
Balancing mission and metrics: A CEO’s experience
When people find out I’m the CEO of Calm, they inevitably ask me, “Does your team meditate all day?” or “Are you calm all the time?” The honest answer is — I’m pretty stressed out.
David Ko is the CEO and serves on the Board of Directors of Calm, the mental health company with the #1 app to help you sleep more, stress less, and live mindfully. Before joining Calm, David was the co-founder and CEO of the health tech company Ripple Health Group. The company was acquired by Calm in 2022 to help build out its mental health capabilities.
Before founding his own company, David spent over a decade as a leading executive in healthcare. He was a Board Member, President and COO of Rally Health, a digital health company acquired by UnitedHealth Group in 2017. Rally’s solutions are available to nearly 55 million people through health plans, care providers, and more than 200,000 employers.
David has been featured in TIME’s Leadership Brief, named a LinkedIn “Top Voice” and one of RockHealth’s “Top 50 Leaders in Digital Health.” He has also been a featured speaker at the Aspen Ideas Healthcare Festival and the White House Panel on Mental Health & AAPI, among many others.
David was also the COO at Zynga, which he helped take public in December 2011. Prior to his work at Zynga, he spent 10 years at Yahoo! in various senior executive roles, including SVP of Yahoo!’s audience, mobile, and local businesses.
He serves on various boards at his alma mater, New York University Stern School of Business, including the Stern Executive Board and Technology Advisory Board. Through his involvement, he helped launch the Andre Koo Tech MBA program, and in 2016, he established the NYU Stern Venture Fellows program for aspiring entrepreneurs.