The Knockturnal got to sit down with the four finalists and chat about their passion projects, the change they are contributing to the world, and where they were when they received the exciting news. They are genuinely real-life superheroes.
Launched in 2021, the Young Leader Award is an annual international entrepreneur’s award open to emerging entrepreneurs aged twenty to forty who run impact-driven businesses or not-for-profit organizations. The award was created to provide young entrepreneurial leaders the support necessary to grow their businesses and amplify their voices. This year’s award ceremony explored the theme of Bettering Lives, which celebrates entrepreneurial endeavors that provide accessible, inclusive, and effective healthcare solutions for underrepresented communities, paving the way for a better world for future generations.
There were two hundred and eighty submissions from thirty-three countries. Four finalists were selected for this year’s edition last April, all driven by the commonality of making waves in a business for substantial impact to drive change.
As the first-place winner, Dr. Bea Bakshi receives a grant of $50,000.00 as well as a bespoke mentorship program from this year’s Young Leader Award academic partners—Georgetown University and Howard University. Dr. Bea Bakshi is the Co-Founder and CEO of C the Signs, a clinical platform that uses artificial intelligence to identify patients at risk of cancer at the disease’s earliest and most curable stage.
“Howard University is very happy to be part of this Young Leader Award program with RED CLUB x Cartier. We believe we are very connected and tuned in through our history and mission around truth and service. Entrepreneurship is the engine that drives this country, and the theme for this year is a big important mission of our Medical School, with which we can play a role with the entrepreneurship offers that are coming forward.” Anthony Wilbon, Dean of Howard University School of Business.
“Georgetown University is so happy to be part of the Young Leader Award, partnering with RED CLUB x Cartier. We believe every person should have an entrepreneurial spirit, think entrepreneurially, and look for ways to be creative and solve problems. We love leveraging our resources and helping entrepreneurs wherever they might be.” Jeff Reid, Founding Director, Georgetown University Entrepreneurship Initiative.
The three runners-up are Dr. Neha Verma, CEO of Intelehealth, Dr. Tatiana Fofanova, CO-Founder and CEO of Koda Health, and Prabhdeep Singh, Founder and CEO of RED Health. Each received a grant of $10,000.00 to put towards the growth of their businesses.
Dr. Neha Verma, CEO, India/United States – Intelehealth is a non-profit company striving to improve women’s access to healthcare through telemedicine when there is no access to in-person treatment.
She aims to improve women’s access to healthcare, doctors, medications, and diagnostic testing. The company connects front-line healthcare workers such as nurses and community healthcare workers to doctors to treat more and refer less. As someone who cares deeply about women’s health rights, she and her team are on a mission to ensure women everywhere have access to healthcare clinics, as the importance of women’s reproductive and sexual health is as crucial as ever.
Her inspiration comes from discovering a woman in a rural village in West Bengal speaking to a healthcare worker about not wanting children anymore because her husband was certainly not going to prevent it from happening. She wanted to have access to be able to take care of that on her own, as a woman should. A local community health care worker would be able to treat her for other things such as maternal care but wouldn’t have the knowledge of contraceptives or altogether no knowledge in preventative pregnancy care for the patient, and so the thought of it is easy to fix with there being access to a phone and the internet sparked the idea of Intelehealth. It is a fundamental human right to have access to these things.
Future goals for the company are bridging the gap between patients and the medical care they deserve. She and her team will be able to rest once this is solved on a global scale. Working outside India and expanding into other countries is next on the agenda. Intelehealth has supported 7,000 clinics in India and would like it to be worldwide.
She was excited to have the opportunity to meet with the other entrepreneurial finalist making a difference as well. She shared how fulfilling and rewarding it is to be recognized in this capacity and have the RED CLUB X Cartier platform to talk about her work.
When asked where she was when receiving the news that she would be a finalist for the 2023 Young Leader Award, Dr. Verma shared that someone from her team told her, and she said, “Please double-check.” She is in disbelief but super excited. Just being a part of the group is a fantastic experience.
Dr. Tatiana Fofanova, Co-Founder & CEO, United States – Koda Health is a clinical platform that provides users with streamlined patient education, support, and digital documentation of legal forms, in an effort to drive equity of access to serious illness care.
She shares that other companies in this space have not been as successful in terms of engaging patients from all backgrounds in part because, in healthcare, there is a traditional mindset that in order to talk about serious things, you have to be morose, dark, and deeply serious. Koda Health doesn’t believe in that. The company makes the process easier, more approachable, and more understandable than its competitors. Fundamentally Koda does not believe a 75-year-old to be bad at technology. They believe a 75-year-old is bad at technology developed for a 25-year-old. So they try to make every part of their process deeply curated and targeted toward this group of people while being sensitive and kind.
Koda Health is a difficult conversations company rather than a serious illness or end-of-life company, a solution to help patients navigate through the education and decision-making documentation as they age. Whether that is whom to make your medical power of attorney or dealing with a worsening condition and thinking about what you should put in place, what conversation you should have with your children, or what you should be doing to safeguard your quality of life, Koda assists their patients with dealing with all of those concerns and not feeling so alone and at a loss in how to navigate through such waters during the process.
The motivating factor to start this company was initially what she and her colleagues saw during the pandemic. There was an apparent inequity in who got to have their choices respected and who did not. Traditionally, all the legal documents such as advanced medical directives, medical power of attorney, do not resuscitate orders, and conversations that need to be had to protect the patient’s healthcare when they can no longer speak for themselves are people who can afford an estate attorney.
She shares that we recognize when a person is born, when there is a significant life change, or when they are sick and that it is a beautiful thing to have such a focus on life, but so often do we overlook the people who are seriously ill and the people who are dying. In doing so, we also overlook the quality of their life and the dignity in which they could pass away in.
