feminists that inspire others.
• Alain de Botton: This guy is just impressive, his story telling skills and his capacity to explain complex concepts in a simple way… I want to be like him when I grow up. Every time I listen to him I think about how I can incorporate in my language and in the way I communicate, the capacity to influence and motivate others to be better versions of themselves (this is my purpose… this is to convey complex concepts in a simple way). One of the greatest story tellers I’ve ever heard and read.
• Andrew Huberman: I’ve learned from him in simple words how to leverage on my own biology to live a better life, how by understanding how my brain works I can implement simple changes that can help me live a more joyful and empowered life.
• Brené Brown: She is the reason why in one of the answers to the questions of this interview I wrote about vulnerability. This woman has scientifically proven why just being yourself is enough and more. I’d love to have a couple of drinks with her over dinner.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

This is our website, our YouTube channel, our LinkedIn and our CEO’s Twitter account.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.