Dr. Shoreh Ershadi | Founder, ANTIAGING Institute of California | Apoptosis, Clinical Excellence, & Women in Science

Dr. Shoreh Ershadi is the founder of ANITAGING Institute of California and a renowned expert in clinical biochemistry and pharmacology with over 40 years of experience. Dr. Ershadi shares her compelling journey from Iran to the United States, highlighting her unexpected entry into medical technology and the numerous challenges she faced as a woman in science. From setting up clinical labs and pioneering AIDS testing to founding her own antiaging company, Dr. Ershadi discusses her relentless pursuit of scientific innovation and passion for improving human health. The conversation also touches on her entrepreneurial ventures, the role of art in her life, and her vision for a healthier future driven by natural apoptosis-promoting supplements.

Guest links: www.Apoptosis.us | www.facebook.com/apoptosisnutraceuticals | www.instagram.com/apoptosisnutraceuticals | www.threads.com/apoptosisnutraceuticals 

Charity supported: Save the Children

Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com. 

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Host: Lindsey Dinneen
Editing: Marketing Wise
Producer: Velentium

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Episode 037 - Dr. Shoreh Ershadi

[00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.

[00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.

[00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives.

[00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives.

[00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.

[00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and today I'm so excited to introduce you to my guest, Dr. Shoreh Ershadi. With over 40 years of expertise in clinical biochemistry and pharmacology, Dr. Ershadi stands at the forefront of scientific innovation in the field of nutraceuticals and supplements. Board certified by the American Academy of Antiaging Medicine and holding dual doctorate degrees, Dr. Ershadi brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the world. Dr. Ershadi's distinguished credentials, including National Registry in Clinical Chemistry and Toxicology and American Society of Clinical Pathology certifications, underscore her dedication to precision and quality in laboratory practices. Her visionary leadership and unwavering passion for advancing human health has made her a trusted authority in the field.

All right. Well, Shoreh, thank you so much for being here today. I'm so excited to speak with you.

[00:01:51] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to talk to you, especially that you're going to talk about medical technology. And that is something that I have been doing or working at for, I would say over 30 years, easy. 1988, I got my license in California. So it's what, 32 years?

[00:02:17] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Excellent. Oh my goodness. Well, this leads perfectly into my first question and that is, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and how you got into medtech?

[00:02:29] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Okay. That is interesting because I was born in Iran and I studied pharmacology. And before I was graduated, the Department of Health in Iran was hiring pharmacists, pharmacologists. So we all went and took the exam and we passed the exam. We were still at the final stages of doing the thesis and going through final stages of graduation. And then they called me and a few other people for an interview. Apparently I had a high mark in the test, which I did not know.

So when we went for the interview, and I went to an American school and then later to a British school in Iran, so I was speaking English. At the interview, there was a gentleman who was back in Iran from United States, and he was a PhD in clinical biochemistry, and he asked me to read something in English. And I read it, and he thought that I had it by heart or something, so he flipped the book and found a more difficult page and said, "Okay, read this," and I read that, and he said, "Okay, I'm hiring you for the reference lab."

I had absolutely no clue what he was talking about, what was reference lab. I had no intention to even work for Department of Health because I was not even graduated at that time. And then they said, "Okay, start on such and such date." And when I went there the first day, he said he spoke in English and he said, "You're overqualified." Oh my God. What? I mean, it was funny. Without even planning to get into laboratory, I got into the reference lab of Department of Health. And what he was planning to do was to bring College of American Pathologists, the proficiency testing to all the laboratories in Iran. And he wanted someone who would speak English and who could communicate.

So first day of my job, I wrote a letter to College of American Pathologists and I said, "Hi, hello, I'm Shoreh Ershadi, I want to buy a thousand proficiency kits." And of course they responded. So just like that, I got into clinical laboratory. And I became the Director of the Quality Control for Department of Health. And that was before the revolution. So, that was my exciting start into laboratory.

[00:05:25] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, that's an incredible story. Thank you for sharing that. And

[00:05:28] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Not voluntarily, but serendipitously, yes.

[00:05:34] Lindsey Dinneen: There you go. So then at some point, you came to the U. S. and was that transition really difficult? Was it frustrating? Were you excited? Nervous?

