We’re excited to spotlight Christina Vosbikian (MBA 2025), a recent Blavatnik Fellow whose work is advancing innovation in women’s health. During her time at HBS, Christina helped grow the Women’s Health SIG, organized the school’s inaugural Women’s Health Summit, and launched Coord Health. Having grown Coord Health through the Blavatnik Fellowship, Christina reflects on her path to HBS, lessons learned from building communities and companies, and opportunities she sees ahead in women’s health innovation.
Tell us about your path to HBS: what brought you here, and what made health care entrepreneurship the direction you wanted to pursue?
Before HBS, I spent my career in private equity and – before that – investment banking. While I was looking at investment opportunities across consumer, health care and wellness services, I got extremely interested in how innovation in clinical operations could affect change for women and clinicians. That’s what brought me to HBS. I knew I wanted to explore health care entrepreneurship and felt business school would be a helpful jumping-off point.
During your MBA, you led the Women’s Health Special Interest Group (SIG) and grew it from a small WhatsApp group to a community of hundreds. What need were you responding to, and what has that experience taught you about building community around a shared mission?
During my RC year at HBS, the Women’s Health SIG already had a great foundation. My SIG co-head, Ricky Cordova, and I experimented with formats – building upon that base – and saw clear demand for a capstone event. The lesson was, I think, to be responsive to demand trends and capitalize on “the moment” to bring incredible minds together and affect positive change.
You organized the inaugural Women’s Health Summit in 2024, bringing together students, founders, policymakers, and executives. What was one moment or conversation from that day that has stayed with you?
It’s hard to pick just one moment! Some of the most impactful for me were the discussions of public policy and how it enables – or doesn’t – sound innovation in health care. I did my undergrad degree in public policy at Princeton and think about these links often. Common-sense approaches to public health are inextricably linked with the ability to uplift society and build businesses that do well in health care, so I always appreciate those discussions.
You founded Coord Health during your time at HBS and grew it through the Blavatnik Fellowship. Tell us about what Coord does and the problem you’re trying to solve.
U.S. OBGYN burnout has reached a tipping point. The problem is multi-faceted, but it trickles down to impossible conditions for clinicians and gaps in care for patients. I strongly believe that innovation in clinical pathways and utilization of multi-disciplinary teams – i.e., coordinated health care – can plug many of these gaps. That’s what I’m trying to build with Coord. We’ve seen incredible progress to date, and I look forward to what’s ahead.
Women’s health is having a real moment in health care innovation. What areas of the space are you most excited about, and what do you think is driving the interest?
I’m excited about right-sized capital structures that enable truly sustainable and impactful companies, across women’s health verticals. I think it’s a good thing that the venture market has cooled somewhat from the sky-high valuations we saw ~5 years ago across all of digital health, but specifically women’s health where the track record is more limited and good outcomes matter more for future funding. There is incredible work being done today across life sciences, which we need more of, but where I get most excited is unsurprisingly care delivery. I like some of the more horizontal models that are addressing many stages of life for women, whether B2C or B2B2C. Coord falls into that bucket, but we’re also seeing that diversification in unicorns as they expand beyond pregnancy to include menopause – or even open up new GTM motions. I think it’s critical that we begin structuring women’s health care services companies the way health care services are structured more broadly – versus staying in “wave 1” women’s health innovation where many DTC point solutions were targeting a few windows in women’s lives.
You came to HBS from finance and private equity. How has that background shaped the way you think about opportunities and challenges in the women’s health space?
I probably think more about numbers and do more “let’s see what this looks like” scratch math in excel than other founders do. Old habits!
What is one thing you understand about building in health care now that you didn’t when you arrived at HBS?
I don’t think anything prepares you for the kind of learning you get while doing, and I appreciate how HBS enabled me to build and operate even as a student. Those experiences taught me many eye-opening lessons, from nitty-gritty billing operations to EMR workflows and more.
As you wrap up the Blavatnik Fellowship, what’s next for you and Coord?
Folks can expect to see continued hard work from our team and a sustained, laser focus on supporting patients and clinicians across women’s health. That will always be our true north!
