WoW Woman in Health Tech I Dr. Jennifer Schneider, co-founder and CEO of Homeward
Dr. Jennifer Schneider is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Homeward, a company focused on rearchitecting the delivery of health and care in partnership with communities everywhere, starting in rural America. Having grown up in a small town, and being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at a young age, she experienced first-hand the challenges of accessing convenient care that millions of families across rural America deal with every day. This fueled her passion to found Homeward and create novel, value-based care models that are purpose-built to address the needs of rural Americans.
Previously, Dr. Schneider served as the chief medical officer and president of Livongo. While there, she led the company through the largest consumer digital health Initial Public Offering in history and the industry’s largest merger ever between Livongo and Teladoc Health, valuing Livongo at $18.5 billion. She also served as chief medical officer of Castlight Health.
Dr. Schneider has been honored by Modern Healthcare as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” and by Fierce Healthcare as a “Woman of Influence” for her work empowering women and modeling diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Dr. Schneider is also on the boards of Cityblock, Maven, and Jasper.
Dr. Schneider completed her bachelor's degree in biology at the College of the Holy Cross. She went on to get her MD at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and her master’s degree in Health Services Research at Stanford University.
Homeward is rearchitecting rural health and care for the 60 million Americans living in rural communities. As a new value-based care provider, Homeward employs multidisciplinary care teams, available in-home, within the community, and virtually, with technology to better connect patients to high-quality, affordable, and comprehensive care. The company supports Medicare-eligible beneficiaries, including by partnering with Medicare Advantage plans, and takes full risk for the cost of care of its members to improve outcomes and reduce costs.
Tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far.
I was born and raised in Winona, Minnesota, a small town on the Mississippi River. Winona was an amazing place to grow up and my family owned and operated the local auto parts store, Motor Parts and Equipment (MPE), and still runs MPE to this day. I recently went back to Winona for the first time in a few years and it was amazing how everything felt so similar and comfortable. While the shops and scenery looked a bit different, the close friendships and values never changed. That is the beauty of small-town America.
One of the greatest influences on my life was when I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 12 years old. Due to a limited supply of providers, it took me weeks to see an endocrinologist after diagnosis. It wasn’t until I attended medical school at Johns Hopkins University that I learned how dangerous an extended delay between diagnosis and first seeing an endocrinologist could be.
Without a prompt visit to optimize my medication routine, I was at high risk of the things that can kill people living with type 1 diabetes—namely really high blood sugar (resulting in diabetic ketoacidosis) and really low blood sugar (resulting in loss of consciousness).
My diagnosis of a chronic condition at a young age and the incredibly powerful and empowering interactions with my eventual endocrinologist inspired me to become a medical doctor and later motivated me to build and scale mission-driven healthcare companies.
In 2010, I joined Castlight Health and we took the company public through an IPO, one of the first in the field of digital healthcare. My early work at Castlight brought issues of healthcare transparency to light, which I fully believe has led to significant advancements across the industry. In 2015, I joined Livongo and as our Chief Medical Officer and applied my experience living with diabetes to build our chronic condition management program. I was later promoted to President overseeing product, engineering, data science, marketing, design, and clinical services.
After Livongo, I joined General Catalyst as an Executive in Residence, where I spent time evaluating different aspects of the healthcare ecosystem. As we looked across the industry, one thing kept coming back into clear focus. Healthcare in rural America is MASSIVELY broken. It was something I couldn’t shake, and given my experience growing up in a small town, I knew I had to address it head-on. When I presented this realization to General Catalyst CEO and Managing Director Hemant Taneja, we began looking for companies to invest in and quickly realized that there were no companies in the market rearchitecting the end-to-end care delivery in rural America head-on. With that realization, Hemant, my business partner Amar Kendale, and I decided to launch Homeward, with the mission of rearchitecting the delivery of health and care in partnership with communities everywhere, starting in rural America.
Why did you get into this industry? Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges or obstacles?
As I mentioned, my diabetes diagnosis inspired me to become a medical doctor. I attended medical school at Johns Hopkins and did my residency at Stanford, but after serving as a physician for several years, I realized that although I loved seeing patients, the advancement of technology was beginning to create opportunities to make an even greater impact–to touch and deliver care to more people. Technology enables us to improve a complex, ever-changing healthcare system to deliver clinical outcomes outside of the four walls of a doctor’s office, rather than just those who I saw in the visiting room. That was my original motivation to begin building and scaling mission-driven healthcare companies using technology to help scale access to clinical services.
Healthcare is never easy, and I would argue that there is no area more complex than rural healthcare. Today, access to care in these areas is more challenging than ever due to the combination of increasing hospital closures, an aging physician workforce, and a lack of infrastructure.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
My greatest accomplishment is, and will always be, my three amazing children Fiona, Piper, and Angus. Despite some amazing professional accomplishments throughout my career, my most important role is being a mom.
I have been fortunate to help scale my last two companies to, and subsequently, through, initial public offerings and eventually led Livongo through our merger with Teladoc. While these have been significant achievements, besides my children, I am most proud of my work to empower women healthcare leaders.
Throughout my career, I have set aside time to mentor and support other women leaders who are poised to make a difference. In fact, at Livongo, we launched internal women in a leadership program that was focused on empowering women across the business to take the next steps in their careers. I am so proud of the impact of the program and the fact that many of our participants are now serving significant leadership roles at different companies throughout the healthcare ecosystem or have founded companies of their own.
