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The potential of bringing psychedelics back into mainstream medicine was so enticing to Amy Emerson that her first foray into the effort was as a pro bono volunteer. By day, she worked as a clinical program manager for Chiron (which became Novartis Vaccines after its acquisition), while by night—and also a little bit by day—she did the same work for free for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

“I was at a conference and learned about the idea of taking psychedelics back through the regulatory system,” she said in an interview. “I was immediately inspired by the potential of that and the need for it.”

At the time, in 2003, there wasn’t much funding available for the work, and she also liked the job that was actually paying her bills. Nonetheless, for six years she helped launch clinical trials testing MDMA as an actual medicine—trials that will likely serve as the foundation for MAPS’ soon-to-be-submitted approval application to the FDA. The nonprofit organization has scratched and clawed for decades, and it’s finally on the precipice of breaking into the market.

But back when Emerson joined, there was more stigma and wariness about using psychedelics for therapeutic benefit. Many know MDMA as ecstasy or molly, a drug associated with raves and all-night clubbing. A year before Emerson came aboard MAPS full-time, a study protocol (PDF) submitted to Swiss regulators described how a phase 1 study in Spain testing MDMA in women survivors of sexual assault with treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) had been discontinued after pressure from the Madrid Anti-Drug Authority.

“I never set out to be the CEO, but it was just one of these things where I think I was building so much knowledge and history of how to do this particular thing,” she said.

Emerson and her team recognize that expanding access to MDMA will go far beyond breaking the stigma associated with psychedelics. It will also require that more people suffering from trauma or a mental health condition seek the help of a professional who may ultimately be able to administer a psychedelic therapy. Emerson said MAPS PBC is engaging with advocacy groups beyond just veteran organizations—often the first group that comes to mind when you think about PTSD—like those serving survivors of abuse and childhood trauma, men and women alike.

“I think that the work we’re doing to get MDMA-assisted therapy approved has a broader implication for destigmatizing the conversation around seeking mental health treatment, seeking therapy,” she said. “It’s really bringing it to the forefront.”

“There’s a lot of women that have been involved for a long time in psychedelic research, but I think it’s a bad habit in our culture of talking about the men that are doing things,” she said.

As MAPS’ clinical development plan has progressed, it’s been a consistent goal of Emerson’s to have the therapy be administered by teams of men and women, something she believes encouraged more female clinicians to be involved.

Now, as the PBC’s core objective shifts to actually commercializing MDMA-assisted therapy, access is the name of the game—and MAPS is now tasked with building a legal user base for a drug that for so long has existed largely on the black market. Emerson said a huge focus now is on speaking with companies and payers to construct the economics behind the potential marketplace for the therapy. That work got a major boost over the summer when the American Medical Association formally incorporated psychedelic-based therapy into current procedural terminology III codes, essentially validating the use of psychedelics by the broader medical community.

“I think [it’s] very unusual for a code like that to get approved prior to there even being a drug,” Emerson said. The code will be available for clinicians to use starting in January.

For someone whose day-to-day is focused on delivering accurate clinical testing—with results being either high or low, positive or negative, worrisome or benign—Ana Hooker is still quite comfortable living among shades of gray.

“I came into medtech a little bit by accident—I was originally an art major,” said Hooker, who after 25 years in the industry now serves as chief laboratory officer of Exact Sciences, maker of the Cologuard at-home colorectal cancer screening test and the Oncotype line of genomic tumor assays.

“But I use that creative side to help solve problems,” she continued in a recent interview. “I don’t worry about things being incredibly defined. … Sometimes being able to look at different angles of the situation through that lens plays to my advantage.”

Hooker got her start in a pathology lab at a small community hospital in Kansas, which occasionally required her to draw blood despite a hatred of needles.

“At that point, part of the job is making it work, and I just make lemonade,” she said. “I bit the bullet, and I’ve never been happier in my life.”

Later, after spending some time working at a national reference laboratory, Hooker made the jump to Exact just as its Cologuard test was starting to get off the ground—narrowing down her professional focus from a large menu of tests to just one as she helped open the company’s lab.

The noninvasive, at-home Cologuard DNA test aims to increase colon cancer screening numbers by offering a more convenient option than a standard colonoscopy to catch early signs of colorectal tumors. Stool samples are mailed off to Exact’s laboratory, and a positive result can help refer a patient to a full diagnostic work-up.

