Operators who have been in your shoes.
Our team brings decades of experience from every corner of healthcare: running plans, building technology, treating patients, and standing up the kind of company we wished existed when we were on your side of the table.
Operators who have built and run health plans.
Our leadership team has spent decades inside healthcare as operators, technologists, and benefits experts. They are here because they believe it can work better for employers and communities.
Larry Hightower
Chief Executive Officer
Larry Hightower is a hands-on leader and proven innovator who has spent his career developing solutions that improve clinical and financial outcomes for physicians, patients, and payers. In 2005, he founded Vxtra Partners, a health benefits solution focused on helping large, independent medical practices improve the cost and quality of their healthcare benefits, which was acquired by national benefits advisory firm OneDigital in 2023. He reinvested the proceeds to launch Vxtra Health, a value-based platform built to bring physicians and self-insured, middle-market employers together in a collaborative, transparent environment.
Jason Hager
EVP, Chief Operating Officer
Jason has delivered operational and technical leadership to large health insurance companies and multiple healthcare start-ups, including operationalizing two health insurance companies from the pre-licensure concept stage to scale, reaching as much as $145M in annual revenue. A Six Sigma practitioner, he specializes in recognizing and preventing operational challenges before they occur, drawing on a deep understanding of healthcare business processes, systems interoperability, data flow, and technical engineering. Known for his coaching and mentoring, Jason has a proven track record of attracting experienced talent and giving back to those who have supported him.
Pete Murphy
EVP, Chief Information Officer
Pete Murphy brings decades of senior technology leadership to Vxtra Health, having served as a Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Information Security Officer across both Fortune List enterprises and entrepreneurial companies in financial services and healthcare. He is CISA and CISM certified, a founding member of the University of North Carolina Charlotte Cybersecurity Symposium, and a co-inventor on a patent for Risk and Control Assessment. Pete is also a past category winner of the Charlotte Business Journal CIO of the Year.
Tino Valentino
Chief Financial Officer
A CPA by training, Tino brings deep financial leadership built across multiple executive roles at large, independent medical practices. Most recently he served as chief financial officer of Carolina Urology Partners, a 36-physician practice in Charlotte, NC, where he led all financial operations, data analytics, and contractual relationships. Earlier, he served as CEO, COO, and CFO of Central Ohio Urology Group in Columbus, overseeing the practice, an independent ambulatory surgery facility, and a men's health center, and he previously served as CFO for the rehabilitation division of the state of Ohio.
Jerry Quinn
Chief Administrative Officer
Jerry has spent his career in senior executive leadership and strategic consulting roles serving large and middle-market self-insured employers. As a former National Benefits Practice Leader, he developed and managed health benefits solutions for clients including an international medical device company, a private-equity-backed pharmaceutical company, and an international consumer products company, giving him a deep command of health plan financing, claims administration, networks, care management, and pharmacy benefits. He was one of the senior management investors who helped launch Alta Health Strategies, a Warburg Pincus-backed venture that became First Health.
Bethnie McDonald
Chief Marketing Officer
Bethnie McDonald serves as Chief Marketing Officer at Vxtra Health, bringing more than two decades of experience in post-acute healthcare. Her career spans managing inpatient authorizations to leading marketing teams across the healthcare industry, with a consistent focus on strengthening physician and patient relationships and driving revenue growth. A results-driven strategist, she leads Vxtra Health's brand awareness efforts and champions patient-centric care as the organization grows.
Danielle Belding-Smith
Senior Vice President
Danielle has spent her entire career in the self-insured employer space, starting at a local third-party administrator as a teenager and going on to serve as a benefit manager for a large self-funded employer and as an advisor at a national benefits consulting firm. She later served as Director of Business Development for Charlotte-based TargetCare, helping self-insured employers design preventive health and disease management programs that lowered costs and improved outcomes. Most recently, she held senior leadership roles at a venture-backed TPA, spanning sales operations, implementation, reinsurance, and marketing.
Mike Orth
Senior Vice President, Product
Mike brings deep early-stage experience helping health plans build the operational and technology roadmaps needed to move from concept to scale, working across established and venture-backed health plans, third-party administrators, and industry vendors. As one of the first employees at a leading venture-backed health-tech start-up, he led enterprise readiness ahead of the launch of individual and Medicare Advantage plans nationwide, and earlier held product roles at Optum, a UnitedHealthcare company. Today he chairs the Self-Insurance Institute of America's committee on price transparency data and has been a featured speaker at multiple SIIA conferences.
