Our Team


Image

LAUREN PIERCE FLICKINGER

Chief Executive Officer

Lauren became the interim CEO of ilumivu after having served on the company’s Board of Directors since 2022 representing the Pisgah Fund. For the Pisgah Fund, Lauren serves as the Fund Manager, where she is primarily dedicated to identifying, investing in and supporting the growth of healthcare-focused companies in Western North Carolina. In addition to Ilumivu, Lauren serves on the board of Configo Health and is a board observer at Rx ReDefined, GoCheck Kids, and Wesper. She is also involved in healthcare IT/services investments for Hatteras Venture Partners and the WakeMed Innovation Venture Fund. Prior to joining Hatteras, Lauren spent six years in investment banking with Morgan Stanley in New York, where she served as a Vice President advising clients on mergers and acquisitions as well as public and private capital markets transactions. Lauren previously managed the Eastern Europe and Central Asia practice of DHInfrastructure, an economic and finance consulting firm specializing in advising the World Bank and other international financial institutions on infrastructure development.

Lauren holds a bachelor’s degree from Smith College and an MBA from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Connect on LinkedIn

Photo of Kat Houghton

Katherine (Kat) Houghton, Ph.D

Co-Founder & Chief Clinical Officer

Kat started ilumivu in 2009 with Mark to support families struggling with autism and look beyond behavioral interventions to discover what other tools could be helpful. Her work with wearable sensors and mobile tacking led to the development of the ilumivu platform to increase the wellbeing of children with autism. Specializing in parent-implemented approaches, there was a desire to empower parents to take the lead in their child’s development and make evidence-based interventions available to those with fewer resources. Her behavioral interventions are still used in Argentina and Poland.

Today, ilumivu has grown into the leading solution for ambulatory data capture and insight in the clinical research market under Kat’s leadership. To date, over 70 health systems and research universities have completed hundreds of different studies using the ilumivu platform. Kat continues to work individually with adults and leads soul-tending retreats and wilderness rites of passage in the Southern Appalachian Mountains.

Connect on LinkedIn

Photo of Mark Tuomenoksa

Mark Tuomenoksa

Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Mark started ilumivu with Kat in 2009 with an equal passion to support families with children with autism and to create innovative technology to make their lives better. He went on to develop online platforms for researchers running clinical trials on autism intervention (the Early Start Denver Model at the M.I.N.D Institute), clinical psychologists providing online support to training programs for parents of children with complex needs (The Adult-Child Wellbeing Project, UK), and ultimately a platform to facilitate a multisite collaborative research projects.

Mark worked as an engineer and executive at Bell Labs Research, AT&T and Lucent Technologies for 15 years where he developed portions of the original Unix operating system kernel before starting ilumivu. He has also worked in two early-stage networking and internet security start-ups, one of which was acquired by Intel for $180M. Mark has worked in biomedical engineering where he developed algorithms for implantable devices and continues to collaborate with colleagues at MIT.

Mark has a B.S and M.S in computer science, 11 issued patents, and has studied music at Berklee College of Music. As an avid musician, Mark lives on top of a mountain where he creates both new algorithms and beautiful music.

Connect on LinkedIn

Photo of Mike Helmeke

Mike Helmeke

Chief Operating Officer

Mike is a seasoned operations and client service executive with 25 years of experience managing systems, processes, contracts, and people for companies such as IBM, WebMD (now Change Healthcare), and a number of early-stage growth companies. He was the operational executive at Dakota Imaging responsible for professional services, product delivery, and contracting, and played an instrumental role in the acquisition of Dakota by WebMD.

Mike assists clients with strategic technology planning, analyzing processes and requirements, and designing and implementing operational solutions. He leads all of ilumivu’s operations including delivery, product management, contracting, customer support, and client satisfaction. He is a proud graduate of the University of Maryland - Go Terps!

Connect on LinkedIn