Dr. Tarul Kode: Betting On Systems: The Leadership Moment In Women's Health
February 26, 2026
Dr. Tarul Kode
Betting On Systems: The Leadership Moment In Women’s Health
Recently, I wrote about betting on myself. It was a reflection on leaving a long career in managed care to step into healthcare venture and company building. I chose alignment over comfort. Conviction over predictability. That decision reshaped my path.
Today, I am thinking about a different kind of bet. On systems.
As a member of the 2026 Women’s Health Council at Springboard Enterprises, I have the privilege of advising and learning from founders and investors who are reshaping the future of healthcare. Springboard has played a catalytic role in expanding access to capital and elevating women innovators across the ecosystem.
The visibility we are seeing in women’s health today matters. But visibility is not infrastructure.
Reflecting on JPM 2026, one of the most consequential conversations centered on a data-driven reframing of women’s health as an investment category. In Follow the Exits: Why Women’s Health is a Smart Bet in Healthcare, Anna Jeter and Emma Giancarlo of AOA Dx analyzed 276 women’s health exits over a 25-year period. Their findings are unequivocal.
More than $100 billion in realized exit value has been generated in women’s health since 2000.
Of the 159 transactions with disclosed values, $91.5 billion occurred between 2000 and 2024.
Nearly half of all exits happened in the past five years.
Twenty-three companies surpassed $1 billion in exit value.
Diagnostics delivered median exits exceeding broader healthcare benchmarks by more than 2×, with capital efficiency ratios above 12×.
Strategic acquirers drove 91 percent of transactions.
This is not a nascent category. It is a scaled, durable market that has been historically misclassified and under-measured. That distinction matters. When performance is mismeasured, capital follows flawed assumptions.
The Gap Isn’t Returns. It’s Infrastructure.
Across my career, I have worked at the intersection of clinical care, venture capital, strategic partnerships, and philanthropy. I have seen innovation succeed and stall for reasons that have little to do with science and everything to do with capital design, governance discipline, and ecosystem coordination.
The women’s health capital gap is often framed as a question of opportunity. The evidence suggests it is a question of architecture.
If more than $100 billion in exit value has already been realized, the issue is not whether women’s health generates returns. It is whether our capital frameworks are calibrated to recognize its full scope.
Historically, women’s health was narrowly defined as reproductive care. Yet only a small percentage of women’s disease burden is exclusive to female biology. The vast majority arises from conditions that affect women disproportionately or differently, including oncology, cardiometabolic disease, autoimmune disorders, neurodegeneration, and chronic conditions
When those exits were categorized under broader healthcare verticals, the performance of women’s health as a cohesive investment segment was obscured.
Infrastructure requires us to widen the lens. Women’s health is not a thematic investment lane. It is a primary determinant of economic productivity, multigenerational stability, and population health.
Capital Allocation Is a Leadership Decision
Capital allocation is not neutral. It signals what we value. It shapes which companies scale. It determines which innovations survive long enough to mature.
The Follow the Exits data demonstrate that women’s health companies have not only exited at scale, but done so efficiently.
Yet prevention, early detection, menopause, neurodegeneration, and cardiometabolic health in women remain undercapitalized relative to disease burden.
That mismatch is not about viability. It is about conviction. Curiosity enters markets when headlines shift. Conviction builds systems that endure beyond cycles.
The capital gap in women’s health is not about returns. It is about resolve.
Reclaiming Agency Through Investment
For me, betting on systems became deeply personal during a period of profound transition. After my divorce, I made a conscious decision to reclaim my agency — not only professionally, but financially. Around the same time, my daughter was healing from a pancreatic tumor. That experience reshaped my understanding of what innovation truly means for families navigating uncertainty.
I chose to become an investor not simply to participate, but to help shape the system itself. I became one of the earliest investors in Persephoni Bio, and ultimately a builder within it — a woman-led biotech venture studio redrawing the map for how oncology, rare disease, and immunology companies are built and scaled to reach patients with greater rigor and speed.
I did not invest because it was easy. I invested because it aligned with my values.
We are living through a period that feels heavy across healthcare and society. Trust in institutions is fragile. Patients are navigating increasing complexity. Scientific advancement is accelerating, yet translation remains uneven.
In that environment, governance is not bureaucracy. It is protection. Regulatory fluency is not friction. It is strategy. Philanthropic alignment is not ancillary. It is upstream risk mitigation.
As a mother of two teenagers, I think often about the systems they will inherit. The healthcare infrastructure we design today will shape the care they receive decades from now.
That perspective changes how I evaluate opportunity. It changes what I am willing to bet on.
From Momentum to Infrastructure
The data confirm what many of us working in this field have long believed: women’s health is not emerging. It is evolving. Nearly half of all exits have occurred in the past five years. Billion-dollar transactions are no longer anomalies. Strategic acquirers are repeat buyers.
Momentum is real. The leadership question now is whether we translate that momentum into infrastructure. Betting on systems in women’s health means:
- Deploying capital with conviction, not opportunism.
- Integrating regulatory and clinical expertise early.
- Designing diagnostics and therapeutics with sex-specific data from the start.
- Bridging venture and philanthropy so prevention and early detection do not stall.
- Building cross-sector partnerships so innovation is not siloed.
Springboard has demonstrated what ecosystem building looks like when leaders are supported early and surrounded by community and access. That work is foundational.
Now we have an opportunity to deepen it.
To align capital allocation with disease burden. To correct legacy misclassification that obscured value. To treat women’s health as infrastructure, not adjacency.
Betting on disruption can feel bold. Betting on systems is quieter. But systems are what endure.
In women’s health, endurance will determine whether this moment becomes a legacy — or another missed inflection point.
About Dr. Tarul Kode
Tarul Kode, PharmD is Vice President of Partnerships & Alliance Management at Persephoni Bio, where she shapes how biotech and philanthropy work together to deliver enduring impact for patients and communities. Persephoni is a hybrid venture studio and private equity platform advancing breakthrough therapies across oncology, immunology, and rare disease. In her role, Tarul leads Persephoni’s highest-priority strategic partnerships across industry, academia, philanthropy, and the broader innovation ecosystem, working to build durable, values-aligned collaborations and long-term value creation. She also plays a leadership role in Persephoni’s philanthropic and public-benefit efforts, focused on advancing early biomedical research, prevention, and early detection.
A healthcare and life sciences executive, board member, advisor, and angel investor, Tarul brings more than two decades of experience across clinical care, venture partnerships, investing, and advising healthcare organizations and startups. Her work centers on supporting purpose-driven leaders and building ecosystems where innovation, accountability, and real-world impact reinforce one another.
Tarul also serves on boards or advises several mission-aligned organizations, including Executive Women in Bio, Women Leaders of the World / How Women Lead, CSweetener by HLTH Foundation, and Springboard Enterprises. She was named one of the 2025 BLOC100 Most Impactful Women of Color and Allies in biopharma, healthcare, and life sciences. She holds a Doctorate in Pharmacy (cum laude), completed Harvard Medical School’s Executive Global Health Care Leaders Program (Cohort 1), and is an alumna of VC University through Berkeley Law, NVCA, and Venture Forward.
Based in the greater Seattle area, Tarul is also a mother of two teenagers, grounding her leadership in service, accountability, and responsibility to the next generation.
