2021 Vic Award
The 2021 Victorian Pearcey Entrepreneur Award was presented to Bronwyn Le Grice, founder and CEO of ANDHealth. The award, in its 23rd year, was presented by the Honourable Mr Danny Pearson MLA, Assistant Treasurer, Minister for Regulatory Reform, Government Services and Creative Industries.
Victorian Pearcey Chair, Jordan Green, summarised:
Choosing the recipient for this award is guided by three principles - has the individual taken a risk, is this individual making a difference and is this individual an inspiration to others. Bronwyn has taken more than a few risks in her life to pursue her passions and her career. Each of her major career transitions happened when she left her current job without knowing what would come next! Her achievements and leadership in growing the Australian digital healthcare sector is definitely inspirational.
Bronwyn Le Grice
Bronwyn has led a diverse career. She started out on a dairy farm south west of Perth, completed a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Western Australia and from there her passion evolved to capital markets and commercialisation combined with a deep focus on health.
In a leadership position as CEO of NZBIO Bronwyn guided the health innovation community in New Zealand. That experience impressed on her the value and importance of technology convergence in a diverse and collaborative business culture.
Her focus on digital health in all its facets - diagnosis, medicine, therapeutics and management was the deep expertise that caught the attention of Bioscience Managers, a specialist international biosciences fund manager based in Melbourne. For 6 years in that role she focused on venture capital investments across Australasia.
During that time Bronwyn gained experience in governance and executive roles. She even found time to co-found a start-up in pet care - a sort of AirBnB for pets.
Along the way Bronwyn gained additional formal qualifications in commercialisation and a Masters degree in Commercial Law.
In 2017, working with a consortium of industry partners, Bronwyn created the only commercialisation organisation in Australia dedicated to digital health, with a specific focus on digital medicine and digital therapeutics. The novel non-profit model is specifically designed to suit the Australian reality. It has already supported over 450 emerging digital health companies, with the 10 companies selected in the 2018-19 pilot program going on to raise over $70m in funding, creating around 300 jobs and impacting over 200,000 patients in just four years.
This original, cooperative, commercialisation model designed specifically for Australia has led to significant growth of our nascent digital health sector. Bronwyn's original model and her reputation for well-placed tough love continue to be a driving force for the development of our sovereign capability in evidence-based, regulated digital health technologies.
Bronwyn has always been generous with her time, sharing her insights and experiences in industry, teaching,
The Award presentation is available on YouTube.
Sponsors
The Pearcey Foundation is most appreciative of the generous support given by the Victorian Government through the Digital Innovation Festival (DIF).
