Meet Our People
Health Professionals Alliance is a collective effort of multiple entities, specialists, and market verticals to offer the medical and dental community a national model that is truly revolutionary.
We exist to equip physician and dental practices with the tools necessary to maintain their independence, build value, increase profitability, and control their patient care.
Executive Team
Kate Othus
Chief Executive Officer, DataDx
Roy Rose
Executive Chairman & CEO, HPA
Karen Molis
Chief Financial Officer
Justin Valley
Chief Operating Officer
Membership Division
Grant Diggles
VP, Membership Relations
Doug Fettig
VP of Membership
Jessica McBurney
Sr. Regional Manager
Rebecca Kelly
New Member Manager
John Van Leeuwen
VP of Membership
Denise Roberts
Regional Manager
Consulting
Justin Valley
Healthcare Consultant
Denise Roberts
Executive Recruiter
Sheila Kirkegaard
Healthcare Consultant
Noelle Vilela
Provider Enrollment
Kevin Kwiecien
Consultant
Software
Glen Lawrence
Chief Business Officer
Ben Lawrence
Manager, Analytics
Patrick Anderson
Manager, Engineering
Ashley Kargel
Project Manager
Joe Garro
Cloud Engineering
Ahmed Abualsoud
Business Analyst II
Dorothy Gasque
Data Analyst II
Benjamin Elder
Data Analyst
Allister Kays
Web Developer
Support
Justin Valley
Chief Operating Officer
Christine Potter
Executive Administrator
Jayme Barnes
Director of Marketing
Board
Roy Rose
Executive Chairman & CEO, HPA
Kate Othus
Chief Executive Officer, DataDx
Michael Balter
Board Member
Kate Othus, CEO of DataDx
What kind of person does it take to launch a company that exists entirely to empower independent doctors? As the Founder and CEO of DataDx, Kate Othus would say her childhood gave her a boost with the empathy she absorbed from her mother, a lifelong nurse, and the drive her entrepreneur father imparted along the way. Kate realized shortly after completing her Bachelors in Exercise Science that she could have a greater impact by earning her Masters in Healthcare Administration from Portland State University. She expanded her expertise by becoming an educator herself. As an adjunct professor at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU), Kate taught Strategic Planning and Organizational Development courses within the Healthcare Certificate and MBA programs. Working side-by-side with physicians as a practice CEO and Administrator for various specialty groups, she witnessed outdated and often error prone data repeatedly lead to poor business decisions by providers. Kate carried that experience forward as she transitioned to healthcare business consulting. There she developed a high performing consulting team to serve private practices and formed a personal philosophy that propels her next steps to this day. It’s all about the people who feel valued and are willing to become lifelong learners for the purpose of helping others. When emotions are calmed by data driven decisions and logic can inform the plan, a shared sense of understanding and respect will follow. Building and executing winning strategies, so that doctors can focus on giving the best possible care for their patients, has become monumental to her life’s mission. Now Kate serves as CEO for DataDx and practices nationwide are better for it.
Roy Rose
CEO & Chairman of the Board, HPA
Roy Rose brings over 30 years of diverse experience in the private equity market to the Health Professionals Alliance (HPA) mission. As a financial and strategic professional, Roy has repeatedly propelled company growth, expansion and diversification by developing effective corporate strategies and restructuring plans for actionable business and financial transitions. Since 1985, he has provided leadership in structuring and investing in leverage buyouts, real estate, analysis, and private investing for nearly 40 acquisitions and management buyouts.
As CEO & Chairman of the Board for HPA, in addition to serving as CEO and chairman of Whitestone, Roy believes in a personal philosophy to that we all are capable of the courage to never settle for ‘average’ and can push oneself towards the exceptional. That’s part of what led him to the healthcare field. He saw an urgent need to put medical care back into the hands of physicians rather than insurance companies and hospital administrators in order to reduce the cost of treatment without compromising quality.
Roy brings his passion for competing with the knowledge that winning in business isn’t defined the same way as it is in sports, where there is always a distinct winner and a loser. A true win in business means there is never a loser. With Roy’s philosophy and guidance, HPA helps practices bring better care at lower costs for patients and more peace of mind to their doctors and dentists.
