Dr. Manju’s Favorite Women Innovators in Healthcare

As both a board-certified dermatologist and founder, what gaps did you see that pushed you to build something new?

As a physician, I was trained to focus on diagnosis and outcomes. But if we are honest about outcomes, we have to look at adherence, avoidance, and trust. When patients delay vaccines, skip blood draws, or stop medications because the experience feels painful or frightening, those are outcomes too.

We have normalized the pain points around care and then been surprised when adherence suffers. The gap I saw was not just about discomfort. It was about the entire experience of treatment and how that experience shapes behavior. If we want better health outcomes, we have to care about how care feels.

When history looks back, what impact do you hope your work has made?

I hope we helped repair the fractured relationship between patients and their healthcare teams. Too often we have focused on clinical endpoints while overlooking the human experience that drives adherence and trust. Humanity is not a soft add on to medicine. It directly shapes outcomes.

If history looks back, I hope it sees that we recognized the power of compassion in healing. That we understood experience influences behavior, and behavior influences health. If our work helped people feel safer, more respected, and more willing to receive the care they need, that would be meaningful.

In honor of Women’s History Month, who are your five favorite women innovators in healthcare right now?

There are so many women building meaningful things in healthcare right now that choosing five is honestly difficult. I am drawn to founders and leaders who are deeply rooted in mission, many shaped by lived experience. They are not just building for scale. They are building for dignity, for equity, and for real human impact. Here are five women whose work I truly admire.

Jennifer “Jaki” Johnson
Founder and CEO, wellMiss

Jaki is one of my favorites because she has been fighting a long and often uphill battle to bring trauma-informed care to the people who need it most. This is not flashy work, and it is frequently underestimated. Yet she keeps going. Steady. Thoughtful. Clear about her mission. What I admire most is that even while navigating resistance, she continues to lift other women up. That kind of leadership tells you everything you need to know.

Eve McDavid
Founder and CEO, Mission Driven Tech

Eve has literally lived through the problem she is now working to solve. As a cervical cancer survivor, she knows firsthand how fragmented and frightening the system can feel. What moves me is the care and intention behind how she builds. Her work at Mission Driven Tech is focused on making cervical cancer treatment more precise, more equitable, and more humane. She brings lived experience, storytelling, and technical fluency together in a way that feels grounded and purposeful. She is building from truth.

Dr. Pinkey Patel
Founder and CEO, Myri Health

Dr. Patel saw the cracks in maternal care and chose to build something better. Myri Health provides proactive, personalized support for women during pregnancy and postpartum, a time when too many feel unseen or dismissed. I respect how she blends her clinical background with her lived experience as a mother. She is not simply digitizing care. She is redesigning it so that women are supported earlier and more thoughtfully.

Dr. Shreya Kangovi
Founder and CEO, IMPaCT Care

Shreya and I went to Columbia University together, so it has been especially meaningful to watch her create impact at scale. Through IMPaCT Care, she built one of the most widely adopted evidence-based community health worker models in the country. Her work recognizes that health does not begin and end inside a clinic. She is building infrastructure that helps health systems reach people where they actually live. It is rigorous, practical, and deeply human.

Mitchela “Mitch” Gilbert
Founder and CEO, Oya Apparel

Mitch is innovating in a space many people overlook: what we wear when we are healing. Oya Apparel creates thoughtful, functional pieces that help women feel dignified during vulnerable seasons such as recovery and medical procedures. That may sound simple, but it is not. Design shapes experience. And experience shapes how we move through care. I admire how she insists that dignity belongs everywhere, including in moments of healing.

What gives me hope is that so many women founders today are solving real problems in health with thoughtful, implementable solutions. They are starting with lived experience, clinical insight, and deep listening. In the past, we often saw technology built first and a problem identified later. What feels different now is that these women are beginning with the need and building with intention. That shift matters.

Send In Your Questions Here

Beyond intimacy, we continue to see that women’s health research is routinely underfunded. And the legal barriers women face in innovating for women’s health are wild. Next issue, we’re digging into legal barriers women face in innovating for women’s health. This op-ed will feature Jessie Gabriel: Founder + Managing Partner of All Places.

So let us know what you want to understand better about this topic? What feels unclear?

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