From Patient to Pioneer: Mariya Filipova on Investing, Convergent Care, and the Oral-Systemic Health Revolution

[00:00:09] Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining me at HIT Like a Girl Podcast. This is Rebecca Love, your host, and I am joined today by Maria Filipova, one of the most incredible women that I've had the pleasure of getting to know over the course of the last decade of my career. Maria serves as the founding partner of Merrim Ventures, is the CEO of Proclaim Health, and as well as the course director at Harvard School of Dental Medicine for Convergent Leadership. Maria, thank you so much for being here. Today, you guys, we are so excited to talk to you about investing, women,

[00:00:38] investors, their careers, and the impact that other women are making in this space because we know that today's statistics show that women still fall drastically below men in the space that either engage in investment or receive investment. So Maria, thank you so much for being here. Tell us, the audience, a little bit about yourself and we are going to dive in. First of all, Rebecca, it's a pleasure to be here. Anytime I get an excuse to spend time with you and talk to you, it's always a lot of fun.

[00:01:07] So great to be here. As you mentioned, I wear a couple of hats. I come to you as an investor. I'm one of the two partners at a early stage venture capital fund called Merrim Ventures.

[00:01:21] We back entrepreneurs who see healthcare as one comprehensive whole person health system. Entrepreneurs who are building solutions across silos. Much of our time in healthcare has been spent educating, delivering care, and paying for care in specialties or the narrow disciplines. And the reality is that nothing in the human body happens in a quarterly cycle or in a narrow silo.

[00:01:49] So that's the investment thesis behind Merrim Ventures. Our investments are based on what we describe as convergent care. So care converging multiple silos and disciplines together.

[00:02:01] So we deploy about $80 million of capital across different solutions. Anything from nutrition, functional medicine to medical and dental solutions and how all of these come together in the service of anything from managing chronic conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular health to mental health and overall wellness and longevity, if you will.

[00:02:26] So that's one hat. So that's one hat. An investor actively deploying capital. My other hat has to do with my current role as a CEO of one of our portfolio companies called Proclaim Health. Proclaim is at the epicenter of making oral systemic health actionable and easy.

[00:02:46] It's a medical grade device that helps patients replace the need for flossing with a single button and seven seconds that allows them to deliver that fresh clinical grade clean at home. Very excited to tell you about that. And I'm also here as in my role as an educator.

[00:03:05] We just completed a brand new executive education course for established executives and clinical leaders while in their career with the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in collaboration with faculty from the business school and other parts of the school to bring together that mindset of convergence. So the course is called Convergent Leadership, and I was very pleased to be able to deliver and design it with Dr. Catherine Hayes at the school there.

[00:03:33] So educator, investor, entrepreneur. Probably I'll give you two other disclaimers. I'm a recovering banker, so started my career at Barclays in London, and I'm also a recovering consultant having spent over eight years at Deloitte. So convergent perspectives, if you will, is what I bring to you today. I love this, Mary, and I have to tell you, both being able to be a guest at your first session of your Convergent Leadership to knowing you across your career, and also really defining a new market, which I think is absolutely brilliant.

[00:04:03] And I think all of us that are listening that have been in healthcare have always wondered why oral health has been separated from systemic health and why the body and the head suddenly don't convene around the mouth has been absolutely mind-boggling for all of us. And I would like to say that you really have been one of the leaders in this space to bring forward this convergent thinking of how we're looking at health from a really holistic perspective. So, Maria, I think our audience, they always believe that it can't be them, that they as a woman, they as an individual listening to our podcast,

[00:04:32] things feel unattainable for so many out there. And your story to me is one of these stories that transpires the abilities and the odds to think anything is possible. So, Maria, step us back. Even how did you come into these spaces? Because I think people have to understand that there are so many opportunities that we need to know the person behind Profile as they exist today.

