Closing the Gender Health Gap: Driving Accountability Through the [w]Health Index

Paula Bellostas Muguerza is a partner and global lead for Kearney’s healthcare and life sciences practice. She works with leading global biopharmaceutical companies on commercial strategy and transformation and has a passion for exploring the opportunity to improve patient outcomes at the intersection of medicine and technology.

She came to consulting after several years as an industrial engineer, which set her on the path to a career in problem-solving. Despite a background in a field driven by numbers, her approach to her consulting work is centered on people. “Bringing empathy, compassion, and humanity to this job is not only necessary to make our teams and clients succeed; it’s what makes this often-misunderstood profession special and so rewarding.”

With her life motto of “Work hard, be kind, and good things will happen,” combined with the DNA from a family of serial entrepreneurs, Paula is always looking for new ways of making an impactwithin and outside the firm. Recently, together with a passionate village of women and allies, she founded and leads [w]Health, a global platform of more than 100 companies with the mission of advancing women’s health worldwide.

Outside of work, Paula spends her time running after her very active young daughter and trying whatever the next big thing is on the “quantified self” with the aim of living a long, healthy, happy life.

Elena is Microsoft’s Global Business Leader for Healthcare, Pharma Life Sciences. In this capacity she is responsible for go-to-market, commercial, and partnerships, enabling AI transformation initiatives in health providers, payors and Life Sciences’ organizations globally. In 2023 Elena was elected as Member of the DIA Europe, Middle East & Africa Regional Advisory Council. Elena was selected twice as one of the top 50 AI Innovators by Intelligent Health in 2020 and in 2023. She is one of the founding members of the Holomedicine Association; and Vice Chair of the DIGITALEUROPE Executive Council for Healthcare since it’s creation in 2021. She recently joined the Board of The Movement Health Foundation, an organization founded by Roche, Siemens Healthineers, Microsoft and CIFS to build strong and sustainable healthcare systems. A signature outcome of her work – together with engineering and research - was the design of the AI partnership with Novartis in 2019, and the AI for Leprosy initiative with Novartis Foundation and Fiocruz published in The Lancet/Elsevier. In 2021 Elena spearheaded an innovation project for the prevention of gastric cancer with data and AI, leading to the largest EU working with StratejAI and international health providers. 

Elena co-chaired the Health Cloud Council from 2015-2019 leading work on secondary use of data and the creation of the first global data collaborative in cardiovascular population health. In 2017, she was elected to the HIMSS Europe Governing Council. Elena has been working in the health sector for 20+ years, starting in health policy at EU level, as leader for Microsoft’s public sector healthcare in EMEA. She is an active advocate and public speaker representing Microsoft Healthcare and Life Sciences’ AI strategy, and how “Data help save Lives”. She supported the creation of the Healthcare Data Innovation Council, a partnership of healthcare actors to progress regulatory frameworks for data sharing in health and life sciences. Elena championed the transformational impact of meditation in personal and professional development, working with the Centre for Evolutionary Learning. She promotes empowerment of women in leadership as founding member of WiL Network and as champion for Diversity and Inclusion at Microsoft.

Stephanie Sassman is Portfolio Leader, Women's Health in the Global Product Strategy group of Genentech/ Roche. In this role, she leads a global team to co-create end-to-end solutions to address sex and gender health gaps in conditions and predominantly and differently impact women with key healthcare system stakeholders globally. She also co-leads the Diversity & Inclusion team and is passionate about healthy equity and representation to ensure a workforce reflective of patients. She has over 20 years of experience in product development and commercialization strategy, leading project and disease area teams across early and late stages in diverse therapeutic areas from cardiovascular, immunology, and infectious diseases.

Lynsey is a Principal within Mubadala’s Private Equity platform, based in London, where she specializes in Healthcare investments across subsectors including pharma services, MedTech, life sciences tools & diagnostics, and healthcare provision & services. More recently, she has been leading the firm’s investments in Women's Health. Throughout her tenure at Mubadala Investment Company, Lynsey has built a diverse skill set spanning asset management, portfolio strategy, and investment execution. Prior to joining Mubadala, she worked at PwC in Shanghai, gaining international experience in financial advisory and strategic consulting. She holds an MBA from London Business School and a Master’s in Health Economics from the University of New South Wales.