Dr. Dena Bravata joins Health Velocity Capital as Advisory Board Member

Health Velocity Capital
3 min readJul 14, 2023

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Health Velocity Capital is excited to announce that Dena Bravata M.D., M.S., has joined the firm as an Advisory Board member.

Dr. Dena Bravata is a physician, healthcare entrepreneur, and executive. Dr. Bravata was the co-founder of Lyra Health where she also served as the Chief Medical Officer from 2015 to 2016. She was the Chief Medical Officer and Head of Products at Castlight Health from 2009 through 2014 and again from 2019 to 2022 (formerly NYSE:CSLT). Dr. Bravata was a practicing internist for 16 years in her own private practice and an attending physician at Stanford University and the Palo Alto VA. As a nationally recognized health services researcher, Dr. Bravata has published widely on the clinical effectiveness of a variety of key health technology, clinical and public health topics. She is a founding member of the Aspen Institute Healthcare Strategy Group, was an assistant public health officer for Santa Clara County, and serves on the board of several health technology and services companies. In 2021, Dr. Bravata received a national service award from the White House and CDC for her work on the pandemic response and vaccines.gov. Dr. Bravata has an undergraduate degree from Yale University, an M.D. from Columbia University, and a M.S. in health policy from Stanford University. She completed her Internal Medicine Residency and Ambulatory Care Fellowship at Stanford University.

Expressing her excitement, Dr. Bravata remarked, “I am thrilled to join Health Velocity Capital’s Advisory Board and partner with the team and other advisors. I have been impressed by the firm’s track record of supporting entrepreneurs building some of the most innovative service and software companies in our industry, working with their strategic limited partners, and being guided by the mission to be the preferred innovation partner of entrepreneurs and investors working toward a more affordable, sustainable, consumer-friendly healthcare system.”

Health Velocity Capital Partner Kristin Torres Mowat added, “Having known and worked with Dena for many years, we are honored to welcome her to our Advisory Board. Dena is widely recognized as a leader across academic and business sectors for her research and entrepreneurial work that has touched innumerable companies and consumers through care delivery and technology enablement while delivering measurable value to payers, patients, and providers. We welcome her passion for innovation and collaboration.”

As a Health Velocity Capital Advisory Board member, Dr. Dena Bravata joins Sally Welborn, the former SVP of Global Benefits for Walmart; Scott Powder, the President of Advocate Aurora Enterprises; Mark Smith, the former CEO of the California Healthcare Foundation; Kent Marquardt, the former CFO and EVP of Premera Blue Cross; Doug Ghertner, the CEO of IVX Health and former CEO of ChangeHealthcare; Brad Fluegel, former SVP, Chief Healthcare Commercial Market Development Officer at Walgreens; Mike Weissel, the CEO of SecureSeniorConnections and former EVP, Optum; Karen Murphy, EVP and Chief Innovation and Digital Officer for Geisinger; and Rick Jelinek, former EVP at CVS Health, Aetna, and CEO of OptumHealth.

About Health Velocity Capital

Health Velocity Capital invests exclusively in innovative healthcare software and services companies. The firm’s partners have more than 75 collective years as investors, entrepreneurs, and executives helping to finance and build innovative companies that created important new healthcare markets and that became market leaders, including successful companies such as Teladoc, Livongo Health, Change Healthcare, MDLive, Contessa Health, Headspace Health, Aspire Health, Zipari, IVX Health, Well Health, Compassus, Aperio, The Advisory Board Company, Healthways (Tivity Health), US Renal Care, Spero Health, OnShift, Vantage Oncology, D2Hawkeye, Circulation Health, Payerpath, and many others. And, either as investors or operators, they have been part of nine companies that have exceeded billion-dollar valuations. In addition to investing on behalf of institutional investors, Health Velocity Capital invests on behalf of a number of the nation’s largest and most influential healthcare organizations and many of their top executives who collectively represent organizations that provide health insurance to more than 175 million Americans, operate more than 600 hospitals, provide pharmacy and PBM services to all Americans, and provide software and services to every major hospital in the United States. For more information, please visit www.healthvelocitycapital.com.

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Health Velocity Capital

Health Velocity Capital invests in growth stage healthcare companies contributing to a more affordable, sustainable, and consumer-friendly healthcare system.