Ross Mason
Founder of HINRI (The High Impact Network of Responsible Innovators)
Ross Mason has a 25 year career as an entrepreneur, angel, and venture capital investor focused on health innovation. He is the founder of Samaritan's Road International (sroadi.com), an international healthcare consulting firm and serves as an advisor to four healthcare focused venture capital funds.
Ross lived and worked in Silicon Valley from 1999 to 2004 where he started and sold a healthcare software company. He worked for Volkswagen’s €280 million Healthcare Venture Accelerator Fund and €500 million innovation campus in Wolfsburg, Germany. Ross was an Associate in Private Banking at Morgan Stanley (New York, London, Zurich, Moscow, and Atlanta), and created a real estate investment and development company in Moscow, Russia that he owned and operated for 12 years.
In 2004, Ross created the High Impact Network of Responsible Innovators (HINRI), a venture philanthropy focused on solving today's most difficult healthcare challenges. HINRI has two objectives: (1) to match the resource with the need while ministering to giver and recipient, with the focus on Christ, and (2) to make Atlanta the global leader in health innovation.
On August 2, 2007, Ross broke his neck in a bicycle accident and was paralyzed from his collarbones down. Prior to his accident, Ross was actively involved in triathlons, wreck, cave, and ice diving, surfing, rock and ice climbing. He is now committed to bringing that same drive, passion, and spirit of adventure to serving others through the work of HINRI. HINRI has created more than 65 programs, partnerships, and initiatives in almost 120 countries.
Ross is the former Chairman of the Georgia Department of Community Health Board, the 3rd largest health plan in the United States with a $11.2 billion annual budget and 660,000 covered lives. He is the former Chairman of the Commercialization Advisory Board for the Praxis Spinal Cord Institute in Vancouver, BC and helped create the world’s largest clinical trial and research network for spinal cord injury. Ross holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Georgia Tech, where he was student body president, and a Masters of Business Administration in Finance from The Wharton School.
Ross was a missionary with Cru in Poland, Operation Mobilization in St. Petersburg, Russia, and a volunteer in an AIDS hospital in Zimba, Zambia. He is an Honorary Knight of Grace in the Sovereign Order of St. John (The Knights Hospitallers), the oldest order of Christian Knights in the world.