Polina Segalova
About Polina:
Polina Segalova is an Olin partner and innovator in San Francisco working at Naya Health, a startup currently designing more comfortable and convenient breast pumps. Entrepreneurship has been a major consideration in her life since attending Olin — she took on the challenge of co-creating her own school partially because she believes entrepreneurship to be a vital part of being an influential engineer. Developing Olin, working on internships, graduate work, larger companies positions, and leading Naya Health have taught her about technical processes, handling money, and the importance of fulfilling company mission and have made Polina a prime example of Olin’s E!ngineer.
Founding Olin
One of Polina’s first entrepreneurial endeavor was the experiment of starting Olin. She was one of the students camping out in the trailers, getting money for pizza as food while she helped her professors create an entirely new school that no one else had heard of. This acceptance of scrappiness for the purpose of pursuing an organization is the core of entrepreneurship. Creating Olin and participating in Olin’s project-based classes taught Polina the importance of knowing how to “jump off the deep end” and deal with uncertainty. Within Olin, Polina participated in several startup organizations including CORe and the Honor Board, which further reinforced these skills and the necessity for relying on her peers within projects. Polina’s experience at Olin allowed her to explore some basic entrepreneurship skills that she further developed in her later pursuits.
Early Business Experience
Polina’s early work during and after college began her transition towards medical devices and taught her the ins and outs of industry standard companies. During college Polina had an internship at the University of Chicago where she was trained to use an electron microscope and tested yttrium hydride films’ electrical aspects. Because electron microscopes are commonly used in biological and medical sciences, this internship sparked an interest in the medical aspect of mechanical engineering she later worked on. She also took on an internship at IBM studying nanostructures and exploratory devices, and learning about hybrid e-beam and light lithography methods to write nano-scale wafer patterns. Her work in Crossroad Medical Technologies after college helped her further develop her engineering skills and gave her experience reaching out to buyers and collaborators: in other words, “talking to humans.” Polina also used her collaboration skills as a product manager at Stryker. These experiences gave Polina the technical and entrepreneurial expertise to work at Naya Health efficiently and effectively without compromising her product’s quality.
Graduate School at Stanford
Polina’s work on biomedical projects while earning a Mechanical Engineering degree at Stanford represented a major career pivot towards medical work that allowed her to further explore entrepreneurship. During our interview, Polina spoke extensively on her work with Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Endografts, and challenges such as uncooperative faculty and funding issues. She learned to apply for grants, a skill relevant to her current work in Naya Health, and learned to overcome personal troubles as she struggled with a feeling of disengagement. Learning to self motivate to work on projects even when they proved difficult increased Polina’s confidence and translated to her later entrepreneurial endeavors. In this way, Polina’s graduate research experience taught her more specific technical and soft skills that allowed her to function better within the larger companies she worked for, and with Naya Health.
Post-Graduate School Work
Polina’s subsequent work helped develop skills she’d learned in graduate school and past internships. Her work in Crossroad Medical Technologies after college helped her further develop her engineering skills and gave her experience reaching out to buyers and collaborators. Polina also refined her collaborative skills while working as a product manager at Stryker Corporation.
Current Work
Polina currently works at Naya Health, a medical device startup. Her company identified a literal pain point for busy mothers: using uncomfortable, archaic breast pumps. Polina now uses her mechanical engineering expertise to design less painful and more effective breast pumps, and the entrepreneurial skills she gained in school and industry to navigate politics, regulations, and funding. Taking the principles she had learned from her past, Polina has managed to practice entrepreneurship, becoming the perfect example of Olin’s E! engineer.