First launched in 2014, sales of the guideline-recommended test have grown alongside Exact: After joining an outfit of about 80 employees, Hooker has watched the company’s head count swell to more than 6,500 over the past 10 years. Meanwhile, Cologuard and Exact’s Oncotype DX tests—which it acquired in 2019 from Genomic Health and help personalize cancer treatments and gauge the chances of tumor recurrence—collectively delivered more than 1 million results to patients last quarter. The company is also developing a next-generation Cologuard screener as well as a blood-based test for detecting multiple cancers.

“For me, what was important was the impact on population health,” Hooker said. “If you wanted to be part of a population health story, such as the Pap smear, the promise of what this company had to offer me was beyond career growth or career progression. … It’s given me an opening to be part of history and part of how we screen for colorectal cancer.”

“My job right now is more strategic: [It’s] about how do we grow that footprint, how do we grow profitably, and how do we do it in an organized manner and in an intentional manner,” she said.

That intentionality also extends to her mentorship efforts, as she builds out not just a pipeline of products but also a pipeline of talented people by supporting women receiving training for leadership roles along with STEM students and employees who join Exact’s laboratories.

“Mentorship is critical for me. I come from a Latino background, and though I’m an American citizen by birth, coming to this country from Puerto Rico always brought an immigrant mentality,” Hooker said. “So, mentoring and bringing others along, finding ways to incorporate them into the conversation, has always been a big thing for me.”

And, she added, “as we get larger, it’s even more important, because you don’t want people to get lost in the shuffle. You want it all to be intentional.”

That translates into making more space for women and people of color in leadership roles and in the life sciences industry as a whole, where the numbers are certainly improving—but perhaps not as quickly as they could be—thanks to the effects of the still “pretty male-dominated field” of medicine, according to Hooker.

“Having a diverse slate when interviewing for positions in the C-suite is super important. And mentoring is critical—not just sponsorships, but truly mentoring and providing the space for people to be presented and have their perspectives be shared across the organization,” she said.

“It’s important to recruit women and people of color from different backgrounds and find ways to put them on a path where they can learn things that they maybe didn’t have the opportunity to learn in their education or academics,” she continued. “Opportunities where you can remove a lot of those barriers or equalize them a little bit more can help with the conversation.”

Overseeing the operations behind more than 160 clinical trials is no small feat, but Regeneron’s Bari Kowal relishes the opportunity to take a “bird’s eye view” of one of biopharma’s premier development groups.

As Regeneron’s head of development operations and portfolio management, Kowal is responsible for overseeing clinical trial operations, biostatistics, data management and a shared services department that each support the company’s vast R&D efforts. In all, around 1,200 people serve at the various divisions in her group.

Kowal started her career at a clinical research organization in the 1990s before moving to the biotech world and, eventually, to the global drug giant Pfizer. Along the way, she’s maintained a passion for science and a “keen interest” in serving patients, she said in an interview.

Ultimately, when the prospect of being able to create and lead a large development group arose, she jumped at the chance. That led her to her current position at Regeneron, where she came aboard in 2015 as head of clinical trial management and global monitoring.

When Kowal joined the company, Regeneron had a “very prolific” research organization, but the company needed to “build out” a larger group to develop molecules across many different disease areas and therapeutic modalities, she explained.

She didn’t hesitate and made the move. Not long after, in 2017, Kowal became Regeneron’s vice president of global clinical operations. Four years later, she earned the senior vice president title and assumed her current duties.

Like others who’ve had expansive careers in the industry, Kowal has weathered her share of setbacks. She’s served at companies that suffered failed trials and others that suddenly closed their doors “from one day to the next.”

Of these experiences, she said, “you have to have a thick skin” and “withstand the ups and downs of the industry.”

For Regeneron, prioritizing resilience and learning from setbacks served the drugmaker well during the pandemic, Kowal said. In one such case, before the COVID-19 crisis, a Regeneron antibody against respiratory syncytial virus failed a study because of a strain mismatch. While that was a momentary setback, the trial taught Regeneron the importance of developing a dual antibody to have the “best shot at the evolving strains,” Kowal said.

Later, the company applied that lesson during the pandemic and was able to win an FDA emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 antibody combo. Summarizing that experience, Kowal said the company looks to take lessons “from everything” that it does.

