Sara Holoubek

About
Sara Holoubek is the CEO and founder of Luminary Labs, a consultancy that develops strategies and innovation systems to help Fortune 500, government, and nonprofit organizations thrive in the face of change. She is also an active early stage investor.
Sara is a director and former chair of the Step Up National Board, a nonprofit that propels girls from under-resourced communities to fulfill their potential by empowering them to become confident, college-bound, career-focused, and ready to join the next generation of professional women. Sara’s previous advisory roles include serving on the inaugural RWJF Pioneer Fund Advisory Group and the Aspen Health Innovation Project Planning Committee.
Sara has been widely quoted in publications such as Fast Company, The Washington Post and WSJ.com. She has been recognized by LinkedIn as a 2017 Top Voice in Technology, Mashable as a female founder to watch, SmartCEO magazine as a 2017 New York Brava award winner, and PepsiCo WIN for her contributions to women in technology. Her company has been profiled in business books, Geek Girl Rising, Here’s the Plan, The Big Enough Company, and Stiletto Network. She also serves as a frequent guest lecturer on the subjects of technology and innovation.
Prior to founding Luminary Labs, Sara served as the Chief Strategy Officer of iCrossing and President of SEMPO, the global trade organization for the search marketing industry. Sara also brings an international perspective to her work, having lived and worked in Latin America and Europe; she is fluent in Spanish and French, and conversant in Portuguese. She holds a B.A. from the University of Iowa and an M.B.A. from HEC in France.
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Select Publications
- Prompts and provocations: Generative AI and the future of work
- 5 health investments to make in the year ahead
- Health 2025: Investing in people, technology, and real systemic change
- The year behind and the year ahead
- Introducing two new members of our team
- Design is not optional
- Welcome, new Luminaries
- A pulse check on health tech innovation
- The jobs of the future are here today
- New roles filled by new Luminaries
- Calibrating our shared compass
- Beyond the pill, reconsidered
- Investing in sustainable systemic change
- Meet the newest members of our team
- 7 programs that bring private-sector talent to public-sector innovation
- Every decision is a design decision
- People, places, and possibilities
- New Luminaries, recent promotions, and opportunities to join our team
- 3 ideas education can borrow from other industries
- How open innovation can help solve 21st-century public health problems
- 4 innovations that found their use case during the pandemic
- The year of bold experiments
- Looking back at the future
- Joining the club
- Using open innovation to address a crisis
- 4 membership organizations shaping healthcare’s virtual future
- 5 ideas for making public prizes even more powerful
- Helping 21st-century learners gain 21st-century skills
- Education and future-of-work policy: 2021 reading list
- Science and technology policy: 2020 reading list
- 2021 conferences: a crowdsourced list of must-attend events
- The agile 2021 business planner
- Meet your post-pandemic customers
- Why hardware is hard
- Navigating new versions of ‘normal’
- 5 pragmatic futurists on the forces affecting business today
- Placing big bets: 5 organizations going all in on the future of health
- 3 ways companies can make it easier for employees to vote
- A conversation about reopening
- 10 fundamental shifts accelerated by COVID-19
- COVID-19 open innovation index
- Open innovation for impact
- COVID-19 reading list
- 2020 conferences: a crowdsourced list of 200+ events
- The future of primary care
- The case for kidney care innovation
- On prototyping and piloting
- Digital medicine: not just for doctors
- Open innovation reading list
- Problem Spotlight: Algorithmic bias and health
- Connecting the dots between health, tech, and ethics: a reading list
- Janna Gilbert promoted to President of Luminary Labs
- 200+ newsletters: a crowdsourced list of must-read emails
- Problem Spotlight: The aging of America
- The role of the chief digital officer in a 21st-century pharma
- The evolution of accelerators
- The innovation arc: from shiny object to creating enterprise value
- Problem Spotlight: Upskilling and reskilling America
- Steal these ideas: how 3 organizations socialize new ways of working
- 2019 conferences: a crowdsourced list of 100+ events
- Problem Spotlight: The opioid crisis
- Affordable innovations with life-saving potential
- Celebrating 9 years of problem-solving
- A conversation with Christofer Nelson
- 5 reflections on 10 years of digital health
- Introducing the State of Open Innovation
- Planning 2030: the one sure thing
- Is this tech’s seatbelt moment?
- After the challenge: a look at open innovation outcomes
- A first look at our new website
- Rise of the health tech ethicist
- The most important prize incentive isn't what you think
- Measuring open innovation outcomes
- What non-traditional data can tell us about cities, health, politics, and commerce
- The voice tech explainer: updated data for 2020 planning
- 21st century priorities
- What every executive should know about BlackRock's new imperative
- Not another reading list
- 7 lessons learned from $5 million in open innovation prizes
- Automation, education, and the future of work: a reading list
- Voice technology isn’t just a trend; it’s a paradigm shift
- Reading list: 10 articles that make sense of the ‘voice-first’ future
- Hype vs. reality: The AI explainer
- 5 of healthcare's hardest nuts to crack
- The future of humans: A 2017 reading list
- I'll be online later
- Corporate America, meet the maker movement
- Choosing parity
- Women, tech, and the feds
- The Human Company Design Manifesto
- What 10 innovation teams look like
- The problems that matter
- 10 trends transforming healthcare in 2015
- How CEOs can actually take family leave