Lauren founded NourishedRx to support health plans and at-risk providers’ efforts to address the most actionable and critical non-clinical needs of their members and patients – nutrition and social isolation.
Prior to NourishedRx, Lauren was a senior leader in the Strategy practice at Leavitt Partners, a “Health Intelligence'' firm founded by former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt. Lauren served as Corporate Director of Oxford Health Plans, where she led Oxford’s Medicare business.
Lauren is co-chair of the United States of Care, Entrepreneurs Council. Lauren is also a Board Member at Village Health Works, a healthcare organization that addresses the root causes of illness, poverty and neglect in Burundi, Africa. She has served as the Acting Executive Director of Village Health Works, as well as the Chair of the Kigutu Hospital Development Committee. She was faculty at Singularity University’s Exponential Medicine 2016 conference – addressing the potential of technology to democratize healthcare in the developing world.
Lauren grew up in Baltimore, MD. She received her BA from the University of Virginia and her Master’s in Public Health from the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Kyle Raffaniello is a proven leader in the healthcare industry. She has been leading healthcare technology and service companies for the past 20 years. Prior to serving as Chief Executive Officer of Prealize Health, she served as President of Sapphire Digital, a division of Zelis. She served as Chief Executive Officer of Sapphire Digital prior to its acquisition by Zelis.
Kyle was Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President of ValueOptions, a behavioral health company, where she was responsible for profits across all lines of business. She was Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing for Consortium Health Plans, an organization focused on account growth and retention for the nation's 20 largest Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. Kyle has also held senior sales and marketing positions at several regional health plans, as well as led provider strategies for several large medical delivery systems.
Kyle earned a Master of Science in Healthcare Administration from George Washington
University. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Business and Theology from Mount St. Mary's
College.
Dan Ripma is based in Chicago and serves as a Vice President of S2G Ventures’ food and agriculture investment team. Dan joined S2G Ventures from Greenhill & Co. where he worked on M&A and restructuring transactions within the global industrial sector.
At S2G, Dan co-leads the firm’s investment thesis on the convergence of food and healthcare. Dan sits on the board of directors for Mend Nutrition, Big Bold Health, Mealogic, and NourishedRx, as well as supporting Faeth Therapeutics and Lief Organics. Dan helped co-found the Food, Nutrition, and Health Investor Coalition ("FNHIC") to bring together investors, corporates, and start-ups to catalyze capital and investment into the sector and set up a forum for education across different investor types.
During his time in Congress, Patrick J. Kennedy co-authored the landmark Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (Federal Parity Law), which requires insurers to cover treatment for mental health and substance use disorders no more restrictively than treatment for illnesses of the body, such as diabetes and cancer. In 2013, he founded The Kennedy Forum, a nonprofit that unites advocates, business leaders, and government agencies to advance evidence-based practices, policies, and programming in mental health and addiction. In 2015, Kennedy co-authored the New York Times Bestseller, “A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction,” which details a bold plan for the future of mental health care in America. In 2023, Kennedy called for leaders to achieve 90/90/90 by 2033: 90% of all individuals will be screened for mental health and substance use disorders; 90% of those needing care will be able to receive evidence-based treatment; 90% of those receiving treatment will be able to manage their symptoms in recovery. Kennedy’s second co- authored book “Profiles in Mental Health Courage” released April 2024 delves into the compelling stories of a diverse group of Americans who have struggled with their mental health– many of whom are sharing their stories for the first time.
Kennedy is also the co-founder of One Mind, an organization that pushes for greater global investment in brain research and co-founder of Psych Hub, the most comprehensive online learning platform on mental health, substance use, and suicide prevention topics in the world. In 2024, as a further evolution of his mental health and addiction advocacy Patrick joined the nationally-recognized Washington DC health care policy consulting firm focused on federal and state regulatory and legislative policy, Healthsperien.
Dr. Sophia Chang is a seasoned healthcare executive and clinician, with policy and operational experience in health technology, managed care, public insurance, primary care, population management and public health.
She is the former Chief Clinical Informatics Officer at Clover Health, a tech-enabled Medicare Advantage plan with responsibility for setting the company's clinical strategy and integrating clinical perspectives into Clover's technology platform to improve care delivery and patient outcomes.
Prior to Clover, Dr. Chang was Chief Clinical Innovation Officer at CareMore Health Plan with a role focused on scaling care for high-cost Medicare members and translating their model for Medicaid patients. Her previous positions include: Vice President of Programs at the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF), Vice President and Medical Director of population health solutions at Accretive Health, Director of the Veterans Health Administration's Center for Quality Management in Public Health, Medical Director of the San Francisco Health Plan (a Medicaid managed care plan), and Director of AIDS Health Services for the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Dr. Chang continues to practice general internal medicine at San Francisco General Hospital as a UCSF faculty member. She holds a BA from Amherst College; an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley; and an MD from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Kurt Waltenbaugh is a serial entrepreneur with a career spent building solutions to understand, predict, and influence consumer behavior. Kurt has built successful analytic solutions, products and companies in the healthcare, retail, and education/credentialing industries.
