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Jim Jordan:
Welcome to the Chalk Talk Jim Podcast, where we explore insights into healthcare that help uncover new opportunities for growth and success. I’m your host, Jim Jordan.

Jim Jordan:
Our guest today is Joanne Nathan. She’s the CEO and co-founder of Prana Thoracic. Joanna holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in bioengineering, as well as an MBA. She has a diverse professional experience, including working in venture capital at the National Institutes of Health and spending four years at Johnson and Johnson’s new venture centers before spinning out her own company. Joanna, it’s truly an impressive background. However, I’d love you to share with the audience your journey in your own words, and please start out by introducing yourself.

Joanna Nathan:
Have a graduate degree in bioengineering and then fell in love with the MedTech ecosystem here and have been here.

Jim Jordan:
So where are you an immigrant from?

Joanna Nathan:
I’m originally from Abu Dhabi, from the United Arab Emirates. That’s where I was born and raised, but I say second generation, because my parents are of Indian nationality, so a little bit of all of that in there.

Jim Jordan:
So were you originally planning on doing a PhD and then pivoted?

Joanna Nathan:
Yeah, I think my plan of action kind of defaulted to PhD in undergrad, just because half my class went to medical school, the other half went to grad school, and a very, very tiny portion, went out and got jobs right after their bioengineering undergraduate degree. But I decided actually through my senior capstone experience, so I worked on this great medical device project for the first time; Rice’s program was actually very cell-and-tissue engineering based, you know, more benchtop than kind of mechanical engineering things with your hands at the time, and I absolutely fell in love with that. And so I asked the electrophysiologist, Mahdi Razavi, that sponsored that from the Texas Heart Institute, if I could continue to work on it, and he said, sure, if you can find a way to stick around for a year, and then I’ll put you into my budget for the next year as academia goes.

Jim Jordan:
Fantastic.

Joanna Nathan:
So that’s kind of why I stuck around and did my master’s. I specifically chose to go back and get my MBA because I spent a few years after I was done with initial grad school running product development at an early-stage startup. But really, what I found was I enjoyed the strategy side of all of that a lot more than the day-to-day kind of product management, product development stuff, and the tinkering, and so I decided to go back to business school to kind of learn that piece. And also, I think just to be a student again, because that puts you in a really great place to be able to network and, you know, reach out to a bunch of people in a non-threatening or non-burdening way and kind of pick a lot of people’s brains, so that’s why I went back and got the MBA.

Jim Jordan:
So you didn’t follow a traditional path to get here, right? It seems like you took some detours into venture and strategy along the way. Could you please guide the audience through your journey and explain how you reached your current position? I’d like to delve into these details.

Joanna Nathan:
I think what the venture thing has taught me is that nobody really knows what they’re doing; I think is what I’ve learned from that. I think venture, I didn’t realize going into it, I thought that venture, VCs were, you know, would get really, really smart on stuff or really focused in specific verticals and really knew everything about that space. And sometimes, that’s the case, but for the most part, VCs are generalists, and they’re figuring stuff out, and really, the entrepreneur is supposed to be the expert in the room; that’s not something that I anticipated or knew, but the VC skill set is really about pattern recognition, which is just a fancy way of saying, you know, they’ve seen a lot of stuff so they can kind of pick up some trends and make judgments based on that. In my mind, it was a lot more structured and strategic and lots of phase gates and things like that, maybe that’s my engineering background kind of informing that. But I think what I realized is venture is a lot more about people and some of the softer skills and building your network to be able to go find that expertise when you need it while often being a generalist; that was kind of a surprising learning for me.

Jim Jordan:
I want to pause and highlight something you mentioned as I believe its advice is really invaluable, and that’s about pattern recognition. It’s interesting because we share some similarities in our background. I was a VP of marketing at Johnson and Johnson, and I did the corporate environment, and I worked in startups, and really also worked in a small venture fund, and through this journey, I’ve been on both in the industry and the startup side. When you work in a venture fund and come across numerous companies, you start looking for patterns that fit within the prevailing beliefs of the time. So for startups, you need to craft a compelling narrative that aligns with those patterns, while on the other hand, if you’re pursuing something radical like you’re doing, you must communicate it in a way that can minimize perceived risks. It’s an interesting dynamic. Now, can you share with the audience how you took your venture out of Johnson and Johnson’s incubator? Did you secure any funding at that point? Did you have a salary, or did you solely rely on support from the incubator itself? I’m curious to hear about this venture of moving out on your own.