[00:05:47] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: There was a part in between before coming to U. S. There was another test by W. H. O., World Health Organization. So I took that test and I passed that test and I got a scholarship to go to medical school in England to do a master's degree. And when I went there, I told them, "I already have a doctorate in pharmacology. I don't want master's. I want to do PhD." And after a few weeks, they said, "Okay, fine, go to PhD. You don't need to do master."

So I was in England for about four years. I did my PhD in clinical biochemistry. And I went back to Iran. That was exactly during the revolution. So while I was studying in England, the country in Iran was on fire. It was, things going crazy everywhere. But I went back and I got married. I had my son in Iran, and I was working in a clinical laboratory in one of the best hospitals in Iran, and it got very difficult for women to work. They were saying, " Now you have to wear a scarf. Now, you can't see male patients, you can only talk to female patients." It was not right.

So, 1984, I came to United States, I came to California, and with some friends in Iran who had a clinical laboratory, and they were here before me and had started a lab in Orange County, California. I started a branch of the lab in Westwood, in Los Angeles. So that was my first job or position and that was my entrepreneurial side, which now I wouldn't dare to start a life, but then I did.

[00:07:51] Lindsey Dinneen: You didn't know the difference then.

[00:07:53] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Well, yes, I didn't know. I mean, it was a lot easier, I would say. At that point. The lab was not even accepting Medicare or Medi Cal. It was private insurance. I was doing the billing. I was getting the information. I was drawing the patients. I was separating the samples and sending them to the reference lab that was actually running the tests. But I was doing stat CBCs and I was in a medical building and so all the doctors were so nice to send the samples down to me. It worked. So

[00:08:33] Lindsey Dinneen: Amazing. Oh my.

[00:08:34] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Amazing. Yes. Now it sounds really amazing. It's surreal in a way. Yeah.

[00:08:42] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so, so with that lab and embracing this entrepreneurial journey, and I'm so thankful it worked out so well for you, but were there any moments where you just thought, okay, I've, I, you have such an amazing background. You're so highly educated, you're brilliant. And then you're starting this entrepreneurial journey, which is kind of a different skill set in a way. How was that transition of becoming kind of your own boss and being in charge of everything?

[00:09:12] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: That was pure ignorance. I mean, now I can say then, I thought I knew what I was doing, but it was a fast learning. First that I was in a different country, that I had never been in the United States. Second, that I had a three year old son that I brought with me and my then husband never came, so I got a divorce and I became a single mom. So, and nobody else was from my family was here. So it was very difficult because I had to take him to daycare and then come work and then go pick him up. And then there was a war, the Iraq war had started in Iran and my parents were in Iran and I was going through a divorce, so it was turmoil. And I had to work and learn in a way it was good because it didn't give me time to think about anything else. It was just forward, no looking sideways, no looking backwards. It was just moving forward.

But then again, something else happened that made it even more interesting. One of the days that I was at the lab, some guy came and said, "CDL, Central Diagnostic Lab, is looking for a technical director and they've asked me to come and talk to you." I had absolutely no clue if anyone knew me or knew of me or it was the, I mean, a lot of things happened, which, I mean, I'm happy now, but then it changed my life tremendously.

And I don't think I've ever talked to anyone about this in this detail. So, Lindsey, I would say you're the first person I'm telling the story of my life. But anyways, I went for an interview and I got hired right away. I had the lab, so I hired someone to do the work that I was doing in the lab. And then I started working at CDL, Central Diagnostic Labs, which was the largest privately owned lab in the United States at that time. There were 1, 200 employees. So that was a very interesting experience on its own because I was introduced to a world that I did not even know what was going on.

So, and that was during AIDS testing. Bio-Rad had just come up with Western blot testing and we did the clinical trial, which was very easy in those days. We had AIDS patients and we had a lot of AIDS samples accumulated or saved frozen and we used them to validate the Western blot by Bio-Rad and I went on National TV 1988 and I said, "CDL is the first lab in the world that is doing a confirmation for HIV AIDS testing." So then, that was major.

[00:12:40] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes.

