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.

Nkem Egekeze is chief innovation officer and Managing Director of Stealth Startup.  He previously worked as an orthopedic surgery resident and as a research scholar at the University of Georgia, and a strategy advisor at Harvard Innovation Labs. He obtained his medical degree from University of Michigan medical school. He focuses on providing value-based health research and innovation insights for investment executives and medical professionals focusing in particular on cost savings and customized insights. 

Amy Lehman is Founder and CEO at Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic, an international organization, whose mission is to address the problem of healthcare access for millions of people who live in the isolated, but strategically critical lake, Tanganyika, great lakes region of central Africa. She received both an MD and MBA from the University of Chicago, and trained in general surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Additionally, she was a senior fellow with McLean center for Clinical Medical Ethics. She received the 2014 distinguished young alumni award from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She has been mentioned by Newsweek as one of “150 Women who Shake the World” and by a number of other publications. 

Veronica O’Keane has recently retired from her position which was as a professor of psychiatry and consultant psychiatrist at Trinity College Dublin.  She has over 30 years of experience in the field and has published numerous research papers, especially on mood disorders and on perinatal depression. She is the author of the book A Sense of Self: Memory, the Brain, and Who We Are and  The Rag & Bone Shop, How We Make Memories and Memories Make Us.  She lives by the sea in north Dublin and is a passionate open sea swimmer.

In Series 2 of our Inspiring People in Medicine and Science we continue to source inspiring voices and to ventilate topics relevant to us, our loved ones and the societies we live in.  With topics as wide ranging as development aid, mental health, Femhealth and value – we dig deep into what these areas mean, why the conventional wisdom is not always “wise” and hear about exciting new frontiers.  We are releasing all four of these episodes this week so that you can compare and contrast the experiences of these doctors and medical professionals and that have broken the mould and are pushing for change.