[00:04:52] I've learned very early on that I'm comfortable being the odd one out in terms of perspective or anybody's perception of what a healthcare executive should look like, talk like, how background they should have. The impetus for starting the Mayor and Ventures Fund and specifically focused on convergence comes from my own experience as a healthcare executive and investor,

[00:05:21] realizing that abysmally small percent of VC decision-making roles are held by women still. The percentage hovers around between 10 to 17 percent, depending on what statistic you look at. But again, I focus on decision-making roles, not on having women on your team, especially when it comes to venture investing, especially when it comes to early venture investing.

[00:05:44] I think that the largest majority of U.S. venture firms probably have zero female investing partners. Again, partners who are in decision-making roles deploying capital. And to me, that was the impetus behind starting a venture fund and coming up with a category-defining investment thesis.

[00:06:05] Because at the end of the day, it's my point of view that if we really want to show or change the percentage of dollars that go and back women-led companies, then the capital allocators need to also have that female representation. So that's the fundamental premise of if I want to work with entrepreneurs or if I want to be in part of women-led companies,

[00:06:32] then I have to be funding them and supporting them and growing them myself. So that's behind it. My personal story on care convergence comes from the frustration of being a patient. I believe that there's nothing more powerful in innovation and entrepreneurship than a frustrated patient. And healthcare is very personal.

[00:06:55] We're all being patients and we've had firsthand experience in the dysfunction of the current healthcare system as a user of those services. So my patient story led me to truly, I mean, at the time I was a partner at Deloitte and I was, by my standards, having a pretty amazing role globally leading innovative projects and working with AI and exponential technologies and pretty much spending my life on a plane.

[00:07:23] But I still remember one Tuesday morning when I was on my way to the airport to Logan here in Boston, where I had to pop in for one of those like quick annual physicals to just get the paperwork out of the way. And the primary care doctor, by the way, I showed up at an appointment with my carry-on because I was on the way to the airport. And the doctor pulpit in my abdomen and made me stay to get a ultrasound and then a CT and MRI.

[00:07:52] And we had an accidental find of a giant kidney tumor. And that accidental find switched me immediately from a busy executive trying to catch a flight to a freaked out, scared patient whose life has been turned upside down. On Tuesday, I was heading to the airport. On Wednesday, I was patient diagnosed with an unknown tumor that was, by the way, giant, because as my friends say, I don't think I don't do anything small scale.

[00:08:21] And so I had a giant undefined mass in my body. I was asymptomatic. And then on Friday, they already wanted to consent me to schedule me for an ephrectomy because no one goes to medical school to figure out how to resect a giant tumor. They go to medical school to learn how to resect the kidney.

[00:08:40] And so I, within a span of 72 hours, frankly, went from like leading healthcare projects and delivering strategy, multimillion dollar strategy projects for health hospital systems to being a patient in one. And the feeling is drastically different. And I still remember that scary moment where I had to actually ask people who are much more educated and experienced than me in healthcare.

[00:09:08] What if we take the weekend to think about it? What if I didn't have an ephrectomy on Friday, but got a second opinion? Because a giant kidney tumor like this doesn't grow overnight. And chances are, given how much time I spend on planes, if that tumor wanted to rehab it, it could have really done some real damage for me.

[00:09:28] So I am grounded by that patient moment, that sobering moment when you're getting a diagnosis where you're scared, when you don't know how to navigate the healthcare system, where everything coming at you is like overwhelming.

[00:09:41] And again, I wouldn't be here if over the course of the 18 months that followed that Friday, when I said no to the emergency surgery, if I hadn't become my own quarterback of my own healthcare and gone across silos between oncology, nephrology, genetics to figure out what this happened, 3D printing and computational science to figure out how we could resect the tumor, not my kidney.

[00:10:08] That 18 months of patient journey truly helped me figure out how I could develop my own care plan and care coordinate my own patient journey across silos. And I wouldn't be here if I didn't do that. So that's what drives me. That's a little bit of the care convergence where I had to do it for myself. And I wish there were solutions and companies and people who had that mindset.

