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Daniel Oppong The founder of OhanaHealth is helping bring tech talent to town
DANIEL OPPONG is a problem solver with a network. A former recruitment director for health care seed-stage investment fund Jumpstart Foundry, Oppong used his experience working in the startup space to become an entrepreneur. He says he strives to create meaningful solutions for real people: “For me, it’s mostly about following my curiosity — doing things that I’m interested in with people that I enjoy.” Oppong works his day job with a technology startup in Seattle, called Limeade, that focuses on employee wellness. When he’s not working on making the workforce happier and healthier, he’s striving to fill it with promising young adults. His latest venture serves as a major professional development and recruiting tool needed in an industry destined for massive change: the intersection of health care and technology. Oppong in 2017 founded OhanaHealth, a talent acquisition and job placement company, during his time at Jumpstart. His goal was to make tech positions at health care companies more attainable to young professionals by coupling job opportunities with workforce development and internal networking programs. The professional development part is key, Oppong says, due to the daunting nature of much of health care for non-clinical workers. It is a difficult assimilation he knows well. “When I came to Jumpstart, I had never worked in venture, never worked in health care, never worked in tech. So I had a pretty massive learning curve as far as: What does it even mean to think entrepreneurially? What does it mean to work in health care? What are all these acronyms that I’m hearing all the time?” he says. “We wanted to create a meaningful way to support early-career candidates as they kind of transition into their first job.”
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WINTER 2020 | NASHVILLEPOST.COM
ERIC ENGLAND
