Speaker's Profile

Kristian Ranta is the CEO & Founder of Meru Health, a digital clinic for greater mental health.

Kristian has been inventing and innovating in healthcare for the past 12 years in theUS, Europe and Asia. In 2005, he founded his first company Mendor which developed a novel glucose monitor for people with Type 1 diabetes. In 2014, Mendor was awarded with the Deloitte Rising Stars 1st place inFinland and in 2015 Mendor’s glucose monitoring business was sold to a Korean public company, i-Sens.

While Kristian was building Mendor, he lost his older brother Peter to suicide because of his depression. This eventually led to the founding of Meru Health in 2016. Meru Health is building a new standard for mental health care. Meru Health was accepted to the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator in 2018 and is currently collaborating with Stanford University, Stanford Health Care, Aetna, Cisco, Intel and the Veteran’s Administration in California and other states.

Kristian’s passion is to build global businesses that improve healthcare and its delivery. He believes in humane values, positivity and the importance of reducing suffering in the world. Kristian holds several patents and has contributed to publishing cutting edge clinical research in the fields of diabetes and mental healthcare.In his teenage/early 20’s Kristian was a guitarist and a singer in a heavy metal band called Norther, which has sold more than 100k records and has more than 10million views on YouTube.

Kristian has studied computer science, business and leadership at several Finnish universities: He holds a master’s degree from University of Jyväskylä on information system science and has also studied at Aalto University and Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, wherefrom he holds a bachelor’s degree.