Jodi Akin is the founder and chief executive officer of Hawthorne Effect Inc. Jodi began her career as a clinician, working at the bedside and developing deep empathy for patients with critical illnesses. As an advanced critical care nurse at the University of California San Francisco, she became involved in clinical trials and was recruited by Dr. Paul Yock, a cardiologist and inventor, to Stanford when he created the Stanford Center for Research in Cardiovascular Interventions and what is now Stanford Biodesign.