Anika Mistry

Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

“Relentlessly curious founder building technology that keeps humanity at the center.”

Hometown: Santa Cruz, California

Fun fact about yourself:  I’ve spoken at global conferences before legally being allowed to rent a car.

Undergraduate School and Degree: Johns Hopkins University, BS in Computer Science and Cognitive Science

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Founder & CEO, DevMinds

I founded and led DevMinds, an AI-powered therapeutic platform designed to support neurodiverse students with personalized social-emotional learning modules. The company emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic when therapy access collapsed. Since then, I’ve piloted the platform in Baltimore clinics.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? EY; MBA Consultant (Technology Strategy & Operations Consulting); New York City

As a Technology Strategy & Operations Consultant at EY in New York City, I advised enterprise clients on digital transformation initiatives, helping clients think through what AI should actually look like in practice, balancing ambition with operational and regulatory realities.

Where will you be working after graduation? EY; Senior Consultant (Technology Strategy & Operations) in New York City

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

President of Case Competitions, Johns Hopkins Graduate Consulting Club (JHGCC)
As president of the Johns Hopkins Graduate Consulting Club, I focused on strengthening Carey’s consulting community by translating what I learned from personally competing in more than five case competitions and from my internship at EY into preparation for my peers. I hosted internal strategy workshops with over 70 student registrations, sharing frameworks in market entry, financial modeling, and executive storytelling. My goal was not simply to prepare teams for competitions, but to also raise the bar for how we think through strategy at Carey.

I also led the AstraZeneca National Healthcare Strategy Case Competition and partnered with the Carey AI Club to launch the AI for Impact Case Competition. These initiatives expanded employer engagement, elevated Carey’s national presence, and brought healthcare and business students together to solve real strategy challenges.

Johns Hopkins University Pava Marie LaPere Center for Entrepreneurship –Spark and Fuel Accelerators
Through the Pava Center for Entrepreneurship, I scaled DevMinds by completing the Spark early-stage accelerator and Fuel late-stage accelerator. I also participated in the National Science Foundation I-Corps. These experiences pushed me to rigorously validate assumptions, refine our value proposition, and take DevMinds to market. DevMinds was recognized with the Hustler Award for venture traction and selected to represent the Pava Center as one of its most advanced startups and pitch the business to investors in Seattle. I also participated in Maryland’s Baltimore Innovation Initiative (BII), a state-backed commercialization program that’s helped integrate DevMinds in Maryland.

Leadership & Women’s Entrepreneurship Panels
To encourage young women founders to pursue technology and mission-driven entrepreneurship, I have spoken at forums including the Girls With Impact Leadership Forum at the Yale Club of New York City and the Milken Institute Global Conference, sharing my journey building DevMinds. I was also selected to represent Carey at a leadership conversation with Yara Shahidi through Horizons by Hopkins, where I reflected on the responsibility we have to build inclusive, human-centered innovations.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I am most proud of leading the AstraZeneca National Case Competition at Carey Business through my role as President of Case Competitions of Johns Hopkins Graduate Consulting Club. I oversaw the competition’s end-to-end execution, including cultivating corporate partnerships to participant experience, ensuring it was both professionally rigorous and strategically impactful. This year, we had 75 applications from 31 business schools nationwide, trying to solve this year’s theme, transforming breast cancer through precision diagnostics and innovative medicine.

What makes this achievement the one I am most proud of is its ripple effect. It was not about winning personally, but about building an ecosystem where others could compete and succeed, at the highest level. Seeing Carey teams perform nationally with confidence and strategic clarity affirmed that leadership is not about individual accolades, but about creating structures that elevate an entire community.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? I am most proud of transforming DevMinds from a personal initiative into a state-backed venture. What began as an effort to help a neurodivergent friend whose therapy disappeared during the COVID pandemic evolved into an AI-powered platform grounded in behavioral science and designed to close access gaps in social-emotional care.

During my MBA, I moved DevMinds from concept to ecosystem integration. Through the Pava Center and Maryland’s state-backed Baltimore Innovation Initiative, I secured over $60,000 in initial non-dilutive funding, enabling product development, pilot partnerships, and clinical validation. Today, DevMinds is embedded within Baltimore’s healthcare and education ecosystem, supported by clinicians and community stakeholders.

