Bachelor’s Degree Sparks Graduate's Interest in Healthcare Technology, Entrepreneurship

ATLANTA -Tejal Rangdal (B.I.S. '24) traveled thousands of miles from home with a vision: to make healthcare accessible to all. Now, with her bachelor's degree from Georgia State, she's equipped with the skills needed to create innovative tools that improve patients' lives.

The Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies in Biomedical Science and Enterprise degree she earned from the Institute for Biomedical Sciences not only prepared her to land jobs in the healthcare industry, it taught her how to succeed in business and entrepreneurship.

Since graduation, Rangdal, of Aurangabad, India, has been busy launching healthcare apps and business ventures while working full time and continuing her education.

"Entrepreneurship is not just an interest for me," Rangdal said. "It is the thread that runs through everything I do, and it began at Georgia State."

Combining Healthcare, Business and Technology

Rangdal chose Georgia State over many other postsecondary institutions where she was accepted because the university offered a much-needed college scholarship.

"Georgia State believed in me and invested in me," Rangdal said. "But the deeper reason was the program itself. The moment I discovered the Biomedical Science and Enterprise degree, I knew it was made for me. I had always wanted to work at the intersection of business and healthcare, and no other program offered that merger so directly. I had started on a pre-med track, but the courses through the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute became the greatest asset for my career vision: building businesses that solve real problems in healthcare."

The program taught her how to turn ideas into action. Through the entrepreneurship courses and her involvement with LaunchGSU, an incubator open to Georgia State students interested in entrepreneurship and building startups, Rangdal conducted research and founded her first venture in early 2022, a healthcare app called NectAid designed to show patients estimated wait times at hospitals near them and let them join lines.

The vision stemmed from her own experience waiting in an emergency room with a friend.

"That experience taught me that patients don't just need doctors, they need systems that work for them," Rangdal said. "In Aurangabad, where I'm from, accessing care felt almost effortless. We were international students who didn't yet understand how the U.S. healthcare system worked, with no family nearby and no car. Sitting there, I kept thinking: if only we had a way to cross-reference emergency wait times and see which hospital had a doctor specialized in the care we needed, we could have made a wiser decision in a critical moment."

When her business classes asked her to create a mock business, Rangdal saw an opportunity to take a real problem and start building a real solution. She conducted her own market research by talking with hospitals and care centers in the area and brainstormed with her instructors. Her professors and mentors taught her how to pitch the app, fail, learn from that failure, grow and repeat the cycle.

"That rhythm of resilience is something I use every single day," Rangdal said.

The bachelor's program also validated what she always believed: Being a doctor is not the only way to help patients. It's also important to build resources for them, she said.

Entrepreneurial Journey

Rangdal considers herself a serial entrepreneur. Her research on the NectAid app has earned the Research Excellence Award at the Symposium of Applied Research (SOAR) Competition at Westcliff University, where she's now pursuing a part-time MBA in information technology project management.

She has also pitched her ideas at several medical technology conferences. Her venture closest to launch is Brain2, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product for which she will soon begin fundraising. She started working on the product early this year.

"The vision behind Brain2 is simple but powerful: Give people their time back," Rangdal said. "It acts as a connector that links the tools that pull at our attention, like WhatsApp, Gmail, Slack and Outlook, and executes tasks on your behalf so your mind is free to focus on what truly matters."

She is also building two community-driven ventures. The first is PinkRoom, a women's community brand focused on girl empowerment, where she donates a portion of her salary to organizations supporting girls and women in the Bay Area and helps young women build networks and connections. This year, she also co-founded Selivonchik Co., a broader umbrella under which she's building communities of founders, venture capitalists and angel investors. These communities help investors find the right founders before they even create their companies, while founders gain access to mentorship, market guidance and connections.

Since graduation, she has also earned a diploma from Harvard Business School in Business Analytics, Financial Accounting and Economics for Managers, which she pursued to gain further knowledge on starting a business and scaling within an organization.

Meaningful Work

After graduation, Rangdal was fortunate to receive multiple job offers, but her heart was in healthcare. She began her career as a global information technology intern in 2024 at Edwards Lifesciences, a medical technology company headquartered in Irvine, Ca., where she worked on the company's Agile Transformation initiative.

"That experience meant a great deal to me," Rangdal said. "Most of the students in the program came from Georgia Tech, UC Irvine and USC, since Edwards recruits heavily from those schools. I was the only Georgia State student there at the time, and I was proud to receive direct recognition for my work from the CIO. It was a moment that proved to me that the education and drive I built at GSU could stand alongside anyone's."

From there, Rangdal moved into a full-time role as a cloud application analyst in late 2024 at Adventist Health, a nonprofit hospital system in Northern California, where she worked on problems affecting patients. In 2025, her latest career move was to Flexport, a transportation, logistics, supply chain and storage company headquartered in San Francisco.

The pivot changed her industry, but not her mission. She continues to pursue her passion for healthcare through entrepreneurship.

"I currently serve as a global air operations associate at Flexport, where I manage air imports into the United States," Rangdal said. "It is fast-paced, detail-driven work at the heart of global supply chain and logistics, and it has sharpened my ability to solve complex problems under pressure every single day."

Rangdal attributes her career success to her diverse experiences while at Georgia State. She interned at Quorum X Diagnostics under CEO and cofounder Maria Nagy, where they researched and supplied COVID-19 self-test kits to Georgia residents with blindness or low vision. She also volunteered with the Inclusive Digital Expression and Literacy (IDEAL) Program, where she mentored students with mild disabilities. In addition, she served as vice president of the Indian Student Organization and taught yoga to Georgia State students.

She's grateful to the IBMS bachelor's program, her mentors and Georgia State for taking a chance on a student from Aurangabad who dreamed of merging healthcare and business.

"My story is proof that where you start does not decide where you finish," Rangdal said. "I hope it encourages the next student walking through those doors to dream just as boldly."

In the future, she aims to fulfill her vision of making healthcare accessible to all.

"In a world evolving so quickly that even technology founders struggle to keep up, I want to reduce the mental overload we all carry through Brain2," Rangdal said. "Whether it is helping a patient avoid a 12-plus-hours emergency room wait or helping a founder reclaim their focus, my goal is the same: Build things that give people back what matters most, their health and their time."

- Story by LaTina Emerson