NASDAQ welcomes the Health of Women Investor Summit on the MarketWatch Tower in TimesSquare.

The 4th Annual Health of Women Investor Summit started with a warm welcome from Alli Hanratty, Senior Managing Director Listings. She welcomed investors from around the world, and particularly called out the participating companies listed on NASDAQ including Hologic, Dare, and CooperSurgical.

Jessica Federer opens the 4th Annual Health of Women Investor Summit

What is the most exciting area of scientific advancement during our lifetimes? Women’s Health, says Jessica Federer, event chair and managing director of The Women’s Health fund. She reminded us that we aren’t waiting on new infrastructure or technologies to scale progress in women’s health. We just need to turn our lens to a population that has been excluded for too long. She thanked the partners and sponsors, and the incredible investors speaking, for their active role in building the market for women’s health, and challenged everyone in attendance to amplify the messages they hear at the event.

Lucy Perez shares the business case for women’s health and previews the high-impact new report.

Lucy Perez, Senior Partner at McKinsey, presented the business case for areas that differently, disproportionately, and exclusively impact women. She previewed the exciting new Project 23 (for the 23rd chromosome), sharing an analysis of 15 pharma assets currently on the market that could realize an additional $5 billion today through more focus on women’s health. That’s meaningful for any company. The giants in our industry are leaving money on the table by not incorporating the lens of the 23rd chromosome earlier - from female cells and female mice to quicker diagnosis and improved adherence, there’s something all of our companies can do to improve their business bottom line by improving the health of women. This is a powerful new report coming out of the McKinsey team.

The VC Panel with Julia Pugachevsky, Anna Mason, Beth Ferreira, Cristina Gehnoiu, Olivia Capra and Sonal Pai

“Don’t think of it as women’s health. Think of it as making money.” This phrase from Cristina Ghenoiu at Mubadala Capital will stick with us throughout the year coming out of our VC panel discussion. Led by Julia Pugachevsky, senior health reporter, Business Insider, this session featured some of the hottest VC investors, including Anna Mason, Ingeborg Investments, Beth Ferreira, Serena Ventures, Cristina Ghenoiu, Ph.D., Mubadala Capital, Olivia Capra, Frist Cressey, and Sona l Pai, First Spark Venture s. We heard about the new report out from Ingeborg about women as the “power-users” of healthcare, and some of the recent deals that the panelists had done.

Dr. Lisa Mosconi and Jeremy Abbate, Scientific American

Dr. Lisa Mosconi both opened our minds and brought us to tears. Her ability to share ground breaking science in a meaningful, human way, gave us hope for the future of research in our field. In an engaging discussion with Jeremy Abbate, Scientific American, we heard about how the tracers to see estrogen in the brain didn't even exist when she started her work. She shared how women’s brains are different, what we are learning about how hormones impact our brains, and the high-impact work she’s leading at Wellcome Leaps to address the two-thirds of Alzheimer’s patients that are women. Her talk left us inspired, hopeful, and ready to sign up to participate in more brain research for women! And yes, we are all reading her incredible books, the Menopause Brain and XX Brain.

Kate Zernike, Meghan Vaughn Watters, David Stevenson, Basmah Safdar, Michal Elovitz, Jessica Federer

The market building panel was led by Kate Zernike, NYTimes reporter and author of The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science. Meghan Vaughn Watters, Head of Labcorp Venture Fund, shared about some of their women’s health investments, including Teal health, that enable broader consumer access and earlier diagnosis. David Stevensen, Managing Director at Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, talked about the opportunities of building a new market, calling the current state of women’s health “nascent, very nascent.” Michal Elovitz, MD, CEO Nuttall Women’s Health, introduced the new foundation, and shared how they are providing grants for earlier stage innovations, and also doing direct investments, having recently invested in both a series A and series C company in the space. Jessica Federer,The Women’s Heal th Fund, talked about the first market-building fund of funds for women’s health, and why it’s time to break the mold and do something different to accelerate progress at scale across many funds, activating many established investors. And Basmah Safdar, MD, Director Women’s Health Research at Yale reminded us of the role that academic centers and researchers play in advancing our ability to deliver care and advance science.

