In the high-pressure environment of a labor and delivery room, the difference between a routine birth and a traumatic one often comes down to the tools at hand. For Galina Mihalkina, a student in the Gies Business online MBA – known as the iMBA® – solving that problem wasn't just a clinical challenge — it was a business one.
As part of the year-long Carle Medical Capstone (MBA 590), Mihalkina joined an interdisciplinary team of engineers and medical professionals to develop PeriAssist. The device addresses a critical gap in obstetric care — the space between traditional forceps and vacuum extractors — to reduce severe trauma for both mothers and babies during difficult deliveries.
This Gies Business capstone project is far from a typical classroom exercise. It is a year-long immersion that functions as a real-world incubator. Since May 2025, Mihalkina has been embedded with students from the Grainger College of Engineering and Carle Illinois College of Medicine to move a medical innovation from a mere idea to a viable business plan.
Overseeing the ‘Whole Shebang’
“I love to take a big mess of yarn and untangle it and put the elements in all the right places,” said Mihalkina, a philosophy that was essential as the sole MBA student in charge of the project’s business side. While the medical and engineering students focused on the mechanical specifications of a circumferential inflation device, Mihalkina was responsible for making sense of all the moving pieces of the business side.
Stakeholder Mapping: Identifying every hand the device touches, from OB-GYNs and nurses to risk management and insurance payers.
Health System Economics: Navigating the complex "missing middle" of obstetric care to ensure the device is a viable alternative to forceps.
Go-to-Market Strategy: Developing the roadmap that eventually led the team to international recognition at the Falling Walls Science Summit competition in Berlin and into the current phase of pre-seed funding and patenting. Recently, the team took first place at the COZAD New Venture Challenge, winning $15K from the Barkmeier-Tice Rural Health Innovation Fund.
The HIDE Advantage
This deep dive into the mechanics of healthcare delivery is a hallmark of the Healthcare Innovation, Design, and Entrepreneurship (HIDE) specialization at Gies Business. While many MBA programs offer healthcare tracks focused primarily on hospital administration, HIDE is designed for those who want to build the future of the industry.
By integrating design thinking with entrepreneurial strategy, the HIDE focus area allows students to look at healthcare through a multifaceted lens. Courses focus on the healthcare ecosystem and need identification, innovation processes, and healthcare business strategies and new ventures.
For Mihalkina, the Healthcare Innovation, Design, and Entrepreneurship curriculum provided the framework to understand how a physical prototype — like the one her team built with Grainger engineers — survives the journey from a lab to a hospital floor. She says it requires understanding regulatory hurdles, patent law, and the unique ways healthcare value is measured.
"The exposure I've received in healthcare innovation is invaluable," she says. "Even if it’s not applied directly to the OB-GYN world, these skills are transferable to any space where technology and human needs meet."
A Mid-Career Pivot
Mihalkina’s path to the Gies iMBA and HIDE specialization was born out of a desire to exercise more agency over the second half of her career. Growing up in the Soviet Union, she learned early that financial stability was closely tied to independence and opportunity. That perspective strengthened during a short exchange experience in Germany in the 1990s, where she caught a glimpse of a different standard of living and began to see that a broader set of opportunities was possible. She moved to the US to follow the American Dream when she was 18, worked full-time while attending community college, and then transferred to Eastern Illinois University, where she earned an undergraduate degree in business administration.
For the next 20 years, Mihalkina gained experience in business development and consulting but found herself at a mid-career crossroads after a layoff during the pandemic.
"For me, it was important to take two decades of knowledge and go back to the basics — to restructure my thinking in a way that would make me more efficient and effective," said Mihalkina.
In the Gies iMBA, she found a program that offered prestige and academic rigor but was flexible enough to manage while returning to the workforce. She currently balances her studies with her role as a business analyst for Springfield, IL-based MSF&W Consulting, a feat she credits to the program’s manageable eight-week course structure.
"Like an old friend said to me: 'You can do anything for eight weeks — even advanced accounting!'"
Catalyst to a new future
Now serving as a Gies iMBA Ambassador, Mihalkina often speaks to prospective students about the personal and professional growth that happens during the program. For her, the degree wasn't just a credential to add to a resume; it was a catalyst for a new professional identity.
Mihalkina’s career has already shifted toward IT and business analytics in the healthcare space, focusing on building and improving the systems that keep providers running, and helping connect Illinois children and youth with special healthcare needs to services and resources. While she may not be in the delivery room, the lessons from PeriAssist — specifically how to simplify complicated systems to improve lives — remain her north star.
Looking toward the remainder of 2026 and beyond, Mihalkina feels the sense of completion she set out to find.
"At the end of my iMBA experience, I know what I want, I have an amazing job, and I feel absolutely set for the future," she said.