What makes this achievement meaningful is not simply launching a startup but learning how to translate empathy into something tangible. Building technology is one challenge; building something that can endure within reimbursement structures, regulatory frameworks, and community systems is another. Scaling DevMinds taught me that innovation does not begin with code. It begins where empathy meets action.

Why did you choose this business school? Three years into my undergraduate studies, I found myself at a crossroads. I had a strong technical foundation as an engineer and knew how to design and deploy systems, but I began asking deeper questions. I wanted to learn not just how to build something, but how to scale it responsibly and sustainably.

Through Carey’s MBA specialization in Health, Technology, and Innovation, I deepened this perspective through specialized coursework. In the business of health courses, we analyzed how insurance design, payment reform, and cost containment ultimately determine which innovations succeed and which fail. In AI + Health, I moved from theory to execution, designing and coding AI-driven solutions to real clinical challenges.

As a founder at the intersection of AI and behavioral health, I needed to understand not only product design, but also reimbursement realities, regulatory risk, and how organizations actually make decisions. Carey strengthened my ability to build technology that can operate within a healthcare system that demands both clinical rigor and human impact.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? My favorite MBA professor was Professor Stacey Lee, who taught Business Law and Health Law & Regulations. Her courses went beyond explaining statutes, requiring us to think like decision-makers navigating real regulatory complexity. One of the most memorable experiences was simulating major litigation scenarios, where we had to present and defend strategic positions under pressure. Those exercises reshaped how I think about accountability, compliance, and long-term risk management.

As a founder building AI tools in health care, her class fundamentally shifted my perspective. She taught me that regulation is not a barrier to innovation. Understanding liability and intellectual property has directly shaped how I design and scale DevMinds. Professor Lee helped me see that foresight is not merely legal protection. It is a strategic advantage.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? My favorite course was the Innovation Field Project, an eight-week consulting engagement where student groups are teamed with real businesses. My team partnered with Siemens to optimize its LAER operating model as the company transitioned to SaaS. We evaluated growth barriers within Siemens’ sales strategy and interviewed leaders across strategy, marketing, and partnerships. Ultimately, we proposed a redesigned operating model and practical initiatives to help the transition stick.

What made the course especially impactful was its realism. It mirrored a true consulting engagement and allowed me to experience consulting before my internship at EY.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? My favorite MBA event was the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC), one of Carey’s experiential competitions. Each year, teams first compete internally at Carey, with the winning team advancing to represent the school at the regional round in Boston. I had the opportunity to win the internal competition and represent Carey two years in a row, earning the Entrepreneur’s Choice Award at regionals both times.

VCIC stands out because it places students in the role of investors rather than founders. As someone building my own startup, sitting on the other side of the table was transformative. Conducting diligence under time pressure, defending investment theses, and evaluating founder-market fit sharpened my judgment in ways no classroom lecture could. Traveling to Boston with classmates and operating as a true investment team was equally meaningful. Across both years, we leaned into each other’s strengths under intense time constraints. The experience reinforced that leadership is rarely individual; it is built through real collaboration— one of Carey’s key values.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? Looking back over my MBA experience, I would have intentionally built a founder community earlier. While I was deeply focused on scaling DevMinds, I initially approached venture-building independently. It was not until my second year, when DevMinds was selected by the Pava Center for Entrepreneurship to pitch in Seattle, that I fully appreciated the power of peer-accountability and shared founder dialogue. During that trip, I connected with other late-stage founders, and those conversations and support networks continued long after we returned to the East Coast. Engaging with peers navigating similar growth challenges sharpened my thinking, exposed blind spots, and accelerated my decision-making in ways I had not anticipated.

I realized I had waited too long to formalize those founder circles beyond informal conversations. Creating spaces for founders to challenge and support one another would have amplified our collective momentum. Through this experience, I learned that building alone is slower—and lonelier—than building together.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school, and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? One of the most impactful cases for me was Cynthia Carroll at Anglo American in my Behavioral Science: Leadership and Organizational Behavior course. Carroll had just stepped into the CEO role when she faced a series of fatalities in the company’s South African mines. She had to decide whether to continue operations to protect financial performance or shut down production to address systemic safety failures, despite the significant revenue loss that would follow.

