MEDA Angels
MEDA Angels is our newest chapter to join the TCA network, with about 55 members, most of whom are doctors or PhDs with expertise in Life Sciences. For more information please visit the MEDA Angels website HERE.
The Leadership Team includes:
- Elizabeth Cho-Fertikh, PhD, Cofounder & Managing Director
- Tai Mai, MBA, Partner
- Amir Rafii, MD, Cofounder
- Greg Buchert, MD, MPH, Executive Partner
- Ferdinand Hui, MD, Cofounder
Amir is a Head and Neck surgeon, and Facial Plastic Surgeon working with a large multidisciplinary practice in Northern California. He is chief of the department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery at one of the nation’s largest healthcare systems. His current practice has a focus on the treatment of skin cancers including Mohs surgery and reconstruction of facial defects after Mohs surgery. Given his interests in global surgery, and improving surgical access in low resource countries, he has participated in and organized surgical outreach providing cleft lip and palate repair and care to communities in Asia, Central America and Africa. For the last 10 years, he played an active role in the deployment of, and training, surrounding the medical center’s EMR system for surgeons in both the outpatient and inpatient settings. Dr. Rafii completed his undergraduate training at UC Berkeley, followed by medical school at Georgetown University, and residency in Otolaryngology and Head and Neck surgery at University of California at Davis. He subsequently completed fellowship training in Facial Plastic and Reconstructive surgery at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, WA in 2008, and has been working in the San Francisco Bay area ever since.
Joined MEDA Angels: 2019
Ferdinand is a neurointerventional surgeon and served on faculty at Cleveland Clinic for 7 years and Johns Hopkins for 6 years, before assuming the role of Medical Director of Neurointervention at the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has authored over 150 peer-reviewed publications, is a frequent international lecturer and presently serves as committee chair for Venous and CSF diseases for the Society of Neurointerventional Surgery. He has worked closely with the Engineering and Business schools at Johns Hopkins and at the University of Hawaii, forging pathways to develop new technologies and processes to improve healthcare delivery, including helicopter-mediated stroke intervention, as well as research in AI-driven care management platforms. He has started 3 companies, and advises several other startups.
Joined MEDA in 2020
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ferdinandhui/
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Greg Buchert, MD, MPH is Executive Partner at MEDA Angels and the CEO of GSB Health Management Solutions, a consulting firm focused on innovative solutions to improve the health care delivery system. He has over 25 years of C-Suite experience in health plan leadership roles and leverages that in his roles as advisor to startup companies. He is the former President and CEO of Blue Shield of California’s Promise Health Plan that serves over 500,000 Medicaid, Medicare and Dual Eligible members. He previously served as the Chief Executive Officer that launched Centene’s first Medicaid Managed Care Plan in California and later as Chief Medical Officer of HealthNet after its acquisition by Centene. Greg was a founding executive for CalOptima, a public managed care organization where he served as Chief Operating Officer and Medical Director. He began his professional career as a pioneer in Pediatric Emergency Medicine working in leadership positions at two children’s hospitals.
Joined MEDA: 2020
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbuchert/
Tai is responsible at MEDA Angels for operations, deal screening, and investment diligence. His focus areas include digital health and AI technologies. Previously, Tai worked in various roles within analytics, data science, and data operations. Tai has an MBA from Georgetown University and a BSE in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University.
Partner Since 2021
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/taimai1
Elizabeth Cho-Fertikh, PhD is a scientist-turned-angel investor who is Cofounder & Managing Director of MEDA Angels, a healthcare-focused angel investor group based in WSH, DC, with a presence in San Francisco, Newport Beach & Honolulu. She has 25+ years of cross-functional experience in drug development, regulatory affairs, clinical trials & medical affairs for biotechs/pharma (Janssen, Macrogenics, RegenXBio, ADCT Therapeutics, Janssen) and at two startups that have advanced to the clinical stage (Enterin, VLP Therapeutics). She actively supports the innovation ecosystem by serving as a scientific/commercialization advisor to the National Cancer Institute’s Technology Transfer Office, as a reviewer of NCI SBIR grants and as an investment committee member for the Virginia Commonwealth Health System & Riverflow Growth Fund. Additionally, she serves on the advisory boards of multiple healthcare startup ventures and mentors startups, including NIH SBIR awardees and those incubating at Harvard Innovation Labs & Nucleate Bio of Baltimore, MD. Elizabeth received her BA from Johns Hopkins, her MS from Georgetown University, her PhD from Thomas Jefferson School of Medicine and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School & NIH.
Cofounder & Managing Director since 2019
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-cho-fertikh-phd-8b42bb22/