Blog

Female Founders Fund launched in 2014 with one simple belief: women will build the companies of tomorrow. Since 2014 women’s health has outgrown its perception as a “niche” area of healthcare and developed into a key area of interest for investors, as well as the broader healthcare community. As a result of this shift, over $1 billion has been invested in women’s health companies over the last 5 years.

Read more

Once you’ve decided to try menopausal hormone therapy, you’ll probably experience jitters and excitement. At this stage it’s very normal to wonder what’s coming next and how quickly you might feel symptom relief.

Read more

Among the winners was Weiyu Wang ’20, whose team was awarded the $15,000 Rothberg Catalyzer at Yale prize for CtrlTrial, which uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to accelerate the patient-screening process for clinical trials.

Read more

Markea Dickinson ’20 co-founded Thermaband during her second year at SOM. Thermaband’s mission is to reframe midlife and empower women to control their thermal comfort through the Zone device. This smart personal thermostat provides heating and cooling sensations, as well as digital health data, and was co-created with a community of 600+ women.

Read more

What would it take for you to start a business…with your mother? For Markea Dickinson, the answer was simple: a good idea with a strong mission. When her mother Debbie saw how little there was on the market for menopausal women dealing with heat sensitivities, she was shocked. “This is 2020,” she proclaimed. “Women don’t have to just put up with it. Physicians actually have information and solutions that allow my daughters and grandchildren and other women not to have to deal with this.” So Debbie (a former Johnson & Johnson executive) joined by her daughter (a logistical and operational genius who previously spent five years at Unilever) set out to create the solution: The Thermaband Zone device, launching next summer.“Markea, and I are working together on building a smart tech wearable, which is really a personal thermostat. It’s addressing issues of thermal discomforts, focusing on women and their families.” Markea, tired of the bureaucracy of the corporate world, couldn’t have been more excited to join her mother’s new venture, as she entered her second year as an MBA graduate at Yale. “I was trying to figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life and my mom called with this idea,” she says. “I’ve always been passionate about women’s health and democratizing access to resources. [This venture] seemed like a really cool opportunity for huge market, but it was more the social impact lens that was super exciting to me.” Here, in our very first mother/daughter edition, take a look at what’s next to the beds of Markea and Debbie Dickinson.

Read more

First of all, it feels so strange to call my mother by her first name. It doesn’t matter how old I get, I still feel that “oh shit” moment when I call her by a name other than “mom.” That was a struggle being raised in a household where we were taught to call everyone by Mr. and Mrs. so-and-so. As a business owner, I feel like whenever I refer to her as “my co-founder Debbie,” she might snap back into the “mother” role real quick, reach through the phone, and smack some sense into her daughter.

Read more

With support from the Rothberg Catalyzer program, the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY) offered grants of up to $1,000 this semester to kickstart student teams who are developing innovative hardware or AI solutions to healthcare issues. These small grants — offered through the newly created Rothberg Catalyzer Prototype Fund — aim to support the earlier stages of Yale’s pipeline for student innovation in medical tech, helping students advance projects that might ultimately become candidates for the campus’ annual Rothberg Catalyzer Prize (which awards $15,000 to an outstanding student team) or other opportunities.

Read more