About
Digital Therapeutics - Digital Health - Mental Health
WE ARE HIRING!
I lead Happify's digital therapeutics effort to take its world-leading digital mental health and wellbeing platform to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry.
For most patients, the stress, anxiety and depression associated with their disease have a more profound impact on their wellbeing and quality of life than does the disease itself. The Happify mental health and wellbeing platform enables us to help Pharma companies to create "value beyond the pill" by providing digital complements and companions that improve the efficacy of their drug therapy.
This approach enables a pharmaceuticals firm to "own the disease" by providing a comprehensive, total solution that address a broad array of the patients health and wellbeing challenges to improve their total health across multiple dimensions: mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, intellectual, financial, environmental.
Author - Speaker - Educator - Inventor - Innovator - Leader - Consultant - Digital Disruptor
I have co-authored two books and over 60 articles and book chapters on innovation, cultural transformation, digital disruption, and digital health technology applications and transformation. I outline how organizations can create the innovation operating models to transform themselves by adapting to the turbulent new market realties created by SMAC (social, mobile, analytic and cloud) digital technologies.
Books:
Tension: The Energy of Innovation - How harnessing tension accelerates innovation and fuels your creative genius, 2015
Solving for Why: Change your Identity, Change your Future - How a common why provides meaning at work and transform performance, 2018
Ask me about
Work experience
- August 2021 – present
Happify Health
Head of Pharma Speciality Solutions & Corporate StrategyI lead the pharma business and corporate strategy at Happify Health - July 2018 – present
Happify Health
Head of HappifyDTxDigital Therapeutics - Digital Health - Mental Health I lead Happify's digital therapeutics effort to take its world-leading digital mental health and wellbeing platform to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. I also serve as a board member for the Digital Therapeutics Alliance. For most patients, the stress, anxiety and depression associated with their disease have a more profound impact on their wellbeing and quality of life than does the disease itself. The Happify mental health and wellbeing platform enables us to help Pharma companies to create "value beyond the pill" by providing digital complements and companions that improve the efficacy of their drug therapy. This approach enables a pharmaceuticals firm to "own the disease" by providing a comprehensive, total solution that address a broad array of the patients health and wellbeing challenges to improve their total health across multiple dimensions: mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, intellectual, financial, environmental. - April 2018 – present
Digital Disruption Advisors
Managing PartnerAssist leaders in enabling their organizations to prepare for and go through digital transform. The requires creating a culture of innovation that aligns the organization's "why" with that of its employees. Leaders that do this effectively enable spontaneous order to emerge that leads to peak performance. Our process and approach is outlined in our two books: Solving for Why and Tension: The Energy of Innovation. - June 2013 – June 2018
University of Utah - David Eccles School of Business
Professor of Innovation & Executive Director of the Sorenson Center for Discovery and InnovationChris Wasden is a professor of innovation in the Entrepreneurship and Strategy Department at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business. He also serves as the Executive Director of the Sorenson Center for Discovery and Innovation and the Associated Executive Director of the Center for Medical Innovation. He continues to work for PwC as a consultant where he had been a managing director for nearly seven years and served as the Global Healthcare Innovation Leader, where he lead Digital Health opportunities within the Health Industries Advisory Strategy and Innovation practice focused on healthcare, biopharma, medical devices, and life science. He advises clients on how to innovate along the entire Innovation Lifecycle from discovering, to incubating, to accelerating and then scaling to deliver novel and value creating solutions. He works with healthcare payers, providers, pharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostic companies, as well as private equity firms, venture capital, and governments. 
September 2007 – January 2014PricewaterhouseCoopers
Managing Director - Global Healthcare Innovation LeaderAssist clients in creating Innovation Labs, applying best practices to innovate, creating new business models, products and solutions to meet their growth objectives- August 2005 – September 2007
SimplexityMD, Inc.
Chairman & CEOMedical device accelerator, creating 2-3 new medical device ventures each year that can get to a Series A round of VC financing, a liquidity event or commercial product sales on $3 million within three years. - June 2001 – September 2005
Tympany, Inc.
CEO & PresidentStartup company that invented a revolutionary hearing diagnostic medical device that decrease diagnosis costs by 75%. The product, called the Otogram, improved diagnoses of hearing loss, decreased costs, increased convenience and provided 20% increase in physician profitability. - July 2000 – April 2001
Gen3 Partners
Thought LeaderInnovation consultant focused on helping the Fortune 500 launch new products, services and businesses - November 1998 – March 2000
Azurix / Waterdesk.com
PresidentInnovative water utility and internet marketplace dotcom - June 1996 – October 1998
Koch Industries, Inc.
Managing Director and CFODiversified energy company. Largest private company in North America. Responsible for corporate finance, business development, M&A and finance. - June 1994 – July 1996
Caity & Abby's Daily Bread
Co-founder and PresidentCo-founded and ran this $1 M per year full-service Kosher bakery in South Orange, New Jersey. - February 1995 – June 1996
Union Bank of Switzerland
Senior Equity AnalystStarted the Latin American Equity Research business covering 12 Latin American banks for the institutional investment community. - June 1987 – March 1995
JP Morgan & Co.
Vice PresidentResposible for corporate finance and M&A for foreign banks operating in the United States.
Education
- 2006 – 2009
The George Washington University
EdD, Human & Organizational Learning - 1985 – 1987
UCLA Anderson School of Management
Master of Business Administration - MBA, Banking, Corporate, Finance, and Securities Law - 1985 – 1987
University of California, Los Angeles - The Anderson School of Management
MBA, Finance and Strategy - 1981 – 1985BS & BA, Accounting & Asian Studies