Health Tech: Colby Takeda Of Pear Suite On How Their Technology Can Make An Important Impact On Our Overall Wellness

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Colby Takeda.

Colby Takeda is the co-founder and CEO of Pear Suite, a digital health company working to empower community health workers and better address the social determinants of health. Through Pear Suite’s social care navigation platform, health plans, providers and community-based organizations can boost member engagement, improve health outcomes, and reduce the cost of care in a person-centered, culturally, and linguistically centered way. Colby is a former senior living executive and has dedicated most of his professional career to improving community well-being through population health management programs, policy change, and technology solutions, particularly around the social determinants of health. After completing his undergraduate studies in health sciences, Colby completed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Shidler College of Business and a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up on the island of O‘ahu in Hawaii where my grandparents were a huge impact on life. Not only did they feed me great local and Japanese food, but they drove me to and from school and sports practices, cared for me on the weekends, and let me climb up and down mango trees. As a fourth generation Japanese American, I also grew up less connected to my heritage, so my grandparents were my best link to learning about the values, language, and traditions of the Japanese culture. I graduated from the same high school (‘Iolani School) as Guy Kawasaki, who is also a Japanese American and was previously interviewed by Authority Magazine, and then went to a liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest, Willamette University. I’m also the oldest of three siblings. Looking back, I think being a big brother really helped me learn about responsibility, hard work, and respect for others, and despite our age differences, my younger brother and sister teach me so much and are always there for me — I’m very lucky.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

A lady named Jane once said that I “saved her life” when I gifted her an old point and shoot camera. This was her first time ever touching a digital camera, and at 90 years old, she never thought she could learn something new that late in life. Despite needing to use a walker and suffering from chronic back pain, she carried her camera everywhere and captured magical life moments through the camera’s lens. Above all else, it gave her purpose, and it encouraged her to walk around more, talk to more people, and share her art with others. To her, this simple camera helped her live a longer, happier, and more fulfilled life. She recently passed at 100 years old, but I will forever remember her as someone who was not afraid to step out of her comfort zone and try new things.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’ve been lucky to have great champions in my life, but Cindy Adams comes to mind first. While I was still in college, I think I emailed 15 different organizations hoping to secure a summer internship. Maybe my resume wasn’t that impressive, but Cindy was the only person who responded. I got the position and became this nonprofit’s very first intern. Working at a small nonprofit gave me the chance to do pretty much do everything, from coordinating big events, partnering with diverse community groups, and organizing thousands of volunteers to creating e-newsletters, launching social media channels, and doing media interviews. I once had to wrap a large stack of posters for Cindy to carry on the plane and created an ergonomically balanced handle using rope and extra cardboard — Cindy always talks about it, so I know my creative engineering impressed her. As team members left the organization, I quickly stepped into new roles, eventually leading local operations at the age of 22. Cindy moved on to work at a medical startup and several large social service agencies, but she continues to check in on me and serve as a great mentor and friend.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My grandma Takeda would repeatedly tell me to, “just say no,” referring to doing drugs, getting piercings, and engaging in risky behaviors. Meanwhile, a life coach later told me to “just say yes,” when offered to get involve in the community, explore learning opportunities, or support efforts that I care about. This has been my mentality since college, and it has truly opened doors for me. I have joined multiple nonprofit boards, working groups, and advocacy campaigns, and met a ton of great people along the way. It is this mentality that also led me to entrepreneurship, as a professional colleague once asked if I could help her with a startup idea. “Sure,” I promptly replied, without knowing what I was getting myself into, and then I was hooked.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

• I wouldn’t say I’m a successful business leader yet, but I would start with the importance of being authentic and personable. While Pear Suite has a great product, I think a lot of people really enjoy working with us. No one wants to help, invest in, work for, and do business with someone who isn’t authentic and personable.
• Resilience and adaptability also come to mind, as we’ve probably made every single startup mistake in every entrepreneurship book out there, but have been able to shake them off, learn, and bounce back even stronger. And if we were ever afraid of taking risks in the first place, we wouldn’t be where we are today.
• Finally, creativity has been key. Early on, we operated our business using Google Sheets, Typeform, and a web-based phone system. We scrapped together simple health promotion concepts, used good marketing, and collected the outcomes necessary to get early revenue, and we got very creative with our partnerships, staffing, and business development along the way. It was only after a year of operations that we started building our own software and got the traction necessary to raise an oversubscribed round of venture capital.

Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the healthcare technology you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on our wellness. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?

For way too long, the U.S. healthcare system has focused on curing sickness by prescribing more medications, conducting medical operations, and putting people in institutionalized care settings. We now know that up to 90% of health outcomes are impacted by the social determinants of health — food access, housing, transportation, education, social connectivity, and so on. Community health workers (CHWs) are specifically trained to address these social determinants of health challenges by understanding individual needs, providing health education, and connecting people to community resources and services, like the food bank, housing counselors, and legal services. While community health workers have been around for decades, they often operate off paper checklists, notepads, and Excel spreadsheets, creating substantial work inefficiencies and missing opportunities to provide essential follow up support, and that is where Pear Suite comes in.

How do you think your technology can address this?

• Pear Suite is building a social care navigation platform for community health workers, empowering them with tools to work more efficiently, collect valuable member data, and act on it with decision support tools, closing the loop on connecting individuals with key social programs and services.
• While CHWs have long been undervalued in the healthcare system — most people, including physicians and nurses, have never even heard of CHWs — we are giving them a platform (both literally and figuratively) to stand out as healthcare heroes and get properly paid for their efforts using our billing portal. For healthcare organizations employing community health workers, Pear Suite gives them the management tools and insights to implement consistent workflows, collect comprehensive data, and appropriately direct resources and care across their population. This leads to cost savings, increased revenue, and better health outcomes for patients.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we knew that thousands of older adults were struggling to care for themselves, not eating well, putting off medical care, and becoming more and more socially isolated. As we now know, loneliness can kill, so I partnered with Dr. Christy Nishita to launch a virtual ‘pen pal’ program between seniors and students. The program was simple — connect students and older adults using phone and video calls to have friendly conversations. Beyond having a great time, participants started learning interesting new facts, sharing healthy recipes and life stories, teaching home exercise routines, and building supportive friendships that extended beyond our scheduled meetings. These calls were having a direct impact on health outcomes, and when the COVID-19 vaccine came out, we were able to translate this model to increase vaccination rates, both among participants, as well as with other older adults. Having been in the senior care industry, I knew of many companies providing in-person support with meal preparation, transportation, social stimulation, and medication reminders; Pear Suite was going to support in all these same areas, but do so virtually.

How do you think this might change the world?

• Workforce shortages, new policy changes, and expanding broadband infrastructure are collectively revolutionizing the healthcare landscape in profound ways. New digital health companies are launching every week, telemedicine and virtual care are becoming the norm, and remote patient monitoring and home-based care models are being utilized to improve health outcomes, while saving money. Just as important are the social drivers of health — food access, transportation, housing, literacy, and more — and there is certainly no reason why these can’t also be addressed using technology.
• Google search transformed the way internet users got information. Similarly, Pear Suite is enabling individuals to get personalized guidance, navigation support, resources around health and social needs, and doing so in a scalable way using virtual care navigators. Our technology is enabling community health workers to expand their impact, without losing the key elements of person-centered, cultural and linguistic sensitivity care.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

While many digital health companies are solely using AI, chatbots, and mobile applications to improve health outcomes, these solutions are often not well adopted by those most in need, further expanding health inequities. This can be especially true for communities of color, older adults, non-English speakers, people with disabilities, and other underserved groups. For these individuals, addressing the social determinants of health challenges require established trust, human connection, and cultural context. Therefore, just as society isn’t quite ready for fully autonomous vehicles on the road, AI in social care works best when it empowers humans and keeps them in the loop. Tech-enabled community health workers can complete all the key functions — understanding needs and interests, conducting motivational interviewing, and navigating the nuances of health and social service ecosystems — with priority populations, while improving workflows and continuity of care. And while building technology for underserved communities may not be perceived as extremely profitable or immediately scalable, our country will not be able to move towards promoting social justice, empowering community-based solutions, and achieving our health equity goals without innovating in this space.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Four things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”?

