Craig Russell’s involvement in healthcare started at Xerox in the early ‘80s when health and wellness programs were an executives-only perk.
Working within Xerox, I could see a need for self-care and self-responsibility in making informed decisions about medical care – but people were lacking the tools to do so. This was long before the internet so unless you had friends who were physicians or nurses, you were at a loss. And many times there were bad outcomes because of that.
When a promotion at Xerox prompted a move from their Rochester, NY headquarters to Santa Clara, CA, a mix of new experiences led Craig from corporate America into the startup world.
I’d grown up in Maine, where you’ve got seven months of winter and then five months of hard sledding. So when I got [to California] and opened the curtains it was like that scene in the Wizard of Oz where everything goes from black and white to color!
Working at Xerox or any large company, it’s so bureaucratic and the inertia is just too great to make big change there. But out in Silicon Valley I was exposed to so many entrepreneurs… so many individuals from all walks of life who were asking, “How can I make an impact?” That led me to getting involved in a number of startups. The first was a startup called Center for Corporate Health where I met self-care pioneer Dr. Donald Vickery, who wrote a book called Take Care of Yourself: A Consumer’s Guide to Medical Care. It was the first time anyone had used algorithms and decision trees to help people make decisions about whether the healthcare issue they were facing required immediate 911 treatment, primary care treatment, or whether it could be resolved by self-care.
This was the beginning of corporate America waking up to the notion of wellness and self-care that is now ubiquitous – and the value it brings in taking care of their most important asset, which is the individual.
Craig’s involvement in startups has taken him all over the country, and his road to SkinIO was a profoundly personal one.
I have a personal connection to Melanoma. I lost my dad in 1992 at the age of 69 to a misdiagnosis around Melanoma. So this is very personal to me in the sense that even clinicians can make mistakes. And when it’s something like this, if it’s not caught early, you’re in for the fight of your life.
In SkinIO, Craig sees a model that balances clinical expertise with product development knowhow – and a mission to enable the self-care he’s advocated throughout his career.
The blend of biomedical engineer in Kyoko [SkinIO’s CEO] and the clinical expertise from the dermatologist perspective [of Co-Founder Dr. JC Lapiere], the blend of those two is good. I’ve seen many businesses fail because they’ve got too much of one or the other: a clinician with a good idea but no business expertise, or it’s all product development but no clinical expertise to demonstrate return-on-investment to the medical and buyer communities.
The thing that impresses me most about individuals is attitude. Kyoko has an amazing attitude toward making a success of this. It’s her mission, and all the curveballs that get thrown, with COVID being the biggest, don’t get her down.
A highlight of Craig’s own self-care routine? Pickleball.
It’s the Baby Boomers’ sport! All our joints are shot from a combination of more is better medical care (NOT) and poor training methods during our athletic youth. And now it’s the one thing we can still do to work up a sweat!
