SEPTEMBER 2025

Welcome to the WittKieffer Investor-Backed Healthcare Newsletter, a quarterly publication that shares industry-leading trends, expert insights, and curated content from our global team of consultants.  

At WittKieffer, we partner with organizations committed to enhancing quality of life, notably healthcare organizations backed by institutional, private, public, and corporate capital. Our comprehensive suite of services — executive search, leadership advisory, and interim leadership solutions — is meticulously designed to cultivate impactful leadership that propels growth and value creation. 

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In the US healthcare system, innovation often collides with reimbursement constraints. This leads to a growing number of investor-backed companies adopting self-pay models to accelerate market access while building evidence for broader adoption. Our insight piece explores how this approach is creating promising investment opportunities in women's health, advanced diagnostics, and integrative and functional medicine. It also identifies the leadership capabilities essential for success in this evolving landscape. 

Why It Matters: The self-pay healthcare pathway demands leadership capabilities that transcend traditional operational excellence, such as a consumer-centric mindset, innovation and technology fluency, experience design expertise, strategic agility, and analytics and financial acumen. Organizations commercializing innovations outside existing reimbursement frameworks must intentionally cultivate these competencies through cross-industry hiring, flexible leadership models including interim and on-demand solutions, and executive development programs focused on consumer-centric healthcare. 

Distinct from IQ, EQ, or BQ, Organizational Intelligence (OQ) focuses on a leader’s ability to influence and navigate complex organizational systems without direct interaction with every individual. Drawing from his extensive global experience, Professor George Yip, renowned for his work in marketing and strategy, discusses practical strategies for developing and deploying OQ, such as “rebelling from the top” and creating “moments of theater.”  

Why It Matters: Leaders in healthcare face a maze of unique organizational challenges. Achieving success requires more than just technical expertise or interpersonal skills. It demands a deep understanding of how to influence and navigate entire organizational systems. 

In this Converge Cast episode, Dr. Kate Goodrich, Chief Medical Officer at Humana, provides compelling insights on leadership, innovation, and the future of healthcare. Dr. Goodrich shares her remarkable journey from hospitalist to federal policymaker to private-sector executive. She reflects on the surprising moment she fell in love with health policy, the challenges of transitioning between public and private leadership roles, and the critical importance of quantifying value in a for-profit healthcare environment. 

Why It Matters: Tune in to gain insight on how Humana is making value-based care a reality, tackling the provider shortage, and supporting dementia caregivers. Dr. Goodrich also offers candid advice for entrepreneurs hoping to partner with large healthcare organizations and ends on a hopeful note about what is working in American healthcare today. 

In this Converge Cast episode, Dr. Patrick Carroll, Chief Medical Officer and Board Member at Hims & Hers, discusses how his work in population health and primary care fuels his passion for expanding access through innovation. He offers an inside look at Hims & Hers’ fully integrated, direct-to-consumer model and how it is opening doors through asynchronous care, specialty compounding, and AI-powered tools like MedMatch. 

Why It Matters: This discussion examines the potential implications of current trends and developments in the healthcare industry as it moves toward smarter and more accessible care. Dr. Carroll highlights how telemedicine, consumer-centric models, and innovative clinical strategies are transforming patient experiences and, at the same time, reshaping the future of wellness. In a time of provider shortages and rising chronic conditions, understanding these shifts is essential for leaders across the healthcare landscape. 

WittKieffer’s proprietary analysis provides a comprehensive, data-driven exploration of CFO transitions and phenotypes within PE-backed healthcare services companies. Our research reveals that 84% of companies replace their CFO post-acquisition, with transitions occurring on average 11 months after the deal. 

Key features: 

Why It Matters: Understanding CFO transition patterns, replacement timing, and phenotypes is critical for PE firms looking to optimize leadership within their healthcare portfolio companies. The distinction between different phenotypes provides a framework for matching CFO capabilities to specific company needs and value creation objectives. This research offers investors and healthcare leaders insights and actionable recommendations for more effective talent selection, onboarding, and succession planning in an increasingly complex healthcare investment landscape. 

