Transform health and lives with us
Co-Founder, Managing Partner
Christoper Lee is Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Despierta Ventures. He is also Co-Founder of Akita Biosciences, a company developing revolutionary drug-free nasal sprays to improve respiratory health.
Previously, Chris was Co-Founder and COO of InfiniteMD, a leading expert opinion technology company with 3,500 of the world’s top physicians with over 30M lives under management across Fortune 500 clients. InfiniteMD was acquired by ConsumerMedical in 2020, and ultimately Alight Solutions (NYSE:ALIT) in 2021, where he served as SVP of Product and Innovation at ConsumerMedical. Chris also previously co-founded Recon Therapeutics, a TEDMED Hive inductee, representing one of 20 most innovative healthcare startups globally.
Formerly the Director of MIT Hacking Medicine, Chris helped grow the community which has launched over 40+ active healthcare companies that have raised $200M+ in financing. Chris is an active angel investor, World Economic Forum Global Shaper, Forbes 30 Under 30, Medtech Boston 40 Under 40, and also awarded MIT’s inaugural Broshy Fellowship.
Chris graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Connecticut. He earned his masters from the Johns Hopkins Biodesign program in Bioengineering, and doctorate in Medical Engineering from the joint Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology program under the guidance of professors Michael Cima and Robert Langer. Chris has over a dozen publications spanning innovation, healthcare design thinking, and drug delivery.
Chris enjoys bringing new products to market, building high-performing teams, launching new ventures, and identifying and empowering talent across disciplines.
Co-Founder, Managing Partner
Christian Seale brings a diverse and unique experience as a healthcare investor and entrepreneur to Despierta.
Christian co-founded Vitruvia which has pioneered a next generation tissue repair platform used by the world’s top athletes, musicians and CEOs.
His prior investment portfolio includes over 30 healthtech companies with 7 realized acquisitions. Christian is a Founding Member of NextGen Venture Partners and previously worked with consumer-only VC firm Maveron, Goldman Sachs, and Teach for America.
Christian is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and a Fulbright Scholar.
He is an active contributor to Univision and TechCrunch. Christian earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Brown University.
Co-Founder, Managing Partner
Justin Dangel is Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Despierta.
Prior to Despierta, Justin was Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Ready Responders. He is also a founding investor and Chairman of Firefly Health – which provides efficient digital primary care. Justin is also an investor and board member at Norton Point a company that makes consumer products from recovered Ocean plastic.
Justin also previously founded Consumer United (now Goji) in 2008 and grew it from just a few employees in a small office to over 500 employees across multiple locations within 5 years. Consumer United was named one of the ‘Top 10 Fastest Growing Companies in Insurance’ by Inc. Magazine in 2012. Mr. Dangel sold most of his position in a liquidity transaction in 2013 and now serves on the board.
Mr. Dangel has spoken at numerous events and conferences across the country, including the World Economic Forum in Washington. He is a graduate of Duke University with a degree in Political Science.
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Justin sells Goji, one of the top ten fastest growing insurance companies to Consumer United
2013 -
Chris is Christian’s TA at MIT Healthcare Ventures course, a class that has inspired the launch of many healthcare companies, collectively $1b+
2014 -
Christian raises Miami-based healthcare fund – 28 investments, 7 exits to date.
2015 -
Chris co-founded, InfiniteMD, an expert second opinion company. Christian participated in all three rounds of financing.
2016 -
Justin co-founds Ready (now MyLaurel) and Firefly Health.
2017 -
Christian invests in Ready and co-founds concierge MSK platform, Vitruvia.
2018 -
Christian co-founds tech enabled fertility company, Fertilidad Integral
2020 -
InfiniteMD is acquired by ConsumerMedical, and subsequently Alight (NYSE:ALIT) with 30M lives under management across Fortune 500 companies.
2021 -
Christian, Chris and Justin launch Despierta to power the next generation of value based care businesses.
2022
Team
Molly Coye, MD
Senior Advisor
Molly Coye, MD
Senior Advisor
Dr. Coye is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine), and a member of the boards of Amedisys (AMED), Ginger, ConsejoSano, and Curai. From 2005-2018, Dr. Coye served on the board of directors of Aetna, Inc. She has chaired the boards of PATH and the American Public Health Association, and served on the boards of the American Hospital Association, the American Telemedicine Association, Big White Wall, Cholestech, The California Endowment, and the China Medical Board.
