Kara Palamountain, MBA is a Research Professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, where she teaches and conducts research at the intersection of medical technology innovation, market entry, and global health. She has more than two decades of experience working with industry, governments, donors, and health systems to support the design, introduction, and scale-up of medical technologies in low-resource settings.

She is a senior leader with the NEST360 alliance, a multi-country initiative focused on reducing neonatal mortality through the deployment of life-saving medical devices across sub-Saharan Africa and has contributed to the development of numerous WHO and UNICEF Target Product Profiles for diagnostics and medical devices. Her work spans diagnostics, newborn and maternal health technologies, market shaping, and implementation research, with a focus on ensuring innovations translate into real-world impact.