Meet the team

Joseph started his career as a scientist, developing new cancer therapies during his PhD at the University of Toronto. He co-founded a medical device startup during his studies which brought him into the world of business and his first interactions with VCs.

He first learned about active investing during his time at DM Capital in Shenzhen, helping launch their first fund, Harmony. He then joined Oliver Wyman’s health and life sciences practice to understand and develop strategies towards addressing key business and market needs for his global healthcare clients, and did so for over 75 projects, and across 20+ markets. During this time he also assisted several funds and conglomerates with their healthcare investment strategies.

Seeing the need for more early stage investment for healthcare founders, and the opportunity for technology to make a real difference, Joseph began angel investing in health tech companies in 2014, eventually reaching a personal portfolio of 9 companies by 2018. It was at that point that Joseph realised that he needed to do this full time and that there weren't any funds out there that were focused on seed stage, health tech, and massive solving global problems, which is when he decided to launch Verge HealthTech later that year.

Erki graduated from the University of Tartu in 1997 in the fields of: (a) Corporate Finance and Investments; and (b) Money and Banking. He has been involved in healthcare and life sciences for over twenty years starting from 1999, when he assumed the position of CEO of Quattromed. From 1999 to 2013 he helped the company grow from University of Tartu spin-off company to biggest regional laboratory operating in three countries and employing over 200 employees. Quattromed was acquired in 2013 by Synlab. 

Since 2013, Erki has invested into healthcare business models of today and of tomorrow. Erki has invested prolifically across both seed stage health tech (first as an angel, then with Verge as our European Venture Partner in 2018) as well as later stage healthcare build & buy deals. Erki has been a member of Estonian Association of Business Angels EstBAN since 2013.

Erki has held several executive and non-executive positions with nonprofit and for-profit organizations including Chairman of Supervisory Board of Enterprise Estonia (300+ employees, annual turnover 100M+ EUR)  and the CEO of TREV-2 Group (500+ employees, annual turnover appr. 100M EUR).

Erki is the Founder of Health Economy Association (established in 2019) and the first health tech-related business accelerator, Health Founders (established in 2020).

Since 2020, Erki serves as the Supervisory Council member of the Latvian biggest hospital Rigas Austrumu Kliniska Universitates Slimnica.

Erki brings the entire lifecycle of startup and investing experience to Verge, from idea to M&A, across multiple healthcare subsectors (technology-focused + brick & mortar) and markets.

Scarlett is a passionate healthtech investor whose vision is to touch lives through digitising and humanising healthcare. She has invested both professionally and personally, having invested in 13 healthtech startups and actively helping them scale up, including as an investor in, and co-investor with Verge's first healthtech fund. She frequently speaks at conferences, and judges numerous startup competitions.

Previously as Managing Director at Prudential Corporation Asia, Scarlett was responsible for strategic investments, and has invested in multiple early stage healthtech startups that are now at unicorn and near-unicorn valuations. In addition to being an investor, she has been a successful intrapreneur, founding and leading a new healthtech business for Prudential.

Previously, Scarlett worked at Anbang Capital as the Global Head of Financial Institutions Group where she led multiple investments in Europe and Asia.

Before joining the buy-side, she was an investment banker for over a decade, having worked at Merrill Lynch in the US and Barclays in Hong Kong, where she executed more than US$30 billion in capital markets and advisory transactions, including several that were awarded “Deal of the Year”.

Scarlett received her Masters in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, and graduated Magna Cum Laude in Computer Science from SUNY Stony Brook.

Ed’s early career was in investment banking, starting at Lehman Brothers, working on some of the pivotal deals across Taiwan’s booming semiconductor and tech sectors out of their Palo Alto office. He then jumped to the client side where he became Head of Investments at Mediatek, one of the world's largest fabless semiconductor companies.

Ed joined the startup world through Hesine Technologies, an end-to-end push platform for mobile devices, incubated as a JV between Mediatek and NQ Mobile, where he was Chief Marketing Officer before its acquisition by Link Motion. During this time, Ed also began angel investing, making several successful bets across fintech and ecommerce.