Joanna Nathan:
Yeah, absolutely. So we launched Prana out of a technology that had actually been invented by, and J&J kind of added on to it, funded some seed work in the animal space, and then got it to a certain point. And I got to work with their new co-team, which is a team that they have put, together within to launch this asset to be an entity outside of J&J. So J&J has stayed close to the deal, but not necessarily in control, so it is truly its own entity. In terms of how I made that decision and the risk, in my opinion, I’ve always said this, I actually think betting on yourself, betting on a startup, betting on things like that are lower risk because the smaller the company, the more control you have over what actually happens with your day to day, right? And whether that’s good or bad, at the end of the day, you’re betting on yourself, and you only have yourself to blame. What I learned being in J&J was, which is, you know, biggest healthcare company in the world, is adding those layers of management, different things like that, while it does provide a little bit of that safety piece or de-risking piece in terms of not having to fundraise your salary every few years, you know, but the reality is it is still a risky kind of position to be in, as we’re seeing kind of across the MedTech field with all of these cuts in workforce. So for me, it was an easy decision to jump back into a startup. It came from wanting to be closer to patients out of some things that had happened in my personal life, losses that I had experienced. But also, I wasn’t nervous about the risk because, at that point in my career, I was confident in betting on myself.

Jim Jordan:
I think, too, that the one thing about working with companies like J&J or Medtronic or some of these big companies, to your point, they know their space better than anybody, and so if they’re showing you encouragement, the first thing you should think to yourself is, I have a little bit of something here to be confident about. And I think for investors, having that backing is a little bit of a good housekeeping seal in addition to the physicians and the skill that you bring to the party. So can you explain your product to our audience and where your organization fits within the continuum of healthcare?

Joanna Nathan:
Yes, absolutely. So we are working on a traditional medical device in the surgical oncology space to basically address the problem of suspicious lung nodules. So lung cancer has been a big challenge over the last decade. I think this is kind of the big public health challenge of the current time is dealing with lung cancer, which is the number one cancer killer in the US, and we have seen some paradigm shifts in the care of lung cancer and in the patient populations affected by lung cancer, so it’s an interesting time to be in this space. What our device does is it provides a way for physicians to intervene earlier in the journey of that lung cancer patient. So we are kind of at the intersection of three big trends in healthcare. So early intervention, as I mentioned, personalized medicine, and precision surgery. So what our device actually does is it goes in and excises those nodules in a minimally invasive fashion, so it obviates the need for more invasive surgeries that require, you know, more resources, are more difficult for the patient, those kinds of things, and gets that, enough of that tissue to go inform that personalized medicine pathway for that patient, which is becoming more and more important in how we deal with lung cancer, because the outcomes are very, very different for patients that have that kind of definitive diagnosis and molecular testing than those that go into their treatment pathway somewhat blind. So that’s what we are enabling is that initial kind of definitive diagnosis, but the long-term vision in our product pipeline is to ultimately, is to treat lung cancer, primary lung cancer.

Jim Jordan:
And so you’ve probably wondered why I’ve been following you for so long, both my parents died of lung cancer.

Joanna Nathan:
Oh, wow.

Jim Jordan:
And in the case of my father, it’s pretty clear, years later, that the needle biopsy missed the nodule that they were going after to see, just a very small spot. Back in the day, they would just take a chest x-ray, which meant things behind you couldn’t necessarily get to. And then I think the other thing that’s promising is, I believe you know this better than me, it’s only been three years since they improved the reimbursement code for the early diagnosis. Is that, am I correct in that? You want to maybe.

Joanna Nathan:
Yes, that’s right. Yes, yeah, for the expanded population, it actually happened, yeah. The expanded guidelines happened in 2021, the code was approved last year. So very, very recent.

Jim Jordan:
That opens up a whole new realm of opportunities to discuss. In the case of my mother, she unfortunately, passed away about a year after retiring, which was obviously a devastating experience. On the other hand, my father underwent a distal lobe procedure where they were able to successfully remove the tissue, and he lived without any complications for another 20 years, which is truly remarkable and uncommon for that generation. My father was roughly in his 80s at the time.

