I started working in this area when I was an associate at Gibson Dunn. One of the partners in the office was starting up a practice area focused on AI and I got involved. I had been keeping up with some of the developments in the machine learning space and thought it raised some very interesting and novel questions in the areas of intellectual property, liability and privacy. The newly formed practice group gave me an opportunity to do more research in the area as well as to work on counseling clients that were at the cutting edge of AI. Then an opportunity came up at Apple that I could not pass up. It was an in-house role dedicated to product counseling of the AI-focused teams here — both teams involved in technology development and those involved in shipping ML-based features. It’s been a very enjoyable role at Apple so far.

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Before joining Ethena, a compliance training startup, I was one of the first lawyers at fintech infrastructure company Plaid. Before that, I’d been at the CFPB. I approached the role at Plaid (as well as my current role at Ethena) with curiosity and a willingness to roll up my sleeves and work on any legal (and even non-legal) issues that arose — from employment to international expansion to privacy. You have to be somewhat of a generalist to work as a solo lawyer or on a small legal team, and you have to be willing to say “I don’t know; let me look into that” when you inevitably get questions that are outside your speciality (or that you have to Google to understand).

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I received great advice at the beginning of my career to never stop learning and to not fall into the trap of only doing one thing. Going in house from the start was unique when I began my career and I made an effort to ask for opportunities to work with other team members so that I could be exposed to all facets of our larger department. Even though I began in the transactions group, I shadowed or asked to be second chair with the teams who handled other areas. I eventually moved through different groups to become more proficient in a set of topics that I thought were invaluable to support a business, such as global transactions, product counseling, marketing, privacy, corporate compliance, and employment. Building that general awareness of each practice and knowing how they work together to support the business vision gave me a roadmap for what an effective legal function looks like.

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I credit my broad business and technology background, coupled with many years of experience helping startups as outside counsel from formation through their exits. This foundation made the transition easier for me because I am able to understand the workings of companies in general and startups in particular. It is also in my nature to be curious and to seek out challenges. I like to dive in and quickly learn the business and technology of the company I work for, which allows me to start contributing as a lawyer and as an executive on the leadership team.

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I first joined Checkr as their GC when it was 60+ employees with a small legal team of 2 lawyers. When I joined Hopin as their first lawyer and CLO, it was about 250+ employees. At both organizations, I hired and grew teams with 20+ professionals as they both scaled rapidly. I was able to successfully transition to running and building a legal team from the ground up mainly because of my earlier experience at a small legal team at a startup. Given the small size of the legal team, I worked on every subject matter ranging from commercial, corporate to IP and even represented the company in a mediation. Doing so allowed me to become a great generalist who could issue spot any topic at hand and hone my prioritization skills given limited resourcing.

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Working at Google, I was surrounded by highly accomplished lawyers, some are the leading expert (no joke) in their fields. When you go in-house at a startup, unfortunately, you can’t afford to bring all of those experts along with you. What I did instead is attempt to model their thinking when presented with a problem in a particular expert's subject area. Having been exposed to so many interesting and exciting people allowed me to say to myself, “how would person xyz think about this copyright issue.”

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My entry into healthcare was purposeful with a dash of luck thrown in. I was surveying the market for my next opportunity about 10 years ago and just kept seeing really interesting innovations in healthcare. I had no background in the field, having been in consumer products for years, so I thought "I would love to be part of this digital health revolution, but I don't have the skill set - who on earth would hire me??" Then I met the CEO of a digital health company (through extensive networking efforts) and we just hit it off.

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My father was a doctor; my mother, a psychologist. I grew up in a family where healthcare was dinnertime conversation. So when my last tech company got sold, a health technology startup seemed like a natural place to marry my legal experience with my interest in helping people. You can’t get more “real” than people’s health needs—especially during a global pandemic. Yet the experience of getting care in our country is often byzantine, broken, and benumbing. Where else do we buy services without knowing what they cost, find our choices routinely questioned by third parties, feel completely at the mercy of systems and processes that, at their best, bring miracles and, at their worst, bring neither health nor care?

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I got into law by following my love for healthcare. Like many interested in health, I entered college believing that working in healthcare was limited to being a doctor. Time spent in Ghana working on public health the summer after my sophomore year followed by a fellowship at the nonprofit, Medicare Rights Center, after graduation introduced me to law, regulation and policy as levers I could use to impact and improve healthcare access and technology.

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I’ve always been attracted to mission-driven organizations, first in government and then in the private sector. When I’ve searched for new challenges in the past, I’ve targeted tech companies with compelling missions trying to grow in traditionally heavily regulated industries. I was immediately attracted to healthtech companies for both reasons and I’ve particularly loved helping my current company achieve its important mission of making excellent mental healthcare more accessible across the globe.

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As the daughter of two physicians, I swore that I wouldn’t go into healthcare… famous last words. I started my career in litigation working with a lot of medicine and medical records. There, I realized how much I enjoyed diving into the healthcare element of the cases. In 2012, I joined a national public healthcare company where I had the opportunity to work closely with operations teams, providing direct patient care nationwide while also discovering my healthcare niche. I loved how my work was a combination of patient-centric care, provider support, and corporate risk mitigation. As my career has grown, so has my involvement across departments. I think it’s so amazing that my job allows me to continue learning and expanding my skills.

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While I was working in the New York City Mayor's Office, I was assigned to a team with the goal of resuming Medicaid billing for school special education health services. Along the way I learned a lot about finance, contract negotiation, and persuasive writing. I also learned about the services provided in city schools, the kids and families who depended on them, and the dedicated clinicians persevering through red tape to make it all happen. The experience of enabling crucial health services left an imprint on my professional life. Since then, my career has spanned public health, hospital administration and health-centered software development.

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I began my career as a litigator, and a number of my clients were in heavily regulated industries, including pharmaceutical manufacturing. I was fortunate enough to be able to use my pharmaceutical industry knowledge, and risk mitigation and dispute resolution skills to land a job within the McKesson Law Department. At McKesson, I ultimately pivoted into a healthcare regulatory and commercial contracting lawyer overseeing legal support for pharmaceutical manufacturer relationships and transactions, among other business units. After nearly a decade at McKesson, I became General Counsel at Nurx, an innovative telemedicine company providing accessible and affordable healthcare to hundreds of thousands of patients for sensitive medical needs, including contraception, HIV prevention, STI testing, migraines, skincare and mental health. In 2022, Nurx merged with Thirty Madison, combining forces to deliver quality care to more patients, with a focus on chronic medical conditions. What I love most about my legal career in healthcare is the collective drive, on the part of both lawyers and business people, to improve patient care. Everything we work on is typically viewed through a "patient first" filter, with the goal of having a positive impact on people who might otherwise experience barriers to treatment, whether due to cost, geography, stigma or simply logistics.

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