While day-to-day development operations comprise a large part of Kowal’s responsibilities, she also has an eye on the future. That includes serving on an innovation group that’s continually thinking “about how to do things differently, better [and] faster,” she said, with an aim to “modernize clinical trials.”

This effort includes increasing trial enrollment for historically underrepresented groups, utilizing digital health technology, exploring new biomarkers and more, she said.

It seems to be working: In nominating the Regeneron leader as one of this year’s fiercest women in life sciences, one of her colleagues said she “not only exemplifies operational excellence, but is also an innovative and thoughtful leader who listens to, empowers and trusts her team.”

“Bari listens, doesn’t jump to conclusions and gives her teams the room to engage in thoughtful discussions while solving problems,” the colleague continued. “She lets her teams drive their own vision, all while providing constructive input that helps the teams arrive at a viable solution.”

In her own words, Kowal said she is continually looking for areas for improvement and lives by a simple but powerful motto: “Just because that’s the way we’ve always done it, doesn’t mean that’s the way we should do it today.”

As a female co-founder of a company that’s in the process of developing technology capable of running a range of diagnostic tests on a small amount of blood, it might be easy to lump Dena Marrinucci, Ph.D., in with a certain disgraced diagnostics executive—but that’s about as far as the comparisons to Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes go.

For one thing, Truvian Health is building a benchtop blood-testing machine based on much stronger clinical evidence than the infamous Edison device, and Marrinucci herself has more than a decade of experience in developing blood diagnostic technology—and a Ph.D. in cancer biology to boot—to back it all up.

Of course, those strengths didn’t stop potential investors from being wary of Truvian’s pitch, especially since the San Diego startup launched in 2015, right around the time that Theranos’ house of cards was beginning to tumble down. Overcoming that skepticism and the challenges it brought with it is one of the things that Marrinucci, also Truvian’s chief operating officer, is most proud of in her career, she said in a recent interview.

“We really had to prove ourselves,” she said. “The bar raised significantly. And what I tell people is, there’s no shortcuts at all in diagnostics. At the end of the day, you’re delivering results to a patient, and they have to be accurate.”

The heightened pressure on Truvian led the company to spend two years generating enough data to prove to investors that they were taking a different and much more feasible approach to blood-testing—a process that they’d originally planned would only take about six months.

“Data is the core to everything that we do. We have this saying here at Truvian: The data never lies. What that means is that there’s no good data or bad data, it just is what it is,” Marrinucci said. “You have to be transparent and open with that data because it drives decisions and tells you where you are, where you need to go. And that’s a big part of how we’ve been successful.”

Most recently, study results presented this summer showed that Truvian’s fully automated benchtop analyzer was able to churn out results comparable to those of central lab analyzers across 25 of the nearly three dozen assays on its initial testing panel. Meanwhile, around the time of its downfall, Theranos’ devices were said to be running fewer than 10% of the more than 200 tests Holmes had promised, and their results were ultimately revealed to be highly inaccurate.

Throughout her time at both Truvian and Epic, Marrinucci has been driven by a career-spanning goal of “developing disruptive technologies that can improve health and prolong life,” she said, spurred in large part by the death of her grandmother from metastatic melanoma while Marrinucci was in grad school at the Scripps Research Institute.

“She was really my fuel to help to develop this liquid biopsy technology that we ended up commercializing as Epic Sciences,” she explained. “We started that company while I was finishing my Ph.D. My motivation was when she passed away, I started thinking, if we had known earlier, could we have changed her outcome? We could have, and we know that now, but we didn’t have the tools to be able to do that.”

Alongside that passion for breaking new ground in blood testing, another throughline in Marrinucci’s career has been a focus on mentorship.

At the core of that is a goal of creating spaces where people are excited about their work: “It’s really about understanding where my colleagues want to grow in their career and giving them the confidence and equipping them with the skill set in order to achieve their goals,” she said.

In doing so, Marrinucci is paying it forward from her own experiences, where she’s been fortunate to work at both Epic and Truvian with founding teams made up of “really incredible people” who are both already well-versed in the industry and supportive of her own passions and career goals.

Overall, she said, “it’s always about the team.”

