Leadership Team

World-Class Expertise

Spanning clinical medicine, AI technology, regulatory affairs, and healthcare innovation — united by a mission to transform surgical care.

Executive Leadership

  • Adam Schlifke, MD, MBA

    Founder

    Stanford Healthcare & UCSF

    Board-certified anesthesiologist with extensive perioperative medicine experience and an MBA from UCLA, combining clinical expertise with business insight to address inefficiencies in surgical pathways.

    Proven leader in strategy and execution, responsible for building strategic partnerships, and providing clinical oversight for product deployment.

    Previous roles include Attending Anesthesiologist at Stanford and Kaiser, and advisor/investor to early-stage healthcare startups focused on growth and market entry.

  • Brent McCullough

    Cofounder & CPO

    UC Berkeley

    Founder and product leader with a track record of launching innovative AI platforms at scale.

    Expertise in building multi-agent architectures, high-performance data intelligence systems, and scalable SaaS platforms.

    Proven success in executive roles leading product strategy, engineering excellence, and rapid organizational growth at startups and high-growth companies.

    MBA executive with deep technical roots and strong experience in mentoring teams, scaling operations, and delivering enterprise-grade solutions.

  • Kul Bhushan

    Cofounder & CTO

    Cisco, Kaiser Permanente, Baxter Healthcare

    Technology leader with expertise in engineering, security, and compliance across healthcare, fintech, and medical devices.

    Proven track record founding and scaling technology companies.

    MBA and CISSP-certified, combining strategic leadership with technical expertise.

    Focused on building scalable, AI-driven systems balancing innovation and compliance.

  • Alan Young, MD, MBA

    CMO

    USC & Kaiser Permanente

    Physician innovator with MD/MBA from USC, blending clinical expertise with strategic leadership in healthcare transformation.

    Combines clinical care at Kaiser Permanente with strategic advisory roles at Deloitte and USC Care.

    Former CMO at GYANT/Fabric and Safe Health, with consulting experience at McKinsey, Accenture, and Slalom.

    Expert in digital health, Epic/Cerner systems, virtual care, and AI-driven clinical decision support.

  • Anita Samarth

    COO

    Clinovations & DigitalDx Ventures

    Nationally recognized executive in digital health platform strategy, customer operations, and health data infrastructure. As CEO at Clinovations and LP at DigitalDx Ventures, she helps early and growth-stage companies, and their customers, scale their delivery models and leads teams that modernize federal, state, and local health data infrastructure.

    Extensive experience in digital health platform strategy and customer operations, with a proven track record of helping companies scale their delivery models.

    Leadership roles focused on modernizing health data infrastructure across federal, state, and local levels.

    Investment and advisory expertise through DigitalDx Ventures, supporting early and growth-stage healthcare technology companies.

  • Steven Toomey

    CFO

    UCLA Anderson School of Management

    Chief Financial Officer bringing financial leadership and strategic oversight to PeriOptima’s growth initiatives.

    Data-driven finance executive with 22 years of experience, including 13 on senior leadership teams primarily at high-growth SaaS companies (seed stage to ~$100M ARR going IPO).

    Ex-investment banker and frequent first G&A hire, with a track record building finance, accounting, HR, FP&A, etc. from the ground up, guiding capital decisions, leading M&A, advising CEOs, and bridging finance, strategy, and technology.

    Two years of professional coding experience.

Founders

  • Zehan Li (Leo)

    Founding AI Architect

    Clinical AI architect and biomedical informaticist with 7 years of experience developing and evaluating scalable clinical data systems and real-world AI applications. Expert in designing end-to-end data pipelines, OMOP ETL standardization, and leveraging NLP/LLMs for clinical and psychiatric phenotyping.

  • Maksim Daibov

    Founding Engineer

    Serial Entrepreneur-Engineer with broad experience in engineering, AI development, and product innovation across multiple industries. Proven track record of building from the ground up — creating teams, establishing processes, and launching products from concept to scale.

  • Edward Turpin

    Founding Engineer

    Full-stack applications and leading engineering teams; proven track record building production APIs, scalable cloud infrastructure, and data-intensive platforms from concept to deployment. Experienced in designing and training ML models for real-world applications, including custom architectures for image classification trained on large-scale datasets.

Board

  • Jeffrey Pfeffer

    Professor of Organizational Behavior

    Stanford Graduate School of Business

    Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford GSB since 1979; previously on faculty at Illinois and UC Berkeley with visiting posts at Harvard, LBS, SMU, Copenhagen Business School, and IESE.

