Women at the Forefront: Discussions on Transparency, Diversity & Mentorship

In 2013, The Fast Company named Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe as “The Most Daring CEO.” Recently, Anne joined Startup Grind’s London Chapter for a virtual fireside to discuss how she’s boldly empowered patients by putting health data back in their hands, and to share her experiences as a woman-founder and pioneer in the healthtech space. The event was part of #SGwomen’s month, putting the spotlight on incredible women founders and entrepreneurs.

Anne’s fireside was preceded by Charlotte Guzzo, co-founder and COO of Sano Genetics and Shardi Nahavandi co-founder and CEO of Pexxi — two healthtech founders who are also changing the future of healthcare with their work around precision medicine for women. They were moderated by Marta Krupinska, Head of Google for Startups UK.

To open the event, Gary Stewart — founder of The Nest — furthered the discussion on racial inequality within tech, sharing examples of the explicit racism that exists within our systems and businesses.

See a full recording of the event here or keep reading for highlights.

#1: The tech industry hasn’t done nearly enough when it comes to equity — for Black female founders in particular.

Tech has a long way to go in the fight for racial equality. Kicking off the event, Gary Stewart shared sobering statistics: “In the US — only 1% of VC-backed founders are Black and only 1% of the decision makers at VC firms are Black. Of all VC funding over the past decade in the US, Black women accounted for 0.0006% of the funds.” It’s a status quo that can’t be tolerated.

Gary highlighted several areas that must get attention including: putting substantial financial investments into Black founded companies, uplifting Black women founders, and making public metrics that hold companies accountable to these.

#2: Diversity is essential in the success of precision medicine & tailored-health for women.

Advancements in healthcare have long lacked full representation and diversity — at the detriment of entire populations of people.

Exclusion of women in clinical trials has meant lack of data that can be used when developing treatments, feeding into the inability to create medicine that’s holistically effective. This leads to women being misdiagnosed, under-treated, and underrepresented in healthcare.

Pexxi and Sano Genetics are working to change this by focusing on precision medicine — ie. hyper-specific care “designed to optimize efficiency or therapeutic benefit for particular groups of patients.” Because precision medicine requires a full picture into variations, genetics, etc., diversity must be at the forefront for its success.

#3: Mentorship –and mentoring — is critical for uplifting communities.

Strong mentoring networks are powerful tools for uplifting women founders, a point brought up multiple times during the event, first by Charlotte Guzzo and Shardi Nahavandi — each nodding to the help of their Google for Startups network — and then echoed by Anne Wojcicki.

Anne shared: “I’ve been lucky to have really good people in my life and access to mentorship. One of the main things I’ve learned from this is that we have a responsibility to reach out and mentor the next generation […] And I have a responsibility to make sure I’m working with all representations of women, and bringing them in. This requires asking: are there things we’re doing right now that aren’t encouraging of all women?”

#4: Data usage in traditional healthcare systems is due for a reckoning.

Privacy concerns are almost always at the forefront of conversations pertaining to consumer genetics and emerging healthtech companies. When asked about this, Anne was quick to point out that these worries may be directed at the wrong companies.

Current healthcare systems are often veiled in how they use patient data, to the point that most consumers don’t have direct access to their own biological health information. And, when they do, it requires jumping through hoops to obtain.

Innovators in healthtech have been trying to fix this data blackbox, freeing personal health data to the people. This is also one of the biggest reasons why 23andMe invests so much into transparency.

Which brings us to a final takeaway…

#5: Healthtech aims to bring choice, transparency, and agency to the people.

Power of choice is at the forefront of 23andMe’s mission , which gives people the ability to access their own health data to make health decisions. This requires changing ineffective healthcare systems by shaking them at their very core. Anne Wojcicki: “We want to give our customers choice. We want to give our customers agency.”

There’s tons more interesting discussion in the full recording. Click here to watch the event: “Celebrating Women Entrepreneurs.”

Looking for more? Visit our events page to see a list of Startup Grind’s upcoming #SGvirtual events.