Who We Are
Our expertise in healthcare, retail and consumer experience provides us with the foundation for creating easy-to-use solutions with an experience which moves beyond transactional relationships to sustained engagement and overall health improvement.
Robby Knight
Co-Founder and CEO
Robby is a former two-sport college athlete that started his career as a social worker serving communities in the mental health and substance abuse spaces before spending almost a decade building new healthcare ventures at Walmart, most recently leading the healthcare product development and consumer health innovation groups there. Robby and his wife live Bentonville, AR with their two boys (5 month old and a 3 year old).
He holds BSW, MBA, and MS in MIS degrees from the University of Alabama and an MS in Social Work from Columbia University.
Daryl Risinger
Co-Founder, President and Chief Growth Officer
A serial brand builder, Daryl has long recognized the health care industry as ideal for engineering disruptive strategies in the development of successful products, services and organizations.
His nearly 25 years of health care marketing expertise has included Fortune 100 and start-up organizations within the pharmaceutical, medical device, hospital and outpatient services industries. What has been most consistent throughout his career is an innate ability to understand market needs, identify existing gaps and build the teams required to deliver market-leading solutions.
Chris Brown
Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer
Chris is an experienced technology executive with extensive experience as a CTO in both healthcare and fintech industries.
His technical accomplishments include technology stack modernization, architecting solutions to position organizations for future growth while leading teams focused on high-priority, high-impact projects. He built and led teams at Rally Health, Aurora Investment Management and Backstop Solutions Group.
He is a summa cum laude graduate of Bradley University and a National Merit Scholar.
Jared Dauman
Co-Founder and Head of Operations
Fascinated with solving complex business problems, Jared was drawn to an eCommerce revenue cycle management startup at the beginning of his career.
Later, on Walmart's eCommerce team, he managed merchandising P&Ls within health and wellness. He sought out new business ventures for the category and as the directed spend program grew, Jared played an integral role in platform requirements, product strategy and day-to-day operations. During that time, he garnered strong relationships with healthcare payers and developed innovative ways to service their needs through fintech solutions.
Jared has a Bachelor of Science business administration and entrepreneurship from Washington University in St. Louis.
Grae Abbott
Software Engineer
Grae’s extensive technical skillset allows for the efficient creation of meaningful solutions.
Grae started his career at Pendo.io where worked on the core back-end platform team that built and maintained Pendo's event ingestion pipeline, which ingested 15 billion events per day. He also handled on-call escalation issues, patched urgent security vulnerabilities, and built out a secure single sign-on system for the organization. Grae brings diverse software and security experience to Soda Health’s engineering team and will therefore contribute to increased productivity across the board.
Grae has a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in computer science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Josie Baker
Head of Social Care
Josie is devoted to bridging gaps- identifying solutions and resources to address specific issues.
She has supported many individuals considered marginalized and vulnerable to find their voice and advocate on behalf of their interests. Most recently, Josie worked for the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities where she supported the department’s vision for an inclusive Georgia through deinstitutionalization and the implementation of community-based services for individuals with developmental disabilities. She managed the state-wide crisis system and provided broad oversight to hundreds of community providers. Josie is keenly aware of the impact of social determinants of health on outcomes and will seek to provide creative, evidence-based solutions for Soda Health.
She has a Bachelor of Social Work from The University of Alabama and a Master of Social Work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Hannah Moulton Belec
Copywriter
Helena Chi
Software Engineer
Each of Helena’s endeavors are centered around helping others.
Prior to Soda Health, Helena was a software developer at TechSmith, where she focused on Windows desktop applications. Her time there taught her that because problems evolve over time, solutions should also evolve to better address people’s needs.
Her human-centric approach served her well while creating web applications for non-profit organizations and teaching game development and programming courses to students at Hack4Impact and CodeREV Kids, respectively.
Helena has a Bachelor of Science in computer science and linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Jared Childs
Head of Business Development
Jared is a highly motivated leader with significant experience integrating retail and healthcare to drive meaningful outcomes.
Jared most recently worked at Shipt where he helped found and launch the healthcare division. His team built a directed spend payments product within the Shipt Marketplace, allowing health plan members to shop healthy foods and receive same-day delivery from over 120 retailers. Jared believes that true innovation requires great partners to learn and grow alongside. His experience building from concept to new vertical with exponential growth was one of the biggest thrills of his career.
In his spare time, Jared enjoys volunteering for his church’s "serve the city" program, which supports businesses and families in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina.
Jared is a proud alum of NC State University’s Entrepreneurship program.