[00:12:43] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: But then, then my family came. My father passed away here. It was, again, a lot of complications going on. And one of the other people that I knew asked me to go and partner with them in a lab. Again, my entrepreneurial part took over and I went for the partnership, and I started from scratch. I started Path Labs practically from scratch. There were two pathologists working with Los Alamitos Hospital, and I went there and I started a lab from just buying test tubes, buying, from absolutely nothing. I was there for six years, I think. six or eight years with Path Labs. That was not so successful.

After that, I went to Specialty Labs, which is now Quest. Specialty wanted to start a toxicology lab. So, Path Lab was sold. But there was no money made with the partnership and all that. So that was not a very successful six, eight years of my life. Specialty was good. I went to Specialty and I started Department of Toxicology. I don't know if you remember or you were familiar with specialty. Dr. Peters was there and he was the founder, James Peters. He did only immunology testing. They would receive samples and send out everything else to other labs and only do the immunological tests or some specialty tests.

When I started the toxicology department, we started getting samples from all over the world. We were running heavy metals and all that. We had an ICP MS and I started running ICP, and the main test that I developed there was measuring iron in the liver biopsy of patients with hemochromatosis. So we would get one spot, in tip of the needle of the liver and then do a measurement and measure the amount of toxicity with iron in hemochromatosis, which was great. I wrote a paper and we were working with Mayo Clinic and they developed the test. So that was very exciting. Then I started the automated lab because all the chemistry. And all the hematology was going out, was sent out. So that brought a lot of money into the lab, but that was not my lab. It was Dr. Peter's lab. It was wonderful. It was nice. But he was the entrepreneur there.

So in the year 2000, I started ANTIAGING Institute of California. After passing the specialist chemist license in California, I got National Registry in Certified Chemistry, Certified Toxicology, and then I took the board exam with American Academy of Antiaging Medicine. And that was again entrepreneurial and I started the company, that would be 25 years ago. I've done a lot of consultation. I've been director of lab during COVID. I went back to city health. And I was Director of City Health running 4, 000 COVID patients a night for airports, for schools, for traveling, for a lot of stuff.

And then I worked with Siemens Healthineers on regulations for IVDR. So all the kits that Siemens had, over 700 reagent kits that were sold to the laboratories, they need to get the CE mark to be able to be sold in Europe under the new IVDR regulations. And a lot of it had to go through FDA as well because FDA had to approve if there were any changes made to the kits. So I've done a lot of regulation works. I've done a lot of hands on COVID tests, covered it all.

Actually, something else that was very interesting. And this, for MedTechs, I would think this would be interesting to know that it's not just one position. And there's so much you can do, if you want to expand your horizon. For about a year, I helped set up extremely high complex laboratory for testing mother's milk, for making milk bank from mother's milk for NICU for children who were born early and the formulas did not work with them. Some of them were so tiny, less than a pound. And so mother's milk bank, it's called Prolacta Bioscience, the company. And I worked there to establish the clinical lab and to get a license for clear and stuff like that. So.

[00:18:21] Lindsey Dinneen: Oh!

[00:18:21] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: A lot of good work going into my up and down career, I would say.

[00:18:28] Lindsey Dinneen: I love it. Well, first of all, I'm so honored that you were willing to share so much with me. That is. I really appreciate it. And I really appreciate you being willing to talk about some of the amazing moments you've had and the really high, " Yay, we did this," but also some of the moments where it was a little bit tougher and even you being honest and transparent about, the one company didn't do as well as you would have hoped, but you kept going and you are a living testament to resilience and adaptation.

[00:18:59] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: There is no other choice. I would hope that people would have many choices. I mean, you always make choices in life. Even now, this is a choice to talk to you and I appreciate the opportunity because, if I would choose or if I wouldn't know about you, that would be a totally different episode in my life. So I'm open to take chances. You can say that with my experience, living in three different continents and moving and just leaving Iran and coming to us with a three year old, not being here ever before. And then, just jumping in and, but there was no other choice except for moving forward, or we can say, except for success. Because failure was not an option. What would I do? There was nowhere to go back. Sometimes you may have an option to make a U turn and say, "Okay, I don't like this. I want to do something else. I want to stay home." There was no option, no going back. So it was only forward.

[00:20:09] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes, absolutely. So, coming here and like you said, having to move forward and I appreciated what you said, you kind of, you couldn't look to the side, you couldn't look back. You had to keep moving forward. How did you go about building a community that could support you, that you could be friends with, and colleagues with, and feel supported coming in from, not having that.

