Sharon Knight

Sharon Knight is a healthcare and health-tech operating executive turned angel investor and venture partner. She spent roughly 15 years in finance, planning, and operations leadership at Fortune 500 companies — including Gap Inc., YUM! Brands (KFC), BMO Harris Bank, and Electronic Arts (where she led a global shared-services development team) — before pivoting into healthcare in 2009. That year she became President of venture-backed One Medical Group (1Life Healthcare), the membership-based primary-care practice, helping scale it across five cities; One Medical later went public in 2020 and was acquired by Amazon. She holds an MBA in finance from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a BA in economics from Smith College.

Knight launched Avik Ventures in 2012, funding it with the proceeds of her first angel investment — in robotics company Kiva Systems, which Amazon acquired in April 2012 for roughly $775 million. Through Avik she has invested in and advised early-stage digital health and health IT companies, typically writing $10,000–$50,000 checks and connecting founders to other investors and resources. She has described her motivation as funding "tech for a better patient experience," with particular interest in how patients and providers share information to build care plans that keep people healthy.

Beyond investing, Knight has continued to operate. She served as President and COO of Hawthorne Effect (also branded Hawthorne Health), a mobile/decentralized clinical-trials company working to democratize trial access and diversity; she built its provider network and quality system and helped secure venture funding and the company's first ~$35M in signed contracts. She also served as COO of The Plant Café Organic and as interim Executive Director of Stop the Spread, a COVID-19 response nonprofit backed by ImpactAssets and Google.org. She is a Venture Partner at JAZZ Venture Partners and has held board roles, including with the CarePartners Initiative addressing cognitive decline in Sonoma Valley.

• Invests at the seed/early stage, typically $10K–$50K per company, historically making 3–4 investments per year through Avik Ventures.
• Concentrates on healthcare services, health IT/digital health, and related consumer products and services.
• Looks for "healthcare solutions that use technology to improve patient access, to lower the cost of care, and to provide more personalized experiences, better engagement, and self care."
• Thematic interests include women-led startups, prevention and chronic-disease management, and solutions that enable seniors to remain independent.
• In her own words: "What's exciting to me is how patients and providers will share this information and use it effectively to develop care plans that not only manage health conditions but keep people healthy," adding that she believes "in the future … the phrase 'health plan' will take on a new meaning."