10 Things You Didn’t Know about April Koh
April Koh is a businesswoman based in the New York metropolitan area. She should be best-known to people because of her role as the CEO of Spring Health, which is a mental health benefit for employers. In recent times, interested individuals might have seen Koh’s name come up because of reports that Spring Health hasn’t been practicing what it preaches.
1. Plays the Oboe
Koh plays the oboe. This is a kind of woodwind instrument that can be made out of either wood or a number of synthetic materials. It isn’t clear how the oboe came into existence. However, the English name is known to have come from the Italian name, which in turn, is known to have come from the French name. Koh has a pre-college diploma for the instrument from the Juilliard School.
2. Went to Yale University
Education-wise, Koh went to Yale University. There, she focused on a couple of subjects. One would be sociology, which is focused on exactly what one would expect based on its name. Meanwhile, the other would be computer science, which has become more and more important in modern times.
3. Seems to Have Been Interested in Entrepreneurship from the Start
Often-times, entrepreneurs choose to spend some time working in a relevant field for the purpose of building up useful skills as well as other assets before pursuing their true ambitions. However, Koh seems to have been interested in entrepreneurship from the very start. This can be seen in how she seems to have served as a co-founder of Spylight right out of school, with the result that she served as the Chief Product Officer.
4. Believes that Becoming a Young Entrepreneur Has Its Advantages
Koh has stated that she believes that becoming a young entrepreneur has its advantages. In particular, she talked about starting a family, which is a huge issue for female entrepreneurs as well as other business-women because having a child uses up a lot of time and other resources. As Koh sees it, becoming a young entrepreneur means being able to focus on the business now while holding off on having a child until later. Of course, there are other potential benefits as well. To name an example, some people become too comfortable in their positions, with the result that they become unwilling to start their own businesses because the latter is always a significant risk. As a result, a lot of would-be entrepreneurs never become entrepreneurs because of this reason.
5. Believes that She Over-Compensated By Seeking Experienced Team Members
On a related note, Koh has mentioned that she over-compensated when she was starting out by seeking out experienced team members to the neglect of other potential considerations. This doesn’t mean that she thinks that experience is unimportant. Just that she thinks that experience is one of a number of important considerations when hiring personnel, meaning that it cannot come at the expense of everything else.
6. Youngest Woman to Run a Multi-Billion-Dollar Company
Earlier in 2021, Koh received a lot of interest because she became the youngest woman to run a multi-billion-dollar company thanks to some very successful fundraising. Naturally, those funds are meant to improve upon the company’s existing offerings while also providing it with a way to pursue expansion into other national markets. It is interesting to note that Spring Health has very ambitious plans in this regard, seeing as how it seems to be eyeing most of the countries that can be found on the planet.
7. Her Company Is Named for Exactly the Reason that What One Would Expect
Some people might be curious why Spring Health is named Spring Health. If so, they should know that Koh’s company is named for pretty much exactly the reason that they might expect, which is to say, it is a nod to spring’s status as a symbol of new things as well as positive change. Something that can trace its roots to the very basis of agriculture-based societies. After all, winter tends to be an extremely inhospitable time, meaning that it would have been an extremely dangerous time for farmers who were relying on their stored food to make it past the season. In that context, spring would have been a natural reprieve, thus causing it to become associated with many good things. Besides this, Spring Health was also apparently founded in May, which would be spring-time.
8. Interested in Data-Driven Mental Healthcare
One might say that Koh’s background in computer science shows when it comes to her goals for Spring Health. In short, she says that she is working to bring about a world in which mental healthcare is accurately tailored to each individual, which is contrasted with the current world in which it is often a matter of guessing more than anything else. Naturally, this wouldn’t be possible without data. Something that has become extremely important throughout the tech industry as well as everything connected to the tech industry because of the insights that can be gleaned from properly collected and properly analyzed data. Indeed, Koh believes that this future way of providing mental healthcare will be data-driven in nature.
9. Believes in the Importance of Having a Team with Diverse Backgrounds
Koh’s company is very upfront about its belief in the importance of having a team with diverse backgrounds. For that matter, it isn’t hard to see why this would matter for a healthcare company. Simply put, different backgrounds result in different experiences, which in turn, make people form different assumptions about the world around them. This means that there are numerous stories of excessively homogeneous management teams being blindsighted by issues that would have been obvious to people of certain backgrounds. Certainly, interested individuals can compensate for this problem by looking into these issues. However, that assumes that they are actually aware of the existence of a potential gap in their knowledge, which may or may not be the case because our decision-making is so closely bound to our assumptions. In any case, Koh’s company is taking aim at a wide range of industries in a wide range of countries, so it pretty much can’t succeed unless it builds a diverse team capable of handling diverse challenges.
10. Apparently Runs a Very Fast-Paced Company
Recent reports say that Koh apparently runs a very fast-paced company, which isn’t uncommon for companies involved in tech in some way. The problem is that such a pace can be brutal on the employees, thus resulting in burnout as well as other serious issues. Considering Spring Health’s focus on mental healthcare, this isn’t exactly a good look for it.