Joey Ferry was the first person in his family to graduate high school. An entrepreneur at heart, he became a nurse for job security, but he never stopped building things. Then he met Taofiki Gafar-Schaner, another nurse who'd spent months prototyping a solution to a problem they saw every shift: inadequate seizure padding on beds.
Instead of complaining about blankets and tape on bed rails, Taofiki showed up with a Ziploc bag prototype. Joey saw it and knew immediately what he had to do. They spent six years building Safe Seizure while working full-time, then used paternity leave as a trial run for entrepreneurship. Joey’s last day was the worst shift of his career, and he’s never looked back.
đź‘‹ In this episode, you'll learn:
Joey Ferry, RN, BSN, is co-founder of Frontier Innovations and co-creator of the Safe Seizure Pad, which won the 2020 American Nurses Association Innovation Award. He believes the best way to get lucky is to never stop looking for problems to solve.
GET CONNECTED:
🔗 Joey’s Linkedin
đź”— Safe Seizure
🔗 Kayla’s Linkedin
🔗 Kayla’s Instagram
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Rami Wehbi left family medicine residency. Not because of burnout in the traditional sense—because he realized from day one that clinical practice wasn't right for him. He spent the next two years failing at multiple startups, working urgent care shifts he hated, and finally figuring out what mattered to him: helping other clinicians escape jobs that were killing their integrity.
Rami is the co-founder MatchDay Health. He gave himself a three-year deadline, built traction with a paid community, and pitched his mentor like he was pitching Sequoia. Now MatchDay has helped over 100 healthcare professionals land non-clinical roles through personalized coaching fellowships—proving there's a massive market of clinicians looking for the exit door.
đź‘‹ In this episode, you'll learn:
Rami Wehbi, DO hosts The Dream Job podcast (formerly Beyond Medicine), where he interviews clinicians and founders reshaping healthcare careers. He believes that when you're unfulfilled at work, it spills into every part of your life—and he's on a mission to help healthcare professionals spend that one-third of their lives doing something that actually matters.
Interested In changing your trajectory with MatchDay? Use code KaylaBassett during the questionnaire or mention I sent you during your admissions call to receive an exclusive discount of $250 off of the fellowship.
GET CONNECTED:
đź”— Rami's Linkedin
đź”— MatchDay Health
đź”— DreamJob Podcast
🔗 Kayla’s Linkedin
🔗 Kayla’s Instagram
đź”” SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with clinicians who've transitioned into healthtech, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Are you a clinician pushing the status quo? Reach out!
Meredith didn't seek out health tech—it found her. She started consulting while keeping her bedside job, learned how to curate clinical data for machine learning, and validated that nurses absolutely belong in SaaS companies. Then she built Illuminate's remote navigation department from scratch, grew a team with zero turnover, and now leads AI-driven implementations while juggling sales support, product development, and client management.
đź‘‹ In this episode, you'll learn:
Meredith Hickerson, RN, BSN, is Lead Clinical Consultant at Illuminate Health. After a career in ICU and PACU nursing, she took a contract role with a health tech startup in 2018, and stayed for seven years. She's built patient navigation workflows, managed remote nursing teams, supported sales, influenced product roadmaps, and proven that clinical experience directly translates to solving tech problems. She believes curiosity and asking tons of questions are the keys to thriving outside the bedside.
GET CONNECTED:
đź”— Meredith's Linkedin
🔗 Kayla’s Linkedin
🔗 Kayla’s Instagram
đź”” SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with clinicians who've transitioned into healthtech, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Are you a clinician pushing the status quo? Reach out!
keywords health tech nurse innovator entrepreneur healthtech saas product manager clinical innovation
What happens when a PA does everything right: multiple specialties, side business, financial literacy, and still hits a ceiling? Jordan Fisher PA-C co-founded the PA Blueprint to teach PAs about money and burnout while working clinically. He later left clinical practice to become a Medical Science Liaison in response to that nagging feeling of “what’s next?”.
đź‘‹ In this episode, you'll learn:
Jordan Fisher, PA-C, co-founded the PA Blueprint to teach financial literacy and career strategy to thousands of PAs. After seven years in clinical practice across urgent care, ENT, emergency medicine, and head and neck oncology, he transitioned to Medical Science Liaison work. He believes in change, reflection, and building even when the outcome isn't clear yet.
