Akros Atlas
Success in digital health is built on strong relationships. Wherever you are in your startup journey, industry experts can help accelerate your time to market. Even though experts are essential to your journey, different stages require different expertise. That's where Atlas comes in.
Abiola Abu-Bakr
Dr. Abiola Abu-Bakr is an Advanced Practice Public Health Nurse, Healthcare Innovation Consultant, and Doula with a passion for both her local and global community. A firm believer that everyone should be equipped with the knowledge and resources to live a healthy life- Dr. Abu-Bakr works to enact progressive change in the health and social sectors.
In her career thus far, Dr. Abu-Bakr has worked for foreign governments to support emergency health preparedness and response, championed the use of Community-Based Participatory Research in the healthcare and social impact fields, co-developed a doula training program for African American fathers, served appointments to state-wide and county-wide councils on health equity, and continues to work alongside fellow medical practitioners and social service organizations to provide free health screenings to uninsured and underserved communities in her home state.
Shalen De Silva
Shalen De Silva is an operator and leader in Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care, helping fast-growing healthcare companies uncover the truths and tactics required to bring innovative solutions to market for the 140 million Americans covered by Medicaid or Medicare.
He works closely with founders to validate strategy and accelerate commercialization by connecting them directly with MCO and payer executives, decision-makers, and industry operators. His work spans Medicaid waivers, procurement cycles, quality initiatives, supplemental and flex benefit vendor channels, and other pathways to scale products and services in managed care. He is also known for offering unfiltered, practical guidance on company building, governance, fundraising, and product development.
Rebecca Lanquist
Rebecca Lanquist is a market access and reimbursement strategy leader specializing in Medicare coverage, coding, and healthcare policy for medical devices. As Director at Horizon Reimbursement Consulting, she partners with startups and mid-sized MedTech companies to simplify complex payer landscapes, build compliant reimbursement strategies, and execute full life-cycle market access plans.
With deep experience across consulting and industry roles, Rebecca has led HCPCS and PDAC application efforts, supported CPT and ICD-10-PCS strategy, and developed reimbursement tools and training resources that help teams navigate claims, coverage, and payer engagement. Her background includes reimbursement leadership roles at NAMSA and Coloplast, where she contributed to upstream reimbursement strategy, evidence planning, and successful coding and benefit category initiatives.
Dennis Sponer
Dennis M. Sponer began his career as in-house counsel to one of Nevada's largest Managed Care Organizations and shortly thereafter founded one of the first workers' compensation-specific Pharmacy Benefit Managers. He is passionate about founder-led startups and entrepreneurship. Through his consultancy, SRX Advisors, he serves as a fractional general counsel and advisor to several healthcare companies and VC firms.
He is licensed as an attorney in California and Nevada and is a senior advisor to Connected Capital, a London-based UK FCA-regulated advisory firm. He is a thought leader in the legal, health-tech, biotech, pharmaceutical and startup worlds. Sponer devised his first PBM, ScripNet, as a payer-based technological solution to the pharmaceutical payment and remittance challenge. Sponer sold ScripNet to Optum Healthcare Solutions in 2012. His latest venture, HSARx, was a consumer-facing pharmacy benefit manager serving health savings account owners. He sold HSARx to SwiftScript in October of 2023.
Geoff Bartsch
Geoff Bartsh is a healthcare executive, strategic advisor, and growth catalyst with 20+ years of leadership across health insurance and public programs. He currently serves as SVP, Markets at Oscar Health, responsible for growth and financial performance across multiple regions. Previously, Geoff spent 13 years at Medica, where he led commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, and individual lines of business across 11 states and held P&L responsibility exceeding $4B.
Known for sharp market insight and calm leadership through transformation, Geoff is a trusted spokesperson and negotiator with boards, regulators, and community stakeholders, and a builder of transparent, high-trust cultures that deliver results.
Sean Flaherty
Sean Flaherty is a healthcare strategy and partnerships executive with more than a decade of experience driving growth across Medicare Advantage, payer partnerships, and healthcare commercialization. He currently serves as a Solution Sales Executive at Optum, where he focuses on connecting healthcare organizations with solutions that improve operational performance and patient outcomes.
Sean has built his career at the intersection of healthcare strategy, product innovation, and market expansion. Prior to joining Optum, he held leadership roles at organizations including Kroger, UnitedHealthcare, and Sunny Rewards, where he led initiatives that expanded Medicare Advantage offerings, built strategic payer partnerships, and developed growth strategies for large-scale health plan programs. In addition to his corporate roles, Sean advises early-stage medical device companies on reimbursement positioning, payer engagement, and provider adoption strategies to support commercialization of FDA-cleared technologies. His work often focuses on translating complex reimbursement and value-based care dynamics into clear narratives that resonate with providers, payers, and health systems.