Karen Molis
Chief Financial Officer
Karen oversees all the financial and accounting functions of Health Professionals Alliance (HPA). She is a strategic business partner who rolls up her sleeves to immerse herself deeply into every aspect of the business to achieve the best financial and business outcomes.
She has more than two and a half decades of accounting and finance experience after earning her CPA license as she started her career in public accounting. Before joining HPA, Karen served as CFO running all financial and accounting functions of New Seasons Market and New Leaf Community Markets. Her responsibilities included strategic planning, operational finance, budgeting, forecasting, general day-to-day accounting, data governance and sustainability for the Pacific Northwest based B Corp and ushered the company through the merger with Good Food Holdings in early 2020.
Karen sees HPA’s mission as very aligned with her personal beliefs. Keeping physician and dental practices private is something that must be done for the overall health of our local communities and maintaining consumer choice within our healthcare system. “The relationship a person has with their local doctor and dentist is one of the most trusted relationships a person can have.”
She also served as VP of Accounting at publicly traded McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants and worked as a Corporate Controller at AWS Elemental.
Karen moved to Portland from the East Coast in 2005 with her husband, Jared, for a more balanced lifestyle that includes hikes, runs, skiing and trips to the mountains and coast with their three children. She enjoys running to maintain a healthy lifestyle and has completed four marathons. Maybe there is a fifth on the horizon?
She has more than two and a half decades of accounting and finance experience after earning her CPA license as she started her career in public accounting. Before joining HPA, Karen served as CFO running all financial and accounting functions of New Seasons Market and New Leaf Community Markets. Her responsibilities included strategic planning, operational finance, budgeting, forecasting, general day-to-day accounting, data governance and sustainability for the Pacific Northwest based B Corp and ushered the company through the merger with Good Food Holdings in early 2020.
Karen sees HPA’s mission as very aligned with her personal beliefs. Keeping physician and dental practices private is something that must be done for the overall health of our local communities and maintaining consumer choice within our healthcare system. “The relationship a person has with their local doctor and dentist is one of the most trusted relationships a person can have.”
She also served as VP of Accounting at publicly traded McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants and worked as a Corporate Controller at AWS Elemental.
Karen moved to Portland from the East Coast in 2005 with her husband, Jared, for a more balanced lifestyle that includes hikes, runs, skiing and trips to the mountains and coast with their three children. She enjoys running to maintain a healthy lifestyle and has completed four marathons. Maybe there is a fifth on the horizon?
Justin Valley
Chief Operations Officer
After dedicating over twenty years to the healthcare industry, Justin has grown into the purposeful role he always envisioned for himself. With a Bachelor of Science in Healthcare Administration from Oregon State University and his Master of Business Administration from Oregon Health & Science University and Portland State University, his trajectory was cultivated early on. Due to his many years consulting with clinics, hospitals and health systems, as well as earning his Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Justin has forged several specialized skills. His work shines brightest when directed towards medical practice management, operational and financial improvement, benchmarking, rural health clinics, needs assessments, and strategic planning. Whether working with private, public, for-profit or not-for-profit single provider clinics, medical conglomerates or even academic health centers, Justin helps his clients increase efficiency, reduce waste, build capacity and maximize productivity. He loves working in an industry that is always changing so that he can find new ways to help healthcare practices thrive. Justin’s guiding philosophy is simple and has been proven time and again over the years. Always act in the best interest of the provider, and the rest will take care of itself. That’s the best kind of person to give you advice for your practice and we’re lucky to have him.
Grant Diggles
VP of Membership Relations
There is no box big enough to contain the many diverse interests of our VP of Member Relations. Grant is a best-selling co-author for his work on “The Soul of Success, Vol 2” with Jack Canfield and he is led by a philosophy that embraces good relationships and solving problems as the best markers of success. In 2005 he took on the CEO role at Outpatient Anesthesia Services and went on to become CEO of a business management company called The Cummings Group from 2006 to 2018. With his own personal patient experiences driving him, Grant joined the HPA mission to positively impact patient care by helping doctors thrive. He sees the healthcare industry as naturally confusing and full of hard-working professionals who need advocates surrounding them to push for their organizations’ best interests. When fulfilling this advocacy properly, providers as well as patients benefit with better care and fewer headaches. We’re glad we have Grant on our team, serving our members every day.
Jessica McBurney
Senior Regional Manager
Combining over a decade of experience in healthcare with a knack for finding innovative solutions, Jessica has become an invaluable member of our HPA team. Her time as a hands-on clinical RN shaped a love of mentoring and showed her the debilitating consequences of poor organizational change. Jessica furthered her experience as an administrator for an independent review organization where she received extensive training in Lean methodology and operational efficiency. From there, healthcare consulting was a natural segue. Jessica joined dataDX as a Healthcare Business Consultant in 2018 where her broad range of experience cultivated a unique set of specialized skills. Her authentic understanding of the challenges that patients, providers and payors face in healthcare today made her an instinctive medical practice consultant. Once dataDX and HPA joined forces, Jessica’s talent for connecting the dots within healthcare organizations easily transitioned her into a new role as Regional Manager (RM) in November, 2020. This position empowers her to act as a liaison for our HPA membership base working directly with members and their practice leadership to maximize their potential. As RM, Jessica’s culmination of experience acts as a powerful lens through which she can identify lingering opportunities to align HPA membership interests across the various services. Her skill and her heart are a perfect match for our mission and there is no better advocate to have looking out for you!
John Van Leeuwen
VP of Membership
With a personal motto to ‘work hard at something you love, and your job will be a permanent vacation,’ John’s passion for helping dentists make sound financial decisions comes from the heart. As a young financial advisor, he realized that many dentists had little to no training on how to run their business or harnessing financial planning methods. When he saw how grateful they were for his expertise and guidance on these matters, John decided to carve out a niche in advising dental organizations. Soon, he became recognized as a leader in the industry by authoring articles, traveling the country for speaking engagements, and even developing dental school curricula to teach the business side of dentistry. For 27 years, John has advised dentists on all aspects of their personal and practice financial planning including: retirement, tax, estate, investment, cash flow, and debt management. From 1994 through 2005, he founded and was the president of the Portland firm IPA Dental Financial Planning. In 2006 John orchestrated a merger of IPA with the Partners Group where he acted as a Senior Vice President and Director of Dental Practice Services and Wealth Management. In 2011 he founded Green Sail Transitions, Inc., a dental practice valuation and sales company serving the Pacific Northwest. With so many years in the field, John has witnessed how often dentists struggle to accumulate wealth for retirement. This has only grown his dedication for helping dentists develop financial strategies that will maximize their options upon retiring. With a fierce commitment to honesty and integrity driving every decision he makes, he joined HPA as President of our Dental Group. John believes wholeheartedly that once more dental practitioners understand the vast benefits our model provides to hardworking doctors; they will see what a much-needed solution HPA offers to their lives and livelihoods.
Doug Fettig
VP of Membership Relations
Despite Doug’s CPA and MBA academic achievements, he believes the best decision he ever made was dropping out of college at 20 years old. After working for a year afterwards, he bought a one-way ticket to Hamburg, Germany where he began hitchhiking around Europe. That incredible time led to years of countless opportunities to authentically connect with humanity, and it changed Doug’s perception of the world permanently. When he returned to college and eventually to the traditional workforce, he had forged a better appreciation of peoples unique strengths and individual contributions. Now, Doug has over two decades of experience in business consulting and development combined with his deep desire to understand people’s passions through sincere connections. As a dental business advisor, he brings his engaging and entertaining speaking style to dental seminars, academies study groups and vendor forums around the country. This experience has made him skilled at incorporating HPAs expertise to help dentists grow thriving practices while creating the retirement of their dreams.
