Closing out Season 3

Subscribe for your weekly fix of health tech stories, wherever you get your news: Substack, Twitter, Apple, or Spotify.

This past year has been the Pulse’s biggest yet. We released a whopping 32 episodes with leaders across digital health, launched a Substack, and became more #social with an Instagram (we’ll leave Tiktok to future generations).

Season 3 also featured our most eclectic set of companies ever. We ventured into areas like healthcare infrastructure (Ribbon, Truepill, Wheel, Zus), women’s health (Elektra, Modern Fertility), retail (Walgreens, CVS Ventures), behavioral health (Boulder Care, Brightline, Neo Kuma), device-enabled services (Levels, Podimetrics), and even care beyond our borders (Africa Health Holdings). We’d like to extend a huge THANK YOU to all our guests for making this show possible by taking a chance on a few bright-eyed MBA students.

Behind all this were our two amazing second-year hosts, Sandy Varatharajah and Vivien Ho. They are always looking for new ways to reach more people, explore burgeoning areas of the industry, and invite a more diverse set of guests. While we will miss their friendship and mentorship (not to mention their enviable podcast voices), we’re excited to watch them become inspiring healthcare leaders that podcasters all over will be eager to bring onto their shows (but we get first dibs!)

So, before we officially close out Season 3, let’s learn more about what’s next for our new alumni.

Sandy Varatharajah

What’s next for you?

• I’m joining Oak Street Health as a Population Health Director in New York City. In this role, I’ll be leading market growth and operations as the company expands its primary-care focused clinics and care model across NYC’s different boroughs. I’m excited to leap back into an operating role and value-based care, and especially to lower income seniors — an underserved population I care deeply about.
• But, I’m also a chronic side hustler and have a few personal projects on the docket. Those include angel investing in pre-seed/seed-stage health tech companies (just wrote my second check this year!), policy research, and more. If you’re a fellow digital health nerd and find yourself in NYC, I’d love to grab coffee, regardless of whether we’ve met before — shoot me a note!

Reflections on your podcasting experience?

• When I look at healthcare media, I rarely see people that look like me: from immigrant families, women, and people of color. I’m proud that I spent the last two years elevating voices that we don’t hear from too often in healthcare. They exist, in droves! Over 60% of my episodes featured women and/or BIPOCs. This is just my start of building more equitable spaces in healthcare. I look forward to seeing more industry leaders doing the same with actions, not just words.
• Putting something so permanent out there with insanely smart and accomplished leaders was a great stretch experience for me. It taught me that I want to continue building those muscles (public speaking, executive presence, and on-the-fly thinking) in future roles. Forcing an accountability mechanism, whether it’s a public platform or just verbalizing your goals to a trusted friend/colleague, is a great way to kickstart that skillbuilding for others like me who are intimidated on where to start!
• I have a journal with learnings from all of my guests, but my favorite episodes were with Neil Batlivala (Pair Team), Michelle Davey (Wheel), and Paul Martino (VillageMD). You can probably see my passions for underserved populations, rural/primary/virtual care, and PaaS models reign the most in these.

Just for fun — restaurant you’ll miss the most in Philly?

• Toss up between K’Far (from the team behind Zahav) for their weekend morning Jerusalem bagels, Zahav (James Beard winner), and Kalaya Thai (amazing, spicy eclectic Thai!). Philly’s food scene is so underrated and I’m glad I got to explore it for two years. I will also definitely miss Philly prices!

Vivien Ho

What’s next for you?

• I joined Pear VC as a Principal in San Francisco, and will be focused on investing in pre-seed and seed stage founders. Although I am a generalist investor, I lead our healthcare investing and work with our growing portfolio of healthtech founders closely. I’m really excited about investing in healthcare infrastructure to power the wave of digital health adoption across payers/providers and pharma. Other spaces I am interested in are tech-enabled services in eldercare, in-home care, women’s health and value-based care. I’m also excited to further build out programs focused on underrepresented founders starting with a new Female Founder program I launched and will be organizing for the next three months.

Reflections on your podcasting experience?

• I was excited to take on a project where I could present something to the world. In my previous strategic roles, I was often building frameworks and plans instead of executing and building. I felt proud to have led our rebranding strategy, with the most rewarding aspect publishing new episodes!
• Public speaking was an area where I did not have a lot of innate confidence. I remember my first speech in grade school and when I stood in front of my class, my knees would start shaking and my face would turn hot. Entering business school, I wanted to gain the “stretch experience” and decided that not only was joining the podcast team a great way to build confidence speaking on the fly but also diving deeper into an industry I am really passionate about. I also liked the aspects of distilling amazing founder stories and insights into the world.
• A few of my favorite episodes are with Julie Yoo (Andreesen Horowitz), Connor Hailey (Axle Health) and Afton Vechery (Modern Fertility). Through these episodes, you can see that I’m passionate about in-home care, women’s health, and continuing to build a strong perspective in Healthcare 2.0. I honestly would consider working for most of the founders I featured in my episodes, which is largely the reason why I reached out to them!

Just for fun — restaurant you’ll miss the most in Philly?

• During quarantine I was really into sourdough making, but then I found my favorite sourdough source in Philadelphia: Lost Bread! After my sourdough making experience, I truly appreciated trading 30 hours of breadmaking for a $6 dollar loaf of bread. I looked forward to visiting Lost Bread in Fishtown or the Rittenhouse Farmers Market, but they just opened a storefront on Walnut. Definitely get the at home pizza kit for a fun weekend activity! Otherwise, Pizzeria Beddia in Fishtown is a winner as well.