Network N’ Chill: Health, Equity, & Innovation with Ben Reno-Weber

Join Network + Chill as we discuss advancing community health, equity, and innovation w/ Ben Reno-Weber, Deputy Director of the Health Equity Innovation Hub at the University of Louisville.

The Health Equity Innovation Hub is a $25M initiative supported by UofL, The Humana Foundation, and Humana Inc. aimed at closing health equity gaps.

As Deputy Director of the Health Equity Innovation Hub at the University of Louisville, the team Ben works with is leveraging an investment by the Humana Foundation to make the innovation ecosystem in healthcare more open, transparent, and equitable, while elevating the voices of those whose lived experiences give them unique insight into the most pressing issues in health. In the process he gets to hang out with innovators, faith leaders, community members, researchers, technologists, startup founders, industry thought leaders, investors, and health practitioners, which he thinks is pretty cool.

A Louisville native, Ben started his career as a social entrepreneur with the World Bank’s global microfinance unit, focused on creating greater access to capital among marginalized communities, particularly in the Balkans and former Soviet Union. He earned an MBA and MPA from Harvard’s Business and Kennedy School and joined the Boston Consulting Group in 2009, where he focused on corporate culture and change management.

On his return to Kentucky, he ran a series of organizations at the intersection of business and social impact, including non-profits, start-ups, and foundation-funded entities. As former Director of the Microsoft-funded Future of Work Initiative, he worked to build the local skill-base in the data-economy workforce, with a particular focus on connecting resources that support marginalized community members to obtain “future-proof” jobs in technology and AI-related fields.

In 2023, his wife Theresa and three children finally acknowledged that his mastery of dad jokes has become apparent.