While no one was looking, we started from scratch and created the first half-price, whole-you healthcare system. It’s a thriving marketplace where brilliant doctors get connected with our loyal and loving patients. We’ve saved them over $25 million dollars, and we’re just getting started.
Saving people money on doctors and specialists every day.
500K+Patients treated
$47M+Saved by patients
60%Saved per appointment
95%Patient satisfaction
10K+Doctors & specialists
80+Specialties
Our Leadership
Meet our team of healthcare experts, doctors, and visionaries defining the future of healthcare.
David Goldhill
Co-founder, CEO
In 2009 David wrote a cover story for the Atlantic titled "How American Healthcare Killed My Father." That turned into a book - “Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about Health Care Is Wrong” - which catapulted David to a leading voice for health care advocacy. Those transformative concepts then turned into Sesame, a company that is revolutionizing the delivery of health care to the millions who remain shut out of the system with a direct-pay marketplace that delivers half-priced health care from primary care to specialists.
David is also chair of The Leapfrog Group, the nation’s leading advocate for health care transparency. Prior to reinventing a third of the U.S. economy, David served as President and CEO of the Game Show Network and President of TV at Universal Studios.
Michael Botta
Co-founder
Everything Michael has done in his career has led to the Sesame moment, where his role is to oversee all sales, partnerships and clinician relationships.
Michael spent five years at McKinsey & Co, leading multi-million-dollar projects to find solutions to healthcare’s biggest problems: pricing; quality measurement; catalyzing competition in the U.S. and abroad to drive better results. Michael received his PhD in Health Economics and Policy from Harvard and has advised The White House Office of Management and Budget, Brookings Institution, and the State of Massachusetts on health reform legislation and implementation.
John Fontein
Co-founder
John’s role as the operational leader at Sesame draws upon his proven ability to scale businesses while maintaining their entrepreneurial cultures. Prior to co-founding Sesame, John served as General Manager at GoEuro, where he drove revenue growth from zero to over $100M. John founded and sold his music production company, Relabel, after starting his career at Goldman Sachs.
Dr. Marty Makary, MD, MPH
Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Makary is a pioneering pancreatic surgeon and professor of health policy at Johns Hopkins. Named one of the most influential people in healthcare by HealthLeaders Magazine, Dr. Makary contributes to The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, TIME, Newsweek, CNN, and is a sought-after interviewee on NBC, Fox News and other outlets.
It is Dr. Makary’s vision to transform healthcare; as Wikipedia notes, he is “an advocate for disruptive innovation" such as The Surgical Checklist, which he developed at Johns Hopkins, and was later popularized in Atul Gawande best-selling book The Checklist Manifesto. Dr. Makary is also a New York Times best-selling author whose latest book, “The Price We Pay,” ignited a national dialogue around America’s broken healthcare system.
Dr. Allison Edwards, MD
Medical Director
Dr. Edwards is Sesame’s Medical Director and founder of Kansas City Direct Primary Care, a primary care facility that aims to build stronger relationships between doctors and patients and make healthcare easier for all involved.
Michael has a keen understanding of how to communicate meaningfully with consumers to build market-defining ecommerce businesses. He is best known for launching and building the go-to-market strategy for alcohol delivery service Drizly (acquired by Uber). He has also held leadership roles at the National Hockey League, e-retailer Rue La La and popular mobile app GasBuddy. For his work at the NHL, Michael was named to PR Week Magazine’s prestigious “40 Under 40” list.
Max Metral
Chief Technology Officer
Max Metral is an accomplished entrepreneur and technology leader recognized for his pioneering work in artificial intelligence, personalization, and distributed identity systems. With a distinguished career spanning decades, Max has founded five successful technology companies, taking one public and selling three others. He held high-profile positions at renowned companies such as PayPal and Microsoft, where he played pivotal roles in driving innovation. Max's exceptional technical expertise and leadership skills have garnered recognition throughout his career. Today, he remains actively engaged in the tech industry, leveraging his extensive knowledge and expertise to drive innovation and growth as an advisor and mentor.
Kris Hoffman
VP Provider & Customer Success
Kris oversees the clinician accounts and customer service teams at Sesame. Kris has led operations in the health tech and care delivery space, and most recently spent time launching primary care facilities for the Medicaid population at CareMore Health. Prior to CareMore, Kris worked on operations at Flatiron Health and was an early team member at Oscar, where she helped scale the member services and clinical operations teams. Kris received her MPH from New York University.
Lauren Monk
VP Marketing
Lauren oversees all user acquisition efforts at Sesame, spanning direct-to-consumer and B2B. Prior to joining Sesame, Lauren was the VP of marketing at GasBuddy where she developed cross-channel marketing strategies to drive awareness, adoption and repeat utilization of newly developed product features. She has held management roles at a number of startups including Drizly where she built marketing channels from the ground up to support new user acquisition within a new on demand marketplace.
Our team believes that health care is personal, and the best way to make health care affordable and accessible is to strip away layers of bureaucracy and make it easier for patients and providers to connect directly.
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