Joanna Nathan:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, first, very sorry to hear about your parents, and that’s the reason we do this. That’s the reason my team is in this. In terms of where we fit kind of in the existing options for standard of care, I think the best way to explain it might be we are kind of creating the equivalent of the lumpectomy in breast cancer. You know, breast cancer has come such a long way in the last several decades, and it used to be, radical mastectomy was like the immediate kind of option. What we are doing is creating kind of that middle ground that is somewhere between a needle biopsy that, as you mentioned, often misses, especially in these earlier and smaller nodules, which is when you want to catch it, and then a more invasive surgery. A lot of surgeries are actually done today, they’re called wedge resections, where they wedge out a section of the lung, not knowing going in blind whether the patient actually has cancer or not. In fact, 20% of those surgical interventions end up being on a benign nodule. And so what we’re doing is trying to create kind of a middle ground, a minimally invasive way to definitively figure out what is going on in that patient’s lungs, and then also enable kind of all of these other therapies and trends that are happening in this space. As far as why we think, healthcare companies, why this is kind of why there’s a good health economic argument for this is one we believe as screening kind of gets adopted, which is actually beneficial, right, from a health economic perspective, there’s been lots of studies that have shown that. As it gets adopted, we’re going to see more and more of this kind of intermediate nodules where physicians don’t really, at least with the existing spectrum of options, don’t really know what to do with that patient. So a lot of the time, those patients that have a nodule that’s around one centimeter, they’ll go to tumor board, and it’s a flip of a coin as to whether there’s a more radical intervention or if they’re followed with serial CT. And so we think we provide a better option than serial CT, right? Because in 3 to 6 months, that cancer could have completely transformed into something that is no longer addressable through early intervention methods. So on that end of the spectrum, I think we provide a better option than serial CT and serial kind of imaging to follow that patient. But we also are a better option than on this end of the spectrum, surgery, which is a big, invasive, high length of stay, high resource, you know, longer times. We provide a more economic way to essentially get some of the same solutions or outcomes as surgery does, but in a minimally invasive fashion. So as I mentioned, we’re starting with that diagnostic piece, but really, again, our vision is to enable local delivery of different therapies should we find out that that patient does have cancer. So essentially, getting kind of an equivalent outcome to the therapeutic outcomes of surgery as well.

Jim Jordan:
It reminds me of, I was listening to you say that, it’s sort of the evolution of minimally invasive diagnostics as we had minimally invasive surgery. And I think the issue about taking a reasonable-sized sample without surgery is closure of the lung, right, to not let it leak. And I think, isn’t this part of the problem that you’ve solved is the ability to solve that issue?

Joanna Nathan:
Yeah, absolutely. So sealing the lung, so pneumothorax or air leak is kind of one of the big concerns with even just larger bore needles. Our device, again, it’s a surgical tool, so it’s not smaller bore by any means or, you know, close to a needle, but what our technology does is take the same underlying technology that’s used in surgical staplers and vessel sealers in ORs kind of all over the world today. And what we’ve done is taken that same underlying idea and turned it from a linear cut into a cylindrical coring device that can seal both blood vessels and airways all the way down to that nodule as well as in the excision, kind of making sure that those complications don’t have to be on the physician or the patient’s minds.

Jim Jordan:
So to complete your vision, I could imagine that you could leave behind a therapy in the future.

Joanna Nathan:
Absolutely.

Jim Jordan:
That one of the things when you look at the history of cancer, and you didn’t have any sort of treatment, you had surgical treatment, you had chemo, and then you had the different radiation forms and immunotherapies. And we’ve sort of evolved, but at the end of the day, we end up delivering very systemic, caustic chemicals into the body, and the data on local delivery is pretty compelling.

Joanna Nathan:
Yeah, so local delivery of, I think, really an enabler of therapy is of local therapy is kind of how I see the vision for our device, whether that is localized chemotherapy or different agents like that or ablation, you know, even just other device modalities that are less, like you said, systemic and less invasive than surgery could be an option now.

Jim Jordan:
Where are you in your startup now? Would you would people call you a series A?

Joanna Nathan:
Yeah, that’s right, yeah.

Jim Jordan:
And maybe for the audience, explain what a series A is.

Joanna Nathan:
Sure. So we are at basically the stage where we’ve said we’re valued at this, and we’ve raised some money. In the MedTech World, Series A typically means you are in that kind of body of work that is working towards first in human studies, which is where we are. So we’ve raised $6 million, half of that came from grant funding from the state of Texas, and then the other half came from investors, both angels, VCs, as well as strategic. So that’s kind of the amount of money we’ve raised to get from basically having proven our device in both acute and chronic large animals to something that is ready for our first 10 to 15 patients.

Jim Jordan:
So it’s actually rare for a lot of companies to have a VC in, and a strategic at this point in time, correct?

