Shamekka Marty

Bio:

Shamekka Marty, PMP, LSSBB is a healthcare strategist, patient advocate, entrepreneur, and nationally recognized voice working at the intersection of healthcare, technology, health equity, and sports. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience in technology, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, and enterprise project management, Marty brings a distinctive perspective to healthcare: one informed by both executive-level professional experience and firsthand navigation of a highly complex healthcare journey.

Marty is the Founder and CEO of Beyond the Game Health (BTGH), a health engagement company that leverages the influence and reach of sports and athletes to advance health education, awareness, and access. Through BTGH, she works across the pharmaceutical, healthcare, sports, corporate, and patient communities to develop strategic partnerships, health campaigns, athlete engagements, and experiential initiatives designed to make health conversations more accessible and culturally relevant.

Her leadership extends across some of healthcare's most consequential conversations around interoperability, patient access, health equity, and the role of lived experience in healthcare innovation. Marty has served in leadership and advisory capacities with The Sequoia Project and Carequality, including work involving healthcare interoperability and pharmacy interoperability, and was recognized as The Sequoia Project's 2023 Patient Volunteer of the Year. She has also contributed her patient and health technology expertise to national healthcare discussions involving data exchange, patient access, and the future of connected care.

Marty serves on the Harvard Football Players Health Study Women in Sports (WINS) Athlete-Science Advisory Board, contributing to efforts focused on advancing the understanding of women's health and the experiences of female athletes. Her broader board and advisory experience spans healthcare, patient advocacy, emergency medical services, health equity, and community health initiatives.

She has brought the patient perspective directly into rooms where healthcare policy, research, and industry strategy are shaped, including engagements with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and federal health technology leadership, as well as national scientific and healthcare forums. Her advocacy and thought leadership have also included work with pharmaceutical and healthcare organizations on patient engagement, disease awareness, clinical research, and strategies for more meaningfully incorporating lived experience into healthcare decision-making.

Marty holds a Bachelor of Science in International Business from Rutgers University and has continued her executive and healthcare education through Harvard University, including training in health equity. She is a Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified ScrumMaster, and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, bringing the discipline of enterprise transformation and operational strategy to her healthcare and entrepreneurial work.

Her contributions have earned recognition across healthcare and patient leadership, including being named among the Top 25 Women in Health Tech, a 2026 BLOC 100 Vanguard, and recognition as a leading chronic illness and lupus advocate. She also serves in leadership within the sports community, including as COO of the Philadelphia Chapter of the National Basketball Retired Players Association, further extending her work connecting athlete influence, healthcare, and community impact.

What makes Marty's perspective particularly consequential is that her professional expertise exists alongside an extraordinary lived experience navigating the healthcare system. As a kidney transplant recipient who has managed complex chronic and autoimmune disease, she understands healthcare not only through strategy, technology, policy, and industry collaboration, but from the other side of the table—as the person whose life depends on those systems working.

That dual perspective has made her a sought-after speaker and advisor on patient engagement, health equity, healthcare innovation, interoperability, pharmaceutical partnerships, chronic disease, and the evolving role of patients as strategic stakeholders in healthcare.

Marty's work is grounded in a simple premise: patients should not merely be invited into healthcare conversations to share their stories. Their expertise should help shape the strategies, technologies, research, partnerships, and decisions that determine the future of healthcare.