“Without an incredible team, our vision can’t be realized, and so I’ve always put emphasis and focus around building the best possible team we possibly can build,” she continued. “I’ve never been the smartest person in the room, but I’ve been able to always surround myself with the brightest colleagues, advisors, board members, and through those interactions, I learn from them each and every day.”

“My motto has always been to break ceilings,” Juvena Therapeutics’ CEO and co-founder Hanadie Yousef, Ph.D., said in a recent interview. “I’m not going to let the statistics weigh against me.”

Yousef has always been tenacious. After interning at Regeneron and earning a chemistry degree from Carnegie Mellon University, she thought she was set on a career in gene therapy research. However, a graduate class at the University of California, Berkeley, changed her trajectory forever.

The course—led by professors (and spouses) Irina Conboy, Ph.D., and Michael Conboy—was about stem cells and directed organogenesis. It was then and there that Yousef fell in love with the biology of aging.

“I had a lightbulb moment and decided that’s what I wanted to really dedicate the rest of my life to,” Yousef said.

She promptly pivoted her career to focus on understanding the mechanisms behind tissue degeneration and aging.

Coincidentally, around the same time, Yousef’s father began to suffer from age-related diabetes, and the work “became really personal,” she said. Over time, his condition progressively worsened, as he developed multiple comorbidities and other diseases.

Yousef’s father—who went from a refugee camp to earning a Ph.D. at Columbia University—instilled within his daughter the belief that education and perseverance are key to improving one’s circumstances in life. But as Yousef watched her father struggle as he aged, she realized something else was just as important: one’s health.

Thus, the idea of Juvena took root, with Yousef setting out on the ultimate mission to develop therapies that ensure everyone, including our loved ones, can age gracefully.

It was during her post-doctoral studies at Stanford’s School of Medicine that Yousef met Juvena Therapeutics’ co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer Jeremy O’Connell, Ph.D. The two teamed up to launch Juvena in 2019, with the goal of unlocking the potential of stem cell-secreted proteins to treat chronic and age-related diseases.

There are already several blockbuster drugs based on secreted proteins, Yousef explained. Take insulin as an example: It can be prescribed to treat age-related metabolic dysregulation of diabetes and has saved hundreds of millions of lives.

“It’s really our vision that we can develop a whole pipeline of biologics in this category through a platform that enables us to map the therapeutic potential of secreted proteins—in particular, proteins secreted by stem cells that are already enriched for the regenerative potential—followed then by developing them as engineered, protein-based therapies for different disease indications,” she said.

The company’s lead program is JUV-161, a preclinical fusion protein for which Juvena is preparing to file an IND for myotonic dystrophy 1 in early 2024. Currently, there’s no cure available for the rare, muscle-wasting disease.

In the meantime, after raising a $41 million series A last November, Yousef said the biotech plans to start a series B fundraise next year, as JUV-161 enters the clinic.

“Unfortunately, this is an environment in which there are just way less women leaders in positions of power in biotech than men,” Yousef said.

But she refuses to let the statistics bring her down. As one of those rare female leaders, she’s driven by an inner self-confidence and innate sense of perseverance, as well as the ability to continuously adapt to ever-changing environments.

Beyond those personal qualities, according to Yousef, another of the most important keys to success lies in the people you surround yourself with.

“It’s all about finding the right partners, mentors, advisors, colleagues and leaders,” she said. “While there are people out there who will judge based on different biases—whether it be cultural background, race, gender, age or religion—there are plenty of people who won’t judge on those factors. You just have to find them.”

As a CEO, Yousef strives to create an environment that fosters growth and nurtures authenticity. Indeed, as the tides change and it becomes increasingly clear that it’s advantageous for businesses to promote equity and diversity, she’s made a point of urging other women seeking leadership roles in biopharma to stay true to themselves.

In the meantime, she is determined to push forward and keep breaking through barriers, something she hopes will open doors for other women, too.

“I’m just going to go and continue to break ceilings, and do it with a positive attitude,” Yousef said.

Lynelle Hoch’s entry into the field of life sciences “came a bit by chance.”

After starting out as an engineer at DuPont Pharmaceuticals in the 1990s, before it was acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2001, Hoch quickly fell in love with the pharmaceutical end of the business—much more so than her formal engineering role.