Joanna Nathan:
Yes, especially MedTech. Just, there’s, MedTech VC that will do early stuff is more and more of a unicorn these days.

Jim Jordan:
It may be for our audience, prior to 2008, medical devices was very active, it going early, and then with healthcare reform, there was a need for the industry to consolidate; so I could go back in time and look at interventional cardiology or other spaces, and you’d see 15, 20 companies in there, and today they’ve all consolidated down to maybe 3 or 4 big ones. And so I think the world has been in that consolidation mode, and as it relates to those big companies, they’d rather buy later. So they used to sometimes buy prior to FDA approval, and a lot of times now, you need to have revenue. And so this makes it a longer and riskier journey, and I think a lot of people have just sort of either moved into healthcare IT. You know, MedTech people always were very drawn to healthcare IT, and it’s been a tough place for the past few years.

Joanna Nathan:
Yeah, I think an added trend, so definitely kind of that consolidation trend, but an added thing is value-based healthcare coming online, right? That’s changed and transformed really how things got paid for. You used to be able to, if you got a device on the market, got it in the hands of enough surgeons, that surgeon could walk down the hallway and say, hey, buy me this. That doesn’t really happen anymore. Like, as you mentioned, a lot of the time you do have to show revenue or at least that potential for adoption. And what’s been interesting about that is, pre-2008, like you mentioned, more kind of iterative devices with less of a regulatory burden. So the 510K devices used to be desirable, especially by angel investors that kind of wanted that quick flip. And I think what’s happened is we’ve swung to the other end of the spectrum where now more complex, but life-saving transformational devices are actually getting acquired faster. So there’s some data that came out a few years ago. So those kind of transformational devices on average now get acquired in 5 to 6 years. What we’re seeing with this kind of more iterative or lower-risk devices is that they’re taking just as much money, but more time to exit, so ten years to exit.

Jim Jordan:
So I actually have some of that data strangely off the top of my head too. PMAs exit much more favorably than a 510K, and I think, again, in the old days, looking at those angels and going back a decade or so, it’d be, Let me get to approval and then I’m going to sell it to the big company. Well, today they have to demonstrate revenue and because they don’t have a clinical trial behind them, these value-added people saying, show me the data. And guess what? They have to go out and spend a clinical trial that’s pretty close to a PMA clinical trial.

Joanna Nathan:
Exactly, yeah.

Jim Jordan:
So you’re better off doing it. Good for you, good for you. So you’re a female CEO.

Joanna Nathan:
Yeah.

Jim Jordan:
And talking to, probably have 20 or so female CEOs between, say, Pre-seed and Series D and they all have stories about the challenges of being a female CEO in this world. Do you have any such stories? And if you don’t, I’m going to cut this out anyways. If we don’t, it’s just, it appears to be a tougher expectation.

Joanna Nathan:
Yes, I think the bar is higher for any underrepresented founder, whether that’s because of gender or race or whatever that might be. I think what the good news is, so when I was fundraising for Saranas, that was 2012. So exactly ten, you know, a decade earlier, it was a very different set of challenges than it is today. So I really have, I think what was positive about raising in the last year, even with the challenges of being a female CEO, is that landscape really has transformed, and there are lots and lots more programs directly targeting underrepresented founders, lots of funds that won’t even look at founders that or teams that don’t have somebody that’s kind of underrepresented in our world on their team. So there are a lot more avenues, I think, and I did feel taken more seriously. I don’t know if that’s just the change in kind of society or more, you know, that I have ten years more experience than I did the first time around. But I do, you know, interesting timing. I do have an interesting story. So I was at a pitch competition just a couple of weeks ago, and just two days ago, I got kind of the written feedback back from the judges, it was like 25 judges. And I’m flipping through, and it’s kind of standard feedback, and then at some point, I like flip past something, and I was like, wait, does that say something about my nails? And a judge had written in several sentences about how my pink nails were a distraction and, you know, about my outfit and stuff like that. And I, you know, I don’t know, obviously what gender that judge was or anything, but it did feel like a targeted thing because I was one of the handful of female CEOs at the event.

Jim Jordan:
Can you tell me a time when you had to adapt or shift your strategy rapidly? And what was that situation and what did you do?