Ecosystem Updates;

Dr. Elizabeth Cohn, Distinguished Professor of Women’s Health at CUNY Medical

Interested in free access to data on a million Americans from the largest ongoing women’s health study in history that includes a biobank larger than the UK biobank? Dr. Elizabeth Cohn, RN, PhD, FAAN, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Women’s Health Research Professor of Medicine, City University of New York, shared about the All-of-Us study and how CUNY is helping founders access this incredible resource. She also announced a brand new initiative to support founders in accessing the $1.4 billion in SBIR/STTR funding through an innovative program (indicate your interest here) and previewed a new publication that just dropped. You’ll want to read this one and the commentary from the journal.

Ready to personally invest in women’s health? Sabrina Johnson, President & CEO, Dare Biosciences shared their model for bringing new products to market, and invited everyone to invest during the coffee break through a vehicle that they opened to democratize access to women’s health investing. Once again reminding us that if the old way wasn’t working, we can forge a new path to build the space, everyone is welcome to the table here.

And Andrea O lariu, MD, PhD, CEO, Medicines360, told us about the meaningful work they are doing today to improve access for women globally, working closely with Wellcome Leap and other global organizations.

Allison Mignone, recipient of the 2026 Health of Women Investor Icon Award, presented by Stacey Seltzer and Sharon Cedar

Now what if we completely re-engineered a woman’s experience with healthcare? What if she could access the care she needed while advancing care from many different types of providers under one roof? One visionary leader has made that a reality in New York City, and we were privileged to recognize Allison Mignone with our Health of Women Investor Icon award. Presented by Sharon Kedar, Northpond Ventures, and Stacey Seltzer, Pontiva Healthcare Partners.

Why don’t we treat endometriosis like cancer? The cells migrate from the organ where they are supposed to be, and then set up their own food source to cause a lifetime of suffering, pain, scarring and damage. In a fascinating discussion led by Dr. Celine Gounder, MD, ScM, FIDSA, Physician, epidemiologist, and medical journalist at CBS News, NYU and Bellevue we met Dr. Samir Beyaz, Assistant Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He reminded us that none of us would be here if it wasn’t for the organ behind this disorder, we all had to successfully implant in the endometrium to become humans, and he shared the journey of his curiosity seeking to understand why these cells behave this way, going from nurturing life to causing chronic damage. We will be watching the research coming out of this laboratory for years to come, and look forward to the advancements being used for diagnostics, treatments and cures.

Barbara Cheiftet, Jyoti Gupta, Jill Angelo, Gnn Gibbons

Strategic Investments? What do GE, Hologic and Oura have in common? They understand the business behind the health of women and are investing accordingly. In an exciting discussion led by Barbara Cheifet, Chief Editor, Nature Biotechnology, we heard from Jyoti Gupta, CEO Women’s Health and X-ray, GE, Glenn Gibbons, VP Business Development, Hologic, and Jill Angelo, VP Women’s Health and Commercial Partnerships, Oura.

Katelyn Kimber, Sasha Kelemen, Jonathan Sockol, Melanie Bella, Richard Bennet, Vrunda Desai

Exits and Deals: This is always a highlight of the day as we dive into exits and deals that are happening. Led by Katelyn Kimber, Partner, Cooley, Moderator, we heard from Melanie Bella, Executive Advisor, Cressey and Company, Jonathan Sockol, Founder and Managing Partner, Moncap , Richard Bennet, CEO Epicured, Sasha Kelemen, Director Investment Banking, Baird and Dr. Vrunda Desai, Chief Medical Officer, CooperSurgical

Who wants non-dilutive funding? We heard from Michael Banyas, USPHS, MPA, SBIR/STTR Program Manager, and Jennifer Hawks Bland, CEO New York Bio about the $1.4 Billion opening up for SBIR/STTR grants. These are transformative infusions of capital, and we appreciate hearing about this new funding, and how to apply.

A big exit and still not done! Dr. Piraye Beim shared that after building Celmetix as the first precision medicine company focused exclusively on women’s health, they recently sold the entire discovery portfolio to Gedeon Richter. She is now announcing Eve’s Ark, which has secured over two petabytes of multi-omic women’s health data, representing more than 250,000 individuals, along with a biorepository containing thousands of samples linked to deep phenotypic data related to women’s health. These are resources that, absent intervention, were at real risk of being defunded.

We then closed the 4th Annual Health of Women Investor Summit and moved to our reception at Brown & Rudnick with a beautiful view of the sunset over Manhattan. This will be a day we don’t soon forget.

To stay involved throughout the year, check out #HOWinvestor as well as our LinkedIn and Instagram.

2026 Recap

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