Ishika is a Product Lead for Market Strategy at Oscar Health, a healthcare technology company where she has worked on a range of products and programs since joining the company as an early employee — from serving as the sole product lead on its proprietary claims processing system, to operationalizing and running its joint ventures with Cigna and HealthFirst across Oscar’s entire technology teams, to developing product strategies for its Medicare Advantage line of business.
Prior to joining Oscar, Ishika built data and consumer products at Compass, a real estate technology company. Ishika started her career in financial services — notably at the Raine Group, where she invested and advised tech, media and telecom companies, specializing in digital media, live entertainment and social gaming transactions, and at Houlihan Lokey, where she was a financial restructuring analyst focusing on the oil & gas and shipping industries.
Ishika graduated from the Wharton School of Business, at the University of Pennsylvania with a B.Sc in Economics (Finance concentration) and a minor in French. She grew up internationally in India, Russia and the United Arab Emirates and is fluent in four languages (English, Hindi, Bengali and French). She enjoys running (has run the NYC marathon!), photography and deepening a mindfulness practice. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York with her partner and their adopted zoo – dog Peggy and cats, Tyson and Ali.
What causes are you most passionate about?
One of the greatest challenges to human progress is the politicization of social and economic systems to favor a small minority (instead of serving the broader majority). While hierarchical social design has existed since the advent of civilization, the recent, growing inequality in outcomes has a deep, adverse impact to the environment and the human condition writ large. I’m passionate about communities, policies and systems that can reverse this trend, in both big and small ways.
If you could make one improvement in the world what would it be?
I believe that the world would be a more peaceful, unified place if human beings did not act with greed and purely out of self-interest — that is, if we were all at peace with ourselves and each other. Creating opportunities for communities to be exposed to alternative opinions outside of their echo chambers can go a long way in improving our collective empathy.
What do you think some of the most pressing problems we face are?
Climate change and ecological destruction are some of the greatest problems we face today — ones that impact our ability to survive as a planet and species. Our inabilities both to comprehend large-scale, multi-factorial events and to enact long-term policies only make matters worse. We need to create the correct incentives for governments and corporations to act with society’s future interests at heart.