• Building any business is hard, but building a venture-backable business in the health equity and social impact sector is especially hard. Above all else, founders in this space must have a deep conviction for this line of work, must be headstrong and resilient, and must be willing to make sacrifices for the benefit of those your technology will eventually impact. I often meet founders with a strong personal connection to the issues they’re working to address, which can certainly be a strong source of that drive.
• Don’t go at it alone. Find a co-founder (or a couple) with aligned values and a shared willingness to go “all in” on your mission-driven company. I was lucky to find Nick Lockett, a Duke-educated engineer with a background working at Microsoft and SoundCommerce, a SaaS startup in the retail space. The co-founder relationship can truly make or break your company, so spend time to find the right partner in crime.
• Get as close to your users as possible. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I started teaching community health worker (CHW) courses at a nearby community college. It was this experience that helped me recognize the power of CHWs — their lived experience, cultural understanding, language skills, and strong community connections make them a truly unique and talented workforce. We continue to build our platform with direct feedback from CHWs, and all company staff, regardless of their position and title, spends time on our platform serving as community health workers. In fact, many of our staff, including engineers, are enrolled in CHW training programs to learn critical skills and understand their workflows.
• Finally, “no money, no mission.” Building a technology company in the social impact space certainly still requires having a strong business model, and to do so, you must understand the intricacies of how money flows in the relevant industries and sectors. This can be extra complicated in healthcare and social services space, but now, more than ever before, healthcare companies, public agencies, nonprofits, and philanthropic groups are investing big dollars into creating lasting impact, particularly around the social determinants of health.

Can you share a few best practices that you recommend to safeguard your technology from hackers?

While I’m not a technical founder, my co-founder and CTO has these great tips:

1. Create strong code review infrastructure. Everyone makes mistakes, so make sure that your engineering team has the time and ability to double check each other’s work.
2. Encrypt everything, all the time. At all stages of engineering, data and API calls should be encrypted with modern encryption techniques.
3. Use penetration testing. Automated and manual penetration testing are essential to make sure you haven’t missed anything.
4. Update your dependencies. Most hacks don’t come from issues with your own company’s code, but with another group’s code that may be used. Make sure you are keeping all of these up to date.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

Get out of the house and volunteer. Find a cause that you care about and contribute one or more of the three W’s — wealth, wisdom, and work. And if you don’t have a lot of money to offer or experience to draw wisdom from, then you’re stuck with putting in the time and energy, which happens to also be the best way to learn. Not only will volunteering help you better understand societal issues, but you’ll gain empathy by hearing from those experiencing these hardships and standing alongside practitioners working to address these challenges every single day. You’ll also build valuable connections in this space, so be sure to ask good questions, express your appreciation, and follow up in a timely manner.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them

I’m a big fan of Starbucks — not only do I drink a lot of their coffee and travel the world to visit beautiful Starbucks locations, but I’m infatuated by the Starbucks cultural built under the leadership of Howard Schultz. I’ve read all his books, have a signed and framed picture of him on my wall, and once even tried to get a part-time job at a Starbucks just so I could learn the Starbucks way of training new partners (sadly, I couldn’t even land an interview). In addition to creating person-centered experiences for customers and designing dynamic ‘third spaces,’ Starbucks has also been a leader in incorporating social good into their business. While every corporation can always do more, Starbucks has been a champion for employee education and career development, ethnical sourcing practices, addressing hunger by donating food products to local food banks, and building supportive and sustainable communities through volunteerism and corporate giving. If Howard ever wants to grab a cup of coffee, it’ll be my treat (I have over 4,000 gold stars saved up on my Starbucks app).

How can our readers further follow your work online?

I’m decently active on LinkedIn, so anyone can connect with me there. If you’re a young leader looking to break into the entrepreneurship, let’s chat! I am deeply passionate about helping other young leaders get their foot in the door and especially love supporting underrepresented students working in health equity and social impact.

Thank you so much for the time you spent doing this interview. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success.

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.