[00:10:34] Mind you, that experience was seven years ago, eight years ago now, and has been driving my life and my professional career and the choices I've made since then. And I think it's done it in a positive, productive way. So that's what's grounding me. Maria, it reminds me of a book that I'm reading, The Altruistic at this point. And in this story, it says the worst moments of your life are often those can actually redefine your futures in a better way.

[00:10:59] And I think your experience here of being a patient in that moment and looking at the healthcare system and the speed at which they wanted to move and you stepping back and saying, OK, let's look at this differently and let's navigate this care potentially differently. Let me speak to all the players in this moment and define this.

[00:11:16] You showed a gap that I think, to your point, seven years later has stepped you into a moment that is allowing you to build one of the first leading funds where, you know, you and your two partners, being the woman on the equal on this team, is bringing forward a new direction in investment and thinking. And to your point, the numbers of 10 to 17 percent in investment led by women or even in these spaces, it's just shocking to show that still 80 to 90 percent of it as all healthcare investments are made determined by men.

[00:11:44] And we're half of this world's population. In fact, 51 percent of the world's population is made up of women. So the question is where those where investment happens is where our attention follows. And if there is that lack of women being in these spaces, the recognition of how we navigate care. And as most women in today's families are the directors of the determination of how healthcare happens. But the options that they have largely been determined with them absence in these spaces.

[00:12:11] So Maria, step as you're telling the story, and I think this was just such an important one to bring forward, is you've lived the experience. And now from all of your learnings have entered a phase of what the future of healthcare looks like. So in these roles, tell me what you are seeing these conversations happening and the kind of reflections and information.

[00:12:32] If you were going to educate our audience today on how these perspectives are important, can you give us some key positions that you think are really important that are helping understand the way that you're looking at investments that typically may not have been looked at previously? Couldn't agree more with you, by the way. If we're building companies that are successful, then we have to build products and solutions and services that service the 51% of the population.

[00:12:57] And if we're looking to engage patients and educate patients to be knowledgeable consumers of health and healthcare services, then we have to be able to directly talk to the people who are making those decisions. And most likely this is women who are taking care of their children, of their parents, of their spouses. And finally, there's time and energy and resources of themselves, right?

[00:13:24] And so to me, again, it made no sense to nothing against male founders, right? But seeing male founders building solutions for women, it's always that extra barrier. So from my perspective, and maybe as a continuation of my Bertha story, and yes, I named my tumor Bertha because it seemed fitting and befriended my tumor.

[00:13:47] And I was able, after 18 months later, to have a very successful six-hour surgery at Mass General with brilliant cross-disciplinary team where they were able to resect my tumor, four and a half pounds of it, by the way, and preserve both my kidneys. Now, I'll tell you what, I fully recovered. That's the other aha moment, right? A successful outcome doesn't mean successful surgery.

[00:14:11] A successful outcome means that patient who was living on a plane and working and living a full life could still go back to that life that she had before, right? Doesn't mean, oh, I survived the surgery and I survived the tumor. And so to me, that was my outcome. My outcome was what happens after the surgery? How do I recover? How about nutrition? How about physical activity? How about mental health?

[00:14:37] I mean, I was that crazy patient who sent an email to my entire surgical team the night before my surgery. And I asked them, what's your plan for the resecting my tumor? And by the way, I read all these papers that the patient's mindset going into surgery impacts up to 30% of the outcomes. Could you please talk to me about this? And I want to be put under a general anesthesia with the following script. That's the patient taking control over the end outcome. However you decide to define it. For me, it was full recovery, right?

[00:15:07] For me, a successful surgery was one step towards going back to what normal life looked like for me, right? Somebody else might design it differently. The reason I'm sharing that happy ending of that story as a patient is because that informed my decision to leave my role at Deloitte and consulting to start a new chapter around being a healthcare executive in one of the largest health benefits providers in the U.S., Anthem or Elevance. Right.

