The Merrick Momentum Award recognizes the top up-and-coming company that is on the cusp of being an established enterprise and significantly impacting the Chicago economy. The winner of this year’s Merrick Momentum Award will be announced on October 9, 2014 at the Seventh Annual Momentum Awards Dinner.
1871 interviewed each of the award finalists to learn more about the exciting Chicago companies that the Momentum Awards Dinner celebrates. Learn more about ContextMedia here:
Tell us about what ContextMedia does.
ContextMedia is a health information services company, building digital media technologies to deliver actionable education to patients to improve health outcomes. The company empowers healthcare professionals to engage patients by curating content personalized for each provider practice. ContextMedia's platforms deliver specialty focused patient education for over 5,000 hospitals and physician practices reaching over 10MM patients a month.
How long has ContextMedia been around and how did it get its start?
ContextMedia was founded as a “for-benefit” business in 2006 by Rishi Shah and Shradha Agarwal. Since day one, the focus has been to deliver media when and where it can be used to improve health outcomes. The founding team sought a better way to educate and empower patients after seeing family members battle chronic conditions first hand. ContextMedia works to solve these inefficiencies by enabling media to be leveraged at the point-of-care so patients can take control of their own lifestyle and care.
How is ContextMedia connected to Chicago’s entrepreneurial community?
Our organization has always focused on creating value for the constituents it touches: patients, providers, and partners. We believe we have created a valuable company due to the fact we deliver great returns to each of these stakeholders at scale. In a similar way, we take an engaged stance in supporting our entrepreneurial community in Chicago. ContextMedia is always working to give back to the ecosystem given the fact it would not be where it is today without the help it has received from those in the city. Additionally, the leadership team has now invested in 30+ Chicago technology businesses through their personal angel fund to help accelerate the community’s growth.
What does Chicagoness mean to ContextMedia?
ContextMedia's values include Humble Invincibility, Grateful Ambition, Communal Competition, and Happy Tenacity, amongst others. These traits are not words on the wall, but rather "Chicagoness" embodied by our team, most of whom grew up in the Midwest. It's a focus on collaboration, it's a priority to build community, it's an attitude of gratitude, it's humility to serve, it's goal-setting and work ethic, it's winning as a team. We chose to build our company in this city because of the ecosystem where people care to solve real problems, with ambitious solutions, and rely on each other to make it all happen!