Rebecca Kelly
New Member Manager
For Rebecca, the drive to help people is rooted in a lifetime of love of family and guidance by her mother. It was this profound influence that inspired her to earn a BA in Psychology and volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters, several years ago. After the loss of her mom in September 2020 following a long battle with breast cancer, the migration to a more impactful role in the healthcare field felt right. Rebecca gained valuable experience selling consumer products for 14 years, but it was servicing healthcare providers for the last almost 8 years that drew her more substantially into her current role as Regional Manager for HPA. She understands how to navigate a healthcare practice and is comfortable engaging with physicians to help guide their business needs day to day. As a mom herself, Rebecca is motivated by her daughter in every aspect of life and strives to make healthcare better for future generations with her in mind. In her spare time, she loves relieving stress with a hike in the mountains of Colorado or taking a cruise to a lovely tropical destination for a warmer adventure. We are excited to have Rebecca’s heart and expertise helping to shape the future of HPA for years to come.
Denise Roberts
Talent Acquisition Specialist
Denise joined HPA as a consultant with nearly a decade of recruiting experience in various industries, but healthcare has become her favorite. For her, the unending mission of healthcare professionals to enhance an industry that benefits every single person is inspiring. Executive recruitment has given Denise a chance to connect with what drives people both professionally and personally, so she can match candidates to their dream job. This is a responsibility that inspires her philosophy to build strong relationships with both candidates and clients that will foster a successful transition for everyone involved. For Denise, a company is only as good as their greatest assets that generate future prosperity, their people. Understanding the skills gap and needs of an organization looking to bring on a new hire is just as essential as understanding the candidate’s ideal future role. By gaining sourcing and recruiting skills from some of the country’s top independent recruiters, Denise routinely creates an unforgettable candidate and client experience. We’re fortunate to have her working so hard for our members.
Sheila Kirkegaard
Healthcare Business Consultant
With a long list of academic achievements, a CPA license and certifications to support her more than 20 years spent in the fields of healthcare and finance, Sheila’s expertise is second to none. She has been able to combine her experience in Finance & Business Intelligence, Operations, and Technology to help medical practices achieve their optimal performance time and again. Working for health organizations led Sheila to create an Enterprise version of a physician directory with her software developer husband Niels, which Washington State Healthcare Exchange, One Health Port subscribed as a service. Her unending passion for improving the health of American citizens drives her to advance better patient outcomes, reduce costs, and inspire more joy for healthcare workers by drawing on her wealth of knowledge. This personal mission has complimented her work for medical practices all along and propels her to seek new ways of accomplishing it. In HPA, Sheila has found a likeminded partner to ensure independent doctors can thrive in the increasingly competitive healthcare landscape and we’re so glad she’s on our team.
Noelle Vilela
Payor Enrollment Specialist
As someone who values a sense of purpose in everything she does, Noelle spent over a decade taking on multiple administrative roles inside the medical arena before joining HPA. Working as a support to patients, physicians, surgeons, hospital leadership and other healthcare executives, she learned the importance of fostering an openness to new ideas and learning how to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. Noelle is no stranger to a strong work ethic with Midwestern roots helping to drive her tenacious approach as our Payor Enrollment Specialist. Her work helps our members identify procedural redundancies and other areas in need of an administrative overhaul. Exploring new avenues to increase efficiency is fun for Noelle and she harbors a passion for reducing drag in medical organizations so doctors can focus on what matters most, delivering excellent patient care. She is also adept at helping people from diverse backgrounds come together for heightened productivity and the cultivation of healthy work relationships. Noelle is a powerful force working to streamline healthcare operations for our members and we are thrilled to have her on our team.
