Meet the Team
Our Story
Ora started as Ryan's personal study system at UCSF when he saw classmates drowning in scattered resources and wasting time making their own. His method worked—he scored in the 100th percentile on the USMLE—and wanted to help others do the same.
Ryan teamed up with childhood best friends Kevin, a former Square engineer, and Jake, a healthcare UX designer, to build Ora. In the summer of 2023, the team joined Y Combinator to help bring Ora to students across the US.
Now the team is working on a single goal: to create a unified gold standard for medical education.

Founders


Physician & Professor Advisory Board

Jessica Valdez, MD, MPH
UCSF Obstetrics & Gynecology, UCSF School of Medicine
General Advisor

Derek Harmon, PhD
Associate Professor
Clinical, Division of Anatomy

Sophie Yu, MD
UCSF Otolaryngology, Harvard School of Medicine
Surgical Subspecialty Advisor

Donald Keating III, DO
Duke Anesthesiology, KCU College of Osteopathic Medicine
COMLEX Strategy Advisor

Hadley Leatherman, MD
University of Washington School of Medicine
General Advisor

Luis Freitas, MD
Universidade Federal do Paraná
IMG Success Advisor
Medical Student Advisory Board

Sunitha Konatham
Texas A&M College of Medicine (MS4)
Growth & Strategy Advisor

Alex Zhou
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (MS4)
Clinical Content & Strategy Advisor

Henry Nguyen
Stanford School of Medicine (MS4)
Preclinical Content Advisor

Gurasees Bajaj
Northwestern School of Medicine (MS3)
Inclusive Education Advisor

Tejas Sekhar
Rush Medical College (MS3)
General Advisor

Karthika Venugopalan
DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine (OMS3)
COMLEX Content Advisor

Kor Akiti
University of Pennsylvania (MS3)
Growth & Strategy Advisor

Bryan Colasacco
Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine (OMS3)
Growth & Strategy Advisor

Andrew Ma
NYU School of Medicine (MS3)
Research & Data Science Advisor

Christina Stylianou
UNC School of Medicine (MS3)
Growth & Strategy Advisor

Aliya Shabbir
Harvard Medical School (MS2)
Clinical Education & Clerkship Content Advisor

Robert Tran
UC Irvine (MS2)
Research & Data Science Advisor

Nikolai Rogalinski
UConn School of Medicine (MS2)
Content & Curriculum Advisor