Melissa Linares
(Linares is professionally also known as Melissa Caramanica)
Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
Degree: Cornell Executive MBA/MS in Healthcare Leadership
Age: 38
“Strategic healthcare leader and entrepreneur transforming care delivery through innovation, data, and human‑centered design.”
Hometown: Scarsdale, NY
Family Members: Two children: Stella and Lucca.
Fun fact about yourself: After a Saturday microeconomics class, I went home and built a full resource‑capacity model for an outpatient oncology clinic overnight, then brought it to class the next morning to review with my professor and get real‑time feedback.
Undergraduate School and Degree:
The College of New Rochelle — Bachelor of Science in Nursing
New York University — Master of Science, Adult‑Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (Board Certified)
Where are you currently working?
Founder & Chief Clinical Officer, Lina Concierge MedSpa (DBA of Melissa Caramanica Nurse Practitioner in Acute Care PLLC)
President & Co‑Founder, Executive Nurse Leadership Network (ENLN)
Nurse Practitioner, Bone Marrow Transplant, Cellular Therapy & Gene Therapy — The Mount Sinai Hospital
Extracurricular Activities, Community Work and Leadership Roles:
* President & Co‑Founder, Executive Nurse Leadership Network (ENLN) — a student‑founded organization at Cornell dedicated to elevating nursing leadership from bedside to boardroom, expanding interdisciplinary dialogue, and creating a platform for nurse leaders to develop and showcase their skills
* Co‑Chair, Canizares Center for Emerging Markets (EMC²), Cornell EMBA/MS Class of 2026
* Canizares Center for Emerging Markets Fellow, focusing on global healthcare innovation and emerging market strategy
* Chair, EMC² Pre‑Conference Dinner Discussion (Fall 2025)
* Accepted into the Johnson Summer Start‑Up Accelerator (JSSA) — Summer 2026, where I will begin developing my AI‑enabled clinical decision support system for providers
* BioVenture eLab Mentor, guiding a multidisciplinary team of PhD‑level scientists and clinicians from Weill Cornell Medicine, The Rockefeller University, and Memorial Sloan Kettering as they explored commercialization pathways for novel CAR‑T technologies
* Participant, Siemens Healthineers Design Thinking Collaboration — Germany, Fall 2025, working with global healthcare innovators to apply human‑centered design to complex system challenges
* Participant, Family Business Italy Trek, studying the unique strengths, governance structures, and succession challenges of multigenerational family enterprises
* Organizer, NYC EMC² Member & Fellow Events
* Active Member, EMC² Conference Committee; On‑site Lead for Fall 2025 Conference
* Mentor and peer supporter within the EMBA/MS cohort
Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? Founding the Executive Nurse Leadership Network at Cornell is the achievement I’m most proud of. It represents the moment my clinical experience, entrepreneurial mindset, and Cornell education converged into something larger than myself. ENLN is built on the mission of advancing nursing leadership from bedside to boardroom, giving nurse leaders a platform to share their expertise, develop their leadership skills, and shape the future of healthcare. Creating this network allowed me to step fully into my identity as a leader who not only advances her own career but also creates opportunities for others.
What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? Launching Lina Concierge MedSpa is the achievement I’m most proud of. Building a business from the ground up — brand, operations, clinical protocols, patient experience — required courage, discipline, and a willingness to bet on myself. It marked my transition from clinician to entrepreneur and allowed me to design the kind of patient‑centered, high‑touch experience I believe healthcare should deliver.
Why did you choose this school’s executive MBA program? I chose Cornell’s Executive MBA/MS in Healthcare Leadership because it offered the rare combination of Ivy‑level business training and deep healthcare expertise. I wanted a program that would challenge me, expand my strategic toolkit, and surround me with peers committed to transforming the industry. Cornell delivered all of that, and it became the environment where I founded the Executive Nurse Leadership Network, a defining moment in my leadership journey and a platform dedicated to elevating nurses from bedside to boardroom.
Cornell’s entrepreneurial ecosystem also gave me the opportunity to mentor PhD‑level researchers through BioVenture eLab, deepening my commitment to translational science and innovation.
As part of my Canizares Center for Emerging Markets Fellowship, I completed a team‑based capstone with my fellowship group focused on a healthcare company in India leveraging AI to expand access and improve clinical decision‑making in emerging markets. Working collaboratively on this project strengthened my global perspective and deepened my understanding of how technology can transform care delivery in resource‑constrained settings.
Separately, in my final year of the EMBA/MS program, I completed the program’s healthcare capstone with IBM, where my team and I consulted on a real, high‑stakes operational problem for a healthcare organization. This experience allowed me to apply systems thinking, analytics, and strategic frameworks to a complex, real‑world challenge, further shaping my approach to leading large‑scale healthcare transformation.