[00:15:36] And from that perspective, again, I'm a trained economist. I don't faint at the sight of blood, but I couldn't really serve as a provider or don't have the patience and creativity that nurses do. So I figured I will I need to be closer to where healthcare happens. And I want to serve in making that cross-siloed care happen. So I joined a company that really administers benefits, provides payments for care. And because I thought that's where my skill set would be most valuable.

[00:16:06] And so over the next four years, I was part of this business of healthcare delivery and administering benefits, which is a whole world on its own. So I experienced the cross-siloed care as a patient and then experienced, guess what, those silos that I saw as a patient, they carried over on the business side. I still remember we were getting ready to meet one of our largest clients, right, a health plan or a health benefits company.

[00:16:33] Ultimately, what they do is that they help administer the benefits that a patient has. They don't always define the benefits. The benefits could be defined by your employer, right? But if it's Anthem United or whoever that person, that company is in the middle, they are administrators of benefits and they coordinate payments, right? Whether they carry the risk or not, that's a separate question. But if they're fundamental, that's what they do.

[00:16:57] And so I remember I was getting ready as an Anthem executive to go meet one of our clients, a large multinational employer, probably 70,000 to 80,000 employees that we administer benefits for that employer. And I sent a note to my team and I said, hey, guys, looks like this client has both health care and specialty benefits, medical and vision with us. How much do they spend with us across all their employees a year? I'm like, I thought this was like a quick email. I'll get a response.

[00:17:28] Surely we have the numbers. Rebecca turned into a six week project. Wow. These are different businesses, different P&Ls, different data systems, different buyers, even different benefit structures. And we don't necessarily at the time, and even today, we don't have a cross-functional, cross-benefit dashboard that shows you the true cost of care. How are your dental benefits and your vision benefits impacting your claims on the medical side? Amazing. I can't believe that.

[00:17:58] Benefit managers, those HR folks, they usually live in the HR team and they have a benefit on medical, a benefit on dental, a benefit on specialty. Very, actually, I would probably venture to say in less than 5% of the cases, there is a strategic discussion of coordinating and designing those in a way that's mutually reinforcing. I think people are shocked to hear this, Maria. And I love that this was almost by accident that it triggered this kind of perspective that brought it together.

[00:18:27] And then this underlying premise and thesis that you've held on to ever since that moment. That's exactly right, because I realized that, again, nothing in the human body happens in a silo, right? And so it took us how many years to accept the fact that if you want to manage the type 2 diabetes, you have to look at nutrition. You have to look at stress management. You have to look at physical activity, right?

[00:18:51] Not even 10 years ago, it was unheard of until the study for meals and wills programs to be prescribed to diabetic patients. To me, it's the same thing. Having looked at the literature, it's inconceivable to me to think that we're trying to manage trillion dollars of chronic cardiometabolic conditions, right? Without including oral systemic health interventions, right?

[00:19:15] And the whole notion that inflammation in the mouth, which happens to be called gum disease, right? Gingivitis is going to just stay in the mouth and not travel to your heart, not cross the blood brain barrier to go to your brain and impact mental health and dementia. Not impact your healthy pregnancy, because we're seeing preterm labor and low weight births with women who have uncontrolled periodontitis.

[00:19:41] This notion that inflammation stays in the mouth and doesn't cross any other parts of your body is just inconceivable to me. It's not only inconceivable, it's actually factually been proven scientifically that they completely do connect between the mouth and the body. I mean, we've seen multiple studies on endovitis and impacting the heart. There's just gingivitis, all of these situations. And I'm so sorry, I'm bloody going to go. But we know that these things are factual.

[00:20:08] And these are the things that you're spending your time in talking about and bringing it. I mean, I can't believe that it's 2026. And this is a narrative that is finally, my understanding, Maria, right if I understand. It was actually in the 1930s about when medicine and dental fell apart in the greater world. So it's almost taken 100 years where these two specialties fought it out because medicine didn't want dental involved and dental carved out their own form of practice.

