Houston health tech accelerator launches nonprofit to spark, support female leaders in the industry

igniting change

Ignite has announced a new foundation to further its reach in supporting women in health care. Photo via ignitehealthcare.org

For the past few years, a Houston organization has supported nearly 100 female-founded health tech startups with programming, crucial connections, and more. Now, with a newly launched nonprofit arm, the organization is taking it to the next level to bolster women in health care.

Ignite Healthcare Network, which was founded in 2017 by longtime Houston health care professional Ayse McCracken, has created Ignite Health Foundation, a nonprofit foundation, to go beyond startups and technology to support women in health care across the board with networking and events, in-person and virtual programming, professional development, and more.

"The Foundation is a vehicle for major fundraising grants and foundations allowing Ignite to scale the work we do to discover exceptional women leaders and innovators, connect them with an expert community and help them achieve their career goals," McCracken says in a news release.

"This initiative not only amplifies our commitment to inspiring innovation in an untapped resource, female leaders and entrepreneurs but also sets the stage for groundbreaking advancements in healthcare," she adds.

The foundation will accept donations from those who look to level the playing field for women in health care leadership and to support innovative endeavours from female founders. The financial support will go toward all of Ignite's programming

"Join us on the journey and invest in women shaping the future of healthcare to create an inclusive and healthier world," says Sara Speer Selber, chair of Friends of Ignite Health Foundation, in the release.

Last month, Ignite hosted its annual Fire Pitch Competition at the Ion, crowning the award recipients and doling out cash prizes. This year, eight finalists of the 19-company cohort presented at the competition for judges and an audience, and three companies secured top spots and prizes.

In a recent interview with InnovationMap, McCracken spoke to how she's always looking for ways to grow her impact with Ignite.

"Having an impact in the health care industry and finding solutions is important to me," McCracken says of her passion for Ignite on a recent episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "The second aspect of that is there are so many women in health care, and yet you don't see them in leadership roles."

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Ayse McCracken joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss women in health care and Ignite Madness. Photo courtesy of Ignite

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When COVID-19 hit, Ayse McCracken realized that women in health care were going to be disproportionately affected by the pandemic and social isolation. As the founder and board chair of Ignite Healthcare Network, a nonprofit dedicated to connecting and promoting female health tech entrepreneurs, McCracken jumped to provide a virtual way to connect her members.

"With COVID, it has only escalated the importance of our work, so we've elevated our voices through our webinar series," McCracken says on this week's Houston Innovators Podcast.

The webinars featured prominent women in health care discussing leaderships, the effect of the pandemic, and more. Now, Ignite has introduced an entirely new virtual event series focused on startups and, something slightly unexpected: basketball. Ignite Madness begins tomorrow, October 22, and will feature 35 startups. The startups will be narrowed down to seven finalists, who will then pitch at the finals next Thursday, October 29. Click here to register.

"We wanted to do something that was kind of fun and engaging for people while showcasing great entrepreneurs. We didn't want it to just be a pitch event," McCracken says. "When you look at basketball, the similarities were very interesting."

Women make up a significant portion of the fan base for basketball, McCracken says she discovered, and she had the idea of featuring female coaches into the pitch competition. Seven college basketball coaches will be involved in the event as mentors, sharing their own stories.

McCracken says she was strategic when organizing the pitch competition and made sure the competing companies were representative of both the industry's innovation and of diversity. The startups from 13 states across the United States and six other countries — 43 percent of the founders pitching are women of color.

"When we say women, we mean women of all colors and ethnicities," McCracken says. "We have made sure that our leadership team is diverse and inclusive. Everything we do, you'll see women in a very inclusive way."

While you'll have to watch the pitches yourself, McCracken says, the startups are focusing on novel medical devices, cancer detection, and nanotech-based treatment selection platforms, mental health platforms, telehealth solutions, digital solutions for women's health issues like fertility, and so much more.

McCracken shares more about what viewers can expect from the event as well as the important role women in health care play and the evolution of the industry in Houston on the podcast. You can listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


Ignite Healthcare Network has hosted a pitch compeition for a few years now, but this is the first year for its mini-accelerator program. Courtesy of Ignite

Houston nonprofit launches accelerator program to give women-led startup a leg up within health care

The future is female

Within health care, female consumers make 80 percent of the buying power while women hold 65 percent of the workforce's jobs, according to a recent study. However, when you look at the C-suites in the industry, those percentages fall drastically, says Ayse McCracken.

