Ascend Health Council

You can't build a healthier world out of depleted people.

Your work was supposed to matter. It does. And the industry is taking it out of your body — your sleep, your health, your judgment, your capacity to give a damn. You're delivering. It's costing you too much.

It doesn't have to. There's a version of this where you keep the work, keep the mission, and get yourself back — whole, regulated, clear, with thirteen women who'll make sure you stay that way.

Thirteen women  ·  Thirteen moons  ·  Begins 14 January 2027
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Why this room

Thirteen women running something real — all in health tech.

The wish. Healthcare gets better when the women building it stop paying for it with their health. A generation of leaders who are whole — regulated, resourced, honest about what it costs — and who change the industry from inside it instead of burning out and leaving.

The purpose. What if you could have thirteen women in your industry — confidants, mentors, allies — who know your work and your life, and who'll be there long after the program ends? Not a network you work. A council you belong to. That's what this is for.

Who, specifically. Founders and CEOs. VPs and C-suite operators. Women who run a P&L, a function, or a company in health tech — payer, provider, digital health, pharma, services. Usually a decade or more in, senior enough that there's nobody above her to ask, and still in the seat.

The situation she's in. She's good at this. Her results say so. And somewhere in the last few years it started costing her — sleep, health, patience, the sense that the work still means what it used to. She's tried fixing it the way she fixes everything, and it hasn't worked, and she's started to wonder if the problem is her.

She helps other women when there's nothing in it for her. She comes to be useful to the room, not only to be held by it. She's impressive, and she's honest about what it took.

We don't do IG-friendly feminism here. Grievances get their real names. And then we get to what you're going to do next.

General executive networks can't go deep, because nobody in the room shares your context. Here, everyone already knows what a TPA is.

No translation tax

Nobody needs the eighteen-month sales cycle explained. Nobody thinks you're exaggerating about procurement. You start where the problem is.

They've faced your exact situation

The same buyers, the same board dynamics, the same pilot that died in legal. Advice from inside your world is worth more than advice about it.

They can move your career

They can hire you, refer you, buy from you, sit on your board. They know where the good rooms are — which organizations treat people well, which founders are worth backing — and they'll tell you honestly about the ones that don't, before you sign.

They understand this particular kind of tired

Trying to make people well inside a system that is making you unwell. That the work is genuinely meaningful is what makes it so hard to admit what it's costing. Everyone here already knows that.

Who isn't: there are thirteen seats and an empty one costs everybody, so this isn't the right year if you can't hold the dates, or if you're joining to work the room for leads. Everything else — let's talk about it.

The thirteen moons

Thirteen months, in three parts.

Base Camp

You wouldn't survive the mountain without the fortification first. Who you are, what you actually need, what you're worth — which was never conditional, whatever you've been told.

The Climb

The part where you're asking why the hell you did this. The people who won't change, the systems built without you in mind, and how you stay whole inside them.

The View

What you can see from up here. What's next, built on solid ground instead of fumes.

With twelve other women who become your peers, your confidants, your muses and your loudest advocates — and a coach making sure every session sends you home with something that keeps working long after the thirteenth moon.

About the moons. Sessions run every 28 days. The moon runs on 29.5, so it slips back a little each time — dark by the fifth and sixth, filling again through the rest of the year. Beside each session below is the moon that will actually be in the sky that night. Nothing more than that, unless you want it to be.

Base Camp

Moons 1–5
14 Jan
1. The Operating ManualDecision rules for 11pm before the hard email. Written down for the first time, and rewritten at the end.
11 Feb
2. What's Running YouYour nervous system, and the person who told you you weren’t enough when you were nine. Both are still driving.
11 Mar
3. Never ConditionalYou’ve spent thirty years proving it — title, revenue, being needed, never dropping anything. That’s a debt you don’t owe.
8 Apr
4. OxygenYour body — sleep, food, movement, hormones — as the thing everything else runs on. A clinician joins us. Perimenopause gets said out loud.
6 May
5. What You Actually WantUnhedged. Not the version that accounts for everyone else first. Said aloud to twelve women who won’t flinch.

The Climb

Moons 6–9
3 Jun
6. They Are Not Who You Want Them To BeYou cannot fix a person who does not want to change. How to stop trying — and how to spot the next one sooner.
1 Jul
7. Stop Working for the Warm PhaseAcceptance is a stance, not a surrender. Get genuinely indifferent to both versions of them, and do your work the same either way.
29 Jul
8. Where You StopA boundary isn’t a request. It’s what you say, and what you do when they ignore it. Both, or it isn’t one.
26 Aug
9. The System Is Not Your FaultThe patriarchy, named. Twenty years as the only woman at the table. What’s structural, what’s yours — both true at once.

The View

Moons 10–13
23 Sep
10. What You CarryLoss, and how you keep leading through it. Everyone in this room is carrying something. This is the moon we say so.
21 Oct
11. Go Get It BackJoy, creativity, play, romance. You know now who took them and when. Your career gave you a respectable reason never to look. Go look.
18 Nov
12. The Number and the AskWhat it costs to walk. What you’re worth in this market. What you’re terrible at receiving. And what’s next — with my network behind it.
16 Dec
13. The Manual, RewrittenBack to the beginning with thirteen months of evidence. Same operating manual, same bearings, thirteen months apart. Not the same woman.

Not a network. Not a mastermind. Not therapy.

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Who's running it
Jaime Haak

Jaime Haak

I'm a fractional Chief Revenue Officer, an executive coach, and a board-certified holistic health coach. I build revenue engines for early- and growth-stage health tech companies and sell alongside them.

