Biz Dev + Policy Director

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Connecting health and social care.

I joined Unite Us as employee ~125 in Nov 2019. Those were real startup days and I wore multiple hats in my role as Director of Network Development on the West Coast. The role was sales (all verticals), business development (all verticals), partnerships (all verticals). I handled small deals, large deals, and renewals. It was, frankly, insanity. But of the best kind.

Eventually we started to specialize. My territory got split into three and the verticals got split into three and as an accompaniment to sales, we stood up a small policy and government affairs team. I was our first Director of Policy on the West Coast. So after selling into Medicaid managed care plans, hospitals and clinics and large County programs, and after building partnerships with the social service sector including 211s, United Ways, food providers, HIEs, CIEs, and others, I focused on the role of policy to shape markets and build strategic relationships. My focus was on government partnerships. Still the range of conversations was wide. Not a day went by when I didn’t open up 30 new tabs on my browser.

After a year out West, and coinciding with my move back to Texas, I shifted to become our first Director of Federal Affairs. We were also standing up a federal sales practice and the time was finally right to build a DC presence. And we did. We built leads and pipeline in CMS (I sourced our first federal contract, a sub-award from CMMI), CDC, the VA, the Justice Department, and elsewhere. We partnered with an excellent lobbying shop and built relationships with key offices in Congress. We were heavily involved in how to modernize veteran suicide prevention programs; that was our strategic entry point. I also ran an internal process of translating federal grants down to Unite Us team members working at the state and local levels, and managed our summer inters who were awesome.

It’s hard to describe the breadth and depth of conversations I was in. Unite Us provides secure digital infrastructure supporting cross-sector collaborations to have the social needs of individuals and populations identified and met. On top of this cross-sector infrastructure, a lot can happen, though policy levers have to be pulled to create the markets and sustainable funding streams. A few bullets to show the breadth:

  • SDOH + Medicaid 1115 Waivers

  • Prison Reentry and Anti-recidivism

  • Courts and Probation

  • Child Welfare

  • Emergency Response

  • Aging and Disability

  • Data Standards Development

  • Federal, State, and Local

Over my 5 years at Unite Us, I rode the hockey stick growth curve and Unite Us grew, peaking at around 900 staff after multiple acquisitions and stabilizing closer to 700.

I joined via Series B funding at $200MM valuation. I left 5 year later after Series C funding and a valuation of $2BB.

10x in 5 years. Not bad.