About this episode

Mary Varghese Presti discusses her journey from pediatric nursing to leading healthcare AI at Microsoft.

Mary Varghese Presti didn't plan to end up running healthcare AI for one of the most powerful technology companies on earth. She came to the United States at four years old, the daughter of an Indian nurse recruited by Penn Medicine during India's brain drain era. Growing up in Philadelphia in the shadow of one of the world's top nursing schools, she watched her mother and many of the women in her Indian community use the nursing profession as a vehicle for immigration, education, and female empowerment in a generation where very few professional doors were open to them. She began her career as a pediatric nurse at Johns Hopkins. On the floors, she saw everything in a single shift: early cases of congenital HIV, double lung transplants in young children, East Baltimore asthmatic exacerbations. And she kept asking the same question over and over again: why is healthcare organized this way? That single question became a career. From bedside nursing she moved into consulting, working on harmonizing clinical quality measures across NCQA, NQF, AMA and CMS, foundational work that paved the way for value-based care. She helped shape the policy framework that led to meaningful use and…

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