What made the case powerful to me was that it focused on a real leadership decision with immediate human and financial consequences. In class, we debated whether a newly-appointed CEO should take such a bold and costly stance so early in her tenure. Some believed she needed to build political capital first, while others argued that decisive action was the only way to reset the company’s culture.

The biggest lesson I took away is that leadership credibility is established through visible, values-aligned decisions. Culture does not change through messaging alone. Carroll’s choice to prioritize safety over short-term profit showed that ethics isn’t separate from strategy. The case reinforced that in complex systems, leaders must anchor decisions in principle, even when the tradeoffs are costly.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? After five years in Baltimore, I understand why it’s called Charm City. It’s a place that has grown on me and now feels like home. One of the first places I visited when deciding whether to commit to Hopkins was Vaccaro’s Italian Pastry Shop, just five minutes from Carey Business School. Their cannoli sealed the deal. Years later, I still haven’t found one better, and whenever I go home for the holidays, my family requests I bring a box back with me.

Beyond the food, what I value most is Baltimore’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. It is mission-driven and accessible, where relationships feel genuine, not transactional. From Upsurge Tuesdays to community pitch nights across the city, founders, clinicians, and mentors consistently show up to support early-stage ideas. That spirit of grounded ambition has shaped both my MBA experience and my venture-building journey.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into its programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? One of the most meaningful ways Carey integrated AI into my MBA experience was through its dedicated AI for Business pathway. Rather than treating AI as a buzzword, the curriculum emphasized building and deploying models responsibly while understanding their strategic and organizational implications.

In courses such as AI + Health, my team developed and deployed a functional MVP within eight weeks, moving from model selection to implementation under real-world constraints. That experience reinforced that AI success is not determined by model sophistication alone, but by problem definition, adoption readiness, and stakeholder alignment.

Beyond the classroom, I had the opportunity to expand AI applications across the Carey community. I led an inter-organizational collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Graduate Consulting Club and the AI Club to launch the AI for Impact Case Competition, supported by the Cancer AI Alliance (CAIA). The competition challenged teams to leverage AI tools and design responsible AI solutions for real healthcare challenges. It was especially meaningful to see students from diverse backgrounds engage with AI not just as users, but as strategic decision-makers.

Carey’s approach reshaped how I think about AI as a founder. The most important question is not “Can we build this model?” but “Should we deploy it, and how will it shape the system it enters?”

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? One MBA classmate I most admire is Angelica Hall. What stands out about Angelica is not a title or position, but the way she consistently shows up for people. I genuinely cannot remember walking through the halls between classes without seeing her smiling.

As the youngest student in the program, I occasionally questioned whether I belonged. Angelica never did. She treated me, and everyone, with the same warmth and respect, and became someone I could turn to for honest advice and steady perspective. That kind of inclusivity stays with you.

Watching her has taught me that leadership does not always come from being the loudest voice in the room. Sometimes it comes from presence: remembering names and creating spaces where others feel seen and capable. It is no surprise that she serves as President of the Full-Time MBA Association; she builds community not because of the role, but because it is who she is. She reminds me that success in business should never come at the expense of humanity.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? 

1) Scale DevMinds and future AI-powered platforms that transform access to behavioral healthcare for neurodiverse communities.

2) Continue sharing that work on national and global stages, such as the World Economic Forum and Forbes 30 Under 30, not for recognition alone, but to open doors, funding, and policy conversations for communities that are often overlooked.

What made Anika such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?

“Anika Mistry stood out in my Business Law and Healthcare Law course for the clarity and discipline of her thinking. She has an instinct for asking the next question—the one that pushes past the rule itself to examine how the law actually operates in real business and healthcare settings. Anika’s curiosity, sharp analytical skills, and thoughtful engagement elevated the discussion for everyone in the room. Students like Anika make teaching especially rewarding because they approach complex problems with both rigor and insight.”

Stacey B. Lee, JD
Professor of Practice
Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

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