137: Lyfebulb Founder Dr. Karin Hehenberger

Uninvisible Pod with Lauren Freedman

Dr. Karin Hehenberger has close to 20 years of experience in the life sciences sector. She served as an executive at Eyetech Pharmaceuticals and Coronado BioSciences, and had strategic management roles at Johnson & Johnson (Vice President, Metabolic Strategy), JDRF (Senior Vice President, Strategic Alliances), and McKinsey; as well as senior partnership roles at public (Brummer & Partners) and private (Scandinavian Life Science Ventures) multibillion-dollar investment funds. She received her MD and PhD degrees from the Karolinska institute, and did her post-doctoral fellowship as a JDRF stipend recipient at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School. Inspired by her background and diagnosis of type 1 diabetes, she is the founder and CEO of Lyfebulb.

Tune in as Karin shares:

• that she was always in good health — but that at the age of 16, this changed
• that shortly after, she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes
• the fear that came along with her diagnosis
• what she wishes she’d done differently after her diagnosis
• that she spent the first decade after diagnosis largely hiding it from the world, even though it played a role in shaping her career
• that when her dad donated a kidney to her 12 years ago, doctors also suggested she get a pancreas transplant simultaneously
• what qualifies diabetes patients for pancreas transplants
• how she recognized that patients can be innovators — and how this inspired her to launch Lyfebulb
• how she also realized that patients need patients — and how this plays into Lyfebulb’s community today
• how she manages the side effects of her immunosuppressants
• the importance of educating care partners in the nuances of chronic disease — and how vital it is that patients learn to ask for what they need
• the obstacles presented by the American healthcare system
• what it was like to entertain motherhood as a patient on immune-suppressing drugs

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