[00:20:34] They were almost taking 100 years later to bring this conversations and this convergence back together because the absurdity that this was not something that was done 100 years ago has actually, I think, to your point, showing harm to patients. And you're bringing this back together is showing how the system can get better and converging things. So Maria, how did you do this? Like, I think that people that are listening are going to think, well, of course, this should have always been this way. But why is it not this way? And what is that?

[00:21:02] How have you started to bring this conversation? Where is buying in to support you? Because one, I think people are going to be surprised. You've already identified you're not a physician. You're not a nurse. And you're not even you're not a dentist either. That's right. You have sort of brought this to me to come from somebody who wasn't in these silos to step back to say this is just calling out the absurdity of a system and bringing it together. But how are you doing this? How are you? How is it working? And where have you found the support to make this happen? I identify as a frustrated patient with a curious mind.

[00:21:32] And so it's fascinating to see. I also believe that right now we're in a tipping point where health care costs is truly unsustainable. And so that famous quote of Churchill where people would do the right thing when all other options are exhausted. We've exhausted every single other option. When it comes to chronic disease management and cost containment, we have seen everything. We've thrown at it everything.

[00:21:58] Right now, companies are reimbursing for all kinds of wearables and people are getting paid to go to see mental health providers. We've put AI into our transcribers and all kinds of tech. We've thrown tech. We've thrown all kinds of other shiny new toys to try to curb the cost issue that we have, a sustainable cost. And at the same time, we're not living longer. We are not being healthier.

[00:22:24] And we're not, frankly, our wellness and joy, I think, is actually also we live in a stressful environment. So number one, I think we are at a point where we are running out of the business as usual solutions. So we need to think outside the business as usual. Number two, I come at it from a perspective of all the solutions that I build, I won't stop until I find the no-brainer solution for everybody.

[00:22:52] Because of my understanding how the current system works, I understand incentives and value structures. So when we go to a health plan or a dental benefit plan and we offer them a care coordination or a convergent solution across silos, we speak their language. We speak the language of quality of outcomes, cost of care, appropriate utilization, patient engagement rates. Right.

[00:23:16] So we're doing the right thing, but we are dressing it up in a wrapper that allows the players in the current system to say yes. I think that's absolutely brilliant. And Maria, can you step back? Because I think that the women, especially, that are listening to this market, this incentive structure is something that is relatively still poorly understood, I would think, across the space when you're talking about these things. Because a lot of people that get into health care want to do it because it gets people, we get involved because we want to make people better. But you're talking very important language here.

[00:23:44] Can you dive a little bit about this incentive structure and how you're lining up these benefits? So that if other women are listening, other people that are getting into this space, how do they have to frame their thought process around this to be successful? Because it's not enough to believe and truly feel something. There's something here that is absolutely necessary that I don't think many are taught in medical school or dental school or nursing school.

[00:24:05] And I'm not even sure, actually, to be honest, that it's even taught getting your MBA if you're not even focusing on health care because it is still such a small niche in it. But can you dive into that just a little bit? That's actually why we created Convergent Leadership as a course, because we realized that there are all these clinicians that are trained to be exceptional clinicians in their own field. But when they're putting leadership roles where they're leading a team, they're running an organization, they're making business decisions, they find themselves grappling with even the mindset.

[00:24:36] Think about when you go to a medical or dental school, there's a lot of decision trees. Like there's a lot of triaging. A patient walks in with the following sub-symptoms. You follow the triage. You follow a protocol. There's very little room for creative problem solving. In fact, it's highly discouraged. Right? We train our physicians to be narrow specialists and to follow established guidelines. Right?

