When Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau, AM ’02, a professor, gynecologist, and director of a research lab in the Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago, was working in 2014 to commercialize a tool that connects patients to community resources, her advisors had one question: Who will be the CEO?
Recognizing she lacked CEO experience, and shouldering a host of other commitments, Lindau needed her first hire to be the chief executive. And the job needed to be filled quickly. Two years earlier, in 2012, Lindau’s lab had received a $5.9 million award from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to roll out a technology linking patients to community services. The clock was ticking. It was a three-year award, and Lindau only had a year before the end of the study. Lindau and her advisors knew she needed to bring a CEO on board to build the business that would come to be called NowPow.