Laurence Girard
Huntington, New York
Laurence Girard is an entrepreneur with an interest in digital wellness and telemedicine. He attended Harvard University Extension School’s Undergraduate Degree Program and is expected to receive his Bachelor of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies in 2016. Laurence gained formal exposure to entrepreneurship by having office space at the Harvard Innovation Lab (ilab) from 2011 to 2013. The lab is a new initiative fostering team-based entrepreneurial activities among Harvard students, faculty, entrepreneurs, and members of the Allston and Greater Boston community.
Currently, Laurence is a Kairos Society Global Fellow. Kairos Society (www.kairossociety.org) is a global network of student entrepreneurs and each year student fellows are accepted from around the world for entry into the program. It is an international nonprofit organization that seeks to develop entrepreneurs from universities around the world. Founded in 2008 in the wake of the global financial crisis by Ankur Jain, at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the organization supports programs at over 100 universities in 35 countries. The name “Kairos” is the Greek term for “the opportune moment” and reflected Jain’s motivations for starting the organization. Speaking on CNN, Jain acknowledged that the financial crisis had forced many of his classmates and colleagues to reconsider careers in finance and that many had begun to start their own companies, but were finding the support structure in the university did not exist.
In May 2014 Laurence and a co-founder were developing Prevently, a company aimed to become the premier global health and wellness platform that empowers consumers with health information, products, a personal health record, telemedicine, and social networking tools. $930K was raised by Laurence from approximately 60 investors for this company and a strategic content partnership was negotiated with Harvard Health Publications. A robust digital health platform was developed, but because Laurence’s cofounder quit to return to school the company folded and eventually transformed into Welliko. Laurence learned quite a bit about entrepreneurship from Prevently and those lessons should serve him well in this new venture. Welliko, an online digital wellness and telemedicine platform, will be launching in August of 2014. VSee (one of the leading telemedicine software companies in the world) will be developing 100% of Welliko’s software and the platform is expected to launch this August.