[00:20:36] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: And that was not very difficult. There were many difficult times during that, that I mean, I don't mind talking about it, being a woman, being a young woman, being from a different background there was a lot of resistance. And I see that today as well. I mean, I can't say, "Oh, here I'm in L. A. and Los Angeles is so easy." It's not. I am hoping that women would not maybe experience all the difficulties that I went through. But we're talking about 40 years ago. I came to The States actually July 22nd would be exactly 40 years. I left Iran July 1st, 1984. So this is the 40th anniversary.

Being a woman, I thought, when I went to England one of the first things, the professor was my direct supervisor when I worked with him. And I know you can see my face. This is 40 years later. I have no claims, but the professor told me, "You're a beautiful woman. Why do you want to study? Why are you here for PhD?" And I thought that was the greatest insult in my life. So I fought with that professor for four years.

[00:22:15] Lindsey Dinneen: No, I'm sorry.

[00:22:17] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: That wasn't easy, but it was so difficult to prove that I am not just a woman or a pretty girl or a young girl or a young woman, or. That was a major fight. I would say that was as difficult as fighting the revolution in Iran, because you wouldn't expect a British professor to say that to you. And I was the only girl, a PhD student, all the others were guys, and this was medical school. And to me, that was very surprising because when I went to University of Tehran, we had probably more girls than guys in the class. Girls were very prone to education in Iran, and they still are. There's still, I think, 60, 65 percent girls in universities, even here. But to hear that was very difficult. That experience repeated itself. in United States over and over till today that I can say I don't feel old. I'm antiaging, but now that I'm an old woman, I still feel that I have to prove myself that I am equal. And sometimes I would say I'm better, but, just to be honest and modest, you want to be treated equal. And that is very difficult.

[00:23:53] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And As much as I would wish things were improving rapidly, I'm not so sure that they are, but what have you found has been helpful in terms of, helping people understand who might come with a bias, but who, helping those people understand, "No I have this education. I am very capable." What are some strategies that you have found that have worked really well for you?

[00:24:22] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Not many. I have to be honest with you. I mean, if there are a few people, few women, a few even men who are, would be following the conversation, I want them to know that this is not easy. And maybe a part of my success is that I'm a fighter. And I didn't surrender, but I didn't smile my way up. I fought with everyone that went in that direction. And I don't want to get into details, but many of the stronger men would think that if they flirt with you, if they take you out, if they buy dinner for you, then you're going to do what they say.

And my story is, just, I have my guards up and I fought. I wouldn't recommend people to fight. Maybe they can find a better solution. I did not find many. Maybe the reason of working separate and starting my own company, maybe one of the major reasons was that I would not have to say yes to power that I did not want to say yes. I worked very hard. I worked hard, long hours. Medtechs, you have to stay there to get the results out.

One Christmas. I stayed from December 24th for I would say 72 hours in the lab, maybe two, three hours shower and sleep and go back because we had a lot of toxicology tests that were waiting and results had to go out. And the probe in the I-C-P-M-S was broken. There was no one to replace it during Christmas. It was, we had to borrow from somewhere, FedEx shipping it. Those things happen, you know that, and you have to work hard. It wasn't an easy journey to say, "Oh, I worked four hours a day." And they said, "Thank you. You're so good. Go home." It wasn't like that.

[00:26:44] Lindsey Dinneen: Right. Right. Yeah. Well, thank you. I appreciate you sharing that. And so one thing that was really interesting to me, I was looking at your LinkedIn profile and I see that art is a big part of your life in addition to the science and I saw you listed painting and sculpting and I'm wondering how-- well a couple of things-- how did you first get involved in art? And secondly, do you feel that is helpful in terms of having a sort of therapeutic thing to do that kind of maybe helps with some of those harder moments where it's a little frustrating?

[00:27:23] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Very helpful. But I was as a kid, I started painting at a very young age. And I was always coloring and painting and making things and all that. And my father, a very educated father, he had two master's degree from a University of Texas and came back to Iran. And that's why, we spoke English and we went to English school. So my father was educated and open minded, I can say. But he always said that "You should study art. And don't go to medicine, you'll get old." He passed away in 1988, and I always, when I started Antiaging, I always said "Okay, if you're looking, you will see that I'm antiaging, I didn't age, I went to medical school, I did all the studies."

