
After three IPOs, three patents, and years spent translating machine data, Ben Newton chose a messier problem: making fragmented clinical records useful at the moment a decision is made.

After three decades translating between software, strategy and human behavior, the Evidium founder is pursuing a stubborn idea: consequential AI should make its reasoning inspectable.
Maria Szandrach is the co-founder and CEO of Mentalyc, a San Francisco clinical-intelligence platform that turns recorded therapy sessions into insurance-ready notes, treatment plans, and progress insights for psychotherapists. A McKinsey strategy alum with an MSc from London Business School, she has co-founded three startups across the mental health and insurance worlds. She built Mentalyc with engineer Georgi Urumov during the COVID pandemic after the two met through Entrepreneur First, later going through Berkeley SkyDeck. Maria has become a recognizable voice on what AI should and should not do inside the therapy room, arguing for slow, careful building in a field where over-promising is dangerous.