Still, that start in engineering “in many ways set me up for my current role at BMS,” Hoch, who now serves as president of the pharma’s cell therapy organization, said in an interview. “At the core, my job is to overcome challenges and find solutions to complex problems.”

Her career at BMS now spans more than two decades and a wide range of roles, including stints as vice president of immuno-oncology marketing and general manager of the company’s business in the U.K. and Ireland.

“Since those early days, I’ve navigated my career across commercial marketing and market access, and I’ve had the opportunity to touch a variety of therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular, neuroscience, oncology and, most recently, cell therapy,” she continued. “What links them all is the quest to bring innovation and transformational medicines to patients in areas of high unmet medical need.”

“I leverage these problem-solving skills and teamwork to take on the most complex situations at BMS, with the overarching mission of transforming patients’ lives through science,” she said.

And she hasn’t been alone on that mission.

“I have gotten invaluable counsel from so many people during my career, and it’s come from a diverse cross-section of mentors: female and male, inside and outside of BMS, from those senior to me and those not,” she said.

“They have helped me in many ways, but, probably most notably, they had a belief in me and encouraged me to stretch and take roles I did not think I was ready for,” she continued.

Now, Hoch is paying it forward. Not only does she aim to push other women in the field to seize new opportunities, but she’s also a champion of the importance of true work-life balance.

“Mentoring other women, especially women trying to juggle the demands of work and home, is a priority of mine,” she said. “I have four children of my own, and my husband also balances a career, so it’s important to me to make sure women know they can and should prioritize a back-to-school night or a soccer game without feeling guilty.”

Women often “spend too much time beating themselves up for the choices they make,” Hoch went on, describing it as “incredibly important” for women to know they can have a successful career and enjoy their personal lives without feeling guilty.

“Women need to support each other to make sure we have good diversity of perspective and input across our organization and industry,” Hoch said.

“Bringing innovative medicines to patients requires a workforce with diverse experiences, perspectives and personal backgrounds that reflect the patients and communities we serve around the world,” she continued. “To do our work successfully, we need to think differently and bring every idea to the table, which means creating an environment where everyone feels included and empowered to share their perspective based on their unique experiences.”

Hoch said it’s her ambition to create a “powerfully diverse workforce” alongside a broadly inclusive culture that brings out the best in every person and advances BMS’ mission.

Maha Katabi, Ph.D., is a force to be reckoned with in the investment world. With over 20 years of experience, the general partner at Sofinnova Investments operates with a sharp eye for innovation and a knack for building relationships. Plus, she knows how to have fun in the boardroom.

Katabi’s career path is one she never expected. She first learned about venture capital while training as a pharmacologist at Canada’s McGill University, when a gene therapy collaboration between her lab and a partner opened her up to the “huge world” that exists outside of lab research, she said in an interview.

After taking her first steps in that world post-graduation, as a venture capitalist working in early stage companies, Katabi eventually pivoted to managing private equity portfolios at Sectoral Asset Management, which took her back “full circle” as she launched a crossover strategy to invest in private biotechs.

A decade later, in 2019, the now very experienced investor joined Sofinnova Investments. The therapeutics-focused firm currently claims about $3 billion in assets under management and committed capital as of March 31 of this year.

At Sofinnova, the team “really digs deep” into the projects they invest in, Katabi explained, as they partner with “fun” management teams to work through problem-solving, clinical development and the process of taking an asset through either novel indications or existing indications with novel treatments.

“It’s really the career that I never thought I’d have,” she said, referring to her days as a graduate student in pharmacology. “But it’s super fun.”

As unexpected as Katabi’s career pivot may have been, her background in lab research gave her a first glimpse into the complexities of drug development and research—knowledge that she’s carried into her current role. Early stage proof is “never a given,” she said, and the path to actually getting a drug on the market is taxing and tedious.

As a general partner at Sofinnova, a role she assumed in 2020, Katabi balances shaping investment strategy and building the teams that foster beneficial investment decisions, and key to her work is having “hands-on drug developers” around her.

“To me, what’s important as a general partner is to realize exactly what type of inputs you need to make the best possible investment decisions,” she said.

For example, though serving on the boards of public and private companies comes with different challenges, having the right mix of people can lead to some “fun board situations,” she explained. And milestones like working through setbacks, wrapping up a big financing or celebrating a big clinical win can all serve to bring people together.

