Dr. Kara Hartl is the Founder and CEO of Troy Medical and Creator of the Rural Health Hub, which uses a hybrid telehealth model to connect rural communities with high-quality medical specialists and keep care local. She is a Harvard-educated physician and entrepreneur dedicated to improving access to care in underserved areas. After building a multi-specialty medical center in Alaska, Dr. Hartl saw firsthand the challenges rural patients face and set out to solve them. Today, she leads innovative efforts to expand specialty care, integrate technology, and improve health outcomes for millions of rural patients.

Millions of people living in rural communities face significantly worse health outcomes simply due to a lack of access to specialized care. Long travel distances, limited providers, and delayed treatment create a system where preventable conditions become life-threatening. As medical knowledge advances rapidly, how can high-quality care be delivered to underserved populations in a timely and sustainable manner?

Dr. Kara Hartl, a physician and healthcare innovator specializing in rural care delivery, shares a model for bridging this gap by integrating telehealth with local clinical infrastructure. She explains how bringing remote specialists into existing rural clinics improves patient access while keeping care within the community. Dr. Hartl highlights the importance of aligning incentives across hospitals, providers, and payers to create a mutually beneficial ecosystem. She also emphasizes leveraging AI to support diagnosis and decision-making, enabling frontline providers to deliver higher-quality care without needing to master every specialty.

In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Dr. Kara Hartl, Founder and CEO of Troy Medical, about transforming access to rural healthcare. Dr. Hartl discusses building a scalable healthcare marketplace, aligning financial incentives across stakeholders, and leveraging AI to enhance clinical decision-making.

Shawn Bowen is the CTO of Quik!, a company specializing in enterprise forms processing solutions that empower financial advisors and businesses to digitize workflows and automate complex form submissions. He brings over two decades of experience building high-performance software systems and leading engineering teams. Before joining Quik!, Shawn held leadership roles, including VP of Software Development and CTO at other technology organizations, where he developed advanced data and analytