Milwaukee, WI – November 28, 2023 Jim Emling, the CEO of Datassential and former long-time president of Milwaukee-based Zywave, has been appointed Executive Chair of the Board of Directors at VBA, the company announced today.
“We are delighted to welcome Jim officially to VBA as the Executive Chair,” said Michael Clayton, the company’s President and CEO. “Jim and I have worked closely together over the last 3 months and his decades of experience scaling high growth software companies combined with his strong ties to the Milwaukee technology sector will be tremendous assets to VBA as we enter our next phase of growth.”
Emling has deep roots in the Milwaukee technology community. He was the founding CTO of Zywave and served as its president for 17 years. During his tenure, he led the company from $0 to $100 million in revenue and employed hundreds of people. The Expert Institute, where he currently serves as Board Director, opened an office in the 3rd ward and employs over 75 people in the area. Datassential also has a Milwaukee satellite office.
Emling joins VBA at a time when the company is heavily investing in sales and product development, having recently closed a growth equity transaction led by Spectrum Equity and Arthur Ventures. Spectrum is a leading growth equity firm that has backed numerous healthcare technology businesses such as Definitive Healthcare (NASDAQ: DH), GoodRx (NASDAQ: GDRX) and Payer Compass (acquired by Zelis).
VBA makes the healthcare experience better for everyone by eliminating data fragmentation and enabling interoperability through its tightly integrated suite of solutions. VBA serves the entire payer landscape, including third party administrators (TPAs) and health plans, with its next-gen Core Administrative Processing System (“CAPS”), user engagement platforms, customer support tools, population health reporting solution and robust data connections. The company’s cloud-based software solutions enable payers to replace outdated legacy systems, grow their business and reduce costs.
“It’s a really exciting time to join VBA,” said Emling. “The company has a reputation for delivering a unique and differentiated software product to customers across the entire healthcare payer landscape. I’m looking forward to helping the company continue to widen its product lead and scale its go-to-market activities.”
To learn more about VBA’s suite of solutions for healthcare payers, click here.