Our 40 Under 40 Healthcare Innovators of 2015

10. Divya Dhar

Passion is a cliched term, but Divya Dhar, MD, MBA, won’t take on projects that don’t move her. “I must be willing to cry for it,” she says. As a physician, Dhar is more enticed by the preventative care aspect of healthcare than the disease management piece; that’s why she’s betting on trends of patient empowerment and personalized medicine as cofounder of Seratis, a mobile communication service.

Beyond Seratis, Dhar acts as a sounding board for many healthcare organizations – all pro-bono. She launched the P3 Foundation, the largest youth nonprofit in New Zealand, before her move to Boston for business school at Harvard.

Dhar’s advice to young entrepreneurs is to share their ideas with early adopters and nimble organizations. “Don’t try to sell your ideas to big hospitals initially – they’re entrenched and have bureaucracy,” she says. “Find those kinds of organizations that will allow you to get in and start testing your product or idea. That’s my biggest learning point.”