Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Brenda Schmidt, Head of Enterprise Growth at Redesign Health at HLTH 2023.

In collaboration with Redesign Health, Laurie is speaking with several of the extraordinary women leaders in the Redesign family.  This first collab conversation is with Brenda Schmidt.  Brenda joined Redesign after a substantive career in healthcare as an executive, builder of companies, venture studio chief, board member….the list goes ON.  She self describes as an “INTRApreneur”, a hand raiser when it came to opportunities along the way that allowed her to learn.  The consistent career thread is curiosity.  And with all that learning, comes the desire to give back, share with others and work with companies to accelerate their opportunities for growth and impact.

Hear Brenda talk about:

• What’s a venture studio?
  If you have seen one, you’ve seen one.  And Brenda has seen    She believes that Redesign Health has “the model right for what young entrepreneurs really need to build successful companies.”
  
• A different approach at Redesign starts with internal ideation with smart teams who understand healthcare business models and then (and only then) they look to build the founding team. RH provides initial valuable capital and supporting resources to aid the company more like a slingshot and not a crutch. Brenda also announced how RH is newly providing this model to other companies.
  
• Innovation is a spectrum. Value can be created at every stage.
  The core is business process improvement…help me do my job better.  The Adjacent is looking at different markets to drive revenue growth.  And the Disruptive is entirely new ideas but this is really only about 10% of innovation.  At the same time, ensuring that innovation is focused on the largest problems in healthcare is imperative, and that starts at the beginning.
  
• The best CEOs know how to sell. This means listening intently to what the potential customer is saying.  Brenda’s rule of thumb is talking more than 30 or 40% of the time is TOO MUCH.  She also invests time helping CEOs bolster those skills with workshops and role-playing scenarios.
  
• A look into the future means expecting many more partnerships, public/private, government funded and other interesting models.
  

Brenda’s closing advice for aspirational women is to surround yourself with those folks who can help you, forget about the imposter syndrome, and become resilient to hearing no…no is just a pathway to yes!

Guest Bio:

Brenda Schmidt, Head of Enterprise Growth, Redesign Health

Brenda is a proven innovation leader focused on go-to-market speed and growth of healthcare technology and technology-enabled services startups. Brenda founded Viridian Health and Solera Health to create new models for whole-person care. She also led Coplex, a venture studio partnering with health systems to validate, design and launch new healthcare companies.