Finding it heartbreaking during the pandemic to see over fifty covid patients in an intensive care unit, people who were seniors or of lower socioeconomic status or minoritized communities, and seeing many of them did not have these legal documents in place to voice their preferences and protect their care obviated that there is a deeper problem-a clear bias in who gets to get their voice heard and choices protected and who does not. It comes down to who can pay for those services and who can afford an estate attorney when it should be available to everyone. Regardless of your background, socioeconomic status, religious faith, or skin color, everyone deserves to stay in control of their healthcare journey and have an element of decision-making and dignity in that journey.
So excited to be a part of the RED CLUB X Cartier family because serious illness and end-of-life care rarely get recognized. She receives the news of becoming a finalist while sitting at home in her home office, a cat on her lap. She sipped a cappuccino her husband lovingly made for her and opened the email. She says, “Oh! Hey honey!” She goes about her day and later takes a pause. That really just happened. Utterly overwhelmed to be recognized by the prestigious organization that is RED CLUB X Cartier.
Dr. Prabhdeep Singh, Founder & CEO, India – RED Health is India’s largest private emergency response company, providing various services, including air ambulance, road ambulance, and medical assistance.
No Indian should die in an emergency waiting for help to arrive. India still does not have 911, and they take their cars, an Uber, or a tuk-tuk to get to a hospital in an emergency. When we sit down with Dr. Singh, he shares that more than one million Indians die yearly waiting for help to arrive.
In 2014, he was living in Brazil during his father’s health emergency. The helplessness of it all made him realize he had to come back and create an emergency system for his parents and all of India. In seven years of running the company, they have impacted more than a million lives and created massive infrastructure but continue to do the day-one grunt work because there are 300 million people in India who will be above the age of 60 by 2030, and they would all benefit from an emergency care system in place. He tells us we are sitting on a healthcare crisis time bomb if we do not build an emergency care response system to save all the lives that should be saved.
RED Health is a mission deeply inspired because of something that happened in his personal life. It impacts spouses, children, and parents daily, so he and his team are working tirelessly to accomplish this. While sitting with The Knockturnal atop the breathtaking 102nd floor at Aspire at One World Observatory, he uses our platform to give thanks and a massive shoutout to all of the RED Health staff of pilots, paramedics, and EMS staff out there saving lives.
The company is India’s largest ambulance brand, both by land and air, and its products will save many lives. The mission is for there to be no lives lost unnecessarily. The brand’s future consists of expanding across 700+ cities throughout the country and launching in other countries such as Bangladesh and Indonesia and bringing their state-of-the-art technology, people, and training protocols across to Africa and then the world beyond.
When he received the news of being selected as a finalist, it was late evening in India, and he was having dinner with friends. He shares with us that his generation of Indians loves their brands. Cartier has always been such an aspirational brand for them all, especially because the Indian kings, the Maharajas, used to wear Cartier jewelry exclusively, and so when receiving the news of becoming a finalist, it truly made him feel like a king.
Dr. Bea Bakshi, Co-Founder & CEO, United Kingdom – C the Signs is a clinical platform that uses artificial intelligence to identify patients at risk of cancer at the earliest and most curable stage of the disease.
This year’s Young Leader Award recipient is a primary care physician. She lost a patient about six years ago to late-stage cancer. When she cared for him, one of the things that really struck her was when he asked her why his cancer was picked up so late. At the time, she didn’t understand the number of lives cancer claimed yearly.
When taking to research and looking over the data, she realized the majority of patients losing their lives to cancer were being diagnosed in the late stages. If diagnosed early, over 80% would survive ten years or more with cancer, and sadly, most patients have been diagnosed in the late stages.
Her business inspired her when she thought, “Wow, I could have saved this patient’s life had he just been picked up earlier by the system.” She shares, “When I searched for a solution that I could use as a doctor to help me diagnose patients earlier, I saw that there was just an absence of anything really or any innovation in this space.” The passion project took off from the question of how do we stop people from dying from cancer and finding it earlier.
C the Signs uses AI technology that has the ability to predict if patients are at risk of cancer, what type of cancer they are at risk of, and then recommend the most appropriate next steps. Through the platform, she and her team have been able to identify patients earlier. Patients can now go live a healthy and great long life ahead.
The mission-focused company’s future continues to ask the question of how many more lives they can save. In the longer term, research is being done to have the technology in the next ten years where every patient can survive cancer—creating more opportunities to get patients diagnosed early and working on expanding and growing C the Signs and working collaboratively with community stakeholders.
Cancer affects every single person. Whether a loved one or a friend, we have all been touched by it. She is working on changing the cancer narrative and changing the fear people have when they hear the word cancer to a feeling of hope. To have more patients thinking, “I am going to get through this. I am going to survive.”
Before receiving the news of being selected as a finalist, she had just gotten off a flight and was in a really long line at an airport at a ridiculous morning hour. When spotting the email, it was as though all of the tiredness and fatigue from the journey had gone away.
Sha shares, “It has been an amazing feeling because the finalists are just trying to help people and make the world better. To have the sense of validation that an organization like Cartier could give you the platform to do good is a unique and life-changing opportunity—honored to be here tonight and be a part of the RED CLUB X Cartier family.”
RED CLUB X Cartier is a global membership community of young, multicultural entrepreneurs who aim to positively influence society by mentoring the next generation of conscious leaders while working to shape the future together. Since 2019, RED CLUB X Cartier has launched 11 chapters worldwide. Their mission is to connect young entrepreneurs willing to share their experiences, driven by the same purpose and common compassion for making a difference, intending to influence the next generation.
