Julia Cheek: CEO and Founder of Everlywell (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. Hi, I'm Shivani and today on Raise the line, I'm happy to welcome Julia Cheek, the founder and CEO of Everly Well, which is a health and wellness company that provides at home lab testing kits and digital physician reviewed results.

Within days, the FDA just authorized an Everly Well sample collection kit for COVID-19. And we'll be asking Julia about that test and learning more about what role she sees everly well playing in the changing healthcare landscape before I get started.

I also wanted to give a shout out to Elizabeth Galbut, who's an investor both in everly well and osmosis and she's the one who put us in touch as well as sure the fact that uh we were actually in the same section at H BS.

Uh She was B 11, I was B 16. So Julia, thanks so much for being with us today.

Thanks for having me, excited to uh chat about everly well and the environment that we're all in right now. So you guys have been very busy the last few months and before we get into COVID and all the great work you all are doing, do you mind just telling us a bit about your career path and, and what led you to even start this company?

Absolutely. I think perhaps um most interestingly, I look on paper like a very unqualified person to start a healthcare company or a lab testing company.

And so I came to this space really as an individual who had a bad experience in the healthcare system and really looking to innovate on that for patients.

Um but backing up a little bit, I actually had a very traditional career path. I as a management consultant after college.

Um I went to business school at H BS to do something else other than consulting and, and to try to figure out what that was.

Um I happened to be exposed to entrepreneurship in a very big way at H BSI. Was part of these years of classes where you had female founders like Katrina Lake, you had um many unicorn founders as well starting in 2011.

It was right after the recession. Um 2008 recession.

And so I think that that had a big impact on me in setting me on that course, it was another five years before I had this bad experience in lab testing and in starting it really well.

But that really inspired me um at business school to start thinking about what company I would start. Do you have any other final thoughts or comments you'd like to share with our audience.

Our goal is to be a platform that healthcare providers not only recommend but advocate for and that they see value in and we know that that um about 25% of our customers today are are coming through their own healthcare provider.

Um But we would love to engage and take feedback and be able to um really integrate in a, in a more thorough way and not be just part of the ecosystem but be an essential service.

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