The common thread of his work is capturing large amounts of data from disparate sources to produce novel insights into the behavior of individuals and groups. With enough data on prior behavior, we can predict future actions, creating opportunities to influence decision making.
Currently offering strategic advisory & consulting through Kestrel Rising, Kurt is helping companies understand data & prediction, to make the world a better place.
Kurt was the founder of Carrot Health, a consumer+health data and predictive analytics platform offering engagement insights to payer and provider customers. Carrot Health was sold in 2021 to Unite Us. His previous companies were sold to Oracle (Retek) and Pearson Education (Integral7). Kurt was responsible for product strategy at Optum, Inc. (UnitedHealth Group), building data analytic businesses for the provider, payer and employer markets.
When not working with customers, Kurt is with his wife, Tracy, guiding their three children toward adulthood, and planning their next trek into the wilderness.
Dena Bravata is a healthcare entrepreneur and executive. Dr. Bravata is the co-founder of Lyra Health where she also served as the Chief Medical Officer from 2015 to 2016. She was the Chief Medical Officer and Head of Products at Castlight Health from 2009 through 2014 and again from 2019 to 2022 (formerly NYSE:CSLT).
Dr. Bravata was a practicing internist for 16 years in her own private practice and an attending physician at Stanford University and the Palo Alto VA. As a nationally recognized health services researcher, Dr. Bravata has published widely on the clinical effectiveness of a variety of key health technology, clinical, and public health topics. She is a founding member of the Aspen Institute Healthcare Strategy Group, was an assistant public health officer for Santa Clara County, and serves on the board of several health technology and services companies.
In 2021, Dr. Bravata received a national service award from the White House and CDC for her work on the pandemic response and Vaccines.gov.
Dr. Bravata has an undergraduate degree from Yale University, an M.D. from Columbia University, and a M.S. in health policy from Stanford University. She completed her Internal Medicine Residency and Ambulatory Care Fellowship at Stanford University.
Ben is an investor, advisor, and entrepreneur, assisting several venture capital and private equity firms with their investments in technology and healthcare.
Previously, Ben was Chief Strategy Officer at Advantia Health, one of the nation's largest and fastest-growing providers of women's health services. Before Advantia, Ben was co-founder & CEO of Pacify Health, a care management and telemedicine platform that he led through several venture rounds, nationwide expansion, and a sale to Advantia in early 2019. Early in his career, Ben spent 5 years at McKinsey & Company, where he served large health systems and payers on strategic and operational projects.
Ben has also lectured and taught at several business schools, including Georgetown University and UNC Chapel Hill. Ben received his BA from UNC Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar, and his MBA from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Vijay Anand is a seasoned technologist and product leader with 35 years of experience across VC backed startups, PE backed mid-sized firms and large F100 enterprises. Currently, he is playing fractional CTO (First Stop Health) and advisor to the CEO roles (NourishedRx, startups in stealth mode). He has established high-performance product and engineering teams across global locations for multiple companies that excel in solving problems and power growth businesses. His experience spans product vision and strategy, technology strategy, agile SDLC, strategic planning and initiatives (partnerships, M&A). He has led teams from 15 person startups (NetDynamics) and built teams of 1000+ (Intuit, Oracle) through organic growth and has experience with divestiture/spinoffs and integrating acquisitions successfully in the US, India and Israel.
Most recently, Vijay Anand led the R&D organization at apree(Castlight) Health, leading a 300+ person team that included engineering, IT, security, product, design, and analytics. Prior to his role at apree, he served as the Senior Vice President of Global Engineering at Intuit for 12 years, where he was responsible for establishing high performance Global Development Centers(GDC) around the world that owned developing key products in Intuit's portfolio including Quickbooks and TurboTax. He also built centers of expertise for technologies including cloud, mobile, AI and information security for the company
Dr. Yvette LeFebvre is a physician executive and population health leader with extensive experience across value-based care, home-based care, Medicare Advantage, utilization management, and clinical quality. Her work has focused on designing and scaling high-impact care models for medically complex and vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on health equity and outcomes improvement.
She most recently served as Chief Medical Officer for Home-Based Care at Evernorth Health Services, where she was responsible for clinical strategy, quality performance, and operational execution across a national portfolio of home-based programs, including in-home primary care, post-acute care, health risk services, durable medical equipment, and sleep services. In this role, she led large, distributed clinical teams and partnered closely with operations, analytics, product, and technology leaders to improve care delivery, utilization, and financial performance.
Prior to Evernorth, Dr. LeFebvre held senior medical leadership roles at Anthem and eviCore Healthcare, where she focused on Medicare Advantage, post-acute care, utilization management, and physician leadership development. Earlier in her career, she practiced emergency medicine and urgent care, bringing frontline clinical experience to her later leadership roles.
Dr. LeFebvre is board certified in Emergency Medicine and holds a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree from the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Interested in working for NourishedRx? We’re always looking for new folks to join our team and help us make a difference!
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