Glen Lawrence
Chief Business Officer – DataDX
From the start of DataDx, Glen has held a key role in bringing ingenuity and foresight to our core mission. His career in healthcare goes back to his time as a teenager working in a hospital cafeteria after school and on the weekends. There Glen had interactions with patients and providers that helped shape his empathy for the many complexities within the healthcare industry and how they affect people. He went on to earn his undergraduate degree in Business Administration and Finance from Portland State University, while continuing to work in the hospital’s diagnostic imaging department. From there he built a solid business foundation as an accountant for four hospitals within a regional health system then became senior accountant for their regional services before joining a hospital consulting startup. Glen gained extensive experience utilizing large claims datasets along with financial and clinical data to impact operational and strategic decision-making for 60 hospitals, before transitioning into a tactical role performing budgeting, financial reporting, productivity, and benchmarking activities for an academic medical center’s hospitals and clinics. Eventually, his educational journey expanded as he received his MBA in Healthcare Management from Oregon Health & Science University and began working as a management consultant for single-specialty, multi-specialty, and university owned clinics. Over these years, Glen gained an inside view of the vast operational disadvantages private medical organizations have suffered and how patients are negatively impacted when doctors have fewer opportunities to maintain their independence. As our Chief Business Officer, Glen brings his full range of experience in finance, data science and healthcare management to bare for the explicit betterment of independent doctors nationwide. He is driven by the belief that technology has the power to rapidly break down information barriers for small healthcare organizations. Glen’s passion for the human experience is what drives him to leverage every tool in his wheelhouse in an innovative way to enable the sharing of information, rapid data-driven decision-making, closer collaboration and a greater understanding of business processes. He is committed to reframing how the delivery of healthcare is measured with real-time indicators and a greater understanding of performance metrics in order to produce better results for patients and doctors at lower costs. We know that Glen has the advancement of every physician and dentist in mind as the DataDx platform grows and we’re lucky to have him.
Ben Lawrence
Manager of Analytics – DataDX
From a very early age, Ben was drawn to everything technology and computers related and would spend hours tinkering with his family’s IBM Aptiva running Windows 95. That passion only grew as he got older, but it conflicted with his natural interest in healthcare. Just as Ben was fully debating whether to enroll in a Computer Science or Medical degree, he became aware of an accelerated program that nourished both pursuits. As a result, he went on to earn his BS in Computer Science from Portland State University with a Master of Biomedical Informatics from OHSU and has since been certified as a Registered Health Information Administrator by the American Health Information Management Association. This gave Ben the perfect intersection between healthcare and information technology that he was looking for. Working with clinicians, payors, and quality improvement analysts to support population health initiatives as well as using health information exchange to report on clinical quality metrics prior to joining our team gave him a clear sense for what the DataDx software could achieve. Ben has since grown our platform by helping to develop its Anomaly Detection system and enjoys making sure we are staying up to date with the latest in machine learning, cloud computing, and application development. It should come as no surprise that he loves solving complex problems and views software creation as a vast teaching opportunity for those who utilize it. For these and so many more reasons, Ben is a valued member of our HPA/DataDx team and continues to aid in our mission daily.
Ashley Kargel
Associate Project Manager – DataDX
Fueled by a true entrepreneurial spirit, Ashley has owned several small businesses and has experience in a variety of fields including Project Management, Finance, Operations and Human Resources. Armed with a BA in Psychology from the University of Arizona, her passion for continued education has given her the skills to take on any challenge posed by an ever-evolving technological field. To that end, she has pursued her Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ 900) Certification and becoming a Certified Scrum Master (CRM). As an expert in managing the project lifecycle, she has taken on every phase of our DataDx implementation process, and our customers have reaped the benefits. Ashley’s compassionate nature and innate desire to help others led her to the healthcare field with hopes that her work will help contribute to lower medical costs across the board. In her free time, she loves to spend time outdoors with her camera for some amateur photography and doing whatever she can to advance the cause of wildlife conservation. We have seen firsthand the dedication and skill Ashley brings to our DataDx family and look forward to watching her expand that positive impact for years to come.
