Elham (Hasti) Jamshidi

Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

“I’m an unstoppable doctor and entrepreneur, using technology to save lives globally, true digital health innovation.”

Hometown: Tehran, Iran

Fun fact about yourself: I’m an adrenaline seeker who never runs out of energy, from skydiving to snowboarding, to scuba diving, and everything about traveling. I always chase adventure with endless enthusiasm.

Undergraduate School and Degree: I completed my Doctor of Pharmacy at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, one of Iran’s top medical schools. I switched from medicine to pharmacy because I wanted to have a more scalable impact.

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? (List Company and Role) I was the founder and CEO of my own digital health startup in Iran. It’s called Riske Man. At the time, it was Iran’s first approved digital health company, and focused on creating AI models for managing COVID-19, both in public and hospital settings.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2024? I worked at Johns Hopkins Hospital. We redesigned and revamped policies for the Hopkins Health Services. We want to make the policy more unified, accessible, and available for staff.

Where will you be working after graduation? I will be joining AstraZeneca as a commercial leadership associate.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: (Include school awards and honors) I am co-president of the Johns Hopkins Consulting Club, which is the largest student club at Carey Business School. I’m also a vice president of the Graduate Healthcare Business Association, and we organize the annual Hopkins Healthcare Business Conference. I was also selected to the Health Business Health Initiative Graduate Academy, which only admits 13 students. I’m involved in Techstar, Nucleate, Hexcite (a Johns Hopkins digital health accelerator), the Social Innovation Lab, Fast Forward, and SPARK.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? My proudest moment was helping to create a unified policy document for the six Johns Hopkins hospitals in the Baltimore-Washington region, and Florida. Each hospital had different ways of handling critical policies, and I wrote a draft that brought all these policies together into one clear document. Over a couple of meetings with hospital leaders, we refined this draft until everyone agreed on one standard for doing things. These top hospital leaders were using my work as a basis to make a real change. It showed me how far I’d come, and it proved that my mix of medical knowledge and business training could make a real difference in health care and improve patient care on a bigger scale.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? I’m most proud of building Riske Man, Iran’s first approved digital health company. It means “my risk” in English. As a woman CEO in a male-dominated country, I worked tirelessly for a year to collect patient data to develop the app. Our mobile application helped people check their COVID risk based on their health history. We grew to over one million users in just three months, and the project won the Most Innovative Product at the World Hospital Congress, which is an International Hospital Federation Award. What really matters is that we saved lives across the whole country. We helped people make safer choices at a time when they were scared and needed the guidance the most. That’s something that I’m really proud of.

Why did you choose this business school? I chose Carey Business School because of the focus on health care technology, which was exactly something that I was looking for. Coming from a clinical background, I wanted a program that kind of could help me bridge between medicine and business. And Hopkins doesn’t just teach health care as another industry, I think it’s in the school’s DNA. And being right next to one of the best hospitals in the world means you are constantly exposed to real health care challenges that need business solutions. That’s something that I really like about Hopkins.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? It’s so hard to choose because I love them all. Michael Darden taught frameworks for analyzing health care markets, which combined health care and economics. I loved this class for several reasons. First, he made hard topics easy to understand. Coming from a clinical background, I didn’t have a background in economics. He knows how to explain complex ideas in simple ways. When he talked about health care economics, he used clear examples that really made sense.

He also used great, real-world cases for each class, and we looked at real problems in health care. These cases help us understand how hospitals and health care companies make decisions.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? My favorite course is the Student Managed Investment Fund. I loved this course because we manage real money around $500,000. Every week, we looked at different stocks and decide which ones we should buy or sell and see if our choice made or lost money. We worked as a team to make choices. It was very exciting for me because we learned by doing the real work. We could see how our decision affected real money and we worked together as a team.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? The Carey community celebrated many cultural holidays throughout the year. These are specific events for different cultures and different religions. I don’t know about other schools, but I think it’s very special for our school. It is like these special days because students from different countries share their traditional food, tell us stories about their cultures, and teach others about their holidays. For example, I tried Korean food for the first time and learned about Lunar New Year traditions. As someone who loves food, this event was perfect for me. Also, I learned a lot and made some good friends. It brings everyone together like a family.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? One thing I would do differently is to start collaborating with the medical school and other schools at Johns Hopkins earlier in my MBA journey. I think starting these kinds of conversations and building bridges earlier would have accelerated my connections and progress.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? What I love the most about Baltimore is its beautiful blend of cultures and incredible food. They have beautiful festivals, food festivals especially. Coming from Iran, I found Baltimore to be an amazingly diverse city where everyone is so welcoming, from local vendors to my neighbors. They want you to feel that this is your home. I think sometimes Baltimore gets a bad rap, but I think that the warmth of its people, and its rich culture make it special – and also food. Oh, my God, the food.

What movie or television show (e.g. The Big Short, The Founder, Mad Men, House of Lies) best reflects the realities of business and what did you learn from it? I just saw The Founder, which really resonated with me. The film portrays the formation of McDonalds in a very complex moral landscape of business. You have this transformation from a struggling salesman to a kind of ruthless businessman, who works with founders and eventually steals their business. It shows both the power of vision and the potential for corruption and immorality of unchecked ambition. I think that’s something that really touched me.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? I think Carey Business School was ahead of the curve with AI education. Every MBA student, regardless of their background, learns AI from the ground up. And we are not just talking about service-level AI applications. We dive deep into the neural network, and machine learning fundamentals. I think this solid foundation flows into practical application whether you are in finance, marketing, or operation. By the time ChatGPT became mainstream, we were already having sophisticated discussions about generative models and their business implications.

What makes Carey’s approach special is the combination of technical depth and practical business application. You learn both how to build AI systems and how to strategically implement them in a business context. It’s not just an elective or an afterthought. It’s a core part of how Carey Business School prepares a student for the future.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? I admire Deanna Portero from my MBA class. She’s raising three kids while pursuing both her MBA and MPH degrees. That alone is incredible. But what really inspires me is how she’s using her expertise in rare diseases to help patients who are often forgotten by the big pharma. She’s not just a mom, just a student, or just a health care leader, she is excelling at all three. I think Deanna proves that being a mother doesn’t mean putting your dream on hold, and it can make you even more determined to change the world.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? I want to make the next Forbes 40 Under 40 list. It’s not for personal fame, but to show other immigrant women that someone with an accent and a non-traditional career path can shatter glass ceilings. Growing up in Iran, I never saw someone like myself on this list, so I really want to change that. I’d really like to become a C-level executive at AstraZeneca someday. I would love to be a chief digital officer leading the transformation of traditional pharmaceuticals into integrated digital therapeutic solutions. That is something that I really want to do.

What made Hasti such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2025?

“Hasti Jamshidi arrived at Carey Business School eager to make her mark and has been and involved and engaged student throughout her journey. She gained a coveted spot in the Johns Hopkins Health System 2024 summer internship program, and during the 10-week program made noticeable impact, earning the attention of program and hospital leadership. She hit the second year of the MBA running, taking a pivotal leadership role in planning and execution of the Carey Business School National Case Competition, while simultaneously interviewing for and landing her post graduate role in the MBA Commercial Leadership and Development Program with AstraZeneca. Hasti has taken full advantage of all opportunities the Carey MBA program and Johns Hopkins ecosystem afford her with a growth mindset, immense drive, gratitude, and appreciation.”

Corinne Brassfield
Director, Strategic Partnerships & Student Innovation

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