Joanna Nathan:
That’s an interesting question. I think we are honestly constantly doing that, to be quite honest, especially on the clinical and regulatory and market access side. Our vision of our strategy, while it remains the same, we’re constantly getting bombarded with data that maybe we should shift it or change it or those kinds of things, and I’ll explain that a little bit more. So I think from a technical risk perspective, product development of our device, of course, it is challenging because it’s a novel device, but it’s kind of this like binary piece. Either it works or it won’t, and there’s lots of great checks along the way, animal studies, different things like that that we can do to kind of de-risk that. What feels like a little bit more of a bet or a little bit more of an unknown is what strategy we should use to drive adoption. Now, adoption of our device is 3 or 4 years away still, but the decisions that we make today on what regulatory path we take on how we design our clinical trials, those will all ultimately impact what that adoption looks like, and so we keep getting challenged on what we presented or what our current strategy is. And so far we haven’t had to pivot, but we have had to scramble and go see if some feedback had validity to it, enough validity that it meant that we should pivot. So yeah, especially in oncology, I think, you know, I come from a background of cardiology and general surgery, those kinds of things. I feel like they’re faster to move. At least that’s been my experience so far. Oncology seems a little bit slower to move and require a higher burden of evidence to kind of drive change in standard of care. So we’re trying to learn all of that, our team is trying to learn all of that, take all that data in, and figure out what is the best way to generate the appropriate level of clinical evidence that’s going to drive adoption and drive change in this field.

Jim Jordan:
I think one of the challenges are, that the oncology world, for the most part, has a pharmaceutical mentality and the difference between a drug and a mechanical device. These drugs, you have these double-blinded trials, and you’re trying to gather information on how things work with the placebo. In the case of, did I steal the hole, don’t seal the hole, … these are mechanical things that can be measured. I witnessed you with, some of the questions you were asked were very pharmaceutical questions that weren’t maybe the norms of the medical device industry, and I think that’s very interesting. Can you define market access a little bit? Because that’s a word that is relatively new in medical devices.

Joanna Nathan:
Right.

Jim Jordan:
Usually, you have product management and marketing people, now we talk about market access. So there’s a lot of things under market access, can you explain that?

Joanna Nathan:
Yeah, I think a lot of stuff is wrapped in that. Ultimately, to me, it means how are we, at least in the start-up setting that’s launching a new product, how do we approach the market to drive the best possible outcome and the most possible adoption for our device? So to me, that is a combination of really every piece of the company. So especially though clinical and regulatory strategy, even having that reimbursement strategy early, early on, at least an idea of it. And then, of course, product development will ultimately, like the product itself and how it works and how it feels. Again, a unique aspect of medtech will ultimately impact that adoption too, so we have to make sure to do all kinds of usability studies, those kinds of things along the way. So all of those different pieces in my mind come together to define market access, although I think most traditionally it’s defined as figuring out reimbursement and how you get paid.

Jim Jordan:
What’s fascinating is that I recently was working with a client on a similar topic of market access, and we were mapping out the product’s journey and considering it, probably in this case, would likely go through distribution. And the crucial question arises: how does the product reach the customer while ensuring satisfaction at every stage? And to that end, you need to understand the various business models at play. Who are the buyers? Is it an integrated delivery network or a group purchasing organization? It involves really delving into the intricate details of the complex process of getting a product to market into the hands of those doctors these days. When it comes to staying updated on industry changes and the surrounding ecosystem, where do you seek your information out?

Joanna Nathan:
Yes, so I keep up with, actually Axios, the news outlet is a really great way to get like tidbits of both science an.

Jim Jordan:
How do you spell that one?

Joanna Nathan:
A X I O S. So they’re a relatively new outfit, I think they started maybe in 2017, but they send out these daily newsletters in specific verticals, and they cover both the venture deal space, but then they also have a lot like specific to healthcare and life sciences. So that has kept me up to date with big data, big trial, the trial and data that’s coming out from that as well as, you know, other companies that are working in this space. I would say that’s one outlet. The second, believe it or not, is ChatGPT. Now, that may not make sense, but essentially what I do now is I will take a complex paper, and if I just want to kind of understand or get the highlights or takeaways, obviously you can read the abstract, but what I do now is plug that into ChatGPT and say, hey, give me a 200-word layman’s summary of this. And that has worked really well for absorbing information quickly, although it may not be 100% accurate. And the final piece is just network, right? Keeping in touch with the Life Science Network at large, both here in Houston, but also kind of across the country. So people send me stuff all the time when they see something new, or that might be relevant.

Jim Jordan:
So what is the biggest lesson that you’ve learned thus far in your journey?

