Maneesha Ghiya is Managing Partner and Founder of FemHealth Ventures, a firm focused on providing investment capital to entrepreneurs focused on women’s health. Investing in healthcare since 2000, Maneesha has invested via public equities, private equities and as a hedge fund specialist.  She is a Senior Advisor to ExSight Ventures, an ophthalmology-focused venture capital fund and serves on multiple boards.

Shalom Lloyd,  after a career of over 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry, went on to found two businesses. She is founder of Naturally Tribal skincare, a beauty line based on traditional remedies including shea butter, which she developed initially to cure her son’s eczema. She is also the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of eMQT, described as “the Bridge between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Africa” which facilitates clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies in Africa. She has been a keynote speaker on the topic of innovation and was a fellow of the Start-Up Leadership Program in London until 2020. 

Dr Brian Dooreck is a Board Certified Gastroenterologist with a particular focus on private healthcare advocacy, life balance, and gut health. We met on Linked In when I became aware of his frequent health tips and his work within the private wealth community to promote ways to optimally navigate healthcare. He lives in Florida.

In this part three we look around the world to compare the nature of the problem  – hearing from Yele Aluko about his experience in Africa, while Noa Hirsch, an experienced health care director, nurse and business based in Israel shares not only her insights from the ground and from other kinds of disparities on the ground in a much more densely populated country as well as from technology solutions that are in development to chip away at persistent problems in this domain. 

In this part 1 of the series we will explore the problem, through storytelling, on the ground insights and lived experience. We hear from Maneesha Ghiya, the founder of FemHealth Ventures about her own birth experience that prompted a career-long devotion to women’s health issues, as well as Yele Aluko, EY Americas Chief Medical Officer, director of the EY Center for Health Equity, Adonica Shaw, CEO and Founder of My Wing Women, an online community and resource center for women relating to reproductive and other health issues. Maura Rosenfeld, founder of digital health innovator – MindUp, provides her insights on the innovations and technology that can move the needle in alleviating this problem.