Between 2010-2015, Dr. Coye was the Chief Innovation Officer for UCLA Health, where she led the health system in identifying strategies, technologies, products and services to support the large-scale transformation of healthcare.
Previously, she served as Founder and CEO of HealthTech, a non-profit education and research organization that became the premier forecasting organization for emerging technologies in healthcare. In earlier positions, Dr. Coye has also served as Commissioner of Health for the State of New Jersey, Director of the California State Department of Health Services, and Head of the Division of Public Health Practice at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Oren Mechanic, MD, MBA
Venture Partner
Oren Mechanic, MD, MBA
Venture Partner
Oren is a thought leader in healthcare innovation, value-based delivery, and telemedicine.
Oren is passionate about the prioritization of patient care and the sustainability of the healthcare system by leveraging digital health workflows and solutions. He serves as Director of Telehealth for Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an organization with over 500,000 virtual visits. As Medical Director of the 1,900+ physician organization, Oren works across all specialties to support, strategize, and implement digital health solutions.
He has previously co-founded and served as Chief Medical Officer of BIDMC OnDemand, a state-wide virtual urgent care platform. Oren is a board-certified emergency medicine physician and associate professor of medical education.
Mike Phillips, MD, MBA
Operating Partner
Mike Phillips, MD, MBA
Operating Partner
Dr. Mike Phillips currently serves as Chief Medical Officer at Rise Health, a Despierta portfolio company.
Dr. Phillips was previously Managing Partner and Director at Intermountain Ventures, where he directed business development and venture investment for the Intermountain Venture Fund. Dr. Phillips has also served as the Chief of Outreach and Clinical Services at Intermountain Healthcare supporting outreach, telehealth, and clinical shared service design and deployment.
Prior to joining Intermountain, Dr. Phillips practiced as a clinical neuroradiologist at Cleveland Clinic since 2002. He was director of business development in the Cleveland Clinic Imaging Institute and served on the Cleveland Clinic Board of Directors and as the co-chair of the Care Affordability Task Force, identifying and developing ways to improve efficiency and lower the cost of care.
Dr. Phillips earned his medical degree from Columbia University and his undergraduate degree from Amherst College. He completed a radiology residency at John Hopkins Hospital and a neuroradiology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned an MBA from the University of Michigan.
Howard Gold
Operating Partner
Howard Gold
Operating Partner
Howard Gold serves as Executive Vice President, Chief Managed Care and Business Development Officer at Northwell Health, New York State’s largest healthcare provider and private employer, with more than 74,000 employees.
Mr. Gold oversees all business matters related to managed care and business development, including contractual relationships with third-party payers. Prior to joining the health system in 1995, he was vice president-vice provost for strategic planning, The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.
From 1991-1993, Mr. Gold was executive director of Governor Cuomo’s Health Care Advisory Board. Prior to that, he held several positions with the New York State Office for People with Development Disabilities (OPWDD), culminating in his serving as deputy commissioner, office of policy and planning.
Mr. Gold received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and his master’s degree from the New School for Social Research.
Jeremy Schwach
Operating Partner
Jeremy Schwach
Operating Partner
Jeremy Schwach is an entrepreneur and executive with experience building and scaling strong teams. He founded his first profitable company, a student transportation firm, as a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. As an executive at Epic, the Electronic Medical Record giant, Jeremy ran large implementations and served on the implementation executive team.
Jeremy joined Bluetree’s founder in 2013 to help the early-stage health tech-enabled services company find its footing. After assuming the role of CEO that same year, Jeremy led Bluetree through nine years of rapid growth, building the company from 4 to over 600 employees and partnering with all 10 of the top health systems in the country. In 2019, Jeremy sold the company to Tegria, a subsidiary of $20b Providence Health and spent 2½ years working with the leadership team on integration and M&A activities.
Today, Jeremy spends his time working with early-stage startups and scaling companies. He invests out of his early-stage technology fund, is a partner in a healthcare-focused venture studio, advises several healthcare services and technology companies including a large Behavioral Health company in which he is an owner, and serves on the board of cela, MHP, and HDM. Additionally, Jeremy is an advisor and benefactor of the workforce development non-profits YearUp and Coop Careers. He is also a mediocre road biker.
Margie Dillenberg, PhD
Head of Expert Network
Margie Dillenberg, PhD
Head of Expert Network
Margie is a community organizer-turned research scientist-turned private equity consultant with extensive experience in creating welcoming environments that push teams, communities, and leaders to grow. Before starting her PhD research she helped found and grow the social network and programs for Invisible Children, the social movement responsible for Kony 2012. Fueled by her experience there she studied what makes ideas “stick,” and how do we convert that stickiness into action. This was the focus of her research.
