Dr. Brooks is a healthcare technology start-up advisor, mentor and visionary who sees high-value opportunities and brings them to life—not just through innovative strategy—but by leveraging interpersonal relationships, partnerships and alliances.
Marla serves as a strategic advisor to several start-up healthcare companies including Practicing Excellence, MIDAS Healthcare Solutions, and Prolucent Health. While serving as the CEO of the American Nurses Association (ANA) Enterprise from 2009- 2018, Marla’s leadership in large-scale change, innovation, growth, and strategies transformed ANA into one of the fastest-growing national associations.
Founder and CEO of GingerBread Capital Linnea spent three decades in investment banking focused on Capital Markets, Valuation, Corporate Finance and Mergers & Acquisitions. In the latter half of her career on Wall Street Linnea was a Partner in the technology sector at Goldman Sachs, where she led many a start-up from launch to IPO. She launched GingerBread Capital in 2016.
Omid is a dedicated nursing advocate with a strong focus on nursing workforce issues. His journey began in a COVID ICU, where he quickly adapted to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. This experience propelled him toward his current studies as a dual PhD/MBA candidate at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and Goizueta Business School. Omid’s research centers on financial analyses of nursing labor variability to produce actionable insights for nurse retention and increased investment in the nursing workforce. In addition to his clinical and academic pursuits, Omid is deeply interested in venture capital, entrepreneurship, and finance, seeking to leverage these fields to drive innovation and support within the nursing profession.
Skyler is a healthcare executive focused on emerging healthcare technology and its use to disrupt the consumer experience. Her diverse experience crosses clinical settings, payers and technology companies, providing her with a unique understanding of how different components of the healthcare ecosystem interface. She was an early employee at Sesame and Oscar Health (payer), a healthcare unicorn. She then developed and served as Executive Director of Mount Sinai Health System’s Executive Health Program which provides concierge medical care for executives. At a fem tech VC firm Skyler executed diligence to inform strategic investment strategy, she spent time as an analyst at a premier Wall Street investment bank and currently advises digital health tech companies at a VC fund. Skyler is a Registered Nurse with a Master’s Degree in Nursing and Healthcare Administration from the University of Pennsylvania and most recently, her MBA from Columbia Business School.
XO Medtech is a network driven training platform for medtech innovators that’s being leveraged by groups like Vanderbilt, mHUB, and ZeroTo510. The Playbook course inside XO Medtech has 45 lessons tailored for Pre-Seed to Series A stage medtech companies, loaded with downloadable templates, tools, and videos. The XO community has hundreds of founders, engineers, clinicians, experts, mentors, and service providers all collaborating, engaging, and helping each other grow.