About Us - b.well

There’s a reason b.well starts with a “b.”

Founder and CEO Kristen Valdes has spent her entire career focused on providing quality healthcare to underserved populations in our country. When Kristen experienced the healthcare system as a consumer, she quickly realized that she hadn’t accomplished nearly enough.

Her middle child Bailey suffers from a significant autoimmune disorder. Even as a healthcare “expert,” it took Kristen seven years to advocate for her daughter to get an appropriate diagnosis. Together, they experienced countless misdiagnoses, costly repeat procedures, and diagnoses based on limited and siloed health data.

By day, Kristen was a health plan executive. By night, she was a excel lab-plotting mom.

In fact, Kristen was the only person able to successfully pinpoint her daughter’s medical issue by aggregating, analyzing, and considering all pieces of her daughter’s health data. Specialists continuously brushed off Kristen’s suggested diagnosis until one day, her daughter was hospitalized with a life-threatening complication from a medication contraindicated to that specific disease.

After countless conversations with other individuals and caregivers, Kristen understood her case was not an outlier, but in fact, the norm. People need navigation and personalization through the overly complex and fragmented healthcare system to become successful advocates for themselves and their loved ones.

Kristen launched b.well, named after her daughter Bailey or “B,” to empower consumers to become advocates through access and understanding of their holistic health data. b.well is transforming healthcare into a simple, on-demand experience by putting consumers in the center of the healthcare equation.

Leaders that keep our heart beating.

                        
Founder, CEOKristen ValdesKristen is a seasoned healthcare executive with over 20 years in the industry.

Kristen is a seasoned healthcare executive with over 20 years in the industry. Prior to founding b.well, Kristen was a Vice President at United Healthcare running Medicare Advantage plans across 12 states. Kristen started her healthcare career working with CMS on the first national payment integrity programs for Medicare and Medicaid. Kristen then helped to build XLHealth, one of the pioneering Medicare Advantage Plans for the chronically ill. She was responsible for maintaining and growing the profitability of the plan and was instrumental in the acquisition by United Healthcare in late 2012 for $2.4B.
Mrs. Valdes has been recognized as one of four "Women Transforming Industries," by Accenture and Springboard Enterprises, is a 40 Under 40 Top Named Healthcare Innovator and b.well Connected Health has won various competitions and awards including being named Top Innovator by Accenture in their Global Health Tech Innovation Challenge. Her dedication to consumer directed health exchange is reflected in her active involvement as a board member of the CARIN Alliance working to liberate data on behalf of consumers. Kristen also serves on several other healthcare boards, advisory boards and serves as an advisor to Springboard and Guidewell women led companies.

Chief Financial OfficerNathan Weems
                        
Chief Information OfficerImran QureshiImran is seasoned information leader with over 30 years of experience in the industry.

                      Imran was previously Chief Data Science Officer of Clarify Health Solutions, a pioneer in machine learning-enabled care optimization. Before that, Qureshi was Chief Software Development Officer for Health Catalyst, a provider of data and analytics technology, where he led the engineering team that built the company's Data Operating System (DOS). Prior to Health Catalyst, Qureshi held roles such as CTO of Acupera, a care coordination platform for clinical and socio-behavioral care and VP of Engineering at CareAnyware, the largest SaaS provider to home health care and hospice agencies. He holds 10+ patents and has been part of two successful exits (CareAnyware sale in 2012 and Health Catalyst IPO in 2019). He has been responsible for annual budgets in excess of $20M.
                      
Chief Revenue OfficerDunnie NormanDunnie has over 20 years of business strategy expertise in healthcare.

Dunnie has over 20 years of business strategy and commercialization expertise in healthcare. He’s worked closely with leading health systems, payers, and employers to experience best in class results with their revenue cycle, EHR, clinical decision support, and population health software solutions. He participated with the first several hundred employees at Allscripts in growing a $1B healthcare IT company and recently he led Vivify Health through a period of rapid growth as senior vice president of sales and marketing which resulted in the acquisition of the company by Optum. Experiencing the challenges of a disconnected healthcare system, his passion to lead positive change for both healthcare providers and consumers led him to b.well. He is a member of the Board of Advisors for Maxxsure (cyber risk quantification) and MyndVR (VR experiences for seniors)

                        
VP of MarketingGary JohnsonGary has over 20 years of business strategy, marketing and sales experience...

