Phoebe Yang

And I got stuck, in air quotes, doing the little deals that nobody else wanted to do that would never make any money, like with Amazon.

and with Microsoft and with Nokia and Google.

And it was an interesting time to be there because you had this sort of emerging new industry that was forming.

And the technology players didn't understand our business and our business didn't understand what they had to do to be successful in the technology space.

But I rolled up my sleeves and, you know, got my hands dirty in the space and it really kind of changed my trajectory.

Well, you know, it's interesting.

Sometimes you don't realize what's happening in your life until you have the benefit of hindsight, right?

And so my first foray into health was really at Discovery when I helped turn around that health business.

Then I went into the Obama administration where the Affordable Care Act was the big initiative happening.

And I was at the FCC working on a national broadband plan to make broadband the next big infrastructure, transformative infrastructure like highways and electricity and railroads and telephony in prior generations.

And we were...

putting together a national plan to make broadband that.

But what was justifying the investment in this plan was really what we called national purposes, healthcare, education, energy, and how those industries really needed and could benefit from the acceleration of broadband technologies.

And so I ended up taking a particular interest in healthcare.

And so when I was asked to stay after the broadband plan was complete to be the chairman's senior advisor on broadband, I said, I really want to focus on healthcare.

And the reason for that was probably multifold, but I didn't realize it until after I really entered the healthcare industry full force when I went to work for the advisory board company.

You remember the advisory board company?

Yeah.

So it was great.

And I was their first corp dev person.