"For as many women as there are involved in health care, it's not reflected in leadership," says McCracken, founder of Ignite Healthcare Network. "That's what brought us together."

Just 30 percent of health care C-suites are women — and only 13 percent have female CEOs, per the report by Oliver Wyman. Houston-based nonprofit Ignite is an organization comprised of over 150 of these rare female health care execs and focused on clearing a path for future female leaders in the industry.

McCracken founded the network in 2016, and her team established a "Shark Tank-style" pitch competition. After three years of the annual event seeing successes, Ignite is introducing its inaugural mini-accelerator program.

"As we saw this innovation economy and startup space begin to evolve in the city, it seemed that our contribution to this was that we could help incubate and find companies that had high likelihood of success," says McCracken.

Ignite and its partners identified 13 female-led companies from all around the world were selected from over 80 applications and now will go through a 10-week program called the Customer-Partner Program. Each company is paired with a partner and potential customer — from Memorial Hermann and Texas Children's Hospital to Humana and Gallagher.

Here are the participating female-led startups:

  • iTreatMD from San Francisco
  • BabyNoggin (by Qidza) from San Francisco
  • Ria Health from San Francisco
  • Savonix from San Francisco
  • MotiSpark from Los Angeles
  • UpHold Health from Chicago
  • Sound Scouts from Sydney, Australia
  • Augment Therapy from Cleveland, Ohio
  • Oncora Medical Philadelphia
  • Materna Medical from Mountain View, California
  • Path Ex Inc Houston
  • PyrAmes Inc. from Cupertino, California
  • Spoke Health Denver

The Fire Pitch Competition will take place on October 17 at the Texas Medical Center's Innovation Institute. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes is on the line for the 13 companies.

"This year's event is already receiving increased recognition from investors," says Ignite board member and event co-chair, Cheryl Stavins, in a release. "In addition to the top three finalists sharing awards that include entry into the TMCx Digital Health Accelerator, over $125,000 in professional services, and cash prizes of $10,000, Fire Pitch participants will be eligible for investment prizes."

The Texas Halo Fund will be awarding its $100,000 investment prize, called the Corona Award, along with a $50,000 prize from TMC Innovation Institute.

Beyond the new program, McCracken says she wants to expand Ignite's reach and capabilities for its members and startups — including new investment opportunities.

"I think what we're doing now is reaching out beyond Houston and looking at how we can continue to grow the opportunity to have an impact and help women-led companies and women in organizations," she says.

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Pharma giant considers Houston for $1B manufacturing campus

in the works

Another pharmaceutical giant is considering Houston’s Generation Park for a manufacturing hub.

According to a recent filing with the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation (JETI) program, Bristol Myers Squibb Co. is considering the northeast Houston management district for a new $1 billion multi-modal pharmaceutical manufacturing campus.

If approved, the campus, known as Project Argonaut, could create 489 jobs in Texas by 2031. Jobs would include operations technicians, engineering roles, administrative and management roles, production specialists, maintenance support, and quality control/assurance. The company predicts annual average wages for these positions to be around $96,000, according to the filing.

The project currently includes the 600,000-square-foot facility, but according to the filing, Bristol Myers Squibb “envisions this site growing in scale and capability well beyond its opening configuration."

The Texas JETI program offers companies temporary school property tax limitations in exchange for major capital investment and job creation. E.R. Squibb & Sons LLC applied for a 10-year tax abatement agreement in the Sheldon Independent School District.

The agreement promises a $ 1 billion investment. Construction would begin in 2027 and wrap in 2029.

“The proposed project reflects [Bristol Myers Squibb Co.’s] enduring commitment to bringing innovative medicines to patients and ensuring the long-term supply reliability they depend on,” the filing says. “The proposed project is purpose-built to support and manufacture medicines spanning multiple therapeutic areas and modalities, positioning the site as a long-term launch and commercial campus for decades to come. These medicines will provide therapies to the [Bristol Myers Squibb Co.’s] patients located in markets both nationally and internationally.”

The Fortune 100 company is considering 16 other cities for the new manufacturing facility in the Central and Eastern markets in the U.S. According to the Houston Chronicle, Bristol Myers Squibb Co is still in the “evaluation process” for its potential manufacturing site.

