We are passionate about providing scalable virtual care.
Lark's leadership team embodies excellence in the clinical, technical, and relationship space. With a world class combination of leaders driven by a common mission, we settle for nothing but the best for our team, partners, and users.
Our Leadership
Julia Hu
CEO, Co-founder
Julia Hu is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Lark. Founded on the personal experience of having grown up with an undiagnosed chronic condition, Julia is passionate about bringing compassionate care to those struggling with or at risk of chronic disease. Hu was named one of the “Top 10 Women in Tech” by Forbes and was a winner of Inc. Magazine’s “30 under 30”. Prior to founding Lark in 2011, Julia ran global startup incubator, the Clean Tech Open, built a sustainable construction startup, and was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Stanford’s StartX incubator. She is on the board of the Council for Diabetes Prevention and a Singularity University faculty member. Hu received her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees at Stanford University and half of an MBA from MIT Sloan before founding Lark. Julia loves to stay fit with hip hop.
Jeff Zira
CTO, Co-founder
As the technical cofounder, Jeff is continuing to discover how to apply technology to bring humanity and connection to people with chronic conditions. Prior to Lark, Jeff co-founded and sold a social networking startup in Japan, co-founded Sanergy, the waterless sanitation startup at MIT that now has 250 employees, architected the backend tools to improve Kiva’s microfinance platform, and Product Managed Yahoo.com’s homepage.Jeff has a BS from UC Santa Barbara and MBA from MIT Sloan. When possible, Jeff spends at least one whole day each weekend meditating.
Darren Eckberg
Chief Growth Officer
Darren is a seasoned healthcare executive with progressive experience in navigating complex markets. He has a track record of consistently exceeding aggressive performance goals while maintaining a clear vision for organizational growth and development. With a BS in Economics from the University of Minnesota and an MBA in Healthcare from the University of St. Thomas, Darren brings a solid academic foundation to his role. At Lark, he is accountable for driving profitable and sustainable growth in line with the company's mission to deliver compassionate care at scale. Darren oversees all aspects of commercial growth, including sales, business development, account management, sales enablement, B2B marketing, and strategy, prioritizing initiatives that propel the organization towards its overarching objectives.
Dr. Peter Antall
Chief Medical Officer
Sharon Alavi-Hantman
General Counsel
Sharon acts as the General Counsel for Lark.
Melissa Ross
Senior Vice President, Business Operations
Melissa's career of more than 25 years has been dedicated to driving scale and growth for leading companies at the intersection of healthcare and technology. Prior to joining Lark, she advised early stage healthcare technology companies, served as Chief Operating Officer of VisiQuate (a healthcare revenue cycle analytics and workflow company), and co-founded BRIIA.io (an accelerator program for AI startups). Earlier, Melissa spent more than a decade in business development, operations, client management, and engineering leadership positions at MedeAnalytics (the largest pure play healthcare analytics firm) while they scaled from small start-up to over 500 employees and were acquired by a private equity firm.Melissa earned her Executive MBA from Saint Mary's College of California and her BA from Loyola University Maryland. Outside of Lark, Melissa loves spending time with her family, travel, and occasionally a good (bad) pun.
Magnus Hedemark
Senior Vice President, Engineering
Magnus Hedemark is Vice President of Engineering at Lark Health. He is an experienced software engineering leader who is passionate about developing great teams, leaders and helping people fall in love with their careers again. He joined Lark with more than 30 years of experience in infrastructure operations, software engineering and has a talent for reinvigorating organizations. Magnus’s experience spans many industries, but it was during his time as Senior Director, Hybrid Cloud Engineering at Gap Inc. when he decided to refocus his career back to impacting health care outcomes. While Magnus enjoyed his team and tenure at Gap, his desire to join a mission-driven team was getting too hard to ignore. Prior to Lark, he was a senior leader in Optum’s Health Care Cloud program. Magnus is a champion of Neurodiversity. He is proudly and openly Autistic and ADHD.
Dr. Almaz Dawit, PharmD
Vice President of Clinical Accounts
Almaz Dawit is the Vice President of Clinical Accounts at Lark.
Allison Braly
Vice President of Clinical Operations
Allison Braly is the VP of Clinical Operations at Lark.
