About — 01

A platform built where clinical authority and institutional capital meet.

ZMD Group was founded on a simple observation: the consolidation of American specialty medicine over the last fifteen years has been led almost entirely by capital, not by physicians — and the results show. We exist to invert that pattern.

Editorial photograph of ZMD Group leadership boardroom: midnight navy walls, bone white linen drapery, soft natural light through tall windows

02 — Founding

The platform we would have wanted
to join earlier in our careers.

ZMD Group was founded by Dr. Hootan Zandifar, MD — a double-board-certified facial plastic surgeon and otolaryngologist with two decades of operating-room and practice-building experience — together with Marques Kernan, MBA, a former JPMorgan Chase commercial and investment banking professional who spent four years inside the precise universe of healthcare-services and innovation-economy companies the platform is now built to acquire.

The pairing is deliberate. Dr. Zandifar brings the clinical authority — the kind that can only be earned across thousands of operations and a body of peer-reviewed work — and sets the standard every brand and every acquired practice must meet. Marques brings the institutional discipline of a bank that underwrites healthcare-services platforms for a living, and runs the M&A, capital, and operations stack accordingly.

Together, they are building what neither half could build alone: a multi-specialty platform that is governed by physicians and operated to institutional standards, headquartered in the Beverly Hills medical corridor, anchoring its second region in Boston, and designed to scale into a national, research-integrated holding company over the next decade.

03 — Leadership

Two founders. One operating standard.

01 — Clinical

Dr. Hootan Zandifar, MD

Founder & CEO

Dr. Zandifar is a double-board-certified facial plastic surgeon and otolaryngologist with over two decades of operative and practice-building experience. He is a board-certified diplomat of the American Board of Otolaryngology / Head and Neck Surgery and the American Board of Facial Plastic Surgery, a fellow of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He operates two flagship Beverly Hills and Santa Monica locations under his physician practice (ZandifarMD) and is the founding surgeon of ZMDHair, a Beverly Hills hair restoration clinic and flagship site of FUEsion Hair Clinics. At ZMD Group, Dr. Zandifar sets the clinical standards every brand must meet and chairs the platform's clinical governance.

·Board Certified · ABOto/HNS

·Board Certified · ABFPS

·Fellow · AAFPRS

·Fellow · ACS

02 — Capital

Marques Kernan, MBA

Co-Founder & President

Marques is the institutional half of the platform. He spent four years at JPMorgan Chase, most recently as a Commercial & Specialized Associate inside the bank's Innovation Economy / Startup Technology Group in Los Angeles, after earlier roles as a Commercial & Investment Banking Analyst in Treasury Services / Healthcare Services and as a Commercial Banking Credit Analyst in Healthcare Services & Life Sciences. Across those rotations, he underwrote, financed, and advised the precise universe of healthcare-services and emerging-growth companies that ZMD Group is now built to acquire and integrate. He holds an MBA from Southern New Hampshire University. At ZMD Group, Marques leads M&A, capital formation, physician-partnership economics, and platform operations.

·MBA · Southern New Hampshire University

·JPMorgan Chase · 4 years

·Healthcare Services · Innovation Economy

·Based · Los Angeles, CA

04 — Operating Principles

Six principles every brand, every practice, and every hire is held to.

Physician-Led Governance

Clinical decisions are made by physicians, governed by physicians, and protected by structural authority — not by quarterly EBITDA targets.

Institutional Capital Discipline

We underwrite, integrate, and operate the platform to the standard of an institutional bank, not a marketing-led healthcare startup.

III

Equity Participation

Every full-time physician partner and every full-time corporate role receives equity in the platform-level holding company at hire.

Integrated Research

Research is run inside the platform — IRB-overseen, physician-led — so that evidence and innovation flow directly into the family of brands.

Luxury Patient Experience

Care is delivered at the standard of the country's leading academic medical centers and the country's leading luxury houses — both, simultaneously.

Long-Horizon Building

We optimize for what compounds over a decade, not what scales over a quarter. Slower by design, more durable by intent.

05 — Next

Join the platform — as a physician, a practice owner, or an operator.

Services & Partnership Careers at ZMD Group →