Hey everyone! I grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC and spent time in the Bay Area, Boston, and New York City before moving to the Bay Area to begin training as an emergency medicine resident physician at Stanford while also working part-time on the investing team with a16z bio+health. Through my hybrid lens as a clinician and venture capitalist, I am passionate about finding ways to leverage technology to support underserved patient populations and build a more efficient and equitable healthcare system.

Throughout my 20s, I’ve gone through some existential rollercoasters of how I’m meant to impact healthcare at scale. Initially (overly) bought into the Silicon Valley mentality that technology can magical solve any hard healthcare problem, I’ve been humbled by many healthcare providers (including my wife) in learning about the many systemic gaps in our healthcare system. I went through a stint of deep dissatisfaction while working in healthcare startups/VC with the build-first and fast funding of new healthcare ideas in a vacuum without truly understanding patient care. And though I strongly believe you don’t need to be in medicine to change healthcare for the better, most of my twenties have been a circuitous journey of realizing that where I want to sit in healthcare innovation in service of patients as a physician directly while also building a more equitable and efficient care delivery models at scale.

On a more personal note, I ended up marrying the one and only girl I dated throughout  + after college (met in our freshman dorm!) and feel like we’ve grown a lot personally and as a couple over our 20s as well. Over the next 5-7 years, we’ve gained conviction in our shared medium-term goal of raising a family and building sustainable professional careers in Hawaii where my wife is from. In each new city we’ve moved to, we’ve made it a priority to find and plug into our local church and also cultivate a strong community  personal and professional friendships as house party hosts (and aspiring mixologists!).

Strong and consistent mentorship and my Christian faith has been an indispensable part of my own circuitous journey from engineering/product into both venture capital and medicine and something I'd love to pay it forward especially to anyone considering a career pivot from tech > medicine or vice-versa. Also passionate about helping underrepresented minorities interested in breaking into product, VC, or medicine. To this effect, I've started Path to Product with Emma Townley-Smith (another mentor on Twenty!) and also MD+ a 2K+ community of aspiring physician-innovators supporting non-traditional paths through medical school and clinical training.

I look forward to meeting and working with you!

• Exploring the many ways you can have an outsized impact in the healthcare industry: from healthcare graduate schools (MBA vs MPH vs MD)
• Deciding if med school and medicine is right for you as an existential pre-med in working 1-1 with patients directly vs healthtech startups/venture if you’re interested impacting patient care at scale
• Breaking into Venture Capital (and more broadly healthtech as an industry)
• Growing professionally as an early-stage VC and early-career Product Manager

• Getting engaged/married at 25/26 - for some of you that may have college relationships, my wife and I spent a good amount of our twenties growing personally/professionally but also as a couple. Have mentored a number of younger couples actively thinking through how do you know when/who to marry from talking to many personal mentors of mine through similar questions
• Equity/accessibility in Healthcare - one of the biggest pain points that drew me to medicine was a lack of equity and accessibility in healthcare that I felt I couldn’t adequately personally address with a pure tech/business background. As an aspiring emergency physician who will always be able to care for anyone who walks into the door of the hospital, one of my biggest motivations in mentoring folks interested in building a career in healthcare is helping others understand some of our most underserved patients’ gaps in social complexity that lead to medical complexity and healthcare disparities down the road.
• Work vs “side-hustle” Balance - as someone who’s worked throughout medical school (and also taken classes/studied while working full-time), I have a lot of thoughts about how to find a sustainable balance between multiple professional interests. It’s not for everyone! but if you feel like you can’t get through your “main thing” without something else on the side, I can share tips that have helped me continue to derive joy, meaning, and energy from your “side hustle”
• Working through a long-distance relationship
• Building (professional + personal) community in new cities
• “Brain drain” effect of being based in a place like Hawaii (where the industry is 90%+ tourism and there are very few jobs in tech/venture that attracts highly educated/ambitious folk) my wife and I often talk about our dreams in how to build up our local ecosystem of talent in a sustainable way + help people who want to “return home” find a sustainable yet fufilling career path

• Honest about the “shiny-ness” of competitive careers like venture capital or medicine and reasons you should lean in vs out of what isn’t always a glamorous career
• Candid about how unsustainable it can be to juggle “all the things”
• Ask you (likely unanswerable) Qs to help you reflect and introspect (and maybe journal/write!)

I’ll support you as best as I can and promise I won’t paint things with a rosy lens. Most of my  navigation through different careers that have yielded more clarity as I’ve gained different perspectives - I’ll be honest in telling you sometimes that the grass isn’t greener on the “other side” and that doing “all the things” is not sustainable long-term but also encouraging if you need a push to help you explore a balance of medium vs long-term interests.