Before joining Lark, Allison was the VP of Diagnostic Strategy at PathAI, where she was responsible for the identification and implementation of new strategic initiatives that enhanced PathAI’s technology-enabled anatomic pathology lab. Prior to PathAI, Allison was the VP of Clinical Services at Amwell, where she led the day-to-day provider operations of the Amwell Medical Group. At Amwell, Allison led her division through the height of the COVID-19 crisis, contributing to the company’s successful IPO. Allison has spent her entire career in the healthcare space, spanning digital health, medtech, and biotech, and in a variety of roles that include operations, strategy, BD, product marketing, and product development. Allison has her MBA from Duke University, and her BS in Biomedical Engineering from Marquette University.
Olia Hibbard
Vice President of Finance
Iveta Brigis
Vice President of People Operations
Iveta is an experienced People Operations leader with a track record of building high-performing teams and creating innovative HR programs. Before joining Lark, she helped build Google's People Operations function as the company grew from 10,000 to 100,000 employees, working on compensation, performance management, manager development, diversity & inclusion, and internal communications efforts. Iveta earned her MBA from the University of California at Irvine, and her BS in Human Development from Cornell University. She lives in Ann Arbor MI with her husband and two children.
Stephanie Battelle
Vice President, Account Management
Stephanie has dedicated 30 years to the healthcare industry, specializing in client relations, strategy, product development, government regulations, and operations for both health plan and pharmaceutical manufacturer clients. Prior to joining Lark, she was the Senior Director of Account Management at Express Scripts where she consulted and supported several large regional Health Plan clients navigate complex pharmacy benefits services. Stephanie earned her MBA from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a BA from Maryville University.
Brock Howard
Vice President, Product Management
Brock Howard, Vice President, Product Management at Lark Health, leads the development of innovative, AI-powered coaching and patient engagement solutions for people with chronic conditions. Brock has a proven track record of launching successful products, leveraging AI/ML to deliver richer, more impactful user interactions. He is passionate about building "zero to one" products that solve real-world problems and improve people's lives. Prior to Lark, Brock held product leadership roles at Deloitte, Rebellion Defense, and Rally Health (a UnitedHealth Group company). He is a highly motivated and results-oriented leader with a strong track record of success in the technology industry. Brock holds an MPP from George Mason University and a B.A. from The Ohio State University.
Board Members
Julia Hu
CEO, Co-founder
Julia Hu is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Lark. Founded on the personal experience of having grown up with an undiagnosed chronic condition, Julia is passionate about bringing compassionate care to those struggling with or at risk of chronic disease. Hu was named one of the “Top 10 Women in Tech” by Forbes and was a winner of Inc. Magazine’s “30 under 30”. Prior to founding Lark in 2011, Julia ran global startup incubator, the Clean Tech Open, built a sustainable construction startup, and was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Stanford’s StartX incubator. She is on the board of the Council for Diabetes Prevention and a Singularity University faculty member. Hu received her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees at Stanford University and half of an MBA from MIT Sloan before founding Lark. Julia loves to stay fit with hip hop.
Jeff Zira
CTO, Co-founder
As the technical cofounder, Jeff is continuing to discover how to apply technology to bring humanity and connection to people with chronic conditions. Prior to Lark, Jeff co-founded and sold a social networking startup in Japan, co-founded Sanergy, the waterless sanitation startup at MIT that now has 250 employees, architected the backend tools to improve Kiva’s microfinance platform, and Product Managed Yahoo.com’s homepage. Jeff has a BS from UC Santa Barbara and MBA from MIT Sloan. When possible, Jeff spends at least one whole day each weekend meditating.
Weili Dai
Chairman, Lark; Co-founder & Former President, Marvell Technology Group
Bharath Ganesan
Principal, Deerfield
Gwen C. Edwards
Executive Leader, Investor, Advisor, Golden Seeds
Ms. Edwards is an innovative pioneer in Digital Health and Telecommunications, stemming from her unique assignments in her early career at Stanford Research Center, continuing through rapid promotions as she successfully commercialized as a senior executive at Bell Canada – Enterprises to VP Sales at NorTel Networks to ATT to CEO at Middlewire, a venture-backed startup.
At Bell Canada, she turned a critical research project into a commercial venture, the first Information System Network in North America, before heading corporate sales for National Accounts.
At NorTel Networks, she employed NorTel’s unique network capabilities – core, edge and wireless – enabling and introducing new consumer applications, and driving sales for their largest distributor.
