Our Story
Canopy’s story begins with the experience of its founder, Bill Tan, who came to the U.S. with his family as a 15-year-old Chinese immigrant.
Initially relying on a simple, 300-word vocabulary phrasebook, Bill’s limited English familiarity thrust him into the role of family interpreter for doctor’s appointments and emergency room visits. While he proudly served in that role for his family, he knew, like thousands of patients and families with limited English proficiency, his understanding of the language was severely inadequate to operate in the role with which he was entrusted..
One morning, Bill skipped school to help admit his grandmother in the hospital for a serious heart condition, filling out forms and translating for worried family members. When Bill returned the next day, guilt overcame him when he discovered drawings of a bedpan on a nearby notepad left by his grandmother. She had needed to use the bathroom, but didn’t know how to ask.
These types of miscommunications result not only in frustration for clinicians who want to help, but also guilt, embarrassment and poorer health outcomes for patients.
For Bill, two major themes stuck out through these experiences. Clinicians desperately wanted to provide excellent care to all of their patients, but often lacked the ability to do so when treating patients with limited English proficiency. Further, healthcare facilities often employed valuable interpreters to assist with basic communications such as the scenario he grandmother and her nurses experienced and he noted that these mundane, everyday communications represented roughly 80% of all patient-clinician interactions.
This was Bill’s “a-ha” moment. It was clear that the language barrier wasn’t the fault of the patient, clinicians, or administrators, but was instead the result of a misunderstanding of the problem and the poor process that resulted in the desperate effort to solve it.
It’s no longer enough for our healthcare system to say, “we contract with a vendor that supplies interpreters in over 100 languages.” While trained medical interpreters are a valuable resource, the reality is that there are not enough of them to meet all of the need.
Ending the language barrier means that healthcare organizations need to do much more, to diversify their language services and go beyond the use of interpreters. They need to invest in a multilingual workforce of doctors and nurses who speak the languages of the communities they serve and they need to make pre-translated intake forms and discharge instructions more readily available for their patients.
In 2010, Bill Tan vowed to eliminate the language barrier in healthcare and created Canopy Innovations. Since then the team has won several research and innovation awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study and understand the problem, develop innovative solutions, and grow lasting and meaningful partnerships for our Canopy360 solution for ending the language barrier in all of its unique presentations.
Canopy now partners with and serves dozens of health systems and medical and nursing schools and has created the #1 medical Spanish course and #1 medical translation phrasebook in the US.
Our Mission
Canopy’s mission, culture, and impact have attracted a talented group of mission-driven healthcare professionals and educators.
Together we work to eliminate the language barrier in healthcare by transforming language access into an executive priority for advancing diversity and health equity.
We empower health systems, universities, and healthcare workers to deliver better care by investing in their teams to provide comprehensive and sustainable language assistance services that go beyond medical interpretation.
Our Team
Meet the team committed to serving our mission
Bill’s work is inspired by his experience as a family interpreter and the many opportunities he has been able to access as a result of being multilingual. Through the delivery of innovative solutions, Bill firmly believes that complex, systematic barriers such as the language gap can be effectively managed and eventually eliminated. He envisions a future where equitable access to the same opportunities and resources is available to all in the fields of healthcare, education, and social services.
Mark's engineering background started in video games and virtual reality and branched out into mobile and chatbot applications, large-scale enterprise systems, machine learning with protein molecules and human cells, satellite systems, biotech, geospatial applications, and medtech. He has held senior director, senior engineer, tech lead, software engineer, and senior consultant roles at Provivi, Ursa Space Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, and more. Every week, he dances the Argentine tango, practices martial arts, plays the piano, and runs tabletop RPGs. Once upon a time, he was an adjunct lecturer in creative writing at NYU and started coding in a video game design course that put him on a new career trajectory.
Rachel Thompson is a healthcare technology sales leader with a strong track record of driving growth and strategic partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem. Throughout her career, she has helped healthcare organizations evaluate and implement innovative, AI-powered solutions that improve clinical workflows, enhance education, and deliver measurable operational efficiencies. Drawn to organizations with a clear mission and meaningful impact, Rachel connected immediately with Canopy’s commitment to advancing patient care through technology. Outside of work, she enjoys exploring New York City’s dining scene, attending live music events, and traveling to see friends all over the world.
Emily Kubit leads Customer Success at Canopy Innovations. She's spent the last ten years in healthcare customer success. Different organizations, but the same core mission: helping clinicians meet patients where they are. These days that means closing the language gap between clinicians and the patients they serve, working with hospitals, residency programs, and universities to get there. Emily believes in the importance of hearing an issue and diving right into the fire with a smile on her face. A decade in, she hasn't lost the excitement that drew her to healthcare in the first place. At home, she's trying to sneak in some gaming time while keeping pace with a toddler's nap schedule and a dog who insists on being part of everything.
Based in Brooklyn, NY, Beck Klausman leads operations at Canopy, helping turn ideas into action across the organization. She oversees the systems, processes, and partnerships that keep the company running while supporting business development initiatives. With more than 15 years of experience in operations and organizational management, Beck is passionate about bridging the gap between innovation and impact, helping bring technology-driven solutions from concept to real-world use. Outside of work, she enjoys caring for her growing collection of plants and spending time with her dog.
Tony grew up in healthcare IT and never left. It’s where he does his best work. He leads with value over a pitch deck, and his attention to detail shows in everything he puts his name on. Outside of work, he’s a family man through and through. He runs on discipline: up before sunrise every morning, workout done before most people hit snooze. And if you’re picking teams, you want Tony on yours.