We could not be more excited to share that Caroline Glen has joined the firm as the Director of Investor Relations to deepen our partnership with our existing investors and engage with new potential investors as we continue to scale the firm. With Caroline’s addition, Jessica Radford will focus her efforts in her role as Director of Strategic Engagement on our nearly three dozen strategic limited partners that touch nearly one-quarter of all U.S. healthcare spend annually. Importantly, they have generated nearly $1 billion in cumulative revenues for our several dozen portfolio companies and have co-invested nearly $300 million alongside our funds.
A little bit about Caroline, who is a life-long Bostonian. What is so striking about her background is the depth of experience in fundraising with some of the most consequential investment firms. During an illustrious academic career at the University of Virginia, where she was named to the Dean’s List of Distinguished Students, Caroline had her first brush with fame when she rode an elevator with Warren Buffett. Somewhat tongue-tied, all she was able to ask him was if he was superstitious as there are no 13th floors at Berkshire Hathaway.
After graduating from UVA, Caroline joined Cambridge Associates, where she worked with clients to construct portfolios of alternative assets. She quickly caught the eye of Bain Capital, where she then spent four years working with the firm’s family office, RIA, and foundation limited partners.
While at Bain Capital, Caroline developed a particular interest in healthcare. She was recruited to go “in-house” to help manage investor relations for a public biotech company in Boston. Given her deepening interest in healthcare, the call to join RA Capital’s investor relation team was an easy one to accept. While at RA Capital, where she was most recently, Caroline watched assets under management increase by several billion dollars.
All of that is great, no doubt. Caroline is also just a terrific person and will represent the firm well. Evidently, she is an accomplished equestrian and, in fact, took my last call from her horse. She does fess up to being “terrible at golf” – her words. Caroline’s joining also continues our streak of having important Flare Capital team members with both first and last names that are actually just first names. Shout to Adam Bruce and Jon George…
Other Firm Updates
Quick update on our Flare Scholars program and Flare Scholar Ventures (FSV), which is our commitment to invest a portion of our new fund in the pre-seed rounds of Flare Scholar sponsored projects. With 446 current and former Flare Scholars, who are brilliant passionate emerging healthcare technology entrepreneurs, we now have 34 FSV companies, meaningfully exceeding our initial goal. Fifteen of those companies have already graduated by raising proper Seed or Series A rounds (in total our FSV companies have raised over $129 million).
The progress of the FSV program is inspirational as we continue onboarding the next generation of great healthcare technology entrepreneurs. Notably, 38 of our Flare Scholars are founders of start-ups, while 27 have joined portfolio companies in important positions. Importantly, five former Flare Scholars are members of our own core investment team.
The great Class of 2025 Flare Scholars has had a terrific 1H25. We could not be more impressed with the quality of all our Flare Scholars, but this class seems quite exceptional. Capital will always follow great talent and in this market, it will be great talent that wins.
Additionally, we continue to pursue our company co-creation model, having now created six portfolio companies in partnership with one or more of our strategic LPs. One of our more notable co-created companies, Cohere Health, recently announced a $90 million Series C. With another five in-process, this approach rapidly accelerates product development and team recruiting given the quality of the contributed assets by the strategic partner. With the current economic environment, one might expect to see more “stranded assets” available as companies look to streamline operations, monetize assets that are under-utilized, or shed internal initiatives that are not fully funded.
And please join us for our next quarterly Expert Roundtable Series webinar on September 23, 2025, at noon ET. And subscribe here to follow other news and insights from Flare Capital Partners.