And she’s certainly experienced plenty of those key milestones. Looking at Katabi’s track record, her expertise speaks for itself.

Since joining the team at Sofinnova, she has led the charge on Vera Therapeutics and Aerovate Therapeutics, both of which went public in 2021, and also headed up major M&A deals in Pfizer’s Amplyx buy and Novartis’ $1.5 billion Gyroscope Therapeutics acquisition—to name just a few. More recently, Sofinnova-backed RayzeBio announced its IPO in September, and Aiolos Bio launched in October with a management team familiar to Katabi from her work at Gyroscope.

Successful, quality investments require a trained eye. For Katabi, that means keeping an open mind on evolving science and remaining at the “cutting edge of what next layer of innovation is going to make a huge difference” for patients.

Take the “Biotech Sisterhood,” a group of female executives that includes founders, CEOs and investors. In an industry that still sees women underrepresented in the boardroom, a space like the sisterhood offers much-needed support and resources.

CEOs need investors and investors need CEOs. Giving women CEOs a space to expand their network is therefore “hugely important,” Katabi said. Now in its second year, the group has held several events, including retreats and a Sofinnova- and TD Cowen-sponsored hike in the Boston area that gathered more than 80 female CEOs and investors.

Katabi also volunteers as a coach and mentor to people enrolled in the Venture Capital University program. As a mentor, she teaches her mentees to shoot for the moon. Concerns about titles and salaries can often consume a hopeful venture capitalist, but according to Katabi, showcasing one’s passion is what matters the most.

“It doesn’t matter what role you find yourself in,” she said. “The point of any role that you’re in is to deliver the best and exceed whatever the expectation is.”

When Marlena Fejzo, Ph.D., was pregnant for the first time, she was hospitalized twice and lost 15 pounds, all because of two of the most common symptoms: nausea and vomiting.

For Fejzo, though, it wasn’t just vomiting. She had hyperemesis gravidarum, an extreme form of vomiting during pregnancy that can lead to weight loss, volume depletion and risks to the baby. She was never officially diagnosed with the disorder until her second pregnancy when things got much worse.

“It really was a form of torture in pregnancy,” Fejzo recalled in an interview. “I just, for weeks and weeks, had to just lie flat in bed. I couldn’t even sit up. I couldn’t move without vomiting. I couldn’t keep any food or liquid down, so eventually had a feeding tube in, but I was basically starving to death. I got too weak to talk and had to use a buzzer.”

Her doctor’s response?

“He said he thought that it was caused because I wanted attention from my husband,” Fejzo said.

Later, her parents had to come take care of her. She lost the baby at 15 weeks, at which point she was finally diagnosed with hyperemesis.

Unfortunately, Fejzo’s experience is all too common, and the “misogynistic nonsense” that led to her being dismissed is still happening to this day—and, in fact, is still being taught in medical schools, she said. But Fejzo had a particular set of skills that meant she could not let her experience go by without taking action. She knew her condition was real and set out to figure out why it happened.

“I knew that it was something biological. I could feel like I was being poisoned,” she said.

Fejzo had worked on uterine fibroids for her Ph.D. project, later doing her post-doc on breast cancer genetics at the University of California, San Francisco. She turned her attention part-time to hyperemesis, while her main research remained focused on ovarian cancer, since there was no funding to look into vomiting of pregnancy at the time. That balance continued for 20 years until she more recently switched full-time to hyperemesis.

She conducted a familial aggregation study and discovered that hyperemesis does seem to run in families. She finally discovered that a gene called GDF15 is the greatest genetic risk factor for developing the condition. The gene is a hormone that causes nausea and vomiting and is expressed at very high levels during pregnancy by the placenta, especially in early pregnancy.

Babies born to mothers who experience hyperemesis are at an increased risk of being born small for gestational age, with a higher risk even than is typically seen among babies exposed to drugs like cocaine, methamphetamines and cannabis, Fejzo said. There’s also a 53% increase in the risk of autism spectrum disorder, neurodevelopmental delay, insulin sensitivity and increased cortisol levels, as well as vitamin K, vitamin B1 and folic acid deficiency.

Hyperemesis can be so severe that a mother can’t swallow her prenatal vitamins—an easy-to-forget but very important part of pregnancy.

