2025 Summary

Thank you to the many investors that gathered from around the world representing venture capital, private equity, family offices, endowments, governments, foundations, corporate venture capital, and more.

Below is a brief recap of the day with links to all of the speakers and panelists, and the reports they shared, and photos from the day.

To get us started, Dr. Johanna Grossman, head of health care and life sciences capital markets, called the meeting to order and gave a warm welcome to everyone at the beautiful New York Stock Exchange.

Jessica Federer, event chair, board member, and investor, welcomed participants, thanked our incredible sponsors, and gave us a glimpse of the rapid progress that is being made. Jessica was the Chief Digital Officer at Bayer, which is how she learned of the data gap from women not being included in federally funded studies till 1993. When she moved over into VC, now at Angelini Ventures, she was surprised to discover the small fund sizes in the field of women’s health and instigated this event to catalyze change. She reminded us that three years ago, at the first of these meetings, the largest dedicated fund in the field was only forty-million, and all the women’s health funds were micro funds. She previewed that throughout the day, funds would be announced that added up to over a half a billion dollars in new capital, showing how much progress we are making together.

The opening keynote was from Lucy Perez, Senior Partner and Global Leader of the McKinsey Health Institute, sharing information from the seminal report on closing the women’s health gap, and from their latest report on the opportunity for biopharma. The McKinsey work was the first of its kind, and is now the most widely referenced data in the space. One stat to keep in mind is that one in ten people have diabetes and there is a tremendous amount of diagnostics, services, tools and treatments available. But one in ten women has endometriosis, and there is still next to nothing available and it takes almost a decade to even get a diagnosis. We encourage everyone to read and share these powerful reports about the trillion dollar opportunity in women’s health.

Next up was an insightful - and fun - fireside chat with the one and only Mark Cuban, who reminded us that it’s just smart business to invest in women’s health. The fundamentals are there: untapped demand in a highly fragmented market poised for disruption.

We then heard from Dr. Stacey Rosen, the president elect of the American Heart Association, Executive Director for Northwell’s Katz Institute for Women’s health. She introduced the genius behind the Katz Institute, Saul Katz, the founding chairman of Northwell Health.

Saul invited everyone to join the movement of investing in women’s health as he had done. He shared how his wife saw the news that men should take aspirin regularly, prompting him to look into the study and discover that it was only conducted in men, even though cardiovascular disease is the leading killer of women. He turned his discovery into action that is now making a real and meaningful difference for women’s lives today across 193 New York locations. We were energized by his passion and enthusiasm for delivering an integrated approach to care for women.

Next up was a panel on the LP Perspective, featuring investors representing almost two hundred billion dollars in investment capital. Jessica Federer, Angelini Ventures, Michaela Edwards, Capricorn Investment Group, Lily Chang, Novo Holdings, Sajni Chotai, British Business Bank, and Lisa Marrone, Pivotal Ventures, shared actionable insights for GPs raising funds. We learned about how the existing micro funds were often too small for the minimum check size from larger LPs and how this is starting to change as funds evolve, GPs gain more experience, and more seasoned GPs get into the space. We also heard about exciting initiatives from Pivotal focused on family caregivers, and from BBB in the UK, where investors have come together to provide a “top-up” to funds that have a focus on the health of women.

Did you know that your mammogram might have information about your cardiovascular disease risk? After a networking break, we reconvened to hear a life-saving presentation from Dr. Nina Vincoff about how mammograms can help identify heart disease. She shared how with a small five thousand dollar grant, she conducted a study that resulted in a life saving change in care patterns for patients that is already live today. Every woman that gets a mammogram in the Northwell network is now told if breast arterial calcifications are seen on the mammogram and what to do about it. This was an eye-opening talk for everyone in the room, as many lives have already been saved as a direct result of this change. This is something that should be a standard part of every mammogram report to patients.

