Consulting with Sara Szal MD
Advisory, Board & Investment Services
Consulting
Clinical rigor, scientific depth, and audience reach, applied where capital and strategy get decided.
I spend my clinical hours with patients and my strategic hours with the companies building what comes after the visit, the diagnostics, therapeutics, devices, and consumer health products that either hold up under real physiology or don't. I sit on the side of the table that asks the second question, after the pitch deck has already answered the first one.
I work with a limited number of companies and funds at a time, in three capacities.
Investment & Diligence
For funds and operators: I conduct clinical and scientific diligence on longevity, women's health, and precision medicine deals, currently including diligence work for Agentis Longevity alongside Myles Spar, MD. I assess the strength of the underlying clinical evidence, the credibility of the claims against the data actually available, and whether the product will survive contact with a physician who knows the literature. I tell you what the deck won't.
Board Service
Boards need one voice in the room that has actually practiced the medicine the company is building around. I bring Harvard- and UCSF-trained clinical judgment to governance, product direction, and risk, translating between what a research paper claims, what a regulator will accept, and what a patient will actually experience. I've directed a precision medicine and longevity program inside an academic health system and held a clinical faculty appointment at Thomas Jefferson University, so I know both how medicine is actually practiced and how it's taught to the next generation of physicians who will decide whether to recommend your product.
Strategic Advisory
For companies that need clinical and scientific counsel without a board seat: I advise on clinical evidence strategy, product-market fit against actual physician and patient behavior, regulatory-adjacent positioning, and where a company's claims outrun its data. I've co-authored a randomized controlled trial published in NPJ Biofilms and Microbiomes and written multiple bestselling books translating complex endocrinology for a lay audience, including the New York Times bestseller The Hormone Cure, so I can evaluate a company's science and also tell you whether the market will understand and adopt it.
Why Companies Bring Me In
Most clinical advisors bring the credential. Most growth advisors bring the audience. I bring both, with the bench science underneath both of them. I trained as a bioengineer at Harvard and MIT before becoming a board-certified physician, so I read a scientific claim and a clinical trial with the same fluency an operator reads a term sheet. I have also built a public platform of approximately one million followers and readers across my books, my newsletter, and social media, so when I tell a board or a fund whether a claim will land with patients and consumers, I am speaking from direct experience building that kind of reach myself, not theorizing about someone else's.
- Trained as a bioengineer at Harvard and MIT before specializing in precision medicine; board-certified physician, residency completed at UCSF
- Platform of approximately 1 million followers and readers built across books, newsletter, and social media
- Director of Precision Medicine and Longevity, Marcus Institute of Integrative Health, Thomas Jefferson University; Clinical Assistant Professor, Thomas Jefferson University
- CEO, Threshold Ventures, Inc.
- Co-author, peer-reviewed RCT, NPJ Biofilms and Microbiomes (2025), and multiple other peer-reviewed journal articles
- Author of multiple books including the New York Times bestsellers The Hormone Cure, The Hormone Reset Diet, Younger, and Women Food and Hormones
- Active clinical practice, my judgment is current, not emeritus
Work With Me
I take on a small number of board, advisory, and diligence engagements at any given time. If your company is building in women's health, longevity, or precision medicine and needs a rare combination of clinical judgment, scientific depth, and audience reach at the table where the decisions get made, reach out to discuss fit.