Wellist is a consumer navigation company that started by helping to connect patients to services largely outside their care plan — connecting with an acupuncturist, a place to get a wig or someone to clean the house. The company has since opened up its offerings to employees, and in the process has been able to leverage the data it collects to help employers provide better support to their employees and reduce costs.
In addition to being a board member of her own company, Wellist Founder and CEO Ashley Reid is or has been on a number of other company and nonprofit boards. That experience, she says, has given her valuable perspective.
“It’s always easier to see it for someone else than it is to see it for yourself,” Reid says. “And so part of it is actually, every time I poke my head up and talk to other people in the market, or my advisers and leverage their expertise and perspectives, I come away with a way to do something or solve a problem faster, smarter, better. And so I spend a lot more time leveraging their networks, their strategic insights, candidly, just sometimes just their grit to be able to help us do that, to solve problems.”
It’s also helped her learn when it’s time to step away from a problem.
“Being in other advisory boards, you can see patterns where you’re stuck on a same challenge, but you’re not actually breaking through,” she says. “And so having now an appreciation that it’s either not the challenge that you think it is and you don’t have to focus your energy there, or that you need to summon a different level of resourcing to tackle it. But to not stay in the gray space is really important.”
Reid spoke on the Smart Business Dealmakers Podcast about growing into the company’s now national presence, what outside board seats have taught her about running her own business and the evolution of the company’s fundraising.