The venture capital panel was next up with Jonathan Machado, Samsung Next, Frederique Dame, Google Ventures, Tracy Warren, AHA Go Red for Women, and Fern Mandelbaum, Emerson Collective, giving practical insights for founders looking to raise from VCs. They shared about some of their recent investments, with Google Ventures having invested over two hundred million in this space over the last five years. These investors also reiterated that the business case is evident. MVM shared that when they did an analysis of their life sciences companies, they found that the women’s health companies out-performed the non-women’s health companies, which is why their seventh fund is dedicated to women’s health.

Do you know about the biggest study of women’s health in the US? Most of us didn’t know that it is the All of US Study. Dr. Elizabeth Cohn, Feinstein Institute/Northwell Health Iris and Saul Katz Chair of Women’s Health Research Professor of Medicine, told us what we needed to know about this study led by the NIH, which has been running for about seven years, has over 800,000 participants, and 63% are women. It contains one of the largest sets of whole genome sequences widely available for research, and the big exciting news is that this data set is now open for partners! Dr. Cohn also shared about the Katz Women’s Impact Network (WIN) for Research. Companies and researchers that want to collaborate and work with the All of Us and WIN data should reach out to Dr. Elizabeth Cohn. And everyone is encouraged to consider joining the All of Us study personally!

Next up was the corporate panel, moderated by Dr. Johanna Grossman, NYSE, and featuring giants of industry that are making heavy investments in the women’ health space without using the words “women’s health”. Barry Green, the CEO of Sage Therapeutics, shared about the development and launch of a treatment for postpartum depression, building a new market that is saving lives. Diogo Rau, the CIDO of Eli Lilly, reminded us that two-thirds of Alzheimer’s patients are women, and most of the caregiver burden falls on women. Dr. Richa Pande shared the investments they have made in the phase three studies for fourteen women’s health oncology indications, adding up to billions of dollars going into building the field. Dr. Juliette Han, CFO of Cambrian, articulated the business case for investing in the health of women, and highlighted recent investments in the dermatology space.

The last panel of the day focused on a topic near and dear to investors - exits. We heard from Sasha Kelemen, Robert W. Baird & Co, Kendra Rose, Bayer, Glenn Gibbons, Hologic, Jean Roberts, Kohlberg, and Luis A. Fernandez, Red Barn Equity Partners as they discussed recent deals that they each had done in the space, including some that came from the VCs on the previous panel.

We had a late-breaking surprise session featuring former FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden, and Esther Kofrah led by NYSE President Lynn Martin focused on the news for of the women’s health network from the Milken Institute’s annual meeting.

Then it was time to make history with some big announcements.

MVM partner Isabella Mihov, shared that their seventh fund is dedicated to women's health because they saw their women's health portfolio companies outperforming their other health companies.

Stacey Seltzer and Jeffery Steckler introduced Pontiva Ventures, and shared about their entry into the space, bringing a dedicated new organization into the field that will focus on series B checks.

We heard exciting news from Alice Zheng, Foreground Capital, about the SHIFT women’s health gathering.

Former NIH insider, Jamie White told us what we all needed to know about the IEF innovation fund, the XX Prize, the UN Equalizer Hub, and the Wellcome Trust.

Time Health 100 leader, Carolee Lee, the founder of WHAM inspired us, sharing about the Research Collaborative, the Investor Collaborative, and the Innovators Circle.

After a day full of insights and news, we closed the session by recognizing the incredible decades-long leadership of Dr. Carolyn M. Mazure, whose work at Yale and then recently leading the White House effort on women's health, is truly historic and has opened the doors for all of us.

We then closed the 2025 meeting and moved upstairs into the networking reception to make more introductions and share deal flow.

It was a day full of information sharing, openness, and progress, and we appreciate everyone that joined us!

Thank you to each one of our sponsors, Lucy Perez, McKinsey & Company Sasha Kelemen, Baird Eli Curi, Latham & Watkins, Katelyn Marini, The Bowdoin Group and Elizabeth Cohn, RN, PhD, FAAN, Northwell Health and to Johanna Grossman, PhD and our wonderful hosts at the NYSE.

Lastly, if you want to stay up to date on the latest in this space, we recommend Femtech Insider and Maternie!