Inside Gena: Our Story and the Team Bringing it to Life
· Gena Health Team
Our Inside Gena series is where we share who we are, why we're building Gena, and 'behind-the-scenes' glimpses of how Gena works.
Why We Started Gena
Our team knows the reality of navigating cancer care not just from the outside, but from lived experience. We've seen how urgently patients need clear, personalised options when time matters most.
In 2019, Skomer's mother, Jana, was diagnosed with glioblastoma (GBM), an aggressive form of brain cancer. After exhausting standard treatments in the UK, Skomer became her full-time carer and research analyst, piecing together treatment options from around the world. That work gave Jana another year of meaningful life. Jana sadly passed away in 2022, but this experience shaped the mission at Gena: make sure all patients can navigate a fragmented, inequitable and complex landscape with the greatest currency of all - speed.
And we're building Gena around this principle. Every week matters in cancer care and we aim to empower patients and enable carers and clinicians to find options beyond the standard of care faster.
Meet the Team behind Gena
Skomer Bennett-Clemmow, CEO & Co-Founder - Carer-turned-founder. After navigating his mother's glioblastoma journey, Skomer built Gena to ensure no family has to do it alone. He brings experience in scaling startups and a deep understanding of what patients and carers face in real life.
Rob Ballantine, Chief Operations Officer & Co-Founder - With years of experience leading NHS digital transformation projects, including clinical trial coordination and shared care record systems, Rob ensures Gena is grounded in operational and clinical realities.
Nikola Vouk, Chief Technology Officer - With 20+ years of experience in software security, including leadership roles at AWS and McKinsey, IBM and the Singapore Ministry of Health, Nik ensures patient data is handled with the highest standards of safety and privacy.
Dr. James Ray, Clinical Lead - As Emergency Medicine Consultant and National Clinical Advisor at NHS England, James has led urgent and emergency care programmes across the UK, including the rollout of NHS 111's AI-powered triage service. At Gena, he brings frontline clinical expertise and helps us ensure that everything we build aligns with the realities of patient care.
Anna Krukover, Marketing Lead - With 7+ years of international marketing and launch experience at an industry leading pharmaceutical company and digital health start-ups, Anna leads Gena’s efforts to deeply understand the patient, carer, and clinician journeys so that Gena's solutions are relevant and useful in solving the problems that patients, carers, and clinicians face every day.
We've lived the challenges of cancer care - as carers, as clinicians, researchers, and technologists. We're building Gena to make navigating options faster and clearer.