Breaking Barriers, Building Solutions: Meet the Changemakers Transforming Health Innovation
Summary
This SXSW 2026 panel, presented by Reckitt Catalyst and hosted by Katherine Casey (co-founder and managing partner of Acumen America), brought together Serena Williams (entrepreneur-in-residence at Reckitt Catalyst and founder of Serena Ventures), Ryan Delay (Reckitt), Nika (founder and CEO of Malama), and Quaame (founder and CEO of Thrive Link) to discuss health equity, underrepresented founders, and the innovation emerging from lived experience. The session opened with a stark framing: in Austin, neighborhoods just three to four miles apart can have a 20-year difference in life expectancy based on access to doctors, food, and education. Despite this urgent problem, the founders best positioned to solve it are routinely overlooked and underfunded because of what they look like or where they come from.
Malama, founded by Nika, is a community-based doula service powered by technology, remote monitoring, and preventative care for chronic conditions targeting maternal health outcomes. Nika drew on her experience of three high-risk pregnancies, her grandmother's career as an OB-GYN in Japan, and her time at UnitedHealthcare and Optum to identify critical gaps in postpartum care. The US ranks last among developed nations in maternal health outcomes, with 53% of maternal deaths occurring in the postpartum period. Of the nearly 50% of births covered by Medicaid, only about 30% of those mothers attend the single six-week postpartum visit. Malama started with a WhatsApp group of 10 pregnant women to test their prototype and has scaled to 50,000 women across the country. The company closed a $9 million seed round — announced the day of the panel — with Acumen America as lead investor, and has received non-dilutive NIH SBIR grant funding and California state funding.
Quaame, founder of Thrive Link, built AI agents that conduct telephonic conversations to help people enroll in programs for food, housing, transportation, and other social needs. His journey began when his uncle suffered a massive stroke while still relatively young, and deepened when he became an emergency department nurse witnessing preventable health crises in Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, and elsewhere — communities where patients didn't need more healthcare, they needed food, housing, and transportation. He dropped out of college to work as a janitor at a hospital, became a nurse, then a healthcare lawyer, before founding Thrive Link first as a nonprofit. The company now serves hospitals and health insurance companies in more than 17 states. Thrive Link chose voice-based AI deliberately — designed with non-tech-native users in mind, recognizing that asking people to download an app was a non-starter for the populations they served.
Serena Williams spoke extensively about her 15-plus years of investing and her role at Reckitt Catalyst, which has backed over 200 women and underrepresented founders globally. She emphasized that authentic founder-problem connection is the primary quality she looks for in pitches: founders driven by personal or community ties won't quit when barriers arise. On failure, she reframed the concept entirely — "you only fail if you don't try" — and encouraged founders to view setbacks as data: "It didn't work out. Why? And how can I make it better?" Ryan Delay highlighted Reckitt's 200-year brand-building heritage (Lysol, Mucinex, Dettol, Durex) and described a mentorship network of 240 volunteers drawn from across 23 countries, which was oversubscribed at 240% of available slots. Catalyst's goal is to fund up to 200 entrepreneurs globally, 30 in the US. The session closed with each panelist identifying what gives them hope: the power of cross-sector partnership, the role of AI in amplifying community-based trust networks, and the growing energy around building a more accessible safety net.
Key Takeaways
- •In Austin, neighborhoods just 3-4 miles apart have a 20-year difference in life expectancy, illustrating that zip code is more deterministic of health outcomes than genetic code.
- •The US ranks dead last among developed nations in maternal health outcomes; 53% of maternal-related deaths occur in the postpartum period, yet the system provides only a single six-week postpartum visit.
- •Of births covered by Medicaid — nearly half of all US births — only about 30% of mothers attend their postpartum visit, revealing a massive gap in follow-up care that Malama is designed to fill.
- •Malama closed a $9 million seed round (announced the day of the panel), starting from a 10-person WhatsApp mom council prototype and scaling to 50,000 women across the country.
- •Thrive Link built voice-based telephonic AI agents rather than an app, a deliberate design decision to serve populations who may not be able to text or type, reflecting the principle that technology must meet users where they are.
- •Thrive Link now serves hospitals and health insurance companies in more than 17 states, helping thousands of families access healthy food, housing, and benefits — including a patient who won the Boston housing lottery through their platform.
- •Serena Williams looks for authentic personal or community connection in founder pitches above all else: founders without that connection tend to be 'lackadaisical' when barriers arise, whereas connected founders knock down door after door.
- •Less than 2% of venture capital goes to female founders, and even less to founders of color; both Malama and Thrive Link have demonstrated this can be overcome by combining VC with non-dilutive capital sources including NIH SBIR grants and state funding.
- •Reckitt's Catalyst program attracted 240% more mentor volunteers than available slots, drawing from 23 countries across commercial, supply chain, IT, regulatory, and healthcare professional functions — showing strong corporate appetite for meaningful impact partnerships.
Transcript
We love you back. [singing] Hey everyone. Y >> good morning everyone [music] and thank you for that awesome South by Southwest welcome. It's almost like there's someone that you're [music] really excited to see here this morning. My name is Katherine Casey. I'm the co-founder and managing partner of Acumen America and I'm really honored to host this conversation today. At Acument America, we invest in [music] early stage companies that are tackling issues of poverty across the United States. To ...
