In Conversation: Breaking Barriers

To celebrate Women’s History Month this year, we invited our Board Member Nikia Bergan to moderate an eye-opening panel for our RubiconMD family featuring special guests, Dr. Neema Kaseje and Asahi Pompey to discuss the various barriers women face inside and outside of corporate settings, the healthcare disparities on women of color, and insightful advice on how women can actualize their goals and potentiality.

We wanted to share their inspiring stories and wisdom with the rest of the world! This discussion was live on Tuesday, 3/23/2021 and recorded for external presentation.

About Nikia Bergan

RubiconMD Board Member / President, GetWellNetwork

Nikia Bergan leads the domestic and international footprint. In this role, she drives long-term growth strategy and ensures integration and alignment across functions and business units. 

Her growth strategy focuses on strategic partnerships, a commitment bolstered by Nikia’s 20 years of experience working with strategic account executives at leading health systems. Her holistic approach to serving key accounts is pivotal to GetWellNetwork’s success in securing partnerships with some of the largest, most progressive health systems in the country. 

Nikia also has a passion for recruiting, cultivating, and advancing key talent, with a focus on diversity. Guided by an understanding of the strategic priorities and challenges facing hospitals and health systems, Nikia leads cross-functional teams in sales, client services, and marketing.

She also leverages nearly two decades of experience gained through a variety of sales and client service leadership positions at The Advisory Board Company and Optum Insights to steer the company’s government, pediatrics, and international business segments.

About Dr. Neema Kaseje

Pediatric Surgeon, Public Health Specialist, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader

Dr Neema Kaseje is a pediatric surgeon and public health specialist. She is an expert in building pediatric surgical care delivery with previous experience in Kenya, Haiti, Congo, CAR, and Liberia.

In Haiti, she served as the only pediatric surgeon in the public sector and scaled up pediatric surgical care delivery in the region through the training of junior doctors. As a result, her team was able to double the number of children accessing life saving pediatric surgical care. Similarly in Liberia, she was part of the first cohort of surgeons stationed to the first pediatric surgical program by a humanitarian organization such as Doctors Without Borders. Once again, she emphasized training and the setting of minimum standards and protocols as the foundation for improving access to pediatric surgical care in complex humanitarian settings.

In Kenya, she has contributed to improved access to pediatric surgical care by leveraging technology and community health workers as powerful forces for the early detection and referral of children in need of life saving surgical care. In Turkana, Kenya, she is mobilizing women leaders to tackle the persistently elevated maternal mortality that is disproportionately affecting adolescent girls. These activities are key to the global conversations on health leadership as a mechanism for improved health, social cohesion, and inclusive economic development.

She is Founding Director of the Surgical Systems Research Group based in Kisumu, Kenya. She is committed to global health equity and improving access to surgical care as a pathway to rapidly achieving Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. She is actively involved in the Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery. She is committed to youth in Africa and recently launched leadership training boot camps for young girls aspiring to be leaders in health, technology, and science. There are plans to hold these leadership training bootcamps in Kakuma in 2020. She was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2017, and was recently appointed as the focal point for the World Health Organization Programme in Emergency and Essential Surgical Care. She is currently leading a Wellcome Trust funded integrated community and health systems based COVID -19 health intervention in Siaya, Kenya.

About Asahi Pompey

Global Head of Corporate Engagement & President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation

Asahi Pompey is Global Head of Corporate Engagement and President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation. She is a member of the Management Committee, Global Diversity Committee and the Sustainable Finance Steering Group. She serves as primary liaison with communities around the world and identifies opportunities to partner with organizations to leverage the firm’s skills and expertise. Some signature programs include: Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women and 10,000 Small Businesses, Goldman Sachs Gives and Community TeamWorks.

Prior to assuming her current role, Ms. Pompey was Co-Chief Compliance Officer of Goldman, Sachs & Co and Global Head of Investment Banking Division (IBD) Compliance, and had responsibility for conduct risk. Ms. Pompey joined Goldman Sachs in 2006 and was named Managing Director in 2010 and partner in 2018.

Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Pompey was an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, where she worked in the New York and Frankfurt offices.