Amanda Havard has made a career of launching things into orbit, and Innovation Engine is no exception. Her strength is in bringing human-centered design and innovation to Third Wave technology -- that is, legacy industries and sectors whose infrastructure, technology, processes, and culture naturally resist evolution and innovation. Her “Innovation as a Service” work and product design has spanned government, education, publishing, manufacturing, with her deepest base healthcare and health data, and increasingly in utilizing “people” data to help innovate in the workplace.

She previously founded or launched multiple startup initiatives, including an interactive reading platform she patented, a SaaS platform for Medicaid programs, which led to an exit to a digital health network company, where she served as Head of Product. As founder of Lunae Innovation Lab, and now Founding Partner of Innovation Engine, Havard lends her road-tested approach to innovation design to support other innovators in all types of organizations in bringing their ideas to life (including Sam and Vijay’s earliest iteration of Innovation Engine, which was initially a “Lunae Launch”). 

Other Lunae Launches include the family caregiver support app KinKeeper and building from zero-to-$10MM in revenue for the telehealth-centric mental health practice, Oria. She also had early stage roles on the inpatient software, Clarity Health, and Wellvolution, a product that connected Blue Shield of California members to digital health interventions. She advises multiple startups, and often acts as early-stage CEO, like she currently is with Origin Story Health, an integrated mental health program delivering structured, evidence-based treatments that focus on healing from trauma, and, in turn, bring economic value to payers and employers by way of transparent, accountable, and outcomes-driven care. 

Originally from Dallas, Texas, Havard spent 17 years in Nashville, where she was a Peabody Research Institute fellow and received both her Bachelor's of Science and a Master's of Education from Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College. After another tenure in Texas, Havard moved to Kentucky in 2023 to establish Lunae’s headquarters. She is a former HIMSS faculty, New York Film Festival faculty, the inventor of the Walnut Grove Program that brought addiction care to incarcerated individuals, and the Board Chair of the Regional Technology Council in Kentucky. She holds two US patents, is a published author, data enthusiast, art collector, vibrant creator, and big-time nerd.