Vishnu is a senior data scientist at firsthand, a company creating an in-person, peer-driven model for recovery from serious mental illness. As firsthand’s first data hire, he has helped scale the company’s impact to multiple states and thousands of individuals. With 6+ years of experience across clinical, claims, and medical imaging, Vishnu is passionate about realizing the power of data in healthcare.

I’ve worked in healthcare since 1996. Spent 6 years in the provider and rev cycle side, 10 years at payors Aetna, United, and Regence BCBS. Earned my MBA in 2012 and after that, I worked in Rev Cycle Consulting, and then Venture Capital. Ran a 20,000 life self-funded Taft-Hartley plan. In 2018, I Co-Founded my first company called Decent, building an entire health plan from scratch in under 12 months. In 2021, I re-started my consulting company, Formidable Nerd. Zero Card in 2022 building a national bundled services network. In 2023, I co-founded Bramble and became its CEO. Turquoise Health acquired Bramble in 2024, where I currently serve as General Manager.

In addition - I have been a certified professional coder, I have worked with 30+ startups on GTM and business development plans, I have been working on Value-based contracts since 2008, and am passionate about creating efficiency in healthcare. I am truly here to help you disrupt, create, and ultimately improve the way healthcare works in the US. 

Over the past eight years, I've been deeply immersed in the digital health sector, focusing on business development roles with a primary emphasis on selling to health systems and payors. Today, I play a key role in leading a national provider contract with payors at various levels. Throughout the country, I've worked on both fee-for-service and value-based contracts, guiding them from the initial phone call through presentation, negotiation, and finalizing signed contracts. As a co-creator of this course, my goal is to provide a resource that I wish I had during my journey—a tool to quickly get up to speed and avoid unnecessary mistakes, ultimately accelerating your development in payor contracting.

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Neelesh has been in the medical device industry since 2010 working across sales, marketing, product management, regulatory affairs, and medical affairs. He has successfully sold to non-profit health systems, for-profit health systems, the VA Healthcare System, and private medical practices.

His company Bayside Operations Technology deploys service robots to healthcare systems and national senior living organizations, and previously sold startup medical devices and supplies into VA hospitals. During the pandemic, he built an end-to-end vetted PPE supply chain which responsibly provided PPE to state hospitals and governments.

He lives on the immediate left side of the Hudson River (a.k.a. New Jersey) with his wife and baby, and estimates that Coke Zero is at least 10% of his bloodstream.

Matt has been working in medical device commercialization since 2008. Matt started his career at Zimmer where he became the youngest Director of Sales. In 2018, Matt started a sales consulting firm with the goal of helping European medical device startups enter the US-market.

Today, Matt serves as the CEO of Clozex Medical, a medical device company in the wound space. Matt resides in Massachusetts with his wife and young children. In his spare time, he focuses on family activities and loves making his own wine!

Dhruv is a healthcare technologist with over ten years of experience building products that solve critical problems for patients living with complex conditions, and the care teams that support them. Dhruv is currently SVP Product at firsthand, a tech-enabled services business that engages and navigates individuals on Medicaid living with persistent Serious Mental Illnesses via a peer-led care team. Prior to firsthand Dhruv led product, UX, and data analytics at PatientPing, the nation's leading care coordination platform, through its acquisition and integration by Appriss Health. Dhruv also shipped mobile, biosensor, and data platform products to power the first decentralized clinical trials at Medidata ($MDSO), a global provider of clinical research technology. 

Dhruv is an active angel investor in early stage healthcare startups and on the board of the Caregiver Action Network.

‍Julia is a product manager with experience working with early startups like Memora Health and Tendo and health systems like PennMed and CHOP to uncover opportunities from user research and define new products. Julia is currently pursuing a Master’s in Clinical Informatics Management at Stanford School of Medicine. Julia also has a Master’s in Integrated Product Design and Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.