In my role, I am fortunate to have an opportunity to advise leaders across the healthcare industry, and I recently decided that all of the companies that I advise moving forward must be women or minority-led. Today, I am incredibly proud to support two women leaders who I believe are among the most talented CEOs across the industry - regardless of gender. As a Board Member at both Cityblock and Maven, I have seen Toyin Ajayi and Kate Ryder’s leadership up close and personal, and am so excited about the progress they are making at their respective companies.
What are the projects you are currently working on?
Rural healthcare is a huge and challenging problem, so I spend a significant majority of my time serving as co-founder and CEO of Homeward. It’s funny, when I was at Livongo people would often tell me that it was great that I was addressing such a big problem in diabetes. At Homeward, I often hear that it’s great that I am addressing a niche problem.
I’ll say that nothing about rural healthcare is niche. It impacts 20% of the U.S. population, and to put it into comparison, there are about 30 million people living with diabetes in the U.S. today. Nearly 60 million people live in rural communities, and it impacts about twice the amount of people with diabetes. While they are big and challenging problems, I think the misunderstanding of the scope of the issue just reinforces how important it is for a company like Homeward to enter the market and work in partnership with rural communities to expand access to care.
Is the #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why?
As I mentioned along with my work in building innovative healthcare companies, I have always been a strong advocate for empowering women in the workplace and find it critical to have women at the helm and have a voice in business decision-making, especially in healthcare.
I believe that we will never be able to truly improve the healthcare system without increasing the representation of women's leadership in healthcare. I often say that women are the CEO when it comes to healthcare decisions within the household, making the majority of decisions on how their family receives care, and yet, we only make up 25% of healthcare leadership roles. Representation is so important in any business, and especially in healthcare where the experience is so critical and even more personal. Giving experienced and intelligent women a seat at the table is not only the right thing to do but there are countless studies showing that it’s also good business.
What will be the key trends in your industry in the next five years and where do you see them heading?
I believe the key trends we’ll see in our industry in the next five years will center around personalization, hybrid care models, and outcomes-driven care.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated innovation and adoption of critical healthcare technologies including telehealth. However, healthcare is – and will always be – highly personal. While technology-enabled healthcare services like telehealth have undoubtedly been beneficial to all Americans in supporting greater access to care, telehealth is not a fix-all.
Many people still want in-person care options, and at the end of the day, no piece or aspect of technology will supersede the personalized touch and approach of a clinician. We all long for human connection and understanding. As a patient, you want your clinician to put a hand on your shoulder and listen to what you have to say, to have empathy for your condition, and to help you find a solution. You can’t do that through a screen.
As we see a continued rise in value-based care adoption, I fully believe that we will not only see more providers adopt these models, but they will embrace value-based care and all of the benefits it brings. In a value-based care model we can enable providers to do what they do best: Provide the best quality care focused on keeping people healthy for the long term.
It also enables unique utilization of tech, which can help providers practice at the top of their licensure.
What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career in this industry?
Bet on yourself. Someone is getting that best seat at the table and I will always support and advocate for women to ask for it.
Also, take time to have a break if that’s what is important to you. I am fortunate to be a mother of three and a CEO. To me, nothing is more important than family and I dedicate time to drive my kids to school every morning and coaching their basketball teams, while also spending the time necessary to run a business. It’s not easy by any means, but it can be done.
Who are three inspirational people in your life that you admire?
The three people that come to mind that I admire and who have empowered me throughout my personal and professional life include my dad, my basketball coach, and Lee Shapiro.
My father, who proudly owns a Motor Parts and Equipment auto shop in my hometown of Winona, Minnesota has inspired me throughout my career and is one of the inspirations behind why Homeward was founded and launched. At Motor Parts and Equipment, they have a service where they will drive an auto part out to a farmer’s home or business when it’s broken. It got me thinking… Why can we drive an auto part to a person’s home, but we can’t get the same people to access physicians? We clearly need to rearchitect the system and think of a new model, and as a result, Homeward was formed.
My basketball coach was an important figure in my life. I loved basketball growing up and my years playing the sport reinforced the importance of competition, and how you can unify teams to achieve more than they ever believed. Talent is great but can be beaten by a group of hard-working people working together as a team. I apply many of the lessons I learned in basketball to business, and have found that many of my most successful colleagues and partners were also athletes. It’s a common thread and I believe that the valuable lessons sports teach us unite many of us. These lessons and experiences are also one of the biggest reasons why I help coach my kids’ basketball teams today. Coaching my children is one of the greatest joys of my life and something that I am truly passionate about at the moment.
Last, but not least, Lee Shapiro has been a fantastic professional mentor. Those of us who have had the privilege of working with Lee all know how incredibly smart and thoughtful he is as a leader, but we also know how infectious his fun-loving attitude is to everyone around him. Lee is the epitome of taking his work seriously but never taking himself too seriously. When building complex businesses, that kind of mentality is critical. As Chief Financial Officer of Livongo, Lee would seamlessly transition between running complex financial models needed for our upcoming earnings call to playing ridiculous pranks on our team to lighten the mood. If I were to go to a prominent healthcare conference and ask ten random people if they knew Lee Shapiro, I would bet that the majority would have a story to share. He has literally influenced hundreds of people across the healthcare industry and I am fortunate to call him a mentor and friend.
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This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder, and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic and read her stories for Forbes here.