Bret Hightower
Vice President, Business Development
Bret joined Vxtra Partners in 2003 after two years in business-to-business sales in logistics and supply chain management. Over nearly two decades in employee benefits and insurance, he moved into business development in 2014, helping private physician practices weigh fully-insured and standalone self-funded programs against the advantages of health benefits captives, supported by data analytics and price transparency. After Vxtra Partners was acquired by a large national brokerage in 2023, Bret stepped into business development for Vxtra Health, building relationships with prospective employers, consultants, and brokers.
Ted Williams
Vice President, Network Development
Coming from a family of innovative physician leaders, Ted has helped create programs that introduce physicians to new technologies and treatment modalities across a range of sub-specialties. He has a natural ability to connect with early adopter physicians, which has made him an integral part of helping early-stage medical device companies build education-centered sales and marketing efforts. At the heart of that work is a simple commitment: earning the trust of the physician community.
The people who guide your care.
Clinical leaders who keep care coordinated, personal, and focused on better outcomes.
Bob Di Loreto, MD
Chief Medical Informatics Officer
A board-certified adult and pediatric urologist, Dr. Di Loreto brings decades of experience as a specialty-care physician, healthcare innovator, and trusted advisor in clinical information technology, electronic medical records, and software development. He co-founded and served as president of the Michigan Institute of Urology, the nation's first large urology supergroup, and has served as a consultant and urology advisory panel member for the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health for more than 30 years. He has also served as chief of urology and past president of the medical staff at Saint John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit.
Carol Golas, RN
Executive Director, Operational Excellence, VxtraCARE
Carol Golas brings an extensive career in critical care medicine to the VxtraCARE team, having held leadership roles that include Director of Clinical Applications for a national outcomes database and Director of Case Management for the western division of Hospital Corporation of America. With a focus on the most current patient care modalities, protocols, and technologies, she is driven to optimize outcomes. Her strength lies in bringing multidisciplinary clinical and administrative teams together through collaborative leadership.
Physicians and experts who keep us honest.
Practicing physicians and seasoned advisors who shape the clinical and technical foundation of every Vxtra Health plan.
Ryan Whitney, MD
Co-Founder, Medical Affairs
Dr. Ryan Whitney practiced interventional cardiology for 17 years and served as Chief Medical Officer at Bryan Heart in Lincoln, Nebraska before relocating to Gainesville, Georgia in 2019, where he now practices non-invasive cardiology at the Georgia Heart Institute, part of the Northeast Georgia Health System. He earned his medical degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, completed his residency at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, and finished fellowships in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology. A Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, he also holds a master's degree in business analytics.
Paul Pender, MD
Clinical Communications Advisor
Dr. Paul Pender is an accomplished ophthalmic surgeon, innovator, author, and advocate for patients and physicians. He founded New Hampshire Eye Associates and established the first state-licensed and Medicare-certified ambulatory surgery center in New Hampshire, and after serving as a Principal Investigator for FDA clinical trials of laser vision correction, he launched a facility dedicated to refractive corneal surgery. He is the author of two books on the patient-physician relationship: Rebuilding Trust in Healthcare, and Standing Up and Speaking Out for Patients and Doctors.
Brian Coffey
Co-Founder, Chief Technology Advisor
A Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Brian brings deep experience scoping and managing technology transformation for organizations ranging from Fortune 100 corporations to early-stage companies. His corporate leadership roles span Tech Mahindra, GE Energy, CNBC, NBC Universal, GE Capital, and CIBA Vision, and he has advised many organizations on cloud-first systems architecture, predictive analytics, complex data modeling, machine learning, and applied artificial intelligence. At Vxtra Health, Brian serves as a technology advisor to the executive management team and Board of Directors.
David Cane
Shared Savings and Hospital Contracts
David served as a Regional Vice President of Mercy Health, overseeing risk arrangements for large direct employer contracts across Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, where he built patient-centered care management operations and launched a Mercy-owned third-party administrator from the ground up. He helped pioneer a risk-sharing model for self-insured employers that delivered millions of dollars in savings while keeping the experience strong for physicians and patients alike. Over his career at Mercy, David led more than one hundred direct-to-employer contracts, including Walmart, Bass Pro Shops, O'Reilly Auto Parts, and Missouri State University.
John Brown, MD
Value-Based Care Management
John Brown, MD, leads value-based care management at Vxtra Health. He partners with the team to keep care centered on better outcomes for the people and communities Vxtra Health serves.
Cindi Goddard, RN
Population Health Analytics
Cindi Goddard, RN leads Population Health Analytics at Vxtra Health. She brings a registered nurse's clinical perspective to the data that helps the team understand and improve community health outcomes.
We actually care about outcomes.
That is not a tagline. It is the reason this team came together: to build something that puts employers, physicians, and communities first.