Joelle Sostheim

Joelle Sostheim joined Providence Ventures as an Associate in May 2019, working on the investment team to support market research and due diligence across the firm's healthcare portfolio. Providence Ventures was founded in 2014 and manages roughly $300 million across two funds on behalf of Providence St. Joseph Health, investing in digital health, tech-enabled healthcare services, medical devices, and healthcare services, with per-company checks of about $5M–$15M into early- and growth-stage companies.

Before Providence, she spent about a year and a half at PitchBook, where she created research and written content on venture capital, impact investing, and emerging technology. She launched PitchBook's impact-investing analyst coverage in 2018 — a body of work she described as her "passion project" — in which she and the data team identified and tracked more than 700 impact funds. She also authored PitchBook analyst notes on blockchain (2017) and on venture-ecosystem dynamics beyond traditional hubs (analyzing "entrepreneurial density, capital resources and costs, and talent"), and her commentary appeared in PitchBook releases on opportunity zones and impact investing.

Earlier in her career she worked as a Fellow at Capria Ventures, an impact-investing fund-of-funds and fund accelerator focused on emerging markets, which is where she first developed expertise in impact activity across global private markets. She is a graduate of Oberlin College, where she majored in Economics and also studied Theater and was active in the college's Responsible Investing Organization; she is a Young People For (YP4) alumna with a stated passion for economic justice and community organizing.

Note: later professional profiles list her under the name Joelle Velez (and, per Crunchbase, a business-analyst role at Shogun), suggesting she has moved on from healthcare venture capital since her Providence tenure. The @providence.org email in the source record may therefore be dated.

• Invests within Providence Ventures' mandate: early- and growth-stage healthcare companies in digital health / healthcare IT, tech-enabled services, medical devices, and healthcare services.
• The firm's core model, per Managing General Partner Aaron Martin: *"find and invest in companies that create needle-moving opportunities that address top priorities for PSJH."* Nearly all portfolio companies hold commercial agreements with the Providence health system — strategic fit and adoptability inside a large provider network is the key "yes."
• Flexible on structure: Providence Ventures will lead rounds or participate as a syndicate partner, writing ~$5M–$15M checks.
• Her personal analytical lens, from her own writing, centers on impact investing and democratizing data on alternative/impact asset classes — she has said greater awareness of the impact-fund ecosystem is valuable and championed data-driven analysis of emerging trends (impact funds, blockchain/enterprise adoption, non-hub startup ecosystems).