Amy Tenderich

Amy Tenderich is a journalist, blogger, and patient advocate who started DiabetesMine.com after her diagnosis with type 1 diabetes in 2003.  Her site has become a leading online destination for people with diabetes and one of the top health blogs around the country and the world. In 2006, she won the LillyforLife Achievement Award for diabetes journalism from the Eli Lilly & Company.

She is the co-author, along with Dr. Richard Jackson of the Joslin Diabetes Center, of Know Your Numbers, Outlive Your Diabetes – a unique motivational guide to the 5 key medical tests that everyone with diabetes should have and monitor regularly.

Amy has made it her personal mission to spur innovation in diabetes care that actually originates with patients. She penned an Open Letter to Steve Jobs in 2007 that went viral, developing into an international crowdsourcing competition called the DiabetesMine Design Challenge. The competition was underwritten by the California HealthCare Foundation, and supported by IDEO, a leading design firm with close ties to Stanford University. The competition culminated in the DiabetesMine Innovation Summit, a unique annual gathering of diabetes stakeholders held at Stanford.

Amy is also community advocate and helped launch DiabeticConnect.com, the fastest-growing and most successful social networking site for people with diabetes.

She recently became the Vice President of Patient Advocacy at DiabeticConnect’s parent company, Alliance Health Networks. Alliance Health Networks owns and operates over 50 social networking communities for people living with chronic conditions.

Amy is passionate about patient empowerment, and has become a well-known public speaker, consultant, advocate for all people with diabetes and engaged e-patients everywhere.

Amy lives just outside San Francisco, CA, with her husband, three plucky daughters, and a calico cat.