Who was your favorite MBA professor? My favorite professor was Tom Evans, who taught Microeconomics, the first full‑semester course of the program in Fall 2024. His class fundamentally changed the way I think about decision‑making, both in clinical environments and in daily life. Concepts like opportunity cost, marginal analysis, and especially game theory reshaped how I evaluated tradeoffs, anticipate behavior, and design systems. I found myself applying these frameworks everywhere: in clinical workflow decisions, in business strategy, and even in how I structure my own time and resources. Professor Evans challenged me to see the hidden economics behind everyday choices, and that shift has stayed with me throughout the program.
What is the biggest lesson you gained during your MBA and how did you apply it at work? The biggest lesson was that leadership is a systems discipline. Every decision – financial, operational, or clinical – lives within a larger ecosystem. Systems thinking shaped how I redesigned workflows in my business and how I built the Executive Nurse Leadership Network. ENLN itself is a systems solution: a platform that elevates nurse leaders from the bedside to the boardroom, strengthens interdisciplinary collaboration, and fills a gap in the development of healthcare leadership.
Give us a story during your time as an executive MBA on how you were able to juggle work, family and education? One defining moment came during a period when I was simultaneously building the Executive Nurse Leadership Network, running my medspa, maintaining a weekly oncology clinic at Mount Sinai, and raising my two children. This moment happened all while my Cornell team and I were deep into our IBM capstone project and participating in a global experience. It was the first time in my career that every part of my life demanded leadership at once.
I learned to lean heavily on my ENLN leadership team, trusting them to carry forward our mission to elevate nurses from the bedside to the boardroom. Within my Cornell cohort, I learned to rely on my teammates in a new way, dividing and conquering, sharing responsibilities, and supporting one another through intense deliverables. During the IBM capstone, we often worked across time zones and travel schedules, coordinating work sessions from airports, hotels, and classrooms abroad.
Balancing all of this requires structure, communication, and humility. I realized that leadership isn’t about doing everything yourself; it’s about building teams you can trust, creating systems that support you, and allowing others to step into their strengths. That period taught me how to lead collaboratively, sustainably, and with a deeper appreciation for the power of a strong team.
What advice would you give to a student looking to enter an executive MBA program? Build your support systems early, be it at home, work, or within your cohort. The EMBA is a team sport, and the people you surround yourself with will shape your experience. Also, treat the program like a leadership laboratory. Bring real problems, test ideas, and let the learning change how you operate.
What was your biggest regret in business school? My biggest regret is not stepping into leadership roles within the Cornell EMBA/MS program earlier. In the beginning, I underestimated the power of the network around me and didn’t fully tap into the relationships, resources, and opportunities that were right in front of me. Once I began taking on leadership roles — especially through the Executive Nurse Leadership Network — everything shifted. I realized how much I could contribute, how much support existed within the cohort, and how transformative it is to engage with this community actively. If I could start over, I would lean into the Cornell network from day one.
What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? Cornell integrated AI into coursework through analytics, operations, and strategy assignments that required AI‑supported modeling and scenario analysis. Using AI taught me how to accelerate decision‑making, pressure‑test assumptions, and translate complex data into actionable insights. It became a tool for clarity, creativity, and speed, especially in my entrepreneurial work.
What was the main reason you chose an executive MBA program over part-time or online alternatives? I wanted a program that matched the intensity of my goals. The executive format offered deeper engagement, a stronger cohort experience, and a curriculum designed for leaders actively shaping their organizations. I needed the rigor, the structure, and the in‑person community.
How did you finance your EMBA and what did you do to make tuition and associated costs more affordable? I financed my EMBA through a combination of employer support, personal investment, scholarships, and educational loans. Early in the program, my employer assisted with a portion of the first semester’s tuition, which helped me begin with momentum. I also received partial scholarship support from Cornell, which reduced the overall financial burden. For the remainder of the degree, I self‑financed through disciplined budgeting, multiple income streams, and strategic use of graduate education loans. I allocated surplus income each month, made intentional tradeoffs, and treated the investment as a long‑term commitment to my growth as a healthcare leader and entrepreneur. It required focus and sacrifice, but it has been one of the most valuable investments I’ve made.
What is your ultimate long-term professional goal? My long‑term goal is to develop AI‑enabled clinical decision support systems that empower providers with safer, more consistent, and more efficient care pathways. I plan to continue improving healthcare systems through workflow optimization and financial stewardship, ensuring that clinicians can practice at the top of their license while organizations operate sustainably. I also intend to build the Executive Nurse Leadership Network into a nationally recognized nonprofit organization that supports nurse leaders and advances the mission of elevating nursing leadership from bedside to boardroom. I am beginning this work through my acceptance into Cornell’s Johnson Summer Start‑Up Accelerator, where I will start developing the first version of the clinical decision support system.
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