Pete Clodi
Principal Software Engineer
Pete is an active problem solver, both individually and as part of a team.
His background includes designing and developing solutions on Windows, embedded platforms and the web for industries ranging from accounting to education to high frequency Futures trading. As a frontend architect at Packback, he proposed, designed and developed their client application. Seeing the application through a company pivot and the introduction of total application Accessibility.
Pete has a Bachelor of Science in computer science from the University of St. Francis.
James Coombs
Software Engineer
James is a diligent worker who is no stranger to startups. He began his career as an intern at Rally Health where he wrote scripts that streamlined the internal security and IT processes.
He was asked to extend his internship for another 4 months, and then stay on part time to continue working as a software engineer for security. James balanced this while completing a 5-year degree in 3.5 years, demonstrating his grit and drive. Since graduating, he has received several promotions and worked to build platform automation as an engineer and a lead, taught non-technical co-workers programming languages, as well as lead and mentored a team of junior engineers.
James has a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Nick Cruess
Software Engineer
Nick’s engineering career has focused on health tech, cybersecurity, and financial services.
He began his career at Citi where he developed distributed system orchestration software with DMTF Redfish + Python and applications integration services with Java. Nick deepened his knowledge while at Trustwave. There, he developed big data platforms and analytics services; specifically, data archival and retrieval, S3 integration, and stream processing. He has design, development, and test experience with Java, Python, and JavaScript. He is a mentor to first generation college students and heavy reader outside of the office.
Nick has a Bachelor of Business Administration in management information systems and a minor in computer science from The University of Texas at Austin.
Jon Dowdle
Senior Engineering Manager
Jon is passionate about development and infrastructure automation. If it's in the cloud, he wants to automate it.
As the third engineer at InVision, he formed and led the devops/SRE team, fully migrated infrastructure into the cloud (AWS) and built tooling for better reporting around team goals and objectives. Most recently, Jon held various leadership roles at Rally Health (which transitioned into Optum Digital). In that role, he built and ran an infrastructure team that eventually powered portions of myuhc.com.
He has a developer background, can quickly pickup various languages and is experienced in NodeJs, Go, AWS and MongoDB.
Jon has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Central Florida.
Ariane Grazian
Head of Product Development
Ariane never backs down from a challenge and brings deep experience in transforming large-scale, bold ideas into scalable, viable strategies and products.
She began her career with Deloitte as a strategy and operations consultant prior to joining Walmart in 2014. During her time with Walmart Ariane served as a productively disruptive leader who delivered many “world firsts” for the world’s largest retailer. In her most recent role as Director of Product Development & Health Plan Partnerships, Ariane supported the financial viability of Walmart’s healthcare business by forging relationships with the country’s largest health plans and translating their challenges into new product offerings such as clinical gaps closure and engagement support, social determinants of health solutions, and innovative insurance products.
Ariane has a Bachelor of Science in business administration from The George Washington University.
Ryan Hall
Principal Engineer
Ryan is passionate about problem solving and building great software.
He is a SWE with experience across a variety of technology, including system architecture, scaling services across multiple frameworks, game development and CI/CD automation. Prior to Soda Health, Ryan spent over a decade in the healthcare startup space. He joined Spotlite post-graduation to manage the EDI development team to handle reporting. When Rally Health acquired the company, he scaled services to maintain company growth. In his spare time, Ryan builds the infrastructure and multiplayer game engine for his game company, BlackFall.
Ryan has a Bachelor of Science in computer science from the University of Central Florida.
Hank Hollenstain
Principal Engineer
Hank is a site reliability guru. His expertise ranges from front line technical support to scaling reliable software systems.
While at InVision he worked on transforming applications into containers, lead the adoption to Kubernetes, migrated infrastructure as code via terraform. At Rally Health, lead the effort of building Kubernetes and migrating from Mesos, built out vault for identity-based secrets and encryption while maintaining the systems that authenticated internal applications.
He is knowledgeable about newer container technologies and more traditional Linux systems, AWS and HTTP servers.
Hank has an Associate of Science from Heartland Community College.
Catherine Ivy
Social Care Research & Policy Analyst
Mason Joyner
Customer Success Analyst
Mason’s career is centered on engagement. From collegiate organizations to healthcare organizations, she is constantly seeking out unique ways to captivate members.
Mason represented the Boehringer Ingelheim diabetes portfolio where she worked to meet the unique needs of nearly 100 healthcare professionals, in addition to their office personnel. As a U.S. Senate intern in Washington, D.C., she handled constituent visits, Capitol tours and recorded vital notes at hearings for legislative purposes. The role not only gave her insight into the legislative process, but also inspired her to advocate for others.
