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KODA HEALTH surpasses 1,000,000 patients supported nationwide SERIES A $7M oversubscribed round closes, led by Evidenced 2026 UPMC Enterprises takes strategic stake in the platform PARTNERS Cigna · Privia · Memorial Hermann · Guidehealth CARTIER 2023 Young Leader Award recipient "TurboTax meets Duolingo" for advance care planning

Founder · CEO · Molecular Scientist

Tatiana
Fofanova

She left the lab bench convinced that patients needed access more than they needed newer drugs. Then she built the company she calls "the difficult conversations company."

CO-FOUNDER & CEO → KODA HEALTH, HOUSTON, TX

A molecular-medicine PhD who took up mountaineering on her way out of medicine and applied to startup fellowships from resupply stations. She came down the mountain and built Koda Health.

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01 / WHO SHE IS

Tatiana Fofanova runs Koda Health, a Houston company that has taken the most avoided paperwork in American medicine - advance directives, DNR orders, medical power of attorney - and turned it into software that more than a million patients have now used. She sells it to hospitals and insurers. She describes the product as "TurboTax meets Duolingo." She insists it is not an end-of-life company. It is, she says, a difficult conversations company.

02 / BY THE NUMBERS

1M+PATIENTS SUPPORTED

$7MSERIES A (OCT 2025)

2020FOUNDED · TMC BIODESIGN

~35EMPLOYEES

“ We call ourselves the difficult conversations company. — Tatiana Fofanova, on how Koda frames its work

03 / THE PIVOT

A crisis of faith, then a one-way ticket

Fofanova trained as a scientist. She earned a PhD in Molecular Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine as an HHMI Scholar, working on experimental treatments for people living with incurable diseases. She spent time in pediatrics. Somewhere in there she had what she has called a crisis of faith: she decided that most patients did not need the newest and fanciest drug. They needed basic care and good information, so they could make their own decisions.

That conclusion is inconvenient if your career is built on developing the newest and fanciest drug. So she left. The exit was not a lateral move to another lab. She booked a ticket halfway around the world, picked up mountaineering, and - this is the detail that tells you who she is - applied to entrepreneurship fellowships from resupply stations along the way.

One of those applications landed. In 2019 she was accepted into Texas Medical Center Biodesign, a Houston program that recruits three people from disparate but complementary fields and puts them in a room to work on a structural problem in American healthcare. Her two came out of that room as her co-founders: Dr. Desh Mohan, now Koda's chief medical officer, and Katelin Cherry, its CTO.

04 / THE INSIGHT

Recruited by the market she'd end up selling to

The Biodesign team went looking for a problem and found advance care planning. The default standard of care, as Fofanova puts it, was to leave patients to do it on their own - to navigate state-by-state rules on medical power of attorney and advance directives with no help. Families ended up in conflict. Wishes went undocumented until an emergency made it too late.

Because the fellowship embedded them inside hospital systems for research, the founders had an unusual head start. "We were basically recruited by the market that we ended up selling to," Fofanova has said. The health systems that helped them study the problem became the health systems that bought the solution.

Koda incorporated in early 2020. Techstars and NSF funding followed. So did the first paid pilot, within months of launch - fast for a company selling into hospitals, which are famous for buying nothing quickly.

“The standard of care for advance care planning has traditionally been left to patients to do on their own.”

“TurboTax meets Duolingo.”

05 / THE PRODUCT

What Koda actually does

Koda Health is B2B enterprise SaaS. Its customers are health systems and payers; its users are their patients. The platform walks a patient through the education and decision-making, then auto-generates legally valid documents - advance directives, DNR orders, medical power of attorney - often asynchronously and, increasingly, in multiple languages. It virtually notarizes them at no cost to the patient. An AI layer guides the conversation.

ModelB2B enterprise SaaS sold to health systems and payers

OutputLegally valid advance directives, DNR orders, medical power of attorney

Reach1M+ patients; partners include Cigna, Privia, Memorial Hermann, Guidehealth

StackHeavily AWS-based; uses Anthropic Claude in its technology

06 / TIMELINE

From bench to Series A

pre-2019

The scientist

PhD in Molecular Medicine at Baylor (HHMI Scholar); pediatrics; advocacy for refugee, unhoused and seriously ill communities.

2019

Biodesign

Accepted into the Texas Medical Center Biodesign Fellowship in Houston.

2020

Koda founded

Co-founds Koda Health with Desh Mohan (CMO) and Katelin Cherry (CTO). Accepted into Techstars.

2022

Seed & scale

$3.5M seed round; ~12 employees; Spanish-language beta; operating across 25 states.

2023

Cartier & Cigna

Red Club x Cartier Young Leader Award (runner-up, €10,000 grant); Cigna partnership for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries.

2024

New product lines

Launches Kidney Action Planning with a major Houston health system.

2025

Series A

Oversubscribed $7M Series A led by Evidenced; surpasses 1M+ patients supported.

2026

UPMC Enterprises

Strategic investment from UPMC Enterprises in the AI-enhanced platform.

07 / RECOGNITION & ROOTS

A translator at the family appointment

Fofanova immigrated to the United States as a child, into a family with limited resources and limited knowledge of the health system. She was the one who translated at medical appointments. It is a straight line from that role - the kid explaining the doctor to the parents - to a company whose entire pitch is making a confusing, high-stakes process legible to ordinary people.

In 2023 the Red Club x Cartier Young Leader Award recognized her work making healthcare more accessible and inclusive for underrepresented communities; she was a runner-up and received a €10,000 grant. She frames her career in a single sentence: an educator and healthcare advocate for seriously ill children, refugees, the unhoused, and the elderly.

“We were basically recruited by the market that we ended up selling to.”

“Throughout my career, I've remained an educator and healthcare advocate for vulnerable communities.”

08 / WATCH

In her own words

YouTube

09 / ELSEWHERE

Find Tatiana & Koda

Koda Health — Website→ LinkedIn — @fofanova→ Twitter / X — @kodahealth→ YouTube — Advance Care Planning→ Rock Health — Profile→ Crunchbase — Profile→ InnovationMap — Coverage→ The Org — Koda Health→

Quick facts: Tatiana Fofanova

Tatiana Fofanova is the co-founder and CEO of Koda Health, a Houston-based B2B enterprise SaaS company that helps health systems and payers scale advance care planning. Trained as a molecular-medicine PhD at Baylor College of Medicine and a former HHMI scholar, she left bench and pediatric work after concluding that patients needed access and good information more than newer drugs. She built Koda out of the Texas Medical Center's Biodesign Fellowship in 2020 with co-founders Desh Mohan and Katelin Cherry, describing the product as 'TurboTax meets Duolingo' for the hardest conversations in medicine. The company now supports more than a million patients nationwide and raised an oversubscribed $7M Series A in October 2025.

Role: Co-Founder & CEO at Koda Health
Organizations: Koda Health, Texas Medical Center Biodesign, Techstars, Baylor College of Medicine
Nationality: American (immigrated to the U.S. as a child)
Education: PhD in Molecular Medicine (HHMI Scholar), Baylor College of Medicine
Known for: Co-founded and scaled Koda Health to support more than 1 million patients nationwide, Raised an oversubscribed $7M Series A in October 2025 (led by Evidenced); ~$20.4M total funding, Received the 2023 Red Club x Cartier Young Leader Award for advancing healthcare access and inclusivity

Last updated: July 8, 2026

TatianaFofanova