We are passionate about providing scalable virtual care.

Julia Hu CEO, Co-founder

Julia Hu is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Lark. Founded on the personal experience of having grown up with an undiagnosed chronic condition, Julia is passionate about bringing compassionate care to those struggling with or at risk of chronic disease. Hu was named one of the “Top 10 Women in Tech” by Forbes and was a winner of Inc. Magazine’s “30 under 30”. Prior to founding Lark in 2011, Julia ran global startup incubator, the Clean Tech Open, built a sustainable construction startup, and was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Stanford’s StartX incubator. She is on the board of the Council for Diabetes Prevention and a Singularity University faculty member. Hu received her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees at Stanford University and half of an MBA from MIT Sloan before founding Lark. Julia loves to stay fit with hip hop.

Jeff Zira CTO, Co-founder

As the technical cofounder, Jeff is continuing to discover how to apply technology to bring humanity and connection to people with chronic conditions. Prior to Lark, Jeff co-founded and sold a social networking startup in Japan, co-founded Sanergy, the waterless sanitation startup at MIT that now has 250 employees, architected the backend tools to improve Kiva’s microfinance platform, and Product Managed Yahoo.com’s homepage.

Jeff has a BS from UC Santa Barbara and MBA from MIT Sloan. When possible, Jeff spends at least one whole day each weekend meditating.

Ashley Gibson Vice President of Product

Ashley has a diverse background in building disruptive products for healthcare and consumer technology companies. He led the product organizations for several telehealth companies, from fast growing earlier stage startups like Mindstrong Health to SVP of MDLive- one of the largest telehealth providers in the country. At the Siemens Healthineers Digital Incubator, he led product and customer success. With a deep understanding of the healthcare payer and provider landscape, he has scaled product teams from Series A through to IPO. Earlier in his career he held management positions in healthcare (Epocrates) and in highly-scaled consumer companies (Walmart.com, StubHub/Ebay). Ashley earned an MBA from Warwick Business School, United Kingdom and enjoys trying to keep up with his three teenagers.

Robert Gabbay, MD, PhD Senior Clinical Advisor

Robert A. Gabbay, MD, PhD, has 20 years of clinical and research experience and is Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President at Joslin Diabetes Center. His research focuses on improving primary care health care delivery to enhance diabetes outcomes and patients’ experiences.

Dr. Gabbay served as faculty chair of Pennsylvania’s statewide Chronic Care Model-focused Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) initiative (Chronic Care Initiative) involving more than 150 primary care practices with support from 17 payers. Throughout his career, Dr. Gabbay has been committed to providing the best quality possible to diabetes patients while exceeding the highest national clinical quality measures.

Chris Hewitt Head of Enterprise Healthcare Partnerships

Chris is a highly accomplished healthcare executive with over 30 years of experience commercializing healthcare solutions into provider, payor, employer, and government channels. Prior to Lark, Chris was a founding team member at FastMark, and Vice President of Sales at Krames/StayWell. He is passionate about leveraging technology and new healthcare delivery models to make healthcare affordable, accessible and impactful. He received his BA in History at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Jason Paruthi, MD Medical Director

An entrepreneur and scientist, Jason Paruthi, MD is passionate about translating medical science into practices accessible to patients. Prior to Lark, Jason worked in Life Science strategy consulting for pharma/biotech, medical device and healthcare technology companies. He also co-founded Pangea Nutrition, which provides meals and nutrition education programs for the prevention and management of diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. Jason received his BA and MD from Boston University and is a former trainee and translational research fellow at Harvard Medical School. Outside of work, Jason enjoys trying out new healthy, spicy recipes.

Hallie Higbee Vice President of Account Management

With over 15 years of experience in healthcare and employee well-being at companies like Welltok and Cigna, Hallie is an expert at understanding the needs of clients and their customers, and finding solutions that support their business objectives. Hallie has a track record of managing and developing teams of Program and Account Managers, ensuring delivery of client commitments, operational excellence and a consultative approach. Hallie has an MBA from the Haas School of Business at Berkeley.

Sharon Rapoport Vice President of Data Science & Analytics

As Lark Health’s Vice President of Data Science and Analytics, Sharon leads a dynamic team whose efforts inform the behavioral interventions at the heart of Lark’s products. Our data team is focused on applying A.I and ML models to personalize the Lark coaching experience, identify and enhance clinical outcomes, and drive member engagement.

Prior to Lark, Sharon helped lead Data Science initiatives at a number of successful startups, including Plaid, the data-driven FinTech platform acquired by Visa in 2019 for $5.65 billion. Sharon received her B.Sc in Physics from MIT and her Ph.D in Astrophysics.

William Beyer Chief Financial Officer

Bill has been working with Lark since 2018. He is transactionally-skilled, having negotiated and closed numerous financings and M&A deals, been a key contributor to an IPO and follow-on, and conducted commerce in over twenty countries worldwide. Previously, he served as Advising CFO of Tubi.tv resulting in an acquisition by Fox (NASDAQ: FOX), COO and CFO of Raydiance, Inc. resulting in an acquisition by Coherent, Inc. (NASDAQ: COHR) and as CFO of Bitfone Corporation where he was instrumental in its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), among other venture-backed companies as CFO. Bill is a CPA (inactive) and holds a Bachelor of Science in Commerce degree in Accounting from Santa Clara University. He is a guest lecturer for the Sonoma State University School of Business and Economics and, has served on the Board of Directors for a technology company and as a Trustee for an educational institution.

Marie Zolezzi Vice President of People Operations

Marie Zolezzi has contributed to the HR function for high-tech, pre-IPO companies in the SF bay and Seattle areas. She has also led HR initiatives for companies including Intuit, Sun Microsystems and financial institutions including Wells Fargo Bank. Her consulting practice is known as a leading provider of consultative HR services to emerging-growth companies in Silicon Valley. Working with management to facilitate the growth of companies, Marie has directed management development, staffing, compensation and employee relations efforts for several decades. Marie is a skilled HR practitioner with unique expertise in HR business partnering.

Stephane Fourdrinier Vice President of Platform & Engineering

Stephane is responsible for the company’s platform and engineering teams. He joins Lark with two decades of experience leading the engineering teams and scaling companies like InVision (VP Engineering), 8x8 (VP Global Infrastructure), Tinder (Director of Engineering), PlayStation (Director of Engineering), Apple (Head of Maps Infrastructure), and Goldman Sachs (Engineering).

Stephane is a Senior Leader with extensive proven experience in systems, applications, and infrastructure engineering, spanning the whole life cycle starting from team building, to architecting, building and supporting highly scalable and highly available infrastructures and operations.

Vadim Axelrod Vice President of Partnerships & Integrations

Vadim is a customer-focused technologist with a passion for delivering revolutionary technological solutions to real-world problems for users. He is responsible for engineering processes, technical partnerships and security at Lark. For the last 2 decades, Vadim has founded and scaled transformational VC-backed companies in the health care technology, networking, real estate technology, security and educational technology as CTO and VP of Engineering including Rentals.com as co-founder and CTO (acquired by Primedia) and Business Signatures as Principal Technologist (acquired by Entrust).

Vadim holds an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University and loves broadway shows and playing ultimate frisbee.

Jonathan Fielding, MD, MPH Senior Clinical Advisor

Jonathan Fielding is a Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management and of Pediatrics in the Schools of Public Health and Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Fielding is an expert in public health preparedness and communications.

He served as Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health and for 16 years as Public Health Director and Health Officer for Los Angeles County. In this capacity, he was responsible for the county’s public health response to numerous infectious disease threats. He served as a founding member of the U.S. Clinical Preventive Services Task Force and, for 17 years, as Chair of the U.S. Task Force on Community Preventive Services. He chaired the Advisory Committee for the U.S. Healthy People 2020 objectives and is currently Co-Chair for the Healthy People 2030 objectives. He was appointed by President Barak Obama to the National Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion and Integrative and Public Health, and is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Fielding founded the UCLA Center for Health Advancement, which models policies and programs to cost-effectively improve health and health equity and also researches waste in medical care. He is also a founder and co-director of the UCLA Center for Healthy Climate Solutions, which focuses on protecting human health from the harmful effects of climate change. He has authored or coauthored more than 300 original articles, commentaries, editorials and chapters on various aspects of public health, preventive medicine, health services, and health economics. He is the longstanding editor of the Annual Review of Public Health and currently writes a monthly opinion column on health issues for The Hill.

Dr. Fielding holds MD, MPH, and MA degrees from Harvard University and an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. His honors include the UCLA Medal, the Sedgwick Medal, and the Roemer, Fries and Porter prizes, as well as honorary doctorates. The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health is named for him and his wife Karin.

Robert Gabbay, MD, PhD Senior Medical Advisor

Robert A. Gabbay, MD, PhD, has 20 years of clinical and research experience and is Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President at Joslin Diabetes Center. His research focuses on improving primary care health care delivery to enhance diabetes outcomes and patients’ experiences.

Dr. Gabbay served as faculty chair of Pennsylvania’s statewide Chronic Care Model-focused Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) initiative (Chronic Care Initiative) involving more than 150 primary care practices with support from 17 payers. Throughout his career, Dr. Gabbay has been committed to providing the best quality possible to diabetes patients while exceeding the highest national clinical quality measures.