Meet AHIMA22 Keynote Speaker Marcus Whitney

Marcus Whitney’s life has largely been defined by ventures—from technology entrepreneurship to establishing an investment fund centering Black founded and led healthcare companies. Whitney started his career in the technology field, eventually working his way to head of technology at Emma, an email marketing company. There he was able to learn the inner workings of leading a company and developed an interest in entrepreneurship.

“They did everything but hand over the reins of the company to me and three others whom they made partners,” Whitney says. “They gave us significant authority over departments of the business and trusted us with the company culture. So I had this very immersive entrepreneurial experience, except I wasn’t actually ‘The Person.’ And there is a pretty big difference between being empowered as an employee and actually being The Person.”

After four years at Emma, Whitney decided it was time to independently delve into the world of entrepreneurship and venture capital. He went on to co-found Clariture Health in 2013, a HIPAA compliant digital ad management platform, where he took notice of the size and impact of the healthcare industry in Nashville. During his time there, Whitney’s interest in the field was rekindled—having originally sparked in 2005 when his father suffered an aneurysm and underwent a life saving surgery. Whitney attributes these two experiences and what he describes as Nashville’s open and giving culture to his ultimate professional dedication to healthcare.

In 2020, America was simultaneously experiencing the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, a time where Whitney describes the nation as being “in a deep process of soul searching.” Finding himself in the middle of these two headlines, he penned an open letter to Nashville’s healthcare leaders, which would eventually lead to the creation of Jumpstart Nova. In it, Whitney noted the 50-year-old healthcare industry was founded in a time of stark inequity, and while the field had grown to become “an incredibly important, influential, powerful segment of our economy,” its leadership and allocation of funding were almost homogeneous. He called on leaders to begin facing and addressing the inequities of the industry. Ultimately, he says, Jumpstart Nova’s founding was not about entrepreneurship, but responsibility.

“After the letter was circulated, it started more conversations between myself and leaders of the industry, which led me to believe there was a collective willingness to work on this problem and a need to create a means for capturing that collective will,” Whitney says. “That was where I came up with the idea for Jumpstart Nova: a place to invest in Black founders in the healthcare space who have chronically been underinvested in since the dawn of healthcare venture capital. And all you have to do to be supportive is become an investor in the fund.”

As Jumpstart Nova continues its mission to improve the healthcare venture capital field, Whitney is enthusiastic about the future. “We’re in an unbelievably exciting time in healthcare, because we have opportunities to rethink the entire thing. It’s not going to happen overnight, but it does feel like the next 10 years are going to be an era of change,” he says.

Whitney will be sharing more about inspiring change as a keynote speaker at AHIMA22. Register today.