    Prolific author and commentator — 16 books (e.g., Power; Leadership BS; Dying for a Paycheck) and 160+ articles/chapters — host of the “Pfeffer on Power” podcast and former columnist for Business 2.0 and Capital.

    Advisor and board member to companies and nonprofits (e.g., Collective Health, Quantum Leap Healthcare, SF Playhouse); has taught/consulted in 40 countries; honors include the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame and the Academy of Management’s Richard D. Irwin Award (honorary doctorate, Tilburg University).

Subject Matter Experts

  • A. Sassan Sabouri, MD

    Anesthesia & Perioperative Clinical Advisor

    Extensive clinical expertise in anesthesiology, particularly in perioperative AI and patient safety, ensuring PeriOptima’s solutions are directly applicable to surgical settings.

  • James Xie, MD

    Pediatric Anesthesia and Health IT Leader

    Board certified pediatrician, anesthesiologist, and clinical informaticist with extensive experience in leveraging clinical decision support tools to improve clinical processes.

  • Hesameddin Eghlimi, MD

    Surgical Excellence & Liver Transplant Expert

    Expert fourteen year surgeon, ten as a liver transplant surgeon, at one of the busiest hospitals in the world. A leader in developing the best in care for surgery patients.

Advisors

  • Richard S. Isaacs, MD, FACS

    Strategic Healthcare Leadership Advisor

    Dean, CNU; Professor of Otolaryngology. Led full LCME accreditation and serves on AAMC’s Education Committee. Former CEO, The Permanente Medical Group & Mid-Atlantic Permanente, overseeing 5.4M members and 12k physicians/45k staff. Pioneered Kaiser’s first trauma center and EMR; integrated telemedicine and AI. Recognized among Modern Healthcare’s most influential leaders.

  • Matthew Holt

    Digital Health & Market Strategy Advisor

    Renowned health technology expert and strategist with 30 years of experience, providing invaluable insights into navigating the complex healthcare landscape and market dynamics.

  • Iliyan Zlatkov

    Strategic Financial Advisor

    Finance professional with over 10 years of experience in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, private equity and VC, offers crucial guidance on fundraising and business development.

  • Michael Banks, MD

    Business Development & Strategic Partnerships Advisor

    Experienced business executive with a demonstrated history in the medical and healthcare industries, focusing on strategic growth, operational excellence, and integrating AI. Skilled in business development, partnership building, and market expansion.

  • Jamey Edwards

    Healthcare Industry & Social Impact Advisor

    Serial social impact founder on a mission to fix healthcare. Built well recognized healthcare industry leaders including Cloudbreak Health (now Equiti), Emergent Medical Associates and others.

  • Sergei Polevikov

    Healthcare AI Founder and Author

    Decades of deep experience in math, statistics, and AI, with four graduate degrees spanning mathematics, economics, finance, and machine learning. Author of 30+ peer-reviewed publications and manuscripts. Driven by a relentless pursuit of brutal truth in healthcare. Healthcare fraud investigator. Runs the podcast “Digital Health Inside Out” and authors the widely influential Substack “AI Health Uncut”.

  • Michael Gallagher, MD, MBA, MPH

    Clinical Physician & Systems Engineering Advisor

    Experienced clinical physician specializing in musculoskeletal injuries and treatment and preventive care for population medicine. Has over 20 years of experience in data wrangling, AI taming and product ambassadorship which build upon a solid foundation as a systems engineer.

  • Jacob Reider, MD

    Health IT & Regulatory Strategy Advisor

    Former Deputy National Coordinator of Health IT at HHS, Chief Health Officer at multiple health tech companies including Wavely Diagnostics, CEO of Huddle Health Solutions, and Co-Founder of several health technology ventures. Expert in health technology transformation and regulatory navigation.

  • Bill Cherniak, MD

    Digital Health & Emergency Medicine Advisor

    Emergency physician, co-founder and board chair of Bridge to Health Medical and Dental, and founder/CEO of Rocket Doctor, a digital health platform connecting physicians with rural and Medicaid patients in Canada and the U.S. Published researcher (NEJM, Lancet, Academic Medicine) and speaker on digital health and global public health; holds an MPH from Johns Hopkins (Sommer Scholar), is Associate Faculty at Johns Hopkins, and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto.

Combined Expertise

Ready to Transform Healthcare?

Join our mission to revolutionize perioperative care with AI-driven innovation.

  • Clinical Excellence

    Stanford, UCSF, and Kaiser Permanente clinical leadership with deep perioperative expertise.

  • Technology Innovation

    AI engineering, healthcare ML expertise, and scalable platform development.

  • Regulatory & Market

    FDA regulatory experience, healthcare market strategy, and investment banking expertise.

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