Twenty years in this industry before that. Enterprise sales at UnitedHealthcare. Palantir, where I doubled the revenue on our enterprise contract. Head of payer strategy and growth at Bamboo Health, where I closed the largest payer deal in the company's history. Sales and account management at pulseData. Chief Growth Officer at Epicured, where I took the business from $500K to $10M and built a clinician referral network from thirty people to over ten thousand. Along the way I helped deploy the world's first AI-backed kidney disease program.

I came to healthcare because of my family. I come from people the system never really reached, and that need hasn't gone away.

And here's what I got wrong for twenty years. I believed I could fix a bad situation with the right tactics — better communication, more preparation, a smarter read on the room. I was good at my job and I thought that meant I could out-strategize a person who was never going to change.

What I know now is that most of who people are is intractable. The work isn't changing them. It's building a foundation so solid that what they do stops costing you your health.

I got there eventually. I got there by leaving, and by leaving late. And I am sick of watching my colleagues and friends go through the same thing — the same slow depletion, the same certainty that it's them. This is the room I needed then.

When I'm not doing this, I'm traveling somewhere epic — I've been a full-time nomad for years. I garden well and knit badly. I lift heavy and eat a lot of plants. I hike, I ski, I keep a meditation practice with roots in Zen temple training, and I'm Reiki attuned. I played clarinet and sax through college and I fully intend to get them back.

After the thirteenth moon

What you leave with, and what doesn't end.

Thirteen women. Twelve peers and a coach — who know your work and your life, who've heard the thing you don't say at the office, and who you can lean on for years. This is the thing, and it's the part no curriculum can promise, because it only happens in a room.

And what you built. Rules for making hard decisions, written in January and rewritten in December by someone who's changed. The ability to draw a boundary and hold it, and to ask for what you actually want. A regulated nervous system, and real space made for your body. Knowing exactly what it would take to walk away from something bad — and whether you're there yet. Practical tools from a clinician, from your peers, and from me. And a working knowledge of how this industry really runs that you didn't have in January.

What doesn't end. The channel stays open. The introductions keep happening. The program is thirteen moons. The council isn't.

The commitment

What you're saying yes to.

What it's costing you already. Another year making decisions from exhaustion. The role you stayed in eighteen months too long because leaving felt impossible. The raise you didn't ask for. The friendship that thinned out while you were underwater. The doctor's appointment you keep moving. The version of you your kids get at 19:00.

You're not deciding whether to spend $5,200. You're deciding whether to keep spending what you're spending now.

WhenEvery 28 days, Thursdays, 1–3pm ET
First moon14 January 2027
Thirteenth16 December 2027
Attendance11 of 13, cameras on
In betweenOne ask, one offer, answer two
IncludedA private hour with me before the first moon — every member, same offer
Investment$5,200
in full at signing — or $1,050 at signing and three payments through April. Most members expense it.

How this is different. Chief is a credential and a network. WBL is a healthcare network with a Summit and a board program — and you might well be in it. Vistage works on your company. All good at what they do. None of them work on you — your worth, your body, the people who won't change, what you're carrying. That's the difference, and it's why this is twenty-six hours in one room instead of nine.

Ascend Health CouncilChiefWBLVistage
Price$5,200$5,900$645~$16,500
ForWomen running things in health techVP+ women, any industryVP+ women, healthcareCEOs, $5M+ revenue
Size13Groups of 8–12Network of 1,500+Groups of 12–16
Format13 × 2 hrs6 × 90 minSummit + 90 events/yr11 full days + 1:1s
Hours in one room269—~99
Facilitated byJaimeCoach—Trained Chair
Curriculum13 moons6 pillars——
Works onYouLeadershipNetwork, board seatsYour company
WaitNone1–2 yearsNominationQualification

The pool — and why it's there

$650 of your fee funds a pool, collected at signing so it's full before the first moon. Each moon, $650 goes to one woman. The order is drawn by lot. Everyone receives exactly once.

Most of us are great at earning and terrible at receiving. So once in thirteen months, on a month that's yours, $650 comes to you from the other twelve. It's practice. It's also money for your own care that you might never have allocated otherwise.

A tanda in Mexico. A susu in West Africa. A gye in Korea. It's part of an ancient, global tradition among women — and it's deliberately borrowed.

Questions

Things people ask.

Is this therapy?

No, and I'm not a therapist. I'm an operator, an executive coach, and a board-certified holistic health coach — and this is coaching and peer council. We go to real places — health, loss, difficult people. If something needs more than this room can give, I'll say so and help you find it.

Two hours in the middle of a workday?

Yes. Thirteen dates, published before you sign, blocked like a board meeting. It's professional development, and most members expense it.

What if I can't commit for a full year?

The room only works because everyone's in it. Moon 1 is your only exit — within 72 hours of the first session, full refund, no hard feelings. After that, you're in.

What if someone from a competitor is in the room?

Possibly one is. Don't share your roadmap; do share your life. Most of what we talk about isn't proprietary — it's the part nobody has words for.

Is it recorded?

No. Never. Notes on asks and offers go out afterward; nothing else leaves.

I'm not sure I'm senior enough.

Apply and let me decide. I read every one myself.

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Thirteen seats.

Six questions, about fifteen minutes. Then a real conversation with me — you'll have questions too, and you should. Then a yes or a no within 48 hours, either way.

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Applications close 15 December 2026, or when the room is full.
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