Patrick Anderson
Associate Data Engineer – DataDX
What makes Patrick a great fit for DataDx is more than his extensive expertise, although that certainly helps. His capacity for thinking big and mindfully looking for opportunities to make the world a better place is completely in line with our mission to impact healthcare in a positive way. For Patrick, working on a revolutionary healthcare technology platform provides an opportunity to do something he has always had a passion for; to help people. This work also feeds his natural drive to solve complex problems so overall, becoming our associate data engineer nourishes his belief that one should make every moment count in this life. The road to gaining the professional expertise necessary to take on this position began with a client facing tech position which gave him a solid understanding of clinical workflows, healthcare reporting, and translating technology to end-users. From there, Patrick moved into software engineering where he developed some significant expertise in Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and put those skills to work for a coordinated care organization. This experience has made him especially adept at creating the kind of interactive and user-friendly data analytics platform that healthcare providers can use to streamline their practice operations and deliver better care. We at DataDx love Patrick’s passion for problem-solving as well as his love of doing good in this world and our team is so glad that he’s putting these attributes to work for our clients.
Ahmed Abualsoud
Business Analyst II
As a Palestine born transplant to the Pacific Northwest with an affinity for hiking, it didn’t take Ahmed long to fall in love with our lush green landscape and dynamic Portland metropolis. When he’s not home cooking new recipes, he loves learning more about his new city and connecting with our rich soccer community. Upon his arrival, he enrolled in PCC where he studied English and took some introductory business classes before volunteering for Legacy Health Information Systems department. Prior to joining the DataDx team, Ahmed worked as a Data Analyst for an emergency physicians’ group called the Northwest Acute Care Specialists. His goal is to continue his pursuit of a career in data analytics, and he holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems to help that dream come to fruition. Ahmed is passionate about data mining and generating new avenues of information by using visualization tools to make sense of large data bases. Applying his skills to an industry as vital as healthcare contributes to a sense of purpose and makes his workday much more fulfilling. For these and many more reasons, Ahmed is a perfect match for our DataDx mission, and we’re thrilled to have him on our team.
Dorothy Gasque
Business Analyst – DataDX
In the field of data analytics, Dorothy is a standout human being. After serving in Iraq for the U.S. Army, she came home and took on an active role in her community by working in local politics and continues to serve the Clark County Chart Review Commission to this day. Needless to say, having an impact on the well-being of others is meaningful to Dorothy. As a data specialist, she was drawn to healthcare for several reasons. Of course, the field is growing in the medical realm but most crucially, she loves being a part of an industry that everyone needs and benefits from when it works well. Dorothy was initially drawn to the DataDx mission of keeping small to medium-size healthcare organizations solvent through affordable intelligence tools because it evoked that sense of purpose that fuels her ongoing intention to become a better version of herself. That feeling has only grown as she has seen firsthand the empowering impact real-time data analytics can have on patients and doctors alike. This undertaking, beyond monetary compensation or any other incentive, makes even the most tedious parts of her job worthwhile. Her homelife is a worthy reflection of Dorothy’s incredible character with a little organic farm that houses a bunch of spoiled chickens as well as a variety of fruit trees and berry plants to make delicious jams or jellies from. One thing is clear, while her Bachelor’s in Mathematics gave her the academic experience she needed for data analysis, her heart and passion for meaningful work made her a perfect fit for DataDx.
Michael Balter
Board Member
Michael Balter is an executive with 35 years’ experience in Technology, Green Energy, and Entrepreneurship. He is skilled in executive management; vertical marketing; strategic sales; launching new technologies; and fund raising. Most recently Michael was the VP of Sales for Altergy Systems, a California based Hydrogen Fuel Cell Company, specializing in Alternative and Green Energy. Prior to that Michael co-founded Whitestone Investment Network a private equity firm specializing in technology and consulting.
From 2003 to 2012 Michael was an entrepreneur working with 501c3’s to strengthen their fundraising capabilities raising over $50 million for schools and other nonprofit organizations. From 1980 to 1998 Michael worked at Intel Corporation. Over his tenure he held positions in engineering, sales, and marketing. As Vertical Marketing Director he brought multiple technologies to market including two of the most common technologies in the world today: voice recognition and video conferencing. As a Technology Evangelist he spoke at multiple universities and conferences.
Michael has a BSE in Aeronautical Engineering from San Jose State University and an MBA from Santa Clara University. Michael also served 4 years in USAF as an air traffic controller and is a Vietnam Veteran.
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