Erin Emtman

Background Story

Engineered “Luck”

Erin grew up in Northern Detroit, where she learned early on that work ethic is shown, not spoken. Her parents didn’t lecture her to work hard; they modeled it, quietly building a starting line for her that they never had. It taught her the world doesn’t owe you a seat at the table; you have to build it yourself.

That reality forged a work ethic that defines her. While others relied on natural gifts, she relied on a 4 AM alarm. She studied until midnight and woke up before the sun to engineer her own opportunities. She didn’t view that 4.0 GPA as a measure of brilliance. Instead, it was proof that she didn’t need to be special, she just needed to be what most people aren’t: consistent, determined, and willing to work for it.

When she wanted to play Division I volleyball, the recruiters didn’t call. She had to market herself, sending hundreds of emails until the University of South Carolina gave her a shot. She walked onto that court as the worst player on the roster. But decided that if she couldn’t be the top player, she would be the hardest worker. Two years later, the teammates who could outperform her in every athletic category voted her their Team Captain—both her junior and senior years.

At Jacksonville University, Erin balanced a Master’s degree with coaching, managing the “invisible infrastructure” that kept the team running. She taught herself to code matches in DataVolley in just a few weeks, memorizing hundreds of keystrokes to track every touch of the ball in real-time. At just 23 years old, she stepped in as Interim Head Coach, running practices and navigating all logistics while completing her clinical rotations in the hospital. She took on accountability at a scale she never had before.

That dedication to the team—earned her the title of “Assistant Coach of the Year,” an award given to athletes of every sports program at the university.

Professional Experience

NYC Healthcare || Speech-Language Pathologist

Erin has always approached her career with humility, seeking out rooms where she can learn the most. This drive led her to New York City’s top Level 1 trauma hospitals. Working with stroke and traumatic brain injury victims, she lived the Coordination Crisis every day. She saw how a fragmented system could turn a minor delay into a life-threatening spiral—a patient pinged between specialists, waiting days for a consult while their condition deteriorated.

In that high-pressure environment, bureaucracy is the enemy of care. Erin learned to prioritize relentlessly, managing lists of dozens of critical patients, deciding who needed immediate intervention to eat or speak, and who could safely wait. She worked to connect the dots between departments, ensuring patients were seen as whole people rather than a collection of symptoms. That commitment to removing friction and listening deeply to vulnerable patients is why she was selected from over 10,000 employees for the hospital-wide “Hero Award.”

Pathize || Systems Engineer, Culture and Operations

Now, she brings that same relentless prioritization to Pathize. The team is building an operating system to solve the Velocity Paradox—the idea that as you scale, you slow down. Erin knows that in a startup, like in a hospital, you can never do everything. Success depends on identifying the bottleneck and doing the one thing that moves the needle most.

At Pathize, her job is to engineer the environment where the team can do their best work. She keeps all the balls in the air, ensuring no one is blocked, managing everything from legal compliance and finances to the visual direction of the brand. A strong leader creates conditions for others to perform. That is what she does. She acts as the operational glue for the team, handling the details no one notices until there is a crack, with the same attention to what no one sees as to what everyone sees.

Education

• M.S. Speech-Language Pathology, Jacksonville University (Summa Cum Laude)

• B.A. Elementary Education (Minor: Communication Disorders), University of South Carolina (Summa Cum Laude, D1 Athlete)