
A pediatric nurse became a lawyer, an operator and, eventually, a chief executive. Across every reinvention, Karen Walker Johnson kept the same instrument close: the discipline of listening before designing the answer.
Culina Health is a virtual nutrition care company founded in 2020 by registered dietitians Vanessa Rissetto and Tamar Samuels. It pairs patients with credentialed registered dietitians for one-on-one, insurance-covered nutrition therapy delivered via telehealth across all 50 states. The company blends evidence-based clinical care with culturally affirming, multilingual support to treat conditions ranging from diabetes and heart disease to GI disorders and eating disorders, while partnering with major insurers, Medicare, and employers to make expert nutrition care accessible.
La Clínica de La Raza is one of the largest community-based primary health care providers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Founded in 1971 in Oakland's Fruitvale district by UC Berkeley students and community activists, it is a federally qualified health center (FQHC) delivering culturally appropriate medical, dental, behavioral health, vision, and pharmacy services to roughly 90,000 patients a year across more than 35 sites in Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano Counties - regardless of a patient's ability to pay.
Meena Ramachandran is the Chief Product Officer and Executive VP of People at Seen Health, a Los Angeles-based startup building culturally-focused PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) services for underserved Asian and Pacific Islander elders. With an electrical engineering foundation from Stanford and a dual MBA/MPH from UC Berkeley, she has spent two decades at the intersection of technology and healthcare - scaling product teams at Castlight Health, Myriad Genetics, and Brightline before joining Seen Health after its $22 million Series A in late 2024.