Mary Minno first met Esther Wojcicki when she was 15.
Walking into Wojcicki’s journalism class at Palo Alto High School, she was new to Silicon Valley. About 20 years later, Minno’s still in the area—and after nearly a decade in Big Tech, most recently at Google, she’s teaming up with her former teacher. Wojcicki—often called the Godmother of Silicon Valley—has joined Minno to launch Treehub, a residency program focused on academic founders in biotech and healthcare.
“Our idea is to bridge labs-to-launch for the best and brightest computational health builders out of academic circles,” said Minno, who became interested in healthcare amid the trials of her last pregnancy and the difficult diagnosis of a loved one. “I became a little bit problem-obsessed. And I’m a student of Esther’s: I believe in iterating on things until they’re correct. I couldn’t believe that we can let the healthcare system operate the way it does. All of us wind up in that bed one day.”…