Ben Robbins

Ben Robbins is a general partner at GV, investing across healthcare delivery and neuropsychiatric therapeutics. As a psychiatrist by background, Ben also leads GV’s investments in mental health-related companies, including Firsthand and Guidelight. His investments include Aspire (acquired by Anthem), Rodin (acquired by Alkermes), Carebridge, Patina, Waltz Health, Nym, and Cerevance.

“I ended up going into psychiatry because I saw an immense need. After my earliest clinical experiences, my interactions in the psychiatry clinic formed my most vivid memories,” he says. “We needed more high-quality clinicians to treat patients like those I met, and we needed more focus on building a system that could treat a larger number of people at a consistently high quality and greater scale than possible in the current system.”

Ben joined GV as a venture partner in 2014 and was named general partner in 2022. In a past life, Ben worked as an intern at “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. Since then, he has completed psychiatric training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Mclean Hospital, the top and second-ranked departments of psychiatry in the United States.

He also co-founded a non-profit to fund, build, and operate a primary school for AIDS orphans in Tanzania. “Working in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was a formative experience. I lived and worked at a primary school. That was where I had my first exposure to the impact of even moderately creative approaches to delivering healthcare,” he explains.

“We arranged for a pediatrician to come to the school, and for many kids, it was their first time with access to a doctor. I most remember the impact of the anti-parasitic and anti-malarial medications. Kids went from being withdrawn and quiet to being excited and engaged overnight. It led me to pursue medical school and sparked my interest in novel ways to deliver healthcare.”

Ben received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, MBA from Harvard Business School, and B.A. with honors from Dartmouth College, where he was a member of the football team.