She began working with clients shortly before defending her dissertation, consulting with organizations who were interested in finding and activating their customer base. From there, she worked with communities all over the world designing experiences and operations that efficiently motivate and activate people towards a specific goal. Recognized for her ability to do this well, she began working for a private equity firm as their principal consultant for their portfolio.
With Despierta, Margie presently spends her time organizing and activating communities, focusing on values of warmth, collaboration, – especially during a company’s early stage. She still advises other companies and also advises other organizations including an ISP and Broadband provider, a foundation, education startups, a technology company, and more. She also runs a small and scrappy freelance cooperative to help clients scale quickly. In her free time she loves fixing up her 200 year old farmhouse, and learning anything about cooking.
Joseph Whitner
Operating Partner
Joseph Whitner
Operating Partner
Joseph Whitner is a serial entrepreneur and investor focused in digital health & healthcare. Joseph is currently Co-Founder of Rise Health and serves as Chief Strategic Officer.
Previously, Joseph founded Mastermind Health, a digital health consulting and advisory incubator for Seed and Series A companies to propel growth. He played a key role in launching Miami’s first digital health fund in 2016 with a portfolio of 30+ companies and has an angel investment portfolio of 12 companies with 5 exits.
He is a contributor to the Beacon Council – Health & Life Science Committee, Beacon Tech Innovators Committee, and Miami Venture Capital Association (MVCA) in addressing initiatives for building sustainable businesses in South Florida.
Joseph is driven toward optimizing and transforming healthcare with a focus on constructing back-able investor narratives, hiring/finding key executives, addressing key strategic business development needs, developing financial models and incorporating best in class technology towards execution.
Eduardo Hariton, MD, MBA
Fertility Partner
Eduardo Hariton, MD, MBA
Fertility Partner
Eduardo Hariton is an Ob/Gyn and infertility specialist. He received his medical training at Harvard, where he completed a combined MD / MBA at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School and his Ob/Gyn residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. He completed his fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the University of California, San Francisco and practices clinically at the Reproductive Science Center of the Bay Area. He is the VP of Strategic Initiatives at US Fertility and the Managing Director of the USF Innovation Fund. He combines his clinical and business backgrounds to treat patients and think creatively about how to improve the care they receive when seeking fertility services.
Advisors and select LPs
Francisco Sapori
Francisco Sapori
Francisco Sapori presently serves as the Health & Life Sciences Sales Lead for Amazon Web Services.
Prior to joining Amazon, Sapori served as Global Head, Health Industry, GSIs and Business Advisories for Microsoft where he drove adoption of cloud based solutions across the region to improve access and quality of care for rural populations.
Sapori has also served as the leader for GE Healthcare’s Digital Latin America division, where he oversaw the HCIT business driving enterprise data sharing across the region. Sapori serves as a Board Member at Pixeon, Brazil’s software automation leader for labs, clinics and health systems.
Zen Chu
Zen Chu
Zen Chu runs Accelerated Medical Ventures, serving as cofounder and first investor for a few medical and healthcare software companies. As Healthcare Entrepreneur-In-Residence at MIT, Zen co-directs MIT/HST’s Healthcare Ventures graduate course and serves as a co-founder and faculty advisor to MIT Hacking Medicine program.
Zen specializes in building early-stage medical device and healthcare information technology companies and has served as founding CEO of four healthcare companies (3D-Matrix Ltd, Curoverse Genomics, CareCliq, and EViPATH China). Zen serves as investor and advisor to PillPack, Figure1, Careport Health, GymPact, Heartlander Surgical, Pathfinder Cell Therapy, and many additional companies.
Alongside four world-renowned MIT biomaterials professors, Zen co-founded and served as CEO for 3D-Matrix Medical Inc., a venture-backed MIT regenerative medicine company with a successful IPO in 2011. 3D-Matrix has wound-healing and drug-delivery products on the market and multiple human clinical trials in process. Zen has managed and led new ventures for Harvard Medical School, Wyss Institute, NetVentures and Hewlett-Packard, where he founded the HPGarage new ventures group in Silicon Valley in 1997.
Zen earned a BS in biomedical/electrical engineering from SMU and a Masters of Public & Private Management from Yale University. He’s married to a serial software entrepreneur and they are raising three aspiring entrepreneurs.
