Company leader
Tess Michaels
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Clasp
Tess Michaels is the founder and chief executive of Clasp, a Boston fintech that connects healthcare employers with clinical students and repays loans over time when clinicians stay on the job.
Banking, Private Equity, and Harvard Business School
Michaels worked in healthcare investment banking at Goldman Sachs and in private equity at Vista Equity Partners before founding Clasp during her MBA at Harvard Business School, according to public founder profiles and Clasp's about page.
Loan-Linked Hiring
She built Clasp around a simple idea: sign-on bonuses reward leaving, while multi-year student loan support rewards staying. In Clasp's March 2026 Series B post, she wrote that nearly half of clinicians leave their first job within two years and that Clasp employers had committed more than $130 million in loan repayment.
"If we want clinicians to stay, we have to build systems that reward staying, not just joining," she wrote.
Series B and Health System Partners
The $20 million Series B extended Clasp's work with systems such as Boston Children's Hospital, Northwestern Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and OhioHealth. Fierce Healthcare reported total funding around $50 million after the round.