Changemakers: SimpleHealth

Finding Strength in a Team

“I’m a nerd, and this is a major theme of the story: I built a spreadsheet and the spreadsheet was like, ‘What are the pros of brain surgery, and what are the cons of brain surgery?’”

Carrie Siu Butt, MBA ’04, would not call dystonia, a neurological movement disorder she was diagnosed with at age 11, a setback. When she got tremors in her right hand, she taught herself to write with her left.

“Overcoming obstacles is just something that I’m used to,” Siu Butt says. Relearning her world was just another goal to achieve.

After graduating from Stanford GSB, working on Wall Street, getting brain surgery, and finishing the New York City marathon, it was time to conquer her next goal: running a company. In 2020, Siu Butt became the CEO of SimpleHeath, an organization that offers easy access to birth control.

One of the things I'd always said to myself is, “When I grow up and [become] a great CEO, I’m really going to try and create a company where the employee workforce matches the patient or the consumer base.… We don’t do this by checking boxes,” Siubutt says. “We truly do it by attracting the right talent.”

Finding strength in a team is something Siu Butt says she learned at Stanford. "I had a great bunch of classmates that never made me feel different, never made me feel disabled. You really are a product of your tribe, and I think that the GSB, above everything else, is a great tribe.”

[obie]

Proud to call you my friend, I am so incredibly proud of you.

[EnriqueLopez-rdqz]

Beautiful..you are an amazing human being.

[Atlaswh]

Amazing video, thanks for being awesome

[ayushbubna]

i too want to go to Stanford but i am not good in studies that's why they will not take me up. But i really like how they change their students life's forever.

[hansonli]

let's just go ahead and rename the gsb as the csb. you are amazing!