Time for #CelebratingOurWins, welcome! This series is focused on shining a spotlight on incredible women working in women’s health and busting their asses to make healthcare better and more accessible to us ALL, regardless of gender. A win for one of us is a win for all of us.
This week I’m so excited to spend some time telling everyone about the extraordinary Naseem Sayani (she/her) - the single most badass woman in venture.
Hearing Naseem tell her story never ceases to inspire me and I'm sure it will do the same for you. Naseem started her career in consulting and slowly worked her way up to the top in firm after firm (she has all of the logos - BCG, Booz, IBM, etc.). She led markets, teams, and companies straight to the top everywhere she went.
She came to the inflection point that those of us in women's health know very well. The point where you can choose to stay on the corporate path OR dare to break away and focus your work on impact and mission. Standing atop the ladder that very few women get to stand on, Naseem reflected on herself, her career, her legacy - and then she took the jump. She dared to veer onto a different path. She decided that all she accomplished meant very little if she wasn't able to bring other women up with her. To restructure the entire game to chip away at the gender gap power structure in her industry and beyond.
That's why she founded Emmeline Ventures (a FULLY FEMALE, extremely successful VC firm) that is focused on making venture more accessible to women everywhere as founders, entrepreneurs, leaders and investors. Emmeline has a portfolio of fully female founded companies that are all doing incredible things in the world. 11/10 recommend you go and look at each and every company in their portfolio but specifically on the digital health/women's health side of the house are companies like AOA Dx, Ruth Health (YC S21), She Matters Inc and LunaJoy Health.
While her resume and accomplishments are impressive as fuck and for sure speak for themselves, that's not the thing I find most incredible about Naseem. Most incredible to me is her genuine kindness and accessibility - this woman LIVES her mission. She does monthly calls available to any and all founders who are building companies and learning as they go (link to this series in comments).
To this day Naseem is the one and only investor I have ever met who, the first time I met her, was genuinely interested in me, what I was doing, and how she could actively be helpful. We all know investors get hounded daily with incredible founders and operators who desperately need support and it is impossible to help everyone. Yet Naseem has never let this make her jaded, she has never made another human being feel like they had to prove themselves worthy of her precious time, has never made her inaccessible or unwilling to listen and help however possible.
If you don't already, THIS is a woman to follow, emulate and be inspired by.