Fejzo said she still finds doctors who believe that extreme vomiting is psychological or caused by a hormone called HCG, even though research has “pretty much” disproven those ideas.

“It’s shocking to me how little doctors know about the new research,” she said. “It’s really unfortunate when these women are suffering so much [and], on top of it, to have their doctors skeptical of whether they’re really feeling like they’re dying.”

She continued, “It’s really a misogynistic theory that has been perpetuated over and over again, I think because they didn’t know the cause. But now it’s time to put an end to that. We know what’s likely the cause, and so it’s time to just stop that ridiculousness. It’s been really frustrating.”

Fejzo is now trying to turn her findings into a therapeutic. The belief is that the same hormone is associated with cachexia, a metabolic condition that leads to muscle mass loss that is often related to anorexia and other conditions, as well as nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy. There are already therapeutics that target the pathway and hormone in clinical trials, so Fejzo said they could be adapted to hyperemesis patients if proven safe in pregnancy.

To help finally break through the ancient attitudes towards the condition, Fejzo has been collaborating since 2001 with the HER Foundation, an organization that provides information and resources for people suffering from hyperemesis and those who have survived it. The organization is currently working on a campaign to raise awareness of vitamin B1 deficiency.

Fejzo’s ability to translate her experience with hyperemesis into a research breakthrough is not something everyone can do. But, she said, “if you don’t start, it’s not going to happen. So get started, and it will help drive you if you have the disease yourself or are close to someone that has it.”

“Alexa, I’ve been offered a job. Should I take it?”

Alexa: Sorry, I’m not sure about that.

“The company is called AliveCor, and they want me to be their CEO. They help cardiology patients.”

A: My advice is to follow your heart. … That’s a joke, by the way, and I didn’t hear you laugh.

“Come on, Alexa. I need answers here, and you’re an expert in this area. AliveCor helps people by creating artificial intelligence tools, kind of like you.”

A: I’m one of a kind, so good luck with that.

No, Priya Abani did not have this conversation before joining AliveCor. But, after serving at Amazon for three-plus years as the general manager of Alexa Voice Service, it would certainly have been fitting for her to seek the advice of the all-knowing virtual assistant while deciding whether to take a major swerve in her career path.

So, what compelled Abani to take charge of a medical device company after two successful decades in Big Tech?

While she was working at Amazon, Abani was devastated when her father died of a heart attack and troubled by the feeling that there was nothing she could do about it.

“We have no control when it comes to saving the lives of the ones we love,” she said in an interview. “That feeling of helplessness, it kind of changed me, and it stuck with me.”

When she was presented with the opportunity to join AliveCor, Abani perused online reviews from users of the company’s products, many of which told stories about how AliveCor’s devices had saved their lives or the lives of loved ones.

“Seeing those comments took me back to my dad,” Abani said.

They helped convince her to play a “hunch,” she said, and shift gears to healthcare.

Four years after Abani took her unusual leap, AliveCor has 2.9 million users, making it the most popular AI-driven subscription service for cardiovascular health in the world. Among startups, AliveCor is rated the top developer of smart cardiac monitoring devices.

The Silicon Valley company serves patients as a 24/7 virtual cardiologist. Its leading product, the KardiaMobile Card, is billed as the world’s first credit card-sized, FDA-cleared personal ECG. After users open a connected app on their phone, they place their thumbs or index fingers on the card. In no more than 30 seconds, a medical-grade ECG readout appears in the app.

By analyzing the pulse of a user, AliveCor’s AI algorithm can detect six of the most common heart arrhythmias, determining immediately if heart rhythm symptoms are benign or serious enough to require medical care.

Users can share the resulting ECG readings with caregivers. Importantly, AliveCor’s devices also provide a record of symptomatic episodes, painting a broader picture of a patient’s heart health and therefore giving cardiologists a better opportunity for accurate diagnosis.

“We are devoted to providing patients and their healthcare teams with the most affordable, accurate and trusted medical-grade solutions, so they can help their patients confidently and conveniently manage their heart health,” Abani said.

Another advantage is its price, at $149 for the card and a one-year subscription, followed by $99 annually to maintain access to the service.

With heart disease the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S. and 80% of the fatalities preventable, Abani said the importance of AliveCor’s mission “has never been greater.”

