I learned this early by watching my father practice as a PCP in the Bronx. He did everything right inside his four walls. But the forces that shaped his patients' outcomes — access, navigation, health literacy, social connection — lived outside of them.

That observation set the direction for everything that followed.

I got an MD (Weill-Cornell) — not to practice within my own four walls, but because I saw that the biggest problems in healthcare couldn't be solved from inside them. At the same time, I pursued a PhD in Health Economics at Wharton-UPenn, to learn the system-level architecture that determines what's possible.

And then I built.

I co-founded InquisitHealth on a specific question: in any community, there are people thriving against the same odds that defeat others. Could these positive outliers help others who were still struggling? Over twelve years we trained patient-outliers as Peers. We built one of the largest tech-enabled peer coaching workforces for chronic disease in the country. We published peer-reviewed research in JCS, JMIR, and JAMIA. We served Medicaid, Medicare, and Commercial plans across 30+ states and 80+ plans. The company was acquired by Pyx Health in 2023.

As Chief Health Officer of the combined entity, I helped integrate teams, technology platforms, and product portfolios across the merged book of business. It was a master class in what works, what breaks, and what you learn when you're no longer calling every shot.

Today, I'm building again.

I'm putting into practice all of the lessons I learned the first time around, with the goal of only making new mistakes. And, at the same time, I'm helping others build, too, by sharing what I've learned the hard way.