Ed began his journey in health tech when he co-founded Health2Sync in 2013, after witnessing many in his family battle diabetes and learning what works in managing it. It is now Asia's largest diabetes disease management platform ex-China, and has attracted investment from Sompo, Alibaba, and active collaborations with Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, Fitbit and many others.  

Ed co-founded Verge with Joseph in 2018, after several years of working together on Health2Sync, where Joseph was an angel investor and advisor. As one of the early pioneers of digital health, Ed brings valuable operational knowledge and mentorship to our portfolio companies.  

Ed obtained his BSc in Commerce-Finance from the McIntire School of Commerce at The University of Virginia, and currently serves on the Global Advisory Board of the McIntire School of Commerce.

Carl entered the health tech field in 2017, when he joined Lifetrack Medical Systems as their first senior business hire, eventually becoming Chief Operating Officer in 2019. Carl led Lifetrack’s growth with healthcare providers around the world through their next-generation radiology software platform, LifeSys. He also led Lifetrack’s first institutional investor round in 2019, raising a $5.3 million Series A from the Philips, Asia Impact Investment Fund, and Kickstart Ventures. Carl first met Joseph while he was on the board of Lifetrack as their first angel investor, and their strong working relationship eventually led to him joining Verge as a General Partner.

Carl is an active startup advisor and investor. Carl sits on the board of directors for MedGrocer, a Philippines-based integrated digital pharmacy and medicine benefits management provider, and for the Philippine Digital Asset Exchange, the market-leading regulated crypto exchange in the country. He is also an advisor for Thoughtfull, a mental telehealth platform based in Singapore with the largest network of counselors in Southeast Asia.

Prior to Lifetrack, Carl worked at Bain & Company in Singapore, working across private equity, consumer goods and telecoms & technology engagements. Carl received his MBA from Harvard Business School and graduated magna cum laude in Business Economics from the University of the Philippines Diliman.

Trained in sociology, psychology and business, Joice never expected she would find herself right in the middle of the golden age of personal computing – that is, Apple, during the time of Steve Jobs.

Beginning her career as an Engineering Project Manager in the Product Design department of Apple, she worked on several prominent projects from blueprint to mass production, including the MacBook Air and the first aluminum unibody MacBook Pro.

Following her departure from Apple, Joice entered the startup world when she was asked to co-found a tech startup with her ex-Apple colleagues (which Ed invested in, before we knew him!), then founding an e-commerce startup. Following her entrepreneurial ventures, she became an angel investor, co-investing with Joseph.

Joice brings her love of entrepreneurship and investment to our portfolio companies, where she actively assists with operations, especially around international business development and hardware supply chain sourcing.

Sigvards began his healthcare journey in 2016 by co-founding CastPrint with his ex-PwC colleagues. With no prior experience or background in tech or healthcare, he went through the entire journey from an idea to eventually creating a regulatory approved medical device company that today has helped more than 1,000 people from Europe, UK, and the US.

Seeing firsthand the limited support for upcoming entrepreneurs looking to create innovations in healthcare, Sigvards started to become more active in the startup ecosystem by mentoring and helping more healthtech entrepreneurs, which eventually brought him to Verge as our first Associate.

Prior to this, Sigvards was a consultant at PwC and during his time there, he was exposed to numerous businesses, starting from regional companies with staff below 50 and moving up to large international corporates with operations across several continents. Eventually, while moving up the corporate ladder, he specialized in banking and technology businesses.

Sigvards has a degree in business studies from the Riga International School of Economics and Business Administration (RISEBA).

Miguel previously worked on several early-stage startups, including Lifetrack Medical Systems, a venture-backed SaaS health tech startup.  As Lifetrack’s Chief of Staff, Miguel was a thought partner to their CEO and COO where he supported their work in developing corporate strategy while also leading Lifetrack’s special projects.

He joined Lifetrack from the World Health Organization in Geneva where he worked with private and public sector stakeholders to develop strategies for non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention. He has also worked in technical and operational capacities in the biotech space — ranging from development of molecular diagnostics for infectious diseases to pre-clinical research for cancer drugs.

Miguel received a joint MSc/BSc degree, First Class Honors, in Biotechnology from the University of Manchester in the UK. He is adept at working at the intersections of health tech, public health, biotech, and business.