Meet Jennifer
Jennifer Gibson is a San Francisco–based fractional COO and healthtech leader working at the intersection of wellness, technology, and operations. With a background in public health and dietetics, she has spent her career building and scaling care models that combine human-centered design with emerging technologies, including AI.
Jennifer Gibson has never been particularly interested in following a straight line. Her work lives in the spaces between wellness and technology, systems and people, ambition and care. When she talks about her career, she doesn’t frame it as a series of promotions or titles, but as a gradual sharpening of clarity: about how healthcare works, where it fails people, and how quietly transformative it can be when done well.
What drives her isn’t disruption for its own sake. It’s usefulness. Scale. The belief that small improvements, multiplied across thousands of lives, can change the way people feel in their bodies and move through their days. Her leadership style mirrors that ethos steady, pragmatic, grounded in listening rather than performance.
Where Curiosity First Took Root
Long before she worked with AI models or scaled national health programs, Jennifer was captivated by the human body itself. The fascination began early, in a high school anatomy class where students dissected a cat. For many, it was unsettling. For her, it was revelatory.
She was struck by the complexity of biological systems and by the quiet miracle that, despite countless opportunities for failure, the body mostly works. That sense of wonder stayed with her, guiding her toward formal training in public health and dietetics. Wellness wasn’t a trend to her; it was foundational. Health shaped how people lived, worked, loved, and endured.
Her early education didn’t come with prestige-brand institutions or conventional credentials that often fast-track careers. But it gave her something else: fluency in how behavior, environment, and systems interact. She learned to think in patterns, not silos, a skill that would later become central to her work in technology.
An Unexpected Turn Into Technology
Jennifer didn’t set out to work in tech. The shift came through timing and trust rather than ambition. An opportunity opened at Vida Health, an early-stage company experimenting with digital health coaching at a time when few people even knew what a health coach was. She joined as Head of Coaching, working alongside the company’s four co-founders.
It was a leap into unfamiliar territory new language, new pace, new expectations. But it was also where something clicked. Technology, she realized, could extend care beyond the limits of clinics and calendars. It could reach people where they were, consistently, at scale.
At Vida, she spent four years building systems from the inside out. She worked closely with engineering, design, and operations while leading a large, national team of health coaches. The work required translation turning human needs into product decisions, and product constraints back into humane workflows.
What made that period formative wasn’t just the growth of the company, but the environment itself. The founders took a chance on her, offering room to learn quickly and fail safely. It was there she developed confidence in taking calculated risks and stepping into spaces where she didn’t yet feel fully prepared.
Learning to Lead through Curiosity
As Jennifer’s responsibilities grew, so did a recurring challenge: stepping into leadership roles without following a conventional path. She didn’t have an MBA or a computer science degree. Her background was in wellness and science, not business or engineering.
Rather than viewing this as a limitation, she leaned into curiosity. When she encountered gaps in her knowledge, she filled them deliberately through mentorship, self-guided learning, and by taking on projects that stretched her understanding. Over time, this approach became a strength.
In early-stage companies especially, resources are limited and clarity is often incomplete. Jennifer learned how to assess what was needed, assemble what was available, and move forward anyway. That ability—to operate effectively amid uncertainty would become even more valuable as healthcare entered its next phase of technological acceleration.
A Different Scale of Impact at Apple
After Vida, Jennifer was approached by Apple during a pivotal moment. The company was building on-site primary care clinics across its Silicon Valley campuses and wanted to integrate wellness services into the medical model. For her, it was both unexpected and deeply meaningful.
Her second day on the job remains vivid. She arrived at Apple Park, climbed onto a bike, and rode around the massive circular campus often called the “spaceship” to meet a colleague at the wellness center. It was a quiet moment of arrival, one that underscored the scale and seriousness of what they were building.
Over five years, Jennifer led behavioral health, health coaching, exercise physiology, and dietetics teams. She worked closely with medical leadership to design programs for pre-chronic and chronic condition management, grounding innovation in evidence and outcomes. The work was rigorous and visible; the programs they built were regularly presented to Apple’s executive leadership.
One initiative stands out. In March 2020, just as the pandemic began to reshape daily life, Jennifer’s team launched an anxiety program. The timing was unplanned but critical. Thousands of patients enrolled during a period of global uncertainty, and by the end of the program, participants saw an 84% reduction in anxiety levels.
For Jennifer, it reinforced a belief she’d been developing for years: when thoughtfully designed, health technology could provide real support during the moments people needed it most.
Choosing Uncertainty Again
Leaving Apple was not an easy decision. It came with nerves and doubt the kind that surface when stepping away from stability toward something less defined. But Jennifer felt pulled back to early-stage work, particularly as artificial intelligence began reshaping healthcare possibilities.
She spent the next two years working as a fractional COO and CPO, advising and leading product and operations for startups integrating AI into their core offerings. The pace was intense, the learning curve steep, and the stakes high.
One experience crystallized the potential of this new chapter. While leading product for a maternal health organization using at-home monitoring devices, the team identified early symptoms of pre-eclampsia in a patient a dangerous condition tied to high blood pressure. Because the system flagged the issue early, the patient received timely treatment and avoided severe complications.
It was a single case, but emblematic of something larger: technology extending care beyond traditional settings, catching what might otherwise be missed.
Leadership in Times of Change
Across roles and organizations, Jennifer has often stepped into teams during periods of transition or upheaval. Her approach in those moments is deliberately calm. Rather than imposing quick fixes, she listens seeking to understand issues from multiple perspectives and creating psychological safety for teams navigating uncertainty.
She describes her leadership style as coaching-oriented, focused on exploration rather than directives. The goal isn’t control; it’s alignment. When teams feel heard and trusted, they’re more willing to surface real problems and experiment with solutions.
That philosophy extends to her own work habits. Jennifer relies heavily on systems clear tasks, milestones, and routines rather than motivation alone. She knows that especially in early-stage environments, much of the work is unglamorous and repetitive. Systems create steadiness when energy fluctuates.
Her background in wellness reinforces this approach. She runs regularly with her dog, protects her sleep, and maintains simple habits that keep her grounded during demanding periods.
The Work Today: Connecting Data, Systems, and People
Jennifer’s current work centers on a core belief: the future of healthcare lies in better connections between data, systems, and people. AI and interoperability, when used thoughtfully, can bridge long-standing gaps and create more personalized, compassionate experiences at scale.
As Fractional COO at Wiggl Health, she’s helping build a back pain prevention platform that uses passive wearable data to predict and prevent pain before it becomes debilitating. The focus isn’t reactive treatment, but early intervention supporting people in staying well rather than recovering after the fact.
Alongside this role, she continues to support early-stage healthtech companies through fractional leadership and advisory work. Across conditions high blood pressure, diabetes, prenatal care, mental health, sleep, musculoskeletal issues the thread is consistent: small, data-informed interventions that improve daily life.
Reflecting on her work, Jennifer often returns to the idea of scale not as growth metrics, but as reach. Health touches every part of how a person lives, and even modest improvements can ripple outward in meaningful ways.
How She Measures Success
Jennifer’s definition of success resists conventional framing. “I define success as a life well lived,” she says. For her, that means balancing meaningful, impactful work with time for family and community, showing up each day with intention rather than exhaustion.
Professionally, success looks like setting ambitious goals and achieving them through collaboration building trust across disciplines and seeing outcomes reflected in real people’s lives. She values kindness and strong ethics in colleagues, and often finds herself crossing paths again with those who embody both.
She’s drawn to leaders who combine intellect, discipline, and purpose figures like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Michelle Obama, and Ada Lovelace. What she admires isn’t just achievement, but the way they reshaped systems patiently, without spectacle.
Looking Forward
In the coming year, Jennifer is focused on expanding Wiggl Health’s reach through new employer partnerships while continuing her advisory work with early-stage companies. The work remains demanding, but it’s aligned with what has guided her all along: usefulness, integrity, and care at scale.
Her advice to others entering similar spaces is simple and hard-earned:
“You belong in the room where decisions are being made. Preparation and thoughtfulness matter more than perfection.”
It’s a reflection of her own journey one built not on flawless credentials or linear plans, but on curiosity, steadiness, and a willingness to step into uncertainty when the work feels meaningful.
Closing Reflection
Jennifer Gibson’s career doesn’t announce itself loudly. It unfolds through careful listening, systems built to last, and a belief that healthcare works best when it remembers the human at its center. In a field often defined by speed and spectacle, her impact comes from something quieter: the patience to connect what already exists, and the discipline to make it work better for the people who rely on it every day.
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