Influential Woman · Healthtech

Shweta Shekhar

Mentor, Society of Women Engineers

New York, NY

Her Story

About Shweta

As CTO at a health tech startup focused on rehabilitation therapy practices (physical, occupational, and speech therapy), my typical day changes week to week. Some weeks I'm heads down building as a software engineer and AI engineer, working on our web platform, internal tools, or the AI agent side of things. Other weeks I'm talking extensively to external people for integrations and guidance, connecting with other builders, technologists, and CTOs at other companies to adapt solutions from other spaces into healthcare. I spend significant time on internal brainstorming about our product roadmap and infrastructure, researching potential solutions and exploring the possibilities of what can be applied to the various problems we face. Because we're in the healthcare space, I also spearhead compliance and security work, ensuring we conform to HIPAA standards, working alongside my COO and co-founder. As part of a small team, I often support other functions of the company, setting up enablement work for GTM and Clinical Ops teams. My career has been primarily on the product and engineering side, having worked as a full-stack engineer, software engineer, and founding engineer, often as the first or second engineering hire in startups. I was previously head of product at a fintech startup, where I focused on working with external partners and vendors from a product perspective rather than an engineering one.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Shweta

01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

I'd say it is a learning curve, it is a steep learning curve with a lot of intricacies involved, and given the messy nature of healthcare, it is easy to get lost in it, so don't be scared of that. But there is also a lot of room for innovation. Just because it's healthcare doesn't mean it needs to be solved a certain way. I think we are definitely moving towards a world where a lot of the solutions used in other industries could be in some shape or form adapted to healthcare, so one of the things that has helped me the most is just to be open to solutions and figuring it out. Of course, you have to do it in a secure way, you have to do it in a compliant way, but how do you keep your mind open to such flexible solutions and adapting them to such a stringent industry. The other thing would be that it's okay to work your way up into different stages of the company and really get experience on the different sides of it, because there can be very different kinds of roles in health tech that probably may not exist in other industries. So really take your time exploring the kind of things that you want to do and don't want to do, because there is a lot of potential to make a role your own and still succeed in it. Make sure that you're really just leading with secure, compliant solutions and practicality.

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