But my logic, first that I love to do this, I mean, it wasn't just you know, forcing myself. I love science. And to this day I do a lot of research. I play with science. You can see the labels are all fancy. I do the paintings. I do all of that. But my logic, more than being scientific, was that this was a career and art would not be a self supporting career, even at younger age. But I always said that if I was a doctor, I could paint, but if I was an artist, I could not do the scientific part or the medical part that I was interested in.

But after the divorce, I was in a relationship for 14 years. And I was working hard, raising a son, being a single mother and all that. When that relationship ended after 14 years, the art just popped out. I started painting, sculpting. It was not under control. You can see that, things happen to me, things come out in a certain period. Maybe, I push them down, force them to stay within me, and then they just pop out in different directions. So art came out itself. But there was a period in between that there was no art. Maybe there was too much stress. Maybe there was a lot of, and right now there's no art. Right now it's more entrepreneurial, starting, scientific, all that. But the art pops out every now and then.

[00:30:07] Lindsey Dinneen: That's great. Yeah. So speaking of, what you're doing now, I was wondering if you could share a little bit about your company and maybe what you're excited about for its future as you continue along this path.

[00:30:19] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Okay. That is, this is now where all the passion is. So everything that I have forced inside for all my life is now just coming out into Apoptosis. Apoptosis is a Greek word and it means "falling of the leaves." In science apoptosis, if you Google it, you'll see it means "programmed cell death." So in our bodies in creation or creator or whichever you wanna put it, and I'm sure being a medtech and all the audience, they know there are thousands of reactions inside the body are happening for me just to sit here and breathe and talk. There are thousands and thousands of enzymes and catalysts and metals and oh, whatever is going on.

Programmed cell death or apoptosis is a main part of survival. So it's the future of antiaging because we all-- first of all that life expectancy is much longer now. Longevity is longer and younger people do not want to get old. So, at some point I would say my grandmother's generation and my mother is now 95 years old and she's, thank God, healthy and walking and all that, but even she does not want to get old. So, the image of being old and sick is combined together.

But we can age without being sick, without getting Alzheimer's, without losing our memory, without getting all these different kinds of diseases. And one major problem is cancer that was much higher with older people and now the statistic is showing that cancer is happening in younger and younger generations. So what apoptosis does is that it's a program in the body. I did not make it. I wish I did, but it's happening all the time. And apoptosis is getting rid of cancer cells, getting rid of damaged cells, getting rid of neurons that cannot connect and synapses with other neurons to take the message over. So if we encourage apoptosis, then all the damaged cells are removed just like falling leaves. They're removed from the body and they're replaced with new energized healthy new cells.

Every 10 years, our entire body is regenerated. So why do we get old? We should always stay at a 10 year age. So at 20 years old, we have recycled cells that even though we're growing, growth and youth is defined as between 20 to 25. From 25 to 30, it's sort of stable. There's a plateau. After 30, we start the aging process. So now, as 30 to 60, is still considered not so deep slip going down. It's sort of a plateau up to 60. And then after 60, 70, 80, 90, people are beginning to age. And it shows, I mean, with different diseases, with wrinkles, with memory loss, with all that.

So what I'm doing, I'm using nature's product, plant based products, and this has been proven in science that these plants support apoptosis. So, as we get older, just like all the other reactions, apoptosis does not happen at its ultimate way that it should happen. But if we encourage it, for example, we have here, this one is brain beet. This is all beet roots, and it's an organic product. It's all plant based, but it releases nitric oxide. And it works the same way that Viagra works, but it opens all the arteries, it opens the circulation to the brain, to the heart, so why not use it? Why not promote apoptosis the way nature has programmed it in our body, just help it to work better. So that is all my passion right now.

[00:35:28] Lindsey Dinneen: Excellent. Excellent. Well, I love that. Thank you for sharing a little bit about it. I'm excited for our listeners to go and learn more about it and, see how they can maybe also take part in the antiaging movement.