[00:25:00] There's no Maria's approach to managing a chronic condition or treating your broken leg. There's a specific protocol that every ED doctor will follow. Right? Now, that's a certain mindset. That mindset is absolutely contrarian to the mindset you need to deal with ambiguity, deal with change, deal with creative problem solving. Right? And so deal with coming up with like behaviors. Right?

[00:25:30] Why are the benefit managers denying this claim? They're denying the claim because, as you remember, we said a little while ago, they're there not to decide care. They're there to administer the benefit as it was written in your benefit contract. So a health insurance company would literally look at, oh, here's the procedure. Here's the code. Does this code cover? Is it covered in your policy? Yes or no. It's not covered in your policy. Right?

[00:25:59] So from a benefit administrator, they're there to administer. Right? There's a contract. It's pretty black and white in their mind. Right? And so if you don't understand what is the mindset of that benefit administrator and what is the mindset of that ED doc or that surgeon who is fighting for prior off for their patient, then you get this different people talking different languages. And we are stuck into antagonistic relationships that don't really go far. Right? They're like, we need to disrupt the status quo. Great.

[00:26:29] But we're not designing from scratch. Right? We can't flip a switch and from tomorrow change completely. We don't have that benefit. So from my perspective, it comes down to understanding incentives and who is what position, what role is optimizing for what outcomes. That's why so many startups today are going after self-insured employers. These are the employers who effectively pay for the cost of care.

[00:26:56] Now, a health plan or a dental benefit manager might administer the care, but ultimately the dollars are going to come from your employer. So if you're a small employer with like 200 or 300 employees and one of them has, God forbid, cancer or preterm labor, these claims for one preterm labor could rank from $500 to $1,000 to $1 million just to get mom and baby out of the NICU.

[00:27:23] And so if I'm a self-insured employer, I'm paying United or Anthem to administer the benefits. But ultimately, I'm on the hook for that cost. And so now if I go to that self-insured employer and say, because of your dental benefits, all your employees who are family planning or trying to or currently pregnant have a higher risk of preterm labor because women with untreated periodontal disease or gum disease are three to four times more likely to have preterm labor.

[00:27:53] And so now we're having a conversation about cost of care, right? Because if I truly want to manage the risk of medical claims, then I need to look at all the other interventions to keep my employee have a healthy pregnancy, right? Same thing.

[00:28:13] There are specific bacteria that live in your gums, P. gingivitis and F. nucleitum, which levels when elevated have causal relationship with colorectal cancer. If you have periodontal disease and breast cancer, the metastatic cancer is actually more aggressive. And so there are all these, to your point, there's hundreds of metastudies that create a relationship that is associated with higher risk and a relationship that is in some cases causal.

[00:28:42] And so we can't talk about whole person health or we can't talk about cost of care, quality of outcomes if we only look at the tools that are available today, right? And the same way expanded the tool set with nutrition, we expanded the tool set with pharmacy benefits looped in, right? Now we have to expand the tool set with oral systemic health and managing inflammation in the mouth. I think this is going to blow people's minds on the conversation of the benefit manager and the incentives and the misalignment.

[00:29:11] And to your point, coming from it from very different perspectives. And Maria, I cannot believe that we're sort of flown by on so much time on these ones with regards to these things. But your story is so powerful with regards to where you started from the patient perspective. The things that you've built in the course of the last seven years, eight years since you yourself were a patient and taking all of your lived experiences from there and also showcasing the power of when women get into these seats of actually doing investing and opening and expanding this.

[00:29:38] The knowledge that is brought into making smarter decisions on how to invest so that the world that we're building for in healthcare is actually solving the issues that patients are facing today. And to your point, not driving up costs that don't produce better outcomes, but actually decrease costs by improving outcomes. And we know that the United States is on the wrong trajectory. And so maybe the answer is bringing more women into these spaces. And then we can turn the 10 to 17 percent to 50 percent and we can see what happens in the future of healthcare.