Michael Jackman
Michael Jackman
Michael Jackman is Leidos Health Group’s chief operating officer (COO).
Prior to joining Leidos, Jackman served as an operating partner at Ardan Equity Partners and as the chief executive officer of Mach7 Technologies, where he led the business in health imaging modernization, enterprise data sharing, and patient data consolidation.
Jackman has also served as the leader for the Americas Region of GE Healthcare’s Digital HCIT Division, where he oversaw the HCIT business in Latin America, the U.S., and Canada. He has also held executive roles for Carestream Health, iSOFT Health Group, and Eastman Kodak where he led Kodak healthcare research and development (R&D) globally. Jackman’s career started at IBM where he was vice president of Systems and Technology for the IBM Personal Systems Group for close to two decades.
Maulik Majmudar, MD
Maulik Majmudar, MD
Maulik Majmudar, MD, is a renowned cardiologist and leader in digital health transformation, currently serving as Co-Founder, Chief Medical Office for Biofourmis, a Boston-based provider of virtual care and digital therapeutics.
Maulik previously served as medical officer at Amazon, where he led several health care-related initiatives, including the development and launch of Amazon Halo, a health and wellness membership service targeted to consumers.
Prior to Amazon, Maulik was associate director of the Healthcare Transformation Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, where he was responsible for the identification, validation and implementation of digital health solutions to improve care delivery along with the patient and provider experience.
Andrew Ellner, MD
Andrew Ellner, MD
Andrew Ellner is co-founder and CEO at Firefly Health, a tech-enabled primary care services company. He is also an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of lobal Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a primary care physician at the Phyllis Jen Center for Primary Care. Previously, Dr. Ellner was the founding co-director of the Center for Primary Care at Harvard Medical School, where he oversaw the systems transformation portfolio, relationships with strategic partners, and Center research.
Dr. Ellner is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He received an MSc with distinction from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the London School of Economics and completed his internship and residency in the Division of General Medicine Primary Care program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr. Ellner’s work focuses on the redesign of health service delivery and medical training to incorporate advances in information technology, to hasten the adoption of higher functioning organizational models, and to better address the social determinants of health. He previously worked with the World Health Organization and Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative on projects to improve health systems in low- and middle-income countries. He serves on the board of several non-profit organizations focused on advancing primary care and community health.
Arjun (JJ) Desai, MD
Arjun (JJ) Desai, MD
Dr. Desai currently serves as Chief Strategic and Innovation Officer of INSIGHTEC, where he leads the strategy for future platforms, luminary ecosystem development, clinical and economic data analytics and modeling, and Medical Advisory Board.
Dr. Desai comes to INSIGHTEC from Johnson & Johnson Innovation, where he held the position of Vice President and Chief Operating Officer responsible for delivering on goals and objectives across the global JLABS organization and the Center for Device Innovation.
Dr. Desai completed his advanced medical training at Stanford University where he sits on both clinical and Biodesign faculty. He holds an MD from University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and a B.S. in Economics from The University of Oklahoma.
What founders say
“Chris has a unique ability to translate science to business. Due to his strong scientific background, he can create the link that is often missing between academia and industry. His capacity to take a concept or idea and figure out the first steps needed to demonstrate viability is unmatched.”
Khalil Ramadi
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, NYU
Christian and his team have been a strong partner in both our capital market engagement and go to market strategies – the strong network has made our work with Christian very rewarding and efficient across the board.
Jacob Luria
Co-Founder, CEO – Algorex Health
“Chris and his team are fantastic investors and advisors to have in your corner. They go out of their way to help you eliminate barriers and jumpstart your business. More importantly, they have the entrepreneurial battle scars to help you accelerate.”
Alex Revelos
CEO, Akita Biosciences
New to healthcare I needed someone who knows the industry and could be in my corner. Christian was one of the first investors to see the change Atlas could make in the industry and most importantly in people’s lives. Super easy to work with an incredible rolodex, Christian is the value-add investor you want to partner with.
Ethan Davidoff
Founder, CEO – Atlas Health
“Few people have Chris’s unique ability to transform seemingly complex issues and problems into continued progress and his thought partnership is extremely valuable for early-stage health companies. Chris understands how to help founders think through what moves the needle in 0 to 1 entrepreneurship.”
Zen Chu
Faculty, MIT Sloan
"Every early-stage investment dollar is not equal. Founders must find investors who are true partners, including being there in tough times, which will happen. Christian is a real value-add, from intros, to potential customers, and help solving complex problems. Christian is the kind of investor you want."