Carrie Nixon
Carrie Nixon is a healthcare innovation attorney and the Founder and Managing Partner of Nixon Law Group. Alongside her colleagues at NLG, she works with digital health, virtual care, and AI-enabled healthcare companies as they build, scale, and navigate complex regulatory and reimbursement landscapes. She was drawn to this work after observing a consistent pattern early in her career: truly innovative companies often struggle not because their ideas lack merit, but because regulatory, compliance, and payment systems were not designed with innovation in mind.
Over time, serving as counsel to founders and growth-stage teams has shaped her view of legal strategy as a business enabler rather than a barrier. She believes the strongest outcomes come from practical, values-driven collaboration, intellectual honesty about risk, and helping teams understand not only what the rules are, but how to use them thoughtfully to support sustainable growth and better patient care.
Ian Weimer
Ian Weimer is a healthcare data scientist and Founder of Weimer Analytics, where he helps healthcare organizations translate complex clinical and economic data into evidence that drives payer decisions, regulatory strategy, and market access. His work spans Fortune 500 pharmaceutical and medical device companies to mission-driven healthcare organizations, with a focus on turning real-world evidence into compelling financial narratives that resonate with payers and health systems.
Across his career, Ian has led analyses of billions of patient records from claims and EHR databases, developed algorithms that quantify the cost impact of clinical interventions, applied machine learning to identify patient populations most likely to benefit from targeted therapies, and built ROI models that support payer contracting for community health programs. His work has contributed to 16+ peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations and has directly informed pricing strategy, market positioning, and regulatory decision-making. He is known for bridging the gap between analytical rigor and practical business application, making complex findings accessible and actionable for diverse stakeholders.
Callie Chamberlain
Callie is an award-winning, cross-sector leader with deep expertise connecting organizational mission to areas of opportunity. She is also a birth and death doula, bringing a rare blend of systems-level strategy and deeply human care to everything she builds.
She was hand-picked to launch the first Office of Social Responsibility at the world’s largest healthcare company, where she led a $22M investment strategy to close critical research gaps and elevate the fields of maternal and women’s health. Her work has consistently bridged social impact and business outcomes, including developing community interventions that unlocked $3B in revenue for a Fortune 5 company while positioning the brand as a credible thought leader in impact. Across sectors and stages, Callie is known for turning complex challenges into bold, actionable strategies, and building the coalitions needed to make them real.
Clem Foltz, FSA
Clem Foltz, FSA, is a healthcare actuary and value strategist who translates clinical impact into payer-aligned financial outcomes. As Founder of Momentum Actuary, he helps healthcare organizations position their solutions within real-world budget constraints, using CFO-level decision frameworks to connect innovation with economic viability.
Clem specializes in aligning clinical value with the financial realities facing health plans and risk-bearing providers. He works at the intersection of actuarial science, analytics, and value-based care, helping companies quantify impact, navigate risk arrangements, and articulate clear return-on-investment stories that resonate with payer executives and finance leaders. Across his work, Clem is known for bringing analytical rigor to complex healthcare challenges. His approach blends actuarial discipline with practical strategy, helping healthcare leaders make confident, data-driven decisions in high-stakes environments.
Craig Solid
Craig Solid, PhD, is a health economist, researcher, and consultant who helps medtech and healthcare organizations demonstrate the real-world value of their innovations. As founder of Solid Research Group, he works with startups and health technology companies to translate clinical benefits into clear economic and operational value for payers, providers, investors, and other decision-makers. Using a proprietary value demonstration framework, Craig helps organizations quantify outcomes such as cost savings, efficiency gains, and system impact—strengthening the case for adoption and accelerating market uptake.
Craig brings more than two decades of experience in health economics, outcomes research, and healthcare data analysis. He has authored dozens of peer-reviewed publications and books, including work focused on return on investment in healthcare quality improvement and implementation science. Earlier in his career, he served as Principal Epidemiologist at the Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation, where he led research using large healthcare datasets such as Medicare claims and national registries. Craig holds a PhD in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota and an MS in Statistics from Iowa State University.
Steve Weissblum
Steve Weissblum is an entrepreneur and exited founder focused on digital health and aging innovation. He currently serves as Chief Growth Officer at SLTC Centered Care, joining through the acquisition of Troupe Health, the venture-backed company he co-founded and led as CEO. In this role, he drives growth strategy by expanding Centered Care’s footprint, building strategic partnerships, and aligning technology-enabled clinical services with senior living real estate investments to improve resident outcomes, strengthen care coordination, and elevate operational performance.
Previously, Steve led revenue and commercialization as Chief Revenue Officer at UCM Digital Health, overseeing sales, marketing, business development, partnerships, and customer success. He has also supported early-stage companies as a Techstars mentor and Mentor in Residence, advising founders on go-to-market strategy, fundraising, and product development. Steve earned an MBA in Entrepreneurial Finance from Columbia Business School and a BA in Media Arts from the University of Arizona, bringing a blend of operator experience and investor-minded rigor to building scalable, mission-driven healthcare businesses.