Karin Underwood

Karin started Verano Health after realizing that the biggest gap in chronic disease management is getting people the support they need to build healthy behaviors. Karin is a Stanford MBA graduate with 9+ years experience building health products and data-driven teams at startups and social enterprises.

Founder & CEO

VErano Health

Innovator, product-builder, and people manager with a passion for creating connections and trying new, hard things. Karin Underwood (she/her) is a healthcare expert and technology entrepreneur with a passion for service with over a decade of cross-sector experience building health products at startups, social enterprises, and nonprofit organizations. Prior to PIF, Karin founded and led Verano Health to bring health coaching to underserved populations. Karin previously worked at Virta Health on patient marketing, and as the Health Program Manager for One Acre Fund, a social enterprise serving more than 1 million farm families in Africa. She started her career as the 3rd employee at mProve Health, a startup in the pharmaceutical space that was acquired by Bracket. Karin holds an undergraduate degree in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis and an MBA from Stanford University where she was a Social Innovation Fellow. She lives in San Francisco, CA with her husband and enjoys long, meandering bike rides on the weekends.

Listen to my episodes…

Episode #

How User-Centered Design and Development is Helping Karin Underwood Make a Massive Impact in Healthcare with Verano Health

Karin Underwood is the Founder and CEO of Verano Health, an accessible mobile platform to provide life-changing diabetes self-management training to low-income Americans with chronic disease. She’s spent a lifetime embedded in social impact, from high school service trips all the way to living in Kenya for two years post-college with the One Acre Fund. Karin joins Cause & Purpose to detail her exciting journey as a nonprofit tech entrepreneur and share countless lessons-learned from a lifetime of firsthand experience interfacing directly with the communities she wants to help. Long before she founded Verano Health and graduated from the Fast Forward nonprofit tech accelerator, Karin Underwood was diving headfirst into service projects with her church and high school. Working with childcare centers, orphanages, and halfway homes for women at this formational time showed her that the world was so much bigger than her comfortable upbringing. The shining example for Karin came while she was in college working with homeless populations in St. Louis. The director of the center where she worked came to a meeting one day without her laptop. When asked what happened, her director said that her house was broken into and had many things stolen. Her response to all this was: “It’s OK, because I’m sure they needed it more than I did. I’m lucky enough to have the resources to get a new computer and replace these things.”“That moment had a huge impact on me. It was compassion in the face of great loss, and it showed me the kind of person I wanted to become.”Inspiration from her mother’s work in healthcare, on-the-ground service in East Africa, and time in the trenches with community health clinics would help her become that person. In this episode, you’ll hear:Heartfelt stories of impact from Karin’s time on the frontlines with patientsWhat a healthcare system of the future could look like in the U.S. About the importance of user-centered design and developmentHow to successfully introduce tech and innovation to people who really need itEditor's Note: In this episode, Karin refers to her company as CoachMe Health. They have since rebranded to Verano Health.

Entreprenuership

Health

Technology

Female Leaders