Executive Search

Need: Our client envisioned a PE-backed healthcare organization focused on longevity optimization through early cancer detection and precision medicine. Targeting consumers with family cancer history, they planned to combine AI with multi-modality imaging (including whole-body MRI) in a self-pay model outside traditional insurance. They sought a CEO with healthcare and consumer expertise to lead the company from incubation to market launch, who also possessed the charisma to build relationships with wealthy clients and clinical partners. 

Solution: WittKieffer partnered with the investor team to lead a national search for a founding CEO and an inaugural Head of Marketing. The selected leaders brought a rare blend of early-stage company, go-to-market, and operational expertise. The CEO is now building the infrastructure and leadership team, with key hires in technology, marketing, and operations, to launch in the first market within 12 months and transform the venture into the premier destination for individuals seeking peace of mind. These placements showcase WittKieffer’s unparalleled ability to match visionary leadership with transformative ventures. 

Interim & On-Demand Leadership

Need: A healthcare company with an innovative closed-loop technology platform connecting health plans and organizations had entered a critical growth phase. To successfully diversify revenue streams and expand their client portfolio through new payer and employer relationships, they required specialized financial support for pricing strategies and new business models. 

Solution: WittKieffer identified and engaged an on-demand finance leader with deep forecasting and analytical skills, gained through experience at investor-backed healthcare and national provider organizations. Throughout the engagement, this leader validated and built end-to-end financial models to support high-stakes pricing negotiations with new and existing clients, as well as executive and board decision-making. In recognition of their performance and the immediate value they delivered, the role was elevated to interim Chief Financial Office

Leadership Advisory

Need: Our client, a VC fund investing in innovative healthcare solutions, required a CEO for one of their portfolio companies focused on advancing personalized medicine. The company needed a leader who could align with their strategic vision while demonstrating the operational excellence necessary to achieve ambitious growth targets. With three qualified finalists, they sought our data-driven assessment approach to enhance decision quality, mitigate selection risks, provide an objective comparison of finalists against the leadership profile, and gain deeper insights to inform their final selection. 

Solution: We deployed our rigorous CEO-tailored Alignment Assessment methodology, designed to cater to the distinct facets of the enterprise CEO position and covering the four-phase process: online assessments (Hogan Suite, Watson Glaser, Ravens Adaptive), in-depth interviews with the Leadership Advisory consultant, comprehensive reports linked directly to the CEO profile, and structured feedback sessions. The assessment results revealed unexpected insights that transformed the selection process. While the client initially favored one candidate, the data demonstrated that another finalist offered superior alignment with long-term value creation goals, with metrics indicating a high probability for success. The chosen CEO has just begun their tenure, with the assessment findings now contributing significantly to their integration and onboarding plan. 

WittKieffer welcomes Charlie Fick, Senior Partner in Investor-Backed Healthcare, Julie Chavey, Principal in Investor-Backed Healthcare, and Natasha Bunten Cashen, Managing Director of Client Development in Interim Leadership.

Charlie Fick serves as a Senior Partner of WittKieffer’s Investor-Backed Healthcare Practice. He has more than a decade of in-depth experience advising clients in healthcare technology and services, with a concentration in the PE and VC domains. Charlie has completed more than 150 C-suite recruitments for growth-stage PE- and VC-backed businesses, with areas of specialization including CEOs/presidents, operations, finance, marketing, HR/talent, and clinical leadership.  

Julie Chavey serves as a Principal in WittKieffer’s Investor-Backed Healthcare Practice. Julie has more than 20 years of leadership recruiting experience and is able to identify executives whose ambitions and values align with those of client organizations. She specializes in leading executive search efforts for PE- and VC-backed healthcare and life sciences companies, focusing on C-suite, including CEO, CFO, CIO, as well as other senior leadership positions. 

Natasha Bunten Cashen is a Managing Director of Client Development for WittKieffer's Interim Leadership Practice, focusing on investor-backed healthcare. With over 15 years of experience in healthcare operations, finance, and commercial leadership, she advises clients on interim and on-demand leadership roles. Natasha's expertise spans multi-site specialty care, home health, payors, health-tech, and medical supplies, providing deep industry knowledge and operational insights to support her clients. 

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