Lisa Suennen, managing partner at American Heart Association Ventures
The American Heart Association is a nonprofit committed to longer, healthier lives. Its women’s health programs highlight the unique risks women face and drive research, education, and innovation to improve cardiovascular outcomes.
Women’s Cardiovascular Health is finally getting long-overdue attention. At the recent American Heart Association Conference’s Scientific Sessions, researchers highlighted how women continue to be overlooked in both diagnosis and innovation, even though they experience cardiovascular disease distinctly, differently, and disproportionately.
The gaps begin early—through adverse pregnancy outcomes and autoimmune conditions that quietly elevate long-term risk—and extend through diagnostic pathways not built for women’s symptoms or physiology. American Heart Association Ventures aims to close those gaps by investing in solutions that reflect the realities.
Through the Go Red for Women Venture Fund and its venture incubator, Studio Red, the organization is backing companies developing the diagnostics, devices, and care pathways women have long needed. As volunteer AHA president, senior vice president of women’s health, and executive director of the Katz Institute for Women’s Health, Stacey Rosen, MD, has put it, “Women experience cardiovascular disease differently, present differently, and are too often diagnosed too late.”
A Venture Model Built For Women’s Health Innovation
The gap between the burden of heart disease in women and the research dollars devoted to it remains strikingly wide.
Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM) focuses on ensuring women receive the heart health research, screening, and care they need.
American Heart Association Ventures is an unusual presence in venture capital—not a traditional fund, but an innovation platform built inside one of the country’s most influential health nonprofits. It oversees four funding vehicles: the Go Red for Women Venture Fund, Cardeation Capital, the Social Impact Fund, and its venture incubator, Studio Red. Together, they invest in heart and brain health technologies grounded in science.
Despite being mission-driven, these funds are far from philanthropic grants. As Managing Partner at AHA Ventures, Lisa Suennen explains, the same discipline applies as in any institutional venture firm. “There are three things you’ve got to look at every time: Is it a good idea, is it a good business, and is it a good investment?” She oversees $200 million in assets and was recently featured in the Forbes 50 Over 50: Investment.
Still, AHA Venture’s structure lets it pursue innovation that other investors often overlook. Some funds, such as the Social Impact Fund, support models that improve food security, economic mobility, or access to care. Others, like Cardeation Capital, focus on medical devices and scalable cardiovascular technologies. But all share the same goal: translating scientific insight into real-world impact.
The urgency behind that work is well documented. In its global review of women’s heart health, The Lancet wrote: “Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in women globally, yet it continues to be understudied, under-recognised, under-diagnosed, and unde-rtreated in women.”
The Go Red For Women Venture Fund For Heart And Brain Health
Heart health affects women differently, disproportionately, or distinctly.
The American Heart Association is a nonprofit committed to longer, healthier lives. Its women’s health programs highlight the unique risks women face and drive research, education, and innovation to improve cardiovascular outcomes.
Launched to expand the impact of the AHA’s Go Red for Women movement, the Go Red for Women Venture Fund targets mid-stage companies working on conditions that affect women distinctly, differently, or disproportionately. With a $75 million fundraising goal, the fund invests primarily in Series A and B startups—an intentional choice. Although women’s health has gained visibility, the majority of venture dollars still pool in very early seed stages or focus narrowly on fertility, period tracking, or contraception.
The Go Red fund invests elsewhere:
- Cardiovascular and metabolic disease
- Autoimmune disorders
- Neurological conditions such as migraine and stroke
- PCOS and endometriosis
- Alzheimer’s and dementia
- Diagnostic tools for microvascular disease
These categories reflect where women face higher risk, more severe outcomes, or inadequate diagnostic pathways.
“The market for products more attuned to the health of women has shown up more lately than in the past,” Suennen emphasized. “It’s about damn time!”
Global data reinforce her point. According to the British Heart Foundation, “Women are 50% more likely than men to receive the wrong initial diagnosis for a heart attack.” Many of these misdiagnoses stem from the same structural problem: technologies and clinical pathways built for male physiology.
Where Early Women’s Health Innovation Begins: Studio Red
If the Go Red fund accelerates growth-stage companies, Studio Red is where many of their earliest ideas begin. The venture incubator allows AHA Ventures to co-create startups from scratch or partner with clinicians and researchers who have promising insights but need commercial scaffolding.
Two early examples illustrate its breadth:
- Auxira Health, which deploys virtual cardiology teams to relieve burnout among cardiologists and speed access for patients.
- MDisrupt, a marketplace that connects healthcare companies with vetted clinical experts, solves a significant bottleneck in evidence generation and regulatory readiness.
Studio Red’s flexibility enables it to support both high-growth and high-impact opportunities. “We’re working on terrific companies that we expect to scale and grow and create a return—and terrific companies that aren’t particularly fruitful from a return standpoint but have meaningful impact,” Suennen said.
This “impact-first, returns-possible” model is complex for traditional venture firms to replicate, but it’s central to AHA’s strategy.
A Turning Point in Women’s Cardiovascular Science
The AHA’s Scientific Sessions reinforced why investment needs to shift. New findings spotlighted the link between adverse pregnancy outcomes—such as preeclampsia or gestational hypertension—and increased cardiovascular risk decades later. Research also showed that autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis lead to far higher rates of heart disease and stroke in women than in men.
Another prominent theme was microvascular disease, including INOCA and coronary microvascular dysfunction—conditions that overwhelmingly affect women but remain dramatically underdiagnosed. Because traditional imaging rarely detects microvascular damage, many women are told their arteries appear “normal,” even when symptoms persist.
These insights support Rosen’s call to confront persistent blind spots in clinical practice. Women’s symptoms are different. Their disease pathways are different. Their diagnostic experiences are different. For decades, those differences were minimized or ignored.
Now, the research is catching up—and venture capital is beginning to as well.
Why This Is the Decade to Transform Women’s Heart Health
For years, Women’s Heart Disease received neither the scientific scrutiny nor the venture capital it required. But the combination of improved research, changing cultural norms, and more investors focused on women’s health is creating a pivotal moment.
American Heart Association Ventures is positioning itself at the center of that shift. Its multi-fund structure allows it to back science-backed solutions from discovery through commercialization, while the Go Red for Women Venture Fund and Studio Red create a pipeline explicitly tailored to women’s needs.
If the early momentum continues, the innovations emerging from AHA Ventures won’t just reshape how we diagnose and treat Women’s Cardiovascular Health—they may redefine cardiovascular medicine for everyone.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/geristengel/2025/11/28/aha-ventures-backs-womens-cardiovascular-health/
