Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw

Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw

Advancing women to healthcare leadership–
and keeping them there.


Women comprise 70% of the healthcare workforce. They hold just 20% of the C-suite.


Each week, host Laurie McGraw bridges that gap through conversations with the women rewriting healthcare’s leadership playbook.

The Hidden Disease 40% Of Americans Are Living - Alexandra Drane

The Hidden Disease 40% Of Americans Are Living - Alexandra Drane

What if the biggest health crisis in America is one almost no one is being treated for? In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Alexandra Drane, co-founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS, recorded at the WBL conference. Alexandra has spent her career proving a simple, radical idea: when life goes wrong, health goes wrong. After gathering more than one billion data points at he...

The Microsoft Health & Life Sciences COO: The AI Quietly Rewiring Healthcare

The Microsoft Health & Life Sciences COO: The AI Quietly Rewiring Healthcare

Mary Varghese Presti didn't plan to end up running healthcare AI for one of the most powerful technology companies on earth. She came to the United States at four years old, the daughter of an Indian nurse recruited by Penn Medicine during India's brain drain era. Growing up in Philadelphia in the shadow of one of the world's top nursing schools, she watched her mother and many of the women in her...

The Lie That Held A Generation Of Women Back - Dr. Veronica Mallett

The Lie That Held A Generation Of Women Back - Dr. Veronica Mallett

In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw speaks with Dr. Veronica Mallett, a physician, educator, and trailblazer with four decades of experience advancing health equity and workforce representation in American medicine. Dr. Mallett is Senior Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of the More in Common Alliance, a 10-year, $100 million partnership between Morehouse School of Medi...

Why Only 2% of VC Goes to Women!

Why Only 2% of VC Goes to Women!

Less than 2% of venture capital goes to female founders. When Laurie McGraw started Inspiring Women five years ago, the number was 2.4%. A few years later it had dropped to 1.8%. Absolute dollars going to women have grown, but the share of total capital has gone the other way, and the gap is now one of the largest unsolved problems in capital allocation. Laurie sits down with three women working t...

Stop Waiting To Be Invited Into The Boardroom - Meme Stokes Callnin

Stop Waiting To Be Invited Into The Boardroom - Meme Stokes Callnin

Meme Stokes Callnin had spent two decades inside global human capital consulting building talent strategies, advising on M&A integrations, and leading the Mountain States for Mercer across all things human capital. Then she went to a Harvard executive program on women in the boardroom. And everything shifted. She came back with a clear mission. 2024 was going to be her year. Then she hit the wall:...

The $15M Program, The 13,000 Calls, And The One Patient Who Changed Everything: Dr. Sandy Chung On Fixing American Healthcare

The $15M Program, The 13,000 Calls, And The One Patient Who Changed Everything: Dr. Sandy Chung On Fixing American Healthcare

Dr. Sandy Chung never planned to become a doctor. She grew up in a trailer park, on Medicaid, the daughter of Chinese immigrants who couldn't get professional jobs in the U.S. despite their advanced degrees. Her mom sold clothes in a factory. Her dad was a waiter before the family eventually opened a Chinese restaurant. And in the fourth grade, standing at a bus stop trying to figure out what to b...

The Game No One Teaches Women in Male-Dominated Industries | Julie Zuraw

The Game No One Teaches Women in Male-Dominated Industries | Julie Zuraw

Recorded live at the WBL Summit — part of the Inspiring Women WBL Series. A real estate executive in New York spent years as the only woman at the table in a male-dominated industry, learning the rules of a game no one had taught her. Her husband, watching her navigate corporate rooms full of men, kept asking pointed questions. Why did you say it that way? Don't you see how that lands? That was th...

Curiosity Expert: What We Completely GET WRONG about Curiosity!

Curiosity Expert: What We Completely GET WRONG about Curiosity!

Dr. Debra Clary started her career at 4 AM, driving a Frito-Lay route truck in Detroit as a Teamster. Three decades later, she had held senior leadership roles across four Fortune 50 brands (Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola, Jack Daniel's, and Humana), spent nearly 17 years building Humana's Leadership Institute, performed a one-woman off-Broadway show, and written The Curiosity Curve, a research-backed leade...

From Journalist To Billion-Dollar CEO: How Kate Ryder Built The World's Largest Virtual Clinic For Women

From Journalist To Billion-Dollar CEO: How Kate Ryder Built The World's Largest Virtual Clinic For Women

A venture capitalist in London watched her closest friend disappear into postpartum depression. Texts, calls, visits, the slow realization that the transition into motherhood had no real support system around it. That was the moment Kate Ryder stopped writing about problems and started building for them. Twelve years later, Maven Clinic is the largest virtual care clinic for women's and family hea...