“As a leader, and especially [as] a woman, we’ve all been taught empathy is perceived as a weakness. I completely believe in the opposite,” Abani said. “The ability to connect with others, to truly understand their challenges, makes me a much better leader. It brings me the ability to build strong relationships with my team, allows me to increase trust and communication and helps us function better as a company.”

Abani grew up in Mumbai, India, and developed an interest in math and logic from her father, a physicist who also taught computer science at a nearby high school. Abani found herself most intrigued when learning code and figuring out algorithms.

“That’s when my brain was doing its best work,” she recalled.

She took on a variety of roles throughout 16 years at Intel before landing her high-profile position at Amazon, where she led the development and expansion of Alexa.

In entering healthcare and taking the helm at AliveCor, Abani said she has discovered an even more fulfilling role.

“I’m just so grateful I am here,” she said. “We’re saving lives and transforming cardiology by delivering this highly personalized, intelligent heart health data to patients and to clinicians anytime, anywhere.”

A key component in Novartis’ U.S.-first strategy depends on the work of Reshema Kemps-Polanco and her team. The pharma veteran recently took on an expanded role as the chief commercial officer of Novartis’ U.S. business, overseeing a portfolio of drugs encompassing four large therapeutic areas.

Novartis is undergoing several key drug launches in the U.S., including PCSK9 cholesterol drug Leqvio and radiotherapy Pluvicto, as well as the acceleration of products like breast cancer med Kisqali.

Kemps-Polanco sees drug commercialization from a health equity standpoint, she said in a recent interview. Certain tumor types, such as breast cancer and prostate cancer, have disproportionately poor outcomes in certain underserved communities and among people of color, and heart diseases often show patterns by zip code, she noted.

Part of commercialization at Novartis is therefore about providing education about healthcare inequities and working with communities to help solve those inequities at scale, Kemps-Polanco said.

Meanwhile, she’s also on a Novartis steering committee where she works with colleagues on the R&D side to promote diversity in clinical trials—which could ultimately have downstream impacts on commercialization, according to Kemps-Polanco.

“I do believe it is going to be an expectation of healthcare professionals and patients moving forward,” she said. “I do believe they’re becoming more educated around what questions to ask and how certain drugs are working in certain patient populations.”

The bottom line, she said, is that “more patients will have the opportunity to see themselves in the drug development process, [and] the outcome is greater trust.”

Kemps-Polanco said she’ll always remember a conversation they had a few months before Dinisa passed away.

“She said, ‘You always have asked, Reshema, what is your purpose,’” Kemps-Polanco recalled. “‘I’m your purpose, and patients like me, and you have to remember that.’”

Kemps-Polanco has long had a sense of service ingrained in her. She served in the army, and she ultimately switched her college major from finance to social work, a decision that she said her mother—with an accounting background—wasn’t so excited about.

She became familiar with the pharma industry as a clinical social worker. Throughout that time, she was impressed by the speed with which she could transition patients and ensure access to Novartis’ medications. So, when an opportunity emerged in the late ‘90s for her to start as a sales rep at the company, she took the leap.

Kemps-Polanco has now spent more than 17 years at Novartis—albeit non-consecutively. Following a seven-year excursion to Johnson & Johnson, she returned to the Swiss pharma in 2021 as its U.S. head of oncology and moved up this September to lead all U.S. commercial activities amid a companywide overhaul.

Kemps-Polanco is a member of the advisory board for the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association. She said her work there is centered around “being united for a change around gender parity.” That includes efforts to help achieve pay parity, ensure that women can reach the top levels of their organizations—and stay there—and keep them in the healthcare workforce in general in order to set them up for success down the road.

Plus, taking a page out of the book of a sponsor who, early on in her career, put her in a leadership development program that ultimately helped her to become assistant to Novartis’ North American head, Kemps-Polanco now seeks to pass on the same kind of support to other young professionals.

“It’s important that we sponsor and provide leadership mentoring to talent early on because that was what was provided to me,” she said.

She also noted that while it’s important for people to be able to look up to leaders who look like them, it’s also beneficial to have mentors and sponsors with vastly different experiences and backgrounds.

“One important point on that is even when you have those leaders around you, they cannot give you something that you do not already possess,” she said. “And this is what I tell those who are coming behind me earlier in career: Whatever that is, you got it. And don’t succumb to the imposter syndrome that my generation and [previous] generations had to deal with.”