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Hi, everyone, my name is Dr.
Madhu Shetti, I'm a board certified radiation oncologist,
practicing in the San Francisco East Bay prior to coming to the GSB.
When I have been taking care of patients, I have noticed that many of my patients
experienced many of the problems that I experienced growing up.
My patients had language barriers, transportation barriers,
cultural barriers.
And oftentimes, when they would seek care, they were afraid that they were not going
to get the best care, or they were not going to be treated as well as others.
My team and
I strove to make sure that every patient walking in our door felt respected, and we
gave them the best possible care with them as a partner in every step of the process.
Unfortunately, the financial realities of our hospital system were such
that we ended up closing the hospital, and
our community really is the one who felt the loss.
I came to GSB with the intention of gaining formal business skills so
that I could help other communities keep their health care systems in place.
So that individual could get good high quality care close to home with all
the support that they already have built in during a very challenging time in
their life.
And as I've been at GSB taking classes from all disciplines,
I started to take entrepreneurship classes.
And then I became an accidental entrepreneur.
One of the big challenges that I've seen for patients undergoing radiation or
chemotherapy is that they developed significant hair loss.
Their face can develop significant ashy or pale dry looks, and
their fingernails can turn black.
And their fingers and toes can develop severe numbness, tingling sensations,
and swelling.
Until you experience some of these symptoms, one does not realize how much it
impacts our life and particularly our emotional well being.
What we don't talk about is the other symptoms that you just can't see
because they're covered up.
So many of my patients who are undergoing radiation to the breast will have
significant redness, pinkness, it's a peeling, a burning, and
a weeping of the tissue.
Oftentimes, it can feel like the worst sunburn they've ever had in life.
Some of my patients have been so devastated in the process, both physically
and emotionally of their cancer diagnosis, that they have actually become suicidal.
And that's where it becomes so important to have a team taking care of one to give
you all the support, both physically and emotionally, to get through that time.
As I researched different products to help my patients,
I never could find anything I really liked.
Even products that are labeled as organic, natural, or
clean oftentimes have ingredients that can be harmful to patients during the process.
And it can be that the ingredient can trigger a migraine or nausea.
Or it could be that the ingredients interact at the skin, and
can actually cause worsening of skin irritation.
And in the very worst case, it can actually block some of the pathways for
the chemoradiation,
which will make it ultimately ineffective at curing your cancer.
So it's very important that patients be able to get the correct information about
the products that they're spending so much time and money to purchase and understand.
Is it a product that will help them or is it a product that will hurt them?
And that led to the process of starting my company Bomb Your Skin.
So that I could make sure we could get high quality products to
patients as they were on this journey.
I could not have done this process without the support of my
classmates, from my teachers, and from GSB alumni.
Who have given me feedback on what I could do, context for
how I could execute faster, or the resources of how do I launch a company?
How do I hire individuals?
Every step of that journey requires special skills.
And the entire GSB community has supported my vision, and
helped me to be able to execute in that process.
I'm eternally grateful for everything each member of the GSB community
has done to help me in the process to fulfill my mission.
So I urge you to think about GSB in your future career plans.
If you're an entrepreneur, this is an awesome place to be.
And if you're not an entrepreneurial, and you wanted to go into other avenues,
you very well might become an accidental entrepreneur like myself.
Thank you so much.
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