During her collegiate career, Mason designed and implemented the transition to virtual learning while still maintaining member engagement for an organization of more than 400.
She has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and MBA from the University of Alabama.
Umang Kapadia
Principal Engineer
Umang is a passionate and driven engineer with experience in building out short-term and long-term strategies. He joins Soda Health from Amount, where he served as head of devops.
He set the strategic direction for automation and production engineering, continuously reviewing over production process and driving improvement to lower defect rates. Umang has also held positions at Jo-Ann Stores, LLC and Rally Health.
Umang has a Bachelor of Science in computer science from The Ohio State University.
Dan McGee
Senior Engineering Manager
Dan’s engineering career has been anything but ordinary. He has extensive experience with backend software development, infrastructure, operations and site reliability.
Dan started his career working on open-source Linux distributions, expanding his expertise into web development, before starting his own freelance software development firm. Dan co-founded Data Everywhere, a platform utilizing APIs to allow users to share data between spreadsheets. He also maintained and revamped the infrastructure to support AWS-based applications at Rally Health, led the site reliability team at Kenna Security and led various backend development and DevOps teams at other stops in his career.
Dan has a Bachelor of Science in computer science from the University of Notre Dame.
Kevin McHugh
Senior Software Engineer
Kevin’s career is centered on writing software to improve the lives of customers. He is no stranger to startups.
He was the first employee of the Synap team, where his work included security and vulnerability remediation in addition to writing major features and integrations. He furthered his security know-how at Kenna Security (recently acquired by Cisco), where he integrated with vulnerability scanners while also addressing performance and scaling concerns. Kevin is a Chicago native and likes writing code to make everyone's platforms better by making them more connected.
Kevin has a Bachelor of Science in computer science from DePaul University.
Michielu Menning
Software Engineer
Michielu’s adaptable personality allows him to thrive in a variety of environments. He led a team of software engineers at Sezzle where he managed and developed critical shopper features for over 3 million active monthly users.
Michielu also owned Sezzle’s flagship feature and led major payment method migrations. He has also held positions at Union Pacific and The Boeing Company.
Michielu has a Bachelor of Science in software engineering from Iowa State University.
Matt Miner
Senior Engineering Manager
Matt is a systems thinker with an engineering background. He applies that mindset to organizational leadership to convert ideas into results.
He began his career in consulting for Emmis Interactive and Sogeti USA where he worked with ASP.net, SQL and AJAX. Most recently Matt served as director of engineering at Rally Health. He formed and chaired the Live Site Champions community of practice, founded the quarterly technology capability plan to manage life cycles and transformed error prone infrastructure to 99.99% uptime. Matt often says, "Ideas are easy, results are hard work."
He has a Bachelor of Science in engineering from Purdue.
Desiree Molina
Customer Service Lead
Desiree Molina believes in being her authentic self and spreading joy to those she works with, alongside and everyone in between!
She has lived all over the world, served in the USAF, homeschooled her children and managed NAF accounts. And that only skims the surface. Most recently, Desiree managed customer care vendors for Walmart eCommerce, globally.
She oversaw the customer care organization and played an integral part of creating an omni-channel experience for customers and agents alike. She stood up and launched new business lines to include COVID-19 vaccines and store support while also integrating online pick-up and delivery to the standard e-commerce model and way of working. Desiree uncovered inefficiencies within outsourced partner support teams and improved the overall customer journey. This, in turn, increased satisfaction and continued to help expand the customer care footprint within Walmart.
She believes joining the Soda Health team not only allows her to continue pursuing her best life, but also allows her to help others do the same!
She has an Associates of Arts in business administration from the University of Maryland University College.
Zach Newcomb
Finance Manager
Zach’s love for solving complex problems drew him to the finance world and his detail-oriented nature has allowed him to thrive in it.
Zach joins Soda Health from Barclays where he was responsible for building and maintaining financial models and evaluating companies and market segments. He created new formats and templates for published research, conducted equity and industry research and communicated recommendations to sales, trading, management teams, institutional investors and other stakeholders.
Zach has a Bachelor of Science in finance from the University of Alabama.
Simon Oprzedek
Principal Engineer
Chris Perardi
Senior Web/UX Developer
Chris has always thrived in fast-paced work environments, possessing an innate ability to learn on-the-fly and immediately add value wherever he goes.