Gary has over 20 years of business strategy, marketing and sales experience with leading SaaS companies solving challenges in revenue cycle, supply chain, telehealth and quality of care. Gary led the marketing strategy with MedAssets (Vizient/nThrive) through 14 acquisitions and a successful IPO (Nasdaq: MDAS); led Vendormate's successful growth and exit sale to GHX; led R1 RCM's (Nasdaq: RCM) marketing strategy to launch the rebranded revenue cycle outsourcing company to health systems and group practices. Prior to healthcare software, Gary led marketing and product management for medical devices and consumer packaged goods brands (Kimberly-Clark). Gary holds a Bachelor of Administration (honors) from Brock University, St.Catharines, Canada.

VP of PartnershipsRomy CarlsonRomy has over 20 years of partnership strategy, enterprise health and sales experience...

Romy brings over 20 years of partnership strategy, enterprise health and sales experience with leading healthcare organizations. She has spent her entire career leading sales and marketing initiatives for numerous mature and start-up digital health solutions including Cerner, Humana, Retrofit (acquired by Livongo/Teladoc), WellRight, Viverae (acquired by Virgin Pulse), Weight Watchers, Life Time Fitness, TriHealth, and League Corp., among others. Romy is a graduate of Michigan State University, Xavier University, and the University of Missouri.

VP of SalesErin Scales
                        
VP of RegulatoryJill DeGraffJill is a legal & regulatory leader with over 30 years of experience in the industry

                        
VP of ProductYelena BalinYelena has over 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry

Yelena has over 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, leading operational, technology and product teams while driving sustainable results through applied analytics, process improvements, and quality controls. She was responsible for multi-million dollar program implementations and cost containment at XLHealth, as well as deploying those programs at UnitedHealthcare. She is also Facets certified, and a Medicare claims and data expert. Yelena was the recipient of the Thomson Reuters Healthcare Innovation Award. She holds her BS in Information Systems from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

VP of Biz Dev.Sheri LamarcaSheri is a business development leader with over 20 years of experience in the industry.

Sheri has over 20 years leadership experience solving complex challenges and scaling healthcare organizations. She has a proven track record in healthcare start-ups and multi-million dollar revenue program development. Sheri was a key leader in $67M landmark government program to redesign Medicare and Medicaid data integrity methods at Thomson Reuters (acquired by IBM). In 2012, she was instrumental in the sale of XLHealth to UnitedHealthcare for $2.4B and managed a $20M annual budget working with strategic partners while driving over $150M in annual revenue. She has deep knowledge and experience ranging from health insurance across TRICARE, Federal and Commercial plans, Program Development focused on Quality & Outcomes, Population Health, Consumer Experience and Revenue Optimization.

Head of People & CultureAlicia RaymondAlicia is a people operations leader with over 20 years of experience in the industry.

Alicia comes to b.well with over 20 years of combined Business leadership and Human Resources experience. Most recently working for Optum as a Human Capital Partner leading work around strategic initiatives, organizational design, and executive leadership support. Prior to Optum, she lead the growth for XLHealth from 80 to 1500 employees which resulted in a successful acquisition to UnitedHealth Group. Alicia is a People operations business leader with a focus on supporting all employees to drive an inclusive and engaged culture. She is a strategic partner who helps to establish and drive a positive productive working environment.She has her bachelor’s in Corporate Communications and Business from Elon University and her PHR certification.

ControllerScott MetzScott is a finance leader with over 20 years of experience in the industry.

Scott brings over 25 years of experience serving in accounting and finance roles with various companies. Most notably, serving as Controller for ConnectYourCare, a consumer-directed healthcare company, for eight of those years. Scott is responsible for all of all aspects of financial reporting and budgeting and forecasting functions, as well as, managing tax and insurance for b.well.He holds a B.A. from Franklin & Marshall College and a Masters Degree in Finance from Loyola College.