[00:30:06] So with coming down to this Maria and then spending the last period of time with us, what final thought statement do you want to share with those who are listening and how can they find you learn more and connect with you? I love that question because you know that I'm always action oriented. I have a bias to going out there and doing things. So number one, if you're a patient, max out your dental benefits.

[00:30:31] And you probably noticed I was very careful in using words like benefit managers, not insurance, because dental benefits are in fact not insurance. They are a set of prepaid benefits that you as a patient have. And if you don't use them, you lose them. There's a certain maximum associated with it.

[00:30:51] So number one, max out your dental benefits, go to your dentist and make sure that you're asking questions from your dentist that are connecting to the rest of your medical history. And similarly, if you have diabetes, if you have heart condition, hypertension, talk to your specialist about how dental care, oral health, sleep impacts your medical outcome. I think it starts with the patients going back to the beginning of the conversation, being educated consumers of care.

[00:31:20] Right. And we're seeing the same thing play out when it comes to hormone therapy for women going through menopause. Right. We have to be our own advocates because for the longest time, women health was considered its reproductive health. And by the way, women are small men. So why bother incorporating women in clinical trials? Right. Just do trials with men and just half the dosage. And that's it. We got this. Right. Right. So be educated consumers of health.

[00:31:48] And if you are patient, because that's your right and that and demand convergent care from your providers. Number two, if you're an employer, small group, if you're a woman running your own business, if you're an employee, look at the benefits that you're providing to your employees. And frankly, call out your brokers and your benefit providers and ask them to give you that dashboard.

[00:32:12] Right. A comprehensive dashboard of the true cost of care across medical, dental specialty, vision, whatever is out there. Right. What is the true cost of care and what is the true quality of the outcomes I'm receiving? And that's a starting point, because as an employer, you have a lot of power to design those benefits. Number three, if you're an investor, if you're an executive, I'll tell you this.

[00:32:35] More and more, I see the difference in the way women engage with alternative asset classes, which is venture capital, private equity versus men. Fewer and fewer women are comfortable making investment decisions and talking about building wealth rather than working paycheck to paycheck. And so as a woman who you might be an executive, you might be an hourly worker. Either way, start thinking about how your money could start working for you.

[00:33:02] And I'm not saying put 100 percent of your net worth into venture or private equity, but think about investing some percent of your income to build wealth. Think about investing it in a balanced portfolio where you have diversified pool of assets. Some percent of your investments need to be in that venture and private equity world. Why? For me personally, that's not only a way to diversify and provide disproportionate upside, if that works out.

[00:33:29] But also it's a way for me personally to learn, support entrepreneurs that are mission aligned and build companies and solutions that I believe in. So it was very important for me to bring some of those first time women investors into our fund. And I'm deeply committed to that mission.

[00:33:48] And so whoever wants to connect with me on topics like care coordination, convergent care, female investing and just investing in building companies, I leave my contact information with you. I love it. You guys can find Maria Filipova on LinkedIn. Please follow her on Miram Ventures. I have to tell you, Maria, I have to see what has been the last watching the last decade of your career.

[00:34:10] I'm very excited to see where the next decade of your career goes, because I believe that is women like you that are going to change the future of not only health care for the better, but also you're going to amplify and raise voices, women in places that they have not been seen before. And that is exactly the premise of Hit Like a Girl podcast. So Maria Filipova, thank you for joining us on this episode as we discuss women who are in private equity and investments, translating the future of health care and the impacts that they are having not only across the United States, but globally. So thank you for having us and joining us today, Maria.

[00:34:40] Thank you for having me. This was great. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Hit Like a Girl pod. If this episode resonated with you, please follow us on social media at Hit Like a Girl pod. That's H-I-T, like a girl, P-O-D, across all platforms. And to learn more about the show, our guests, or to join our wait list for what's coming next, please visit our website. The link is in the show notes.

[00:35:07] The Hit Like a Girl podcast is built on joy, fueled by love, and led with grace. We're so glad that you're here. We'll see you next time.