She formed the first Healthcare Market organization in the ATT Bell System Operating Companies, focused in determining needs and requirements of the future healthcare ecosystem, driving innovation in both technologies and service models, enabling AND providing new capabilities for telemedicine and digital health applications.
She convened annual multi-day leadership roundtables with CEOs, CMOs and CIOs of the top 20 health care delivery institutions and major insurers, Aetna, Blue Cross / Blue Shield for 5 consecutive years, seeking industry input and support for the drivers of change, and consensus of requirements, securing their commitment to partnerships. A major innovation at the time, these meetings convened industry thought leaders such as Molly Coy, MD, Eric Topol, MD, and Kim Belshe.
Through these partnerships and the resulting mutual understandings between the healthcare ecosystem and the telecommunications providers, Gwen drove key telemedicine and digital health applications from early days of NIH funded applied research to commercial trials with UCSF, Sutter Health, John Muir, and Scripps. She further served for 18 years on the Board of the National Health Foundation, driving the development of a California wide network that led to CHIN (California Health Information Network).
Active on many fronts, Gwen: drafted the first Telemedicine Legislation for the State of California; was part of Surgeon General’s C E Koop’s Round Table; met with then First Lady H. Clinton during her formulation of the Clinton Health Initiative; and formally advised FCC Commissioners on bandwidth requirements for telehealth.
As the available technology increased and evolved – such as highly distributed, high capacity broadband networks – Gwen had system definition and operating responsibilities, becoming President (with P&L responsibility) for the Network Integration Business Unit of the ATT Corporation, where her unit was named by Cisco as “Fastest Growing Reseller” of the year.
Gwen now invests her knowledge, networks, and operating experience into high growth companies in tech that matters, and at the intersection of tech / AI / health / life sciences.
Involved in the IPO of TCBioPharma and Tivic Health, she has investments in Lark Health, Materna Health, ConcertoCare (with Steel Sky Ventures), Jurata Thin Film, Concerto Biosciences, Sisu Global Health, Rivia Health, OtoNexus, Sunray Scientific, and was a proud early backer of nVision, purchased by Boston Scientific).
Gwen also spends significant time coaching and mentoring many of these companies. She is passionate about advancing positive social impact, gender parity, and greater transparency in governance.
As Chair of the Angel Resource Institute, Gwen teaches Board Governance for early investors.
Gwen holds degrees from University of California (BA), California State University (MA) and Pepperdine University (MBA).
Zebediah Rice
Co-founder & Partner, King River Capital
Danielle Russella
Board Member
Danielle Russella is a 25+ year healthcare veteran with deep domain experience in commercial and government markets, client portfolio growth, business transformation, and creating high-performing client facing teams. She’s built several companies from the ground up with a focus on global sales and enterprise distribution, strategic partnerships, joint ventures, and all facets of go-to-market. Danielle led several companies through extraordinary growth, was a founding Board Director of the National Telehealth Provider Network, and had extensive roles in several companies that went public, including Amwell’s IPO in 2020 (NYSE:AMWL).
Today Danielle is a Venture & Board Chair at Redesign Health where she lends her expertise to Redesign Operating Companies. In this role she works with companies from their earliest days when the business is only an idea, recruits the CEO and founding team, and partners alongside founding CEOs to develop, build, publicly launch and scale their businesses.
Most recently, Danielle was with national telehealth leader Amwell. She joined the company at its inception in 2007, helping Amwell enter and lead in multiple markets. She held a number of executive roles including President of Strategic Partnerships, as well as President for the company’s segment-focused Payer, Health System and Employer business units. Prior to Amwell, Danielle held leadership positions at several healthcare and technology companies including MEDecision, Hewlett-Packard, and Bluestone Software, with earlier days spent as an investment banker at Wells Fargo.
Danielle received her B.S. in Finance from Drexel University and holds Series 7 & 63 Broker Licenses. Danielle serves on the Boards of Navigating Cancer, Lark, Together Senior Health, TempoPay, and Baton Health. She is a sought-after speaker on topics ranging from technology as an enabler to new models of care delivery. She is heavily involved in several student/young adult mentor programs as well as local and national DE&I and social service initiatives.
Anant Ahuja
Investment Partner, PFM Health Sciences
Steven Kornfeld
Partner, Castle Peak Partners
Looking for more information?
Check out white papers and peer-reviewed studies across different conditions and populations to see how Lark is changing the game!
Lark was founded in 2011 to bring compassionate care to those that need it most. Learn about our journey, values, team, and more!
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