Tip of the Spear: Nina Williams, Director at Mount Sinai Ventures

November 25, 2025

By The Artemis Fund
The Artemis Fund believes technology can create prosperity for all. With offices in New York, Texas, Massachusetts, and Nevada, Artemis leads seed rounds for companies creating resilient families, individuals, and businesses across the US.
Tip of the Spear is an interview series highlighting The Artemis Fund’s expert network. In this edition, we sat down with Nina Williams, Associate Director at Mount Sinai Ventures.

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Q: Let’s start with your first job. What was it, and what did you learn from it?
A: My entry into the working world was interesting. My uncle owns a private dental practice, and starting around age 10, I’d shadow his clinic every summer. Like many private practices, he was limited by the payers he could contract with, and I found that discouraging.
My first official job was with the Syracuse Community Health Center, a local FQHC (Federally Qualified Health Center) in upstate New York. I joined as a student dental assistant in the emergency dental unit, and while challenging at times, it was one of the most rewarding experiences I have had to date.
From that role, I learned curiosity and compassion at a very early age. Our facility treated patients of all backgrounds, never turning individuals away based on socioeconomic status. This exposure taught me to listen and understand patient stories at an early age, and I maintained that role through college, about eight years total. I was grateful the leadership team kept calling me back every summer. I saw patient longevity firsthand and experienced compassionate care delivery in real time.
Q: Your career sits at the intersection of healthcare operations and venture. How did you get from those early experiences to what you do now?
A: Everyone seems to arrive at investing through different paths. After grad school at Mount Sinai, I joined a rotation-based Healthcare Administrative Fellowship sponsored by our Office of DEI. The program is geared to develop future healthcare leaders from underrepresented backgrounds.
The fellowship allowed me an opportunity to rotate across teams for weeks to months at a time, doing project-based work, becoming deeply immersed, and receiving mentorship from leaders across the system. That included my current supervisor, our Managing Director of Ventures (safe to say that rotation was my favorite).
Fortunately, I was tapped for all of my subsequent roles based on strong relationships built from the Administrative Fellowship program. Over what has felt like a whirlwind of time, I transitioned into ambulatory (outpatient) operations right as COVID hit. I was later recruited by our VP of Pharmacy Operations to support strategic planning and analysis for Sinai on behalf of our system pharmaceutical wholesaler at the time, AmerisourceBergen (now Cencora). In this role, I worked closely with Sinai’s Chief of Pharmacy to identify pain points and relay them back to the wholesaler.
During my time spent with Pharmacy, my Managing Director of Ventures reached out with an opportunity on the Ventures team, leaving me beyond thrilled to pivot to health system corporate venture. It’s exactly where I wanted to be.
Q: Mount Sinai sits at the crossroads of health systems and innovation. How do you see the role of CVCs in healthcare evolving?
A: It might help to give quick context on Mount Sinai Ventures. We’re the strategic investment arm of the health system and have been investing formally since 2008. Our portfolio spans corporate development assets and early-stage health tech. We also maintain ambulatory investments that expand our outpatient footprint, strengthening our presence in key markets.
More recently, we developed a care-delivery joint venture focused on anesthesia with a PE-backed strategic partner, and these deal opportunities are what we’d like to sharpen our pencils on.
In my role, I manage relationships with our portfolio companies to maximize value, and I support diligence on technologies tied to our strategic initiatives, especially as Sinai undergoes a major enterprise reorg.
Broadly, I see more opportunities for co-investments. It’s easier to bring deals to leadership when like-minded institutions are involved, who can ultimately help de-risk decisions, especially when their capabilities complement ours. We recognize that with the care delivery ecosystem changing, health systems can’t do everything alone. We look for partners with strong clinical or operational models, proprietary tech, and access to capital.
Q: Building on that, how do health systems partner with or evaluate early-stage companies?
A: On the corporate development side, we track shifts in payer reimbursement, especially the movement of certain procedures from inpatient or hospital outpatient departments (HOPD) to ambulatory surgery centers. We pay close attention to areas CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) is actively evaluating for potential site-of-care shifts. For example, we have an eye on cardiac and complex spine procedures that CMS is reviewing, and will likely approve for ambulatory/outpatient settings very soon.
Our surgery centers are geographically diverse to not only expand patient access, but also appeal to our physician enterprise. We recognize that physicians want cutting-edge tools in these new care settings. When solutions are a good fit for these environments, we’re open to pilots so our care teams can test tools they may not have been able to access in traditional hospital settings.
On the innovation side of our portfolio, we maintain a close pulse on consumer-driven care. I recently evaluated a digital pharmacy solution that allows clinicians and patients to choose prescription routing pathways: hospital pickup, home delivery, etc. That autonomy is increasingly important.
Patients care more about healthspan, not just lifespan. We’re seeing that reflected in engagement and expectations.
Q: Based on your experience, what signals readiness or value for strategic investors?
A: Two big things. First, founders who know their internal champion vs. who the actual decision-maker is key. Oftentimes, if Sinai can leverage a solution that is already built into our workflows (e.g. EPIC), we will likely choose that path for ease of integration. Strong founders must clearly articulate why we need them, and not an internal build. Second, we seek founders that have alignment with specific clinical or operational gaps that have been determined as enterprise-wide pain points across our system. Historically, we only invest in solutions Sinai is using or formally contracting with.
To streamline our investing workflows, we recently implemented a detailed venture analysis scorecard covering: Founder & team, solution, market impact, GTM, fundraise, and overall impact to Sinai. If a company scores lower in an area, we dig deeper in diligence. We also heavily value validation from other AMCs (Academic Medical Centers), especially if they’re already customers or investors.
Q: What traits stand out in resilient founders?
A: There’s no single trait, but grit, consistency, and flexibility carry weight for us. Health system CVCs typically come with some level of bureaucracy and red tape, and our approval process is very formal. If we bring a solution to Investment Committee, we have to believe in the workflow just as much as the founder does, because the impact on patients and employees is very real.
Q: Talk to me about a trend or founder you’re excited about right now.
A: I’m really excited about concierge and precision medicine, more from a personal interest than a current enterprise focus. I love using wearables like my Oura ring and Apple Watch, and the idea of turning daily data into actionable insights for care teams is compelling.
While concierge care is still limited to specific populations, I’m curious how companies will democratize and further integrate it into mainstream care delivery.
Q: If you weren’t doing what you do now, what problem would you still be obsessed with solving?
A: If I wasn’t in healthcare investing, I’d love to turn my attention to investing in human capital and further accelerating the next pipeline of leaders. Over the years, I’ve helped develop curriculum for continuing education programs at Mount Sinai, as well as in tribal communities in Arizona. Creating opportunities for bright students to unlock pathways and take on careers in healthcare administration and more has always been a passion of mine. As I continue building on my own career in capital allocation, prioritizing a mandate for impact investing in education — whether professionally or personally — is an absolute must do for me.
Q: What’s your favorite productivity hack that actually works?
A: It may sound silly, but I love switching up my work location during the week. While our team is actually hybrid, sometimes you may see me at our corporate office near Grand Central or working remotely from a coffee shop. Other times, I may be at one of our ambulatory portfolio companies across the city — one of which is around the corner from Eataly, so I always have a great excuse to stop in and say hi to the team. So much of our work is driven by relationship management, and I find an in-person touch base may an easier conversation than a dozen emails back and forth.
Q: What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received?
A: A mentor once told me: Be authentic with your storytelling, and be proud of your story.
The pandemic reset me in ways I didn’t expect, and unfortunately, I went from being outgoing to very reclusive. Being open with my supervisor about wanting to return to the office and reconnect with various teams helped me rebuild confidence.
Sharing the full arc of my journey, including the strengths and low points, has shaped who I am, and I think being honest about it matters.
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