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Webinar Recap · April 8, 2026
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A Look Inside
Cercle.ai — What They’re Building and Where It’s Going Next
What they’re building, where they’re growing, and the talent they need.
Lucy Huang
Chief Operating Officer, Cercle.ai · Connect on LinkedIn →
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Session Recap
Yesterday’s session gave our community a rare, candid look inside one of women’s health’s most compelling AI companies. Lucy Huang, COO of Cercle.ai, broke down exactly what they’re building, why fertility care is their starting point, and what it will take to get hired by a company like theirs.
The core problem Cercle.ai is solving: Despite rapid advances in AI, 80% of healthcare data remains unconnected and unstructured — scattered across EMRs, patient portals, lab systems, and paper notes. Cercle.ai extracts this fragmented data, harmonizes it at scale, and transforms it into a trusted, actionable foundation that enables personalized treatment and improved outcomes.
Why fertility care first? A woman undergoes the highest concentration of reproductive testing, procedures, and treatments in a very short window. That density of data made fertility care the ideal proving ground. Their predictive insights tool can now show a patient her likelihood of success across IUI vs. IVF scenarios, enabling faster, more confident decision-making for both patient and provider.
Where they’re going next: Cercle.ai is already looking beyond fertility — identifying immunology and rheumatology as adjacent areas where their approach could dramatically shorten time-to-diagnosis and time-to-treatment. Their founding story traces back to a serendipitous meeting between a data engineer and an embryologist in Valencia, Spain — a reminder that the best solutions often start with someone simply naming a problem.
On the team: Cercle.ai is a 23-person startup, with ~75% in technical roles — data engineers, ML/AI engineers, and infrastructure. Everyone wears multiple hats, and that’s by design. At a startup like this, your role will evolve — and Lucy wants people who lean into that.
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Career Takeaways from Lucy — Your Action Checklist
Lucy shared specific, actionable advice for breaking into women’s health AI. Use this as your personal checklist.
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Take a short AI/data/health course. Even a one- or two-week intensive that combines all three will give you the vocabulary and common problem sets to credibly enter the conversation. You don’t need years of experience — you need the lingo and a framework. |
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Network — deeply, not broadly. Lucy’s own path to Cercle.ai came through a friend she’d known for decades. Her advice: “Build deep connections early. The more people know who you are and what you’re good at, the more they’ll advocate for you” — even into areas totally outside your background. |
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Lead with impact in your cover letter. Don’t just restate your resume. Show what you specifically did and the net result — “I led a cost-efficiency initiative that saved $20M” is far more memorable than a list of skills. Use the cover letter to tell the story your resume can only outline. |
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Ask questions before answering in interviews. Lucy doesn’t want candidates who jump straight to a solution. She wants people who slow down, dig into the problem, then break it down deliberately. That process tells her far more than any answer. |
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Demonstrate adaptability. At a startup, your job description will evolve constantly. Lucy tests for this directly — she’ll introduce a curveball mid-interview to see how you respond. Candidates who pivot gracefully and stay curious under pressure are the ones who get the offer. |
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Healthcare data experience is a bonus, not a requirement. Lucy wants people who can articulate a clear, rigorous process for tackling messy, complex data — regardless of whether it came from a hospital, a retailer, or an airport. If you can tell the data story, you’re competitive. |
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Don’t just apply through the portal. In a market with 1,000–3,000 applications per role, you have to stand out before the interview. How you find the right person, how you get their attention, how you solve the problem of getting in the room — that problem-solving approach is exactly the skill they’re hiring for. |
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IWH Career Mastermind · April 27 Cohort
Lucy Said It Best: It’s All About Who You Know.
Build your network early, and build it deep. Lucy’s path to Cercle.ai — a field far outside her original background — happened because of a relationship built over decades. That’s not luck. That’s the compounding return on investing in real professional relationships before you need them.
The IWH Career Mastermind is built precisely for this. A small, curated cohort of women’s health professionals who are actively building careers at the frontier — sharing intelligence, opening doors for each other, and sharpening the skills Lucy described: strategic thinking, cross-functional fluency, and the ability to make a compelling case for yourself in a crowded field.
If you want to stop being the most qualified person in the applicant pool who nobody called back — this is where that changes. 20 seats. April 27 start. $1,249.
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🎉 Webinar attendee exclusive: Use code IWH100 at checkout for $100 off your seat.
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Stay Connected with IWH
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IWH Events Calendar →
See all upcoming webinars, workshops, and community sessions — and never miss what’s next.
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P.S. — Lucy told us her one regret was not networking more earlier in her career. You now have the benefit of hearing that directly from a COO who has hired across five industries. The IWH Career Mastermind cohort kicks off April 27 — 20 seats, and every one of them is a future warm introduction waiting to happen. Don’t wait until you need the network to build it.
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