In this episode of The Idealists. (formerly Grit & Grace), host and entrepreneur Melissa Kiguwa interviews Dr. Alexis Petra. Alexis received her MD from University of Pittsburgh, is board-certified in Emergency Medicine, and is licensed in more than 25 states in the united states. For the past 20 years, she's been personally and professionally involved in the transgender community. In 2020, Alexis founded Trans Clinique a practice that provides hormone replacement therapy, letters of referral and trans life coaching via telemedicine. It currently serves over 500 transgender and non-binary individuals.

Transitioning from an emergency room doctor to a startup founder is brave, and in this episode she shares her highs and lows dealing with investors and the reasons she's opted to self-fund... at least for now.

“So we started flirting… and I’d say flirting because of the dance of trying to get funding where they’re checking me out and I’m checking them out. So they kind of promised the world to me and I bought into that. In the meantime, I had my pitch deck together and I approached some other VC's or they approached me actually, but then I kind of blew off some of those opportunities because I really felt like this was the right fit… I listened to the promises. Ultimately though, we both felt it wasn’t the right fit at the end.”

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