On the eighth and ninth floors of a pristine building in a research park in Salt Lake City, employees in gray uniforms tread under gold light fixtures, past abstract artwork, and around plush couches in the waiting area where they check patients in. This isn’t a high-end spa, though the gentle intake process was designed to mimic exactly that kind of environment. It’s the Metrodora Institute, a $35 million clinic and research facility cofounded last year by Instacart CEO Fidji Simo. Metrodora is dedicated to treating women with neuro-immune axis disorders: diseases including endometriosis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, long COVID, multiple sclerosis, lupus, and more, in which the immune system appears to attack the nervous system. It opened to the public in March, and by the end of the year it expects to be treating 15,000 women, both at this outpatient facility, where there are currently thousands of people on the waitlist, and remotely, via telehealth consultations.
The hospital-like aspects of the clinic—the gurneys, feeding tubes, pelvic exam rooms—exist alongside the VR-assisted treadmill area, serene yoga space, and cozy suite where patients with mobility issues can practice getting in and out of bed. Simo says that the arrangement is designed to identify and treat the poorly understood combinations of symptoms associated with neuroimmune disorders, which can include anything from nausea and food intolerances to brain fog and more.
Simo, a marketer by training who spent more than a decade at Meta, eventually overseeing the flagship Facebook app, describes herself as “someone who always thinks of everything as a system.” She was inspired to start Metrodora after dealing with endometriosis during pregnancy and then falling sick again with another chronic illness, postural tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, which is triggered when a patient’s heart rate increases rapidly upon standing, causing light-headedness. It would take a couple of years for her to learn that though the symptoms for both illnesses are different, they can be related, and having one makes you at higher risk for having the other. “I found that the level of care and the ability to find cures was, honestly, so poor,” Simo says. She wanted to create a clinic that would emulate cancer treatment centers like Houston’s MD Anderson, where silos between fields are removed, and treating a patient can involve many different specialists working together. When dealing with issues of the nervous system, she says, “we need to understand the pathophysiology of the disease. We believe that every human is unique. Personalized medicine should be a thing.”
Personalization is central to her primary job, too. As CEO of Instacart, she works constantly to better tailor grocery delivery to individual customers. They are vastly different businesses, of course, but there is overlap: Both involve copious amounts of data, and both are complex marketplaces, with multiple stakeholders. At Instacart, Simo says that means keeping stores, brands, customers, and delivery people happy, while at Metrodora, where she is president—cofounder and neurogastroenterologist Laura Pace is CEO—it’s about caring for patients, staff, investors, and data partners. Combined, that’s a whole lot of interests for one person to manage, no matter how much yoga and soft lighting is involved. Simo, 37, the daughter of a sardine fisherman and boutique owner from the seaside town of Sète, France—she was named after the perfume by Guy Laroche, which her mother wore—takes a sunny view of it: “I just love learning,” she says. “It sounds so cliché, but I get so excited in the job when I’m learning something new.”
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