Finding Balance through Innovation

Teo Forcht Dagi, MD
HLM Venture Partners

Dr. Dagi is a neurosurgeon and neuro-intensivist, and a veteran venture capitalist with extensive international experience in public service. He has operating experience in healthcare services, healthcare information technology, and the biomedical sector, and also serves on boards of directors of publicly traded and privately held companies.

Teo serves as Honorary Professor, and Chairman of International Advisory Panel of the School of Medicine of Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK), and Visiting Professor at Harvard Medical School. He chairs the Committee on Perioperative Care of the American College of Surgery, and serves as a Director of the Council for Surgical and Perioperative Safety, and the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation. He lectures in the Harvard Business School on healthcare innovation and in the Biomedical Entrepreneurship Program at the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology on new technology development, assessment, and commercialization. 

Teo is also a partner at HLM Venture Partners in Boston, and has been involved in guiding and funding over fifty companies in the life sciences and healthcare space. He teaches in the Venture Capital Institute of the National Venture Capital Association and offers a summer seminar on corporate governance and ethics at the University of Prince Edward Island.

Dr. Dagi received an AB from Columbia University, his MD and MPH degrees from Johns Hopkins, and an MBA from the Wharton School. He was named the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Fellow at Harvard, from which he also received a MTS degree in jurisprudence. 

Teo was appointed Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs to develop contingency programs for medical needs in anticipation of the First Gulf War. As a reserve medical officer, flight surgeon and Special Forces instructor, he was called to active military duty, assigned to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and served as a combat surgeon, achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. For his work in developing mobile ICU systems and other contributions to critical care in mass casualty settings, he was elected to Fellowship in the College of Critical Care Medicine, the first neurosurgeon so honored and a distinction reserved for the leading 5% of practitioners in this discipline. 

In 2007, Teo assumed the chairmanship of the International Advisory Board of the School of Medicine in Northern Ireland, where he has been involved in reformulating and rebuilding the school. As part of the Queen’s Jubilee Celebration of 2012, it received the St. James Prize from Queen Elizabeth for biomedical research.

Among other distinctions, Teo has been awarded the US Humanitarian Service Medal, and a DMedSc (Hon. Causae) from Queen’s University for contributions to medicine and public service. He was named the Sir Thomas and Edith Dixon Medalist for 2012. 

Teo lives in Newton, Massachusetts with his wife Linda, a pediatric ophthalmologist at Boston Children’s Hospital. They have three children. A mountain climber, he participated as the physician to a National Geographic Mt. Everest expedition. He is also a sailor, skier, and published photographer. 

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