Jannine Versi: COO and Co-Founder of Elektra Health (Raise the Line)

Hi, I'm Shivani. Thanks for checking out our raise the line interview series.

In which me and my cohost osmosis Chief Medical Officer Dr Rishi Desai explore how to strengthen our healthcare system with some amazing leaders in medicine, technology, education and government.

And they have some great advice for people starting careers in healthcare as well. I hope you'll watch these highlights and then go listen to the full podcast interview wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm doctor today on Raz. The line I'm happy to be joined by Janine Besi.

Janine is the coo and one of the co-founders of Electra Health, a platform for women navigating hormonal health, starting with Perimenopause and menopause.

She's previously worked in healthcare and at the US Commerce Department. I'm really looking forward to asking her about the a very experience and learning all about electro health today.

So, Janine, can you tell us a little bit more about your background, your career path, how you got started? I think it really starts with growing up in a household with two physician parents and um just the, you know, one was au is a urogynecologist, the other um a GP.

And so the dinner table was sort of dominated by um topics of women's health. And so that was early and often.

Um And I uh started my career actually at Google and Tech. I later went to business school, having spent a little bit of time in tech, I worked on microfinance, focused on women in India, was really interested in health care and how tech and health would intersect.

It was right around the time of the AC A. Um And so, uh at Harvard Business School, I spent a lot of time looking at this new category of digital health um and planned to really focus on that.

Um But then had the opportunity to join the Obama White House, which was a bit unexpected. I had had a business background and was recruited to be a political appointee to help to um run part of that um on behalf of American businesses.

And so that was a, a fantastic experience, great management experience um and public service and then returned to the health tech world, um worked with a number of different companies before joining my co-founder to really, you know, dive into women's health in an area which is deeply underserved um specifically around perimenopause and menopause and women's health in their forties and fifties and beyond.

For those in the audience that are students, uh young professionals kind of getting into the health space. Uh I in any capacity, obviously, you have parents that were there as well.

What's your advice to them about kind of meeting the challenges at the moment, especially now with COVID-19, I think that there, you know, is so much happening right now at the intersection of health care and technology and health policy, um whether that's COVID specific or in other realms, but there's so many different ways to get involved.

And so if that's something that's exciting, you can consider um becoming a medical advisor or to actually provide clinical care through technology enabled means.

Um There's, it's just sort of no, no shortage of options and the technologists and the business folks out there like me, um really need, you know, your good advice and your um expertise being on the ground, working with patients directly to translate into better experiences um for users and how to improve outcomes.

Um Ultimately, so would love to get to work with any of you who are interested in menopause. Come and find me.

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