Joanna Nathan:
I have learned, so this is my first role as CEO. I’m about six months in, we launched in October, and I think my biggest lessons have all been in the soft skills space, in management, in working with people both within my team, but then also kind of our advisors, our investors, all of that. This is a tough job. I thought I knew what was coming when I kind of launched a company because I’ve been an operator at a startup before, but taking on the CEO role is just a whole different level, I think of anxiety and insomnia basically that you’re taking on. So I think my biggest learnings have been in spending the time and building the time into my day and week to invest in my team, to guide my team, to coach my team, and that’s the best investment I can make. It’s tough going from, you know, having been kind of a one-woman show while I was raising to having now a full-time team of six, you know, part-time team, including the part-time folks, is about nine people, and it’s been kind of a challenge to make that transition. But I think the biggest learning has been it’s important to make that investment in my team, to make that transition in order to get to some kind of success with Prana.

Jim Jordan:
So what do you do to keep balance in your life? How do you have downtime? What do you do to relax?

Joanna Nathan:
I’ve found balance by just making all of my work friends, my real friends in a way. So I actually did hire folks that I was friends with through kind of my network, and that has certainly made working more pleasant and easier. But in terms of finding balance, I weightlift, I lift heavy three times a week, and I never miss that as much as I can control that within my schedule, and that’s just a great way for me to start my day. It makes me feel strong, but it also makes me realize how like human my body is. And I travel a decent amount, so when I travel, I truly unplug. My out-of-office message says, hey, I’m out and if you want to reach me, email me again, like after I’m back.

Jim Jordan:
I used to joke that being in the plane was serenity. When people talk about the ability to take a phone call …, I’m like, no, I don’t.

Joanna Nathan:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So those are some of the things I do to find balance.

Jim Jordan:
So when you think about healthcare today and looking at all the broader issues that you get to look at, what do you see as the biggest growth opportunity, and then, what do you see as the biggest threat?

Joanna Nathan:
I think we are in an interesting space in transitioning still because, you know, healthcare takes a long time to change, mindsets take a long time to change from how our system used to be to value-based healthcare, and I think everyone is still kind of playing catch-up with that. The innovators are maybe on the forefront of it, but looking into the healthcare system, it does seem like we’re still kind of transitioning people over. So I think the biggest opportunities in my mind are taking that transition and thinking about how that could change how we deliver healthcare, what kind of solutions are worth spending time and money on your life on, and really building your, if you’re working on an innovation or working on trying to change something in healthcare, making sure you’re building that mindset into it from the beginning rather than assuming if we build something cool, eventually it’ll be adopted, or someone will buy it or any of those things. I think one of the biggest challenges we face in healthcare is just the vastness of the body of data that we’re starting to create, you know, even within, of course, healthcare IT, but even within MedTech and biotech, you’re starting to see things like connected devices and digital surgery insights and things like that, where the data piece is becoming really, really important. I think there’s all of these little folks trying little different companies and little different attempts to try and harness that and figure out what to do with it, but I think that is, one of our biggest challenges is we’re starting to generate all that data. But if we could take advantage and harness it and glean insights, I think that could be transformative. I just don’t know that we’ve figured it out just yet.

Jim Jordan:
Well, that’s fantastic. So I always end with, you’re an entrepreneurial person. Parents entrepreneurs, siblings entrepreneurs? You’re the first one in your family?

Joanna Nathan:
I think I’m the first one that technically, in my kind of closer family, has started a high-tech kind of entrepreneurship deal. But I think being an immigrant is kind of naturally pushes you toward entrepreneurship and risk, right? And I think my parents both had very long careers in the education space, and I’ve seen now my dad transition and come out of that and start his own business and is really starting to thrive in that. I think being kind of that second-generation immigrant, or being in the generation that I’m in, my parents had to figure out how to survive and how to support our family, and I get to figure out how to thrive, which is such a wonderful place to be in, and maybe that’s why I’m the first. But I think looking back, looking at my family, even grandparents, that kind of stuff, I think that entrepreneurial DNA is there.

Jim Jordan:
Is there anything else you’d like to add or share?

Joanna Nathan:
No, I don’t think so. I think we’ve covered a lot of ground.

Jim Jordan:
All right, thanks again. I appreciate your time on a Friday.

Joanna Nathan:
Thanks so much, Jim.

Jim Jordan:
Take care.

Joanna Nathan:
Thanks for having me. Bye.

Jim Jordan:
Thanks for tuning in to the Chalk Talk Jim Podcast. For resources, show notes, and ways to get in touch, visit us at ChalkTalkJim.com.

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