[00:35:41] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Yes, they can partner with us and I would be thrilled. Actually, this is something that maybe I have learned during the long life experience, is that the more partners you have, the more friends you have, the more you share your knowledge, the better it is. Because at some point, it was like people wanted to keep everything to themselves and they didn't want to share or, but right now it's totally different. If they go to Apoptosis.us, they can go to the science section, they can read the papers. And if they would like to partner, I'll be thrilled to work with as many people as possible and take the message out. Yeah, this is a healthy message. This is something that we should all be talking about.

[00:36:36] Lindsey Dinneen: Indeed, we should. Yes. Thank you. Well, pivoting the conversation just for fun, imagine that you were to be offered a million dollars to teach a master class on anything you want. It can be in your industry, but it doesn't have to be. What would you choose to teach?

[00:36:56] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Well, the million dollar would be great.

[00:36:59] Lindsey Dinneen: Indeed.

[00:37:00] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Yes. Yeah. Would we all want that. But yes, I think that right now, as I said, I would use the million dollars to talk about apoptosis all over because I see even young children, every time I see St. Jude's children, and thank you for your donation to Save the Children. I admire that. And I'm hoping that all the children in the world would have a good, healthy future. The world is crazy. You can look at it right now and see that, I can say my experience has been crazy. It doesn't get any better. It's always up and down. Things are happening all over everywhere in the world. And I would like to talk about health, talk about antiaging, talk about Apoptosis and educate more and more of the young people to learn and to avoid all the toxins that we are creating and we have created, with what we're doing with industry and go back to a plant based life, go back to nature, enjoy nature, go back to art, if possible, all the good things that we can do with our lives.

[00:38:21] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes, absolutely. And then, how do you wish to be remembered after you leave this world?

[00:38:29] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Oh, wow. That's a very difficult... a fighter? Survivor? Yep. Strong women? I would support women all the way. Now in Iran, they're saying, Woman Life Freedom. I'm sure you've heard about that. And I cannot tolerate, to see women covered all over with a window to see outside. To me, that is very disturbing. So I would like to see equal opportunity for women and I would like to maybe be remembered as a survivor.

[00:39:14] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes, absolutely. And then, final question, what is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?

[00:39:24] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Oh, my granddaughter and my grandson. Yes, I have a five year old granddaughter. Her name is Julia and she is my sunshine. She is my life. The grandson is three months old. He's still too young, but he's getting there.

[00:39:45] Lindsey Dinneen: Aw!

[00:39:48] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Getting emotional.

[00:39:51] Lindsey Dinneen: I'm so glad. It's that's beautiful. That's wonderful.

[00:39:56] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Yes, that is continuation of the fight. That is when you see that what you've done is worth the fight, worth the hard work.

[00:40:08] Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Well, this has been amazing. I so appreciate you telling your story and sharing some of it that maybe you haven't done before, and that's I feel very honored.

[00:40:23] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Yes.

[00:40:24] Lindsey Dinneen: Thank you. Thank you for trusting me.

[00:40:28] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Well, thank you for bringing all of this out. This has been sitting there suffocating, maybe.

[00:40:36] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah.

[00:40:37] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Thank you.

[00:40:38] Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely. And we are so honored, you mentioned this, but to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to Save the Children, which works to end the cycle of poverty by ensuring communities have the resources to provide children with a healthy, educational, and safe environment. So thank you for choosing that organization to support. And we just wish you the most continued success as you work to change lives for a better world.

[00:41:06] Dr. Shoreh Ershadi: Thank you so much, and thank you for having me, and thank you for making me tell the story. Thank you, Lindsey.

[00:41:15] Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. And thank you also so much to our listeners for tuning in. And if you're feeling as inspired as I am right now, I would love if you would share this episode with a colleague or two, and we'll catch you next time.

[00:41:29] Ben Trombold: The Leading Difference is brought to you by Velentium. Velentium is a full-service CDMO with 100% in-house capability to design, develop, and manufacture medical devices from class two wearables to class three active implantable medical devices. Velentium specializes in active implantables, leads, programmers, and accessories across a wide range of indications, such as neuromodulation, deep brain stimulation, cardiac management, and diabetes management. Velentium's core competencies include electrical, firmware, and mechanical design, mobile apps, embedded cybersecurity, human factors and usability, automated test systems, systems engineering, and contract manufacturing. Velentium works with clients worldwide, from startups seeking funding to established Fortune 100 companies. Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.