Portrait No. 001
Marina Davtyan
Founder, CEO
Connectra
Raised — Currently in Raise, 2.5 Seed
Connectra is building a virtual rehabilitation clinic for prosthetic and wheelchair users, starting from the first day post-amputation or injury and continuing throughout their lifetime. We combine real-world device data, Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM), and behavioral engagement tools to reduce abandonment and ensure patients stay connected to their care teams long after they leave the clinic. I’m a medical doctor. In 2020, after the war in Armenia, I worked with young soldiers who had lost their arms. We built advanced prosthetic hands, yet many later stopped using them,not because the hardware failed, but because the system did. Once discharged, they were alone. No structured follow-up, no digital continuity. That injustice stayed with me. Connectra was born from the belief that rehabilitation is a lifelong journey. Why me? I bridge medicine and deep tech. Why now? Because remote care reimbursement and data infrastructure finally make continuous rehabilitation possible.
In her words
“I started building my first startup in Armenia as a 19-year-old female medical student leading engineers in a country with almost no med-tech ecosystem.”
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
I started building my first startup in Armenia as a 19-year-old female medical student leading engineers in a country with almost no med-tech ecosystem. I was often the only woman in the room, and the youngest. Investors questioned my credibility. U.S. partners questioned our geography. Some simply questioned whether I was “experienced enough” to build in a highly regulated industry. There were months with no salaries and moments with no team. I learned basic programming and electronics to keep prototypes alive. I pitched relentlessly, across time zones, across cultures, while building hardware, writing grants, and navigating U.S. regulatory and reimbursement pathways from outside the system. Starting my second company in the U.S. meant earning credibility twice: first as a woman in deep tech, then as a foreign founder entering American healthcare. But we persisted. We are now piloting with industry leaders and leading rehabilitation clinics, have raised $400K, joined Berkeley SkyDeck, and are preparing for a $2M seed round. The hardest part wasn’t technology, it was stamina. Holding belief before validation. Grit became our unfair advantage.
Chapter II
Your vision.
I am obsessed with continuous rehab and holistic care. Globally, too many prosthetic and wheelchair users receive a device and then slowly disappear from structured care. Rehabilitation becomes episodic instead of continuous. Progress becomes invisible. Motivation declines. And we normalize this as “part of the process.” It shouldn’t be. Connectra will enable a world where adaptation is supported as a lifelong performance journey. From the first day post-amputation or injury, every patient will enter a connected virtual clinic, where their data is visible, their care team is engaged, and intervention happens before disengagement. We will shift assistive technology from a one-time transaction to a continuous ecosystem of support. The change is cultural as much as technological: disability care will move from reactive and fragmented to proactive and empowering. No patient should ever feel alone navigating their new body.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
Thirty years from now, I want healthcare to shift from reactive to preventive, from episodic to lifelong, from fragmented to holistic. Connectra is one step toward that future: where technology works for us quietly in the background, enabling early intervention, continuous support, and healthier lives without replacing humanity. I want to help build a system where care begins before crisis, where adaptation is supported at every level, and where innovation never loses empathy. And I want future women, especially from small countries, to know they can redesign global systems, not just participate in them