Mentor Profile: Rashida Bobb
Edited by Alicia Auduong
Part of what makes the Fung Fellowship great is its commitment to mentorship. This article is part of a series featuring the industry mentors who guide and advise students on their journeys. From guest lectures to workshops and coaching, these mentors shape the story and the future of the Fung Fellows.
Rashida Bobb is a healthcare industry veteran having worked with Pfizer, Ernst & Young, and Bayer. She is the principal and chief strategist at Bricks Health, her startup that guides partnerships between entrepreneurs, corporations, investors, and other stakeholders to accelerate the adoption of new healthcare technologies.
What inspired you to get into your field?
I originally worked in healthcare for many years on the administrative side: insurance, hospitals, and other key components of healthcare. I realized the projects that I enjoyed where those around innovation and technology. That’s what inspired me to get into digital health. It’s a broad category defined as using advanced tech to advance the quality and efficiency of care. There’s opportunity to get more detailed personalized information and help clinicians treat them better.
What are you proudest of?
That’s a hard one. I’m proud of being able to maintain my consulting business. I started two years ago and was used to working for other people. It’s different making a living working on startups, expanding their companies, and determining the strategy. It’s great to start this idea and have it keep growing.
What motivated you to be a mentor?
I think it’s a good way to go full circle. I got a lot of good feedback from mentors in my life. Mentorship gave me a good sounding board to discuss key decisions I needed to make and helped me build my confidence. It encouraged me at times and is a whole new way of thinking. People shared introductions and that was great. It’s good to have a combination of mentors, of different backgrounds and perspectives.
I think there’s a ton of opportunities for young people in college. It would be a great opportunity to expose them to things I’m dealing with professionally and help them grow.
“It’s good to have a combination of mentors, of different backgrounds and perspectives.”
What advice do you have for our students heading into their Honors program and beyond?
Get as much experience as possible. I’m a big fan of experience-then-grad school vs. grad school-then-experience. Don’t be afraid to recognize that it’s normal to have multiple careers. Adjust your career path. It’s better to do that than something you don’t love and aren’t passionate about.
What’s a problem in the world you’re excited to tackle?
One thing I started getting into is investing. There is a lack of diversity in private funding available to startups headed by women and people of color. The problem my involvement solves is: there are not enough companies that are run by women and run by people of color. They have a harder time getting their seed capital. The investors they speak with don’t always know the populations that these innovators are working with. I want to make more money available for startups with founding teams of women and people of color.
