The Launchpad Edition #7
I’ve spent the last few months reading with two questions running underneath everything: who gets to decide where the money goes, and who gets left holding the cost when it doesn’t go their way.
You’ll see that thread everywhere in this edition. HealthBegins has a sharp piece on health systems that hold enormous investment portfolios while funding scraps toward the community programs meant to fix what those same investments ignore. Shruti Shah at Symphonic Capital wrote one of the clearest breakdowns I’ve read of the SpaceX IPO — her framing of who hosts the AI boom’s infrastructure and who captures its returns is exactly the systems question that should be surfacing. And at Coyote Ventures’ Health Equity Innovators Summit earlier this year , Dr. Uché Blackstock made the case that representation in medicine isn’t symbolic — it’s a clinical intervention.
Also former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is out with a new project called Staying Human, arguing that our humanity is the thing actually at stake in all of this change happening. The importance of having a daily practice of connection is a real thing.
A lot to dig into. Let’s go.
— André
In The Know
Health Equity in Fractals: Inside Coyote Ventures’ Second Annual Summit
Coyote Ventures’ second annual Health Equity Innovators Summit convened founders, clinicians, investors, and policymakers around a provocation: health equity patterns repeat at every scale, so work at any level ripples outward. Dr. Uché Blackstock delivered the keynote, reframing health equity as infrastructure rather than a cost center — and making the case that when physicians come from and return to the communities they serve, outcomes change.
Health Care Has Untapped Assets to Fuel Equity
Glasha Marcon (VP of Product & Programs at HealthBegins) framing here is simple and a little uncomfortable: hospitals and foundations often grant scraps toward community health while their much larger endowments sit invested in the market, untouched by mission. HealthBegins convened 60 leaders in February to talk about changing that — including one foundation that redirected 5% of its non-grantmaking assets toward impact investing, and the Healthcare Anchor Network’s push to get members to commit 1% of assets under management to community investment. None of this is regulatory. It’s a values choice, and the point is that once enough institutions treat it as normal, the capital follows.
A Lot of People Read the SpaceX S-1. Here’s What They Missed
Not a healthcare piece, but it belongs here for sure. Shruti Shah of Symphonic Capital reads the SpaceX’s IPO filing through the lens of Memphis, where she grew up — the city hosting the COLOSSUS AI data center that xAI (now bundled into the SpaceX ticker) built. Her point: the filing prices the company at roughly 153x Starlink’s revenue on the bet that the AI segment eventually turns profitable, while the community hosting the physical infrastructure sees higher electricity bills and aquifer strain, not upside. It’s one of the clearest articulations of who hosts the cost of innovation, and who captures the return
Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy: "Staying Human" Requires Connection and Time Away From Tech
Murthy is launching a Substack and podcast called Staying Human, built on a thesis he's been sounding since his time as Surgeon General: loneliness is a health crisis, and AI is accelerating it. His prescriptions are refreshingly unglamorous — five minutes a day reaching out to someone you care about, tech-free zones around meals and bedtime, one small act of service. The line that stuck with me: loneliness carries a mortality impact comparable to smoking and obesity, but service reliably counteracts it, because it reminds you that you have value to bring to the world.
Roles Worth Exploring
Strategic Partnerships Director — CareMessage
Remote (USA) • $164,440–$177,532
CareMessage runs the largest patient engagement platform built specifically for low-income populations — 22 million patients reached since 2013 across nearly 500 safety-net organizations. This is a senior individual-contributor role building and scaling a partner ecosystem across health plans, ACOs, and regional networks, reporting to the CRO. A strong fit for someone who’s built partnership motions in health tech and wants mission alongside the commercial mandate.
Director, HR Business Partner — Omada Health
Remote (USA) • $185,680–$242,650 (CA/NY/WA)
A senior HRBP role supporting Omada’s Commercial, Strategy & Ops, and Finance teams — notable for how explicitly it’s written around AI fluency as a baseline expectation rather than a nice-to-have. If you’ve been thinking about how the HRBP function needs to evolve alongside AI-driven workforce change, this is a clean articulation of that shift in job-description form.
Chief People Officer — The Trevor Project
Remote • $260,000–$280,000
A rare CPO seat at the leading crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ youth, as it shifts from a traditional charity model to what it calls a field catalyst — training states and institutions to scale its impact. The role carries real complexity: a unionized, 24/7, shift-based workforce, plus cultural integration with Trevor Mexico. Reports to the CEO.
Spotlights & Opportunities
Elevate Investment Initiative — Application Open
The Women’s Health Network x Milken Institute
A capital-access initiative for emerging and prospective women’s health fund managers, using the Milken Institute’s platform and network to connect them to new LPs. Open to fund managers raising Fund II or beyond, AUM up to $250M preferred, across venture, private equity, credit, and other alternative strategies. If you’re building — or know someone building — a women’s health-focused fund, this is a direct on-ramp to LP relationships.
This year’s honoree list spans Luminary, Vanguard, and Champion tiers — CEOs, chief medical and regulatory officers, investors, and operators across biopharma and life sciences. Worth a scroll if you’re building a network in this space or looking for board and advisory candidates who reflect it. Big shouts to incredible colleagues like Esther Krofah, Jewel Jones, Toyin Ajayi, Christina Jenkins and more!
Humanity AI's Forthcoming $10M Open Call
Humanity AI is philanthropy trying to counterweight AI at the infrastructure level: ten major foundations pooling capital so that policy research, journalism, and civil-liberties work aren't outpaced by the speed of deployment. The $3M going to AI Civics is the more interesting bet than the $8M in institutional grants — putting public libraries at the center of AI literacy is a wager that trust in this technology has to be rebuilt in civic space, not just legislated or litigated into existence. The real test comes this summer, when the $10M open call defines who actually gets funded to do that work.
Meet the 2026 Young Futures Awardees
Young Futures isn't funding adults to study what's happening to kids online; it's funding a growing bench of young researchers, storytellers, and organizers to define the problem on their own terms, then be believed by their peers in a way no adult-led messaging campaign could manage. That's a pretty meaningful difference of a bet than most digital-wellbeing philanthropy makes, which still tends to treat young people as the subject of the intervention rather than its author. It was a privilege to be a mentor for two of the past cohorts!
Thanks for highlighting this piece!
Appreciate the shout out! ☀️