Last fall, Eli Lilly and Co. selected Generation Park for its $6.5 billion manufacturing plant. More than 300 locations in the U.S. competed for the factory. Read more here.

Houston health tech co. lands NIH grant for AI cancer prediction tool

fresh funding

Houston-based CellChorus and Stanford Medicine were recently awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant for the company's AI platform to test how certain cancer patients will respond to therapies.

The funding comes from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. According to a filing, the grant totaled just under $400,000.

CellChorus, which spun out from the University of Houston’s Technology Bridge, has developed TIMING (Time-lapse Imaging Microscopy In Nanowell Grids), which analyzes the behavior of thousands of individual immune cells over time and can identify early indicators of treatment success or failure.

The company will work with Stanford's Dr. David Miklos and Dr. Saurabh Dahiya, who have built the Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cell Therapy Biobank. The biobank manages and stores biological samples from patients treated at their clinic and in clinical trials.

"Predicting which patients will achieve durable responses after CAR-T therapy remains one of the most important challenges in the field,” Miklos said in a news release. “We aim to uncover functional cellular signatures that can guide treatment decisions and improve patient outcomes.”

The project will specifically profile cells from patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma (r/rLBCL). According to CellChorus, only about half of r/rLBCL patients who receive CAR-T therapy "achieve a durable, long-term remission." Others do not respond to therapy or experience relapse.

“The sooner we know whether a cancer therapy is working, the better. To maximize patient benefit, we need technology that can provide a robust and early prediction of response to therapy. The technology needs to be scalable, cost-efficient, and capable of rapid turnaround times,” Rebecca Berdeaux, chief scientific officer of CellChorus, added in the release. “We are excited to work with Drs. David Miklos and Saurabh Dahiya and their colleagues on this very important project.”

CellChorus has previously received SBIR grants from federal agencies, including a $2.5 million award in 2024 from its National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and a $2.3 million SBIR Fast-Track award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in 2023.

Houston museum showcases America's founding documents in rare exhibit

Experience History

As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, Houstonians have a chance to see rare documents from the founding of the nation. Freedom Plane National Tour: Documents That Forged a Nation, presented by the National Archives Foundation, will be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science through Monday, May 25.

The collection includes a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence; official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton; a draft of the Bill of Rights; the Treaty of Paris, the documented that recognized America's independence from Great Britain; and the tally of votes approving the Constitution.

The National Archives specifically chose Houston as one of only eight cities in the country to host the exhibit as a means to help the documents reach a wider audience outside of the main hub of semiquincentennial events in New England and the Washington, D.C. area.

"One of the things we decided when we put the tour together because we wanted to be off the East Coast," said Patrick Madden, CEO of the National Archives Foundation, who was onsite for the exhibit's opening in Houston. "There's a lot of 250th celebration stuff happening in the original 13 colonies. How do we get it to major markets where larger numbers of people can see it? So in the case of Houston, obviously, [is a] major market in this part of the country, but also we've partnered with the museum twice before with National Archives exhibits, so we knew that they would be up to the task of handling the exhibit and the crowds."

The star of the collection is a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence. Secretary of State and future president John Quincy Adams commissioned 200 exact replicas of the document from engraver William J. Stone in 1823. Less than 50 now remain. Madden joyfully pointed out that there are errors in this document, a potent reminder that the men who forged a nation made mistakes.

"There's a couple of typos in it where they had to make corrections," said Madden. "So even the founders, you know, they're all human. That resonates because here these people are making this move against the most powerful nation in the world and putting their lives on the line for a country based on ideas."

Other impressive parts of the collection include official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton, as well as one of the drafts of the Bill of Rights. Many states would not ratify the Constitution until certain rights were included in the document, leading to Washington going on a national tour assuring state leaders enshrining protections was first on the list. The draft copy on display specifically shows the First Amendment in progress.

Houston is the fourth stop on the exhibition's tour, which will take the documents to Denver, Miami, Dearborn, and Seattle through the summer. Freedom Plane is just one part of a larger patriotic celebration at the HMNS, which includes a film series celebrating American science and culture and general Americana decoration throughout the main hall.

Admission to Freedom Plane is free to the public, but separate from general admission to the museum. Space is limited, and passes are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Non-members should expect long waits or the possibility that the day's passes are sold out. Only museum members can reserve passes for specific times. Flash photography is prohibited due to the fragile nature of the documents.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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