Prior to joining Soda Health, Chris was a UI Designer for Wolfram Research, where he was responsible for a wide range of user interface designs and solutions across web and native app platforms. It was here that Chris developed a rapid prototyping system of high-fidelity prototypes, migrated his team onto a new all-in-one platform for digital design, and worked closely on projects with the CEO. Chris’s background and skillset uniquely position him to continue building out Soda Health’s best-in-class member experience.
In his free time, Chris enjoys playing rugby, where he recently served on the team’s executive board as communications chair.
Ali Rathore
Senior Engineering Manager
Sarah Rumfelt
Head of Marketing
Sarah’s career is rooted in developing creative marketing strategies to drive sustainable growth.
She started her career at Raymond James, supporting the investment banking team with marketing and PR materials following its European and UK expansion. While in business school, Sarah established a nonprofit organization to bridge the gap between the university and women within the surrounding community, growing the organization from two members to over 50 in a six-month period. She has also held positions at Regions Bank and Walmart. Sarah thrives in a fast-paced world filled with innovative businesses and out-of-the-box thinkers, so it’s no surprise she landed at Soda Health.
She has a Bachelor of Science in business and journalism and MBA from the University of Alabama.
Jordan Savold
Senior Product Manager
Jordan is an experienced public health leader dedicated to the advancement of health equity on a local and global scale.
Prior to joining Soda Health, Jordan led strategy for Johnson & Johnson's Global Market Access Alzheimer's health equity initiatives, consulted for a number of domestic and global health initiatives, shaped projects to improve vaccine access in the state of Colorado, and served as a community health professional in the Peace Corps. Jordan is skilled in project management, human-centered design, and building sustainable partnerships.
Jordan holds an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an MBA with a focus in health, technology, and innovation from the Carey Business School. She completed her BA in Sociology at Colorado College where she graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors as a Division I student-athlete in the Mountain West Conference.
Reid Smith
Customer Success Analyst
Reid embraces the unknown and seeks out new challenges every day.
While at Berkadia’s Alabama brokerage team, Reid not only developed strong relationships with potential buyers, but also handled the quantitative side of the transaction. He analyzed rent rolls and helped generate proformas for multi-family properties. Prior to graduate school, Reid Assisted audit teams in the planning, execution and completion phases of financial statement audits at Price Waterhouse Coopers. He has also held positions at Paycom and Raymond James.
Outside of work, Reid teaches financial literacy courses and coaches group fitness classes.
He has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and MBA from the University of Alabama.
Viki Smith
Senior Sales Enablement Manager
Viki is an accomplished, results-oriented manager with years of achievement in data-driven healthcare consulting.
In her most recent role at Conifer Health Solutions, her goal was to empower clients and work side-by-side with their marketing teams on operational performance, forecast and innovation strategies. Viki has extensive experience in the use of database systems and analytical techniques delivering results for over 200 hospitals and clinics. She gains maximum satisfaction not just from the success of a project well done, but even more from the success of those she supports and mentors.
Viki is a board member and active volunteer with THORN (Thankfully Helping Others Real Needs), an organization that supplies 1,000 meals, clothing, first aid and hygiene supplies weekly to needy/underserved families in the Tampa Bay area.
Viki has an associate degree from St. Petersburg College.
Seth Townsend
Product Manager
Seth is fascinated with the power of technology.
He spent his MBA summer with Soda Health developing marketing landscaping tools that transform the way the company prospects, targets, builds and sells solutions to fit partners’ unique solutions.
Prior to business school, Seth held internships in both the healthcare and technology industries. At HCA Healthcare, he worked alongside the internal audit team to conduct information systems audits by assessing risks, validating controls and making recommendations to internal clients. His time managing a student-led project for Pariveda Solutions was spent revamping legacy community service processes. He managed six students and provided guidance to the team using agile methodology. Seth has also held positions at CGI and Newport Academy.
He has a bachelor’s degree in management information systems and MBA from the University of Alabama.
Jacob Vernau
Software Engineer
Jacob’s purpose has always been rooted in his desire to produce equitable outcomes.
Prior to his transition into software engineering, Jacob worked as a counselor in alternative high schools in the Denver area with a focus on improving equitable education outcomes. Knowing that he had a particular passion for front-end development and creating intuitive and responsive web applications, Jacob decided to leverage his existing skillset and completed an all-stack software engineering bootcamp through General Assembly, a private education organization that specializes in cultivating diverse tech talent.
As a software engineer for Soda Health, Jacob will utilize that talent to continue enhancing Soda Health’s purpose-built solution designed to eliminate health inequities.
Jacob has a Master of Education degree in Counseling from Clemson University.