By Joy Portella, President, Minerva Strategies — If you’re like me, the next month is going to be gluttonous. It already started with Thanksgiving. My husband and I rolled home from three straight days of eating on the East Coast and there was only one thought in my mind: I cannot eat another thing. Until…
Client News
Joy Portella By Joy Portella, President, Minerva Strategies— Intellectual Ventures CEO and famed patent holder Nathan Myhrvold recently proclaimed to Geekwire that, “Seattle is absolutely the Silicon Valley of saving the world.” That’s a bold claim. Some might call it hyperbole. But in a world where fact-checking is a dying industry and fake news can tip presidential…
Minerva Strategies Sometimes when we talk about being born in the United States, we talk about it as “winning the lottery” – as the wealthiest, most powerful country with robust economic opportunity, how lucky to be born here. But what if many of those opportunities could never be enjoyed because of early death or disease? What if…
By Joy Portella, President, Minerva Strategies — It’s almost Mother’s Day, and Minerva wants to give a shout-out to all of the hard-working moms who manage to raise kids, hold down jobs, keep home base running, and not totally lose their minds in the process. You’re our heroes! We’d also like to tell you about a…
By Joy Portella, President, Minerva Strategies — I remember visiting China for the first time almost ten years ago. I woke up in the morning, stood at my hotel window, looking down on the streets of Beijing and saw…nothing. I could barely discern the outline of the building across the way, and off in the distance…
By Caroline Myran, Minerva Strategies — Hamlin Fistula board member competes in the World Marathon Challenge What lengths would you go to help someone in need? How many miles would you run? You hear about people running races for a cause all the time – relay for life, race for the cure – there are hundreds…
Sara Veltkamp By Joy Portella, President, Minerva Strategies — Last week, Rwanda’s health minister, a trained pediatrician, won a major global health award called the Roux Prize. Awards can be a dime a dozen, so I want to put this one in perspective: Between 1990 and 2013, life expectancy in Rwanda increased by about 15 years and…
By Joy Portella, President, Minerva Strategies— Recently, Minerva Strategies helped our client The Lemelson Foundation celebrate their 20th anniversary in Washington, DC. It’s always rewarding and exciting to work with a client through a major milestone, but this was more than just a birthday party; it was an opportunity to bring together generations of inventors…
By Joy Portella The global health sector is obsessed with what kills people. Most studies, not to mention disease advocacy groups, proclaim the death tolls of cancer or HIV/AIDS or malaria. But not many studies talk about what makes people sick. That’s unfortunate because the fastest growing health problem isn’t death – it’s sickness. As…
By Joy Portella, President, Minerva Strategies — The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has been a Minerva Strategies client for more than two years. During my first meeting with IHME’s Communications Director Bill Heisel, we sat at a table with a pile of Excel spreadsheets in front of us. There were data as far…