GET CONNECTED:
🔗 Jordan’s Linkedin
đź”— The PA Blueprint
🔗 Kayla’s Linkedin
🔗 Kayla’s Instagram
đź”” SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with clinicians who've transitioned into healthtech, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
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Breanne Kaiser MMSc, LLM is a lawyer, psychologist and healthcare operations leader who's spent her career asking the hard questions about mental health systems—and actually building solutions. From developing behavioral health initiatives in underserved countries to advocating for clinician voices in policy, she's proving that the people closest to the problems should be the ones designing the fixes.
đź‘‹ In this episode, you'll learn:
Breanne Kaiser is a psychologist and healthcare operations leader focused on youth mental health interventions and behavioral health solutions. With experience spanning community-based program development and international mental health initiatives, she's built systems in some of the most resource-constrained environments. Now she's consulting on behavioral health projects that center clinician input, ethical AI use, and sustainable support structures. Breanne believes the future of mental health depends on who gets to shape it—and she's making sure clinicians have a seat at that table.
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đź”” SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with clinicians who've transitioned into healthtech, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
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Keywords: healthcare career transition, health tech jobs for nurses, psychologist, healthcare operations, clinical burnout prevention, AI healthcare tools, NP burnout, non-clinical careers, occupational therapist, mental health policy, ai policy, adolescent ai use, ai safe guarding, physician assistant
If you’ve ever had that lingering feeling that you weren’t meant to spend the rest of your career in the clinic, you’re not alone. In this episode I sat down with Hannah Pugh, OTR/L, who transitioned out of her career as an OT after feeling stuck in her title.
Our conversation covers:
Hannah Pugh, OTR/L, is the founder of Practitioner Pivot, LLC, where she empowers healthcare clinicians to discover fulfilling non-clinical careers. After years working across outpatient, inpatient, and acute care settings, Hannah realized her values of growth and flexibility extended beyond traditional patient care. She transitioned into the health tech space in 2021—landing her first non-clinical role through networking—and has since helped hundreds of clinicians do the same through her guides, workshops, and 1:1 consults. Passionate about helping clinicians see the value of their transferable skills, Hannah is on a mission to show that you are never “just a clinician.”
GET CONNECTED:
đź”” SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with clinicians who've transitioned into healthtech, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Are you a clinician pushing the status quo? Reach out!
Keywords: healthcare career transition, health tech jobs for nurses, clinical documentation improvement, AI healthcare tools, NP burnout, non-clinical careers, occupational therapist, client success manager, health tech product management, physician assistant
Have you ever had a frustrating experience with a translator service in a clinical setting? Yeah, us too.
Kory Kindle DPT saw this problem as an opportunity — now he’s co-founding Vital Voice AI, an AI-powered real-time interpretation platform solving the language barriers he kept seeing compromise patient safety and care. He's proving you don't need a tech background to build healthcare solutions—you just need to pay attention to the problems.
👋 In this episode, you’ll learn
Kory Kindle is the co-Founder of vitalvoice.ai, building the next era of healthcare and emergency response through AI-driven communication. He is a former professional soccer player turned Doctor of Physical Therapy, with experience ranging from rehabbing top athletes to improving functional mobility of patients in the hospital. Now he is focused on bridging language gaps in healthcare so patients and providers can connect when every second counts.
GET CONNECTED:
🔗 Kory’s Linkedin
đź”— VitalVoiceAI
🔗 Kayla’s Linkedin
🔗 Kayla’s Instagram
đź”” SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with clinicians who've transitioned into healthtech, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
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If you've ever wondered why documentation matters beyond checking boxes, felt crushed by the emotional toll of bedside care, or been curious about the clinicians building the tools that shape everything in healthcare, this conversation will open your eyes.
đź‘‹ This episode covers:
Erin Kreider MSN APRN NP-C CCDS spent years as a bedside nurse pouring her heart into patient care—and felt the weight of it. She grasped an opportunity to help build and implement a CDI program from scratch, learning the ins and outs of what makes “good” documentation and what gets hospitals paid.
After a few other career stops in Case Management and Utilization Review, and returning to NP school, Erin is THE swiss army knife of care delivery, patient navigation, and high quality billing and documentation.
Now, she's the CDI and Utilization Management Product Lead at Ambience Healthcare, bringing her depth of knowledge to build cutting-edge proactive AI tools to fix the documentation chaos she experienced firsthand and supercharge clinicians.
GET CONNECTED:
🔗 Erin’s Linkedin
🔗 Kayla’s Linkedin
🔗 Kayla’s Instagram
đź”” SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with clinicians who've transitioned into healthtech, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Are you a clinician pushing the status quo? Reach out!
Keywords: nurse practitioner career transition, health tech jobs for nurses, clinical documentation improvement, AI healthcare tools, NP burnout, non-clinical nursing careers, revenue cycle management, Ambience Healthcare, health tech product management, physician assistant
Elizabeth Santo is a physical therapist who discovered that treating individual patients wasn't enough when one in four women suffer from conditions the medical system barely acknowledges. Now she's leading clinical program management for a digital health company, where biofeedback sensors, AI, and human clinicians converge to solve what traditional healthcare hasn’t been able to.
In this episode, you'll learn:
If you've ever wondered whether there's more impact beyond the treatment room, how to speak both clinical and tech fluently, or what it takes to build healthcare solutions that actually address overlooked patient needs, this conversation will show you what's possible.
GET CONNECTED:
🔗 Liz’s Linkedin
🔗 LIZ’S FAVORITE RESOURCES: APTA / Rachel Parotta DPT / Sara Reardon DPT
Are you a clinician pushing the status quo? REACH OUT!
👋 Kayla’s Linkedin
👋 Kayla’s Instagram
đź”” SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with clinicians who've transitioned into healthtech, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
#healthtech #healthcareinnovator #healthcare #physicianassistant #clinician
Themes: Clinical-to-product transition, women's health innovation, health tech program management, scaling clinical operations, biofeedback technology, building for equity, pelvic floor physical therapy, physiotherapy
đź©ş Dr. Rue Laka is a formally trained and forward-thinking Internal Medicine and Obesity Medicine physician turned entrepreneur who has fully embraced digital health. She is the CEO and Founder of Mecca Health, where she blends primary care with obesity and longevity medicine to enable her patients to optimize their health at every stage.
đź’ˇ In this episode, you'll learn:
🤔 If you've ever wondered what it takes to leave traditional practice and build something entirely new, how to balance clinical excellence with business operations, and why lifestyle medicine is the foundation before advanced therapies, this episode is for you.
GET CONNECTED: đź”— Dr. Rue's LinkedIn đź”— Mecca Health
đź”” SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with clinicians who've transitioned into healthtech, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Are you a clinician pushing the status quo? Reach out! đź‘‹
#healthtech #physicianentrepreneur #longevitymedicine #functionalmedicine #healthcare #physicianassistant #clinician #healthcareinnovation #conciergemedicine
âť” What do glass ampules, Code Blue charting, and tangled IV lines have in common? They're all problems Caleb Williams tried to solve as a nurse innovator.
đź’ˇ In this episode, you'll learn:
🤔 If you've ever wondered why hospitals need more clinicians in product development, how to identify problems worth solving, and the business lessons Caleb learned by doing, this episode is for you.
đź©ş Caleb Williams is a nurse innovator whose impact is felt far beyond the hospital walls. During his time as an ER + ICU nurse, he went above and becoming ICU supervisor at just 24 years old and an active member of inpatient leadership. He is the founder of Med Content Pros, a marketing agency that helps companies reach more clinicians with their messaging. Most recently he is the Chief Clinical Officer of Crimson Medical Solutions where he translates his lived clinical experience into product development and implementation of a game-changing hardware solution for ICU nurses.
GET CONNECTED:
đź”— Caleb's Linkedin
đź”— Crimson Medical
đź”— Med Content Pros
đź”” SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with clinicians who've transitioned into healthtech, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
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#healthtech #nurseinnovator #healthcare #physicianassistant #clinician