Lisa Suennen has spent nearly 30 years as entrepreneur, venture investor, board member and strategy advisor in the healthcare field. She is currently Managing Partner at Venture Valkyrie, LLC, an advisory firm. Lisa writes the Venture Valkyrie blog and co-hosts the Tech Tonics podcast. She is also co-founder of CSweetener, a not-for-profit focused on matching women in and nearing the healthcare C-Suite with mentors.
Lisa focuses on healthcare IT, medical technology, healthcare services and life sciences and especially the intersection where these fields converge in digital health. She seeks to identify innovations that open new paths to market; foster partnerships that lead to creative business models; leverage technology to drive growth of existing product/service assets; and to create opportunities to build value through the translation of great ideas into great companies.
Lisa is currently a Board Member of Health Reveal and the Dignity Health Foundation. She is on the Advisory Boards of the California Health Care Foundation Innovation Fund, and global digital health organization HealthXL. She is Chairman of the Advisory Board of NASA’s Translational Research Institute, which is focused on innovative approaches to reduce risks to humans on long-duration exploration missions, including NASA’s Journey to Mars. In 2018, Lisa was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the Advisory Council of State of California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine. Lisa is also a Fellow of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute’s Health Innovators Fellowship.
From 2016-2018 Lisa was Senior Managing Director at GE Ventures, leading the firm’s healthcare venture fund. GE Ventures is considered one of the world’s top 20 best performing corporate venture funds. From 2014-2016 Lisa operated Venture Valkyrie Consulting, advising global healthcare corporations around corporate venture capital and digital health strategy, as well as new company formation. From 1998-2014 Lisa was a partner of Psilos Group, a healthcare-focused venture capital firm. Lisa headed Psilos’ West Coast office from the firm’s founding in 1998 and focused on investments in the healthcare information technology, healthcare services and medtech sectors. Prior to Psilos, Lisa was at Merit Behavioral Care (formerly American Biodyne, Inc.), where she held several senior executive roles. Lisa joined Merit in 1988 in its early start-up period and played a key role in its growth to an $800 million revenue/year company, its IPO, and its exit to Magellan Health in 1998. Previously, Lisa worked in various product and marketing roles in the tech sector.
Lisa has been fortunate to receive numerous honors for her work. Most recently she was named 2018 Top Digital Health Evangelist by Goldman Sachs, Rock Health, Fenwick and West & Square 1 Bank, and the fund she leads for GE Ventures was named the most prolific corporate venture fund. 2018: In 2018 she was also named #2 in the Global Corporate Venturing list of 100 Rising Stars, which designates the top 1% of the corporate venture capital industry chosen from 100 corporate venturing units. In 2017 Lisa was named to Becker’s Hospital Review as one of 110 women to know in medtech. In 2015, Lisa was proudly featured as a Tech Superwoman in this Forbes article.
Lisa holds an M.A. and a B.A. in political science and a B.A. in mass communications, all from the University of California, Berkeley where she is on faculty at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.