The Health Design Podcast

Karen is a Higher Education Market Leader with expertise in Medical and Health Sciences Education. Passionate about making the world a better place by creating spaces that bring people together, she has contributed to the design innovation of notable projects across the continental US. She specializes in medical, nursing, and health professions higher education facilities including the programming, planning, and detailing of inter-professional immersive simulation suites, active learning classrooms, anatomy labs, and student life spaces. With this deep understanding of unique design requirements, Karen helps institutions develop spaces to serve the current and future needs of the ever-evolving landscape of health sciences education.
She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Virginia Tech with a Minor in Leadership & Social Change, and is a professional member of AIA, NCARB, the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), and the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH).
For your show notes, here is a recent article I wrote about medical school design on SLAM's blog:

https://slamcoll.com/blog/wellness-focused-medical-school-design/

Carolyn Philstrom is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and works as a healthcare chaplain, with experience at both a major academic teaching hospital and in hospice. She lives with her husband Rory and their two children Edan, 7 and Josephine 3. Edan was one of the first humans to be diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy on the newborn screen in Minnesota and was treated before the onset of symptoms. He is a miracle child, developing without signs or symptoms of SMA. She is an independent rare disease advocate, working to advance newborn genomic sequencing, helping SMA patients in other countries create patient advocacy groups, and assists companies who are dedicated to affordable and accessible gene therapies expand and advance their mission. Carolyn is a proud monthly donor to Genomes2People, Dr. Robert Green's (Harvard University) non-profit working to advance genomic medicine.

Most recent blog about our story (2025)
Blog I wrote for Harvard University (2024)
Speech I gave for Harvard University (2024)
Washington Post article about newborn screening
Bloomberg Article about newborn screening

Dr. Tim McLerran is a physician-turned product leader with a mission to bring human and machine intelligence together in the service of clinical challenges. During a research fellowship at the University of California, San Diego, Tim co-developed methods to rapidly measure the molecular milieu of human blood using mass spectrometry. This exposed him to the massive volume of data in precision medicine, and precipitated a realization that artificial intelligence would have to be a part of medicine in order for us to make full use of the data available for each patient. As an entrepreneur and product leader, Tim has developed and deployed systems which provide AI support to clinicians in diagnosis, management, documentation, and patient communication. He is dedicated to the quadruple aim of healthcare, practices user-centered design, favors lean and agile methods of software development, and actively advocates for the ethical principles laid out by the American Medical Association in their November 2024 statement "Augmented Intelligence Development, Deployment, and Use in Health Care.

Perry Ashenfelter is a licensed architect passionate about creating healthier environments that bridge the relationship between architectural design, sustainability, and the urban experience. Her professional work spans a large range of scales from residential to higher education and healthcare, as well as large scale urban resilience projects. Perry has a diverse background with extensive construction management experience and technical training from her studies in structural engineering. She values the importance of considering all perspectives in developing comprehensive and creative solutions in a collaborative manner with project teams. Perry’s academic pursuits have focused on how design, as a tool, enables adaptation and encourages new approaches for sustainability from the building scale to the public realm. She is enthusiastic about increasing carbon literacy and reducing the carbon footprints associated with the built environment.

Most recently, Perry's health care work has included the renovation and expansion of a world class veterinary medical center facility to match the level of care and expertise they provide to their patient community. While the patients receiving care and treatment may appear to have drastically different needs from their human counterparts, designing for the needs of the most vulnerable whether a patient or family member, and designing for the well-being of the care givers inhabiting these spaces supports the vitality of our overall healthcare infrastructure.

Nicole is a well-being centered Industrial-Organizational Psychologist.
Founder of Humanalysts – which is dedicated to democratizing the employee experience. She is an advocate for employee wellbeing and harm reduction, educating employees and employers on what workplace harm, trauma, or abuse can look like and how to stop it. She brings in multidisciplinary experience as an analyst to executives where she’s worked in environmental health and safety research as well as marketing & sales where she led the launch of a multi-billion dollar new business development program, ran the analytics function at a small startup, and built HR analytics and survey infrastructure from the ground up for a fast growing company. She studied Adverse Work Experiences, adapted from Adverse Childhood Experiences, in her doctoral program in Industrial Organizational Psychology and is passionate about creating more humane workplaces.

Dr. Chelsea Turgeon is a business mentor and founder of The Spiritually Ambitious Entrepreneur podcast and community. She left OBGYN residency in 2019 and built a six-figure coaching business from cafés around the world. If you want to build a business that feels like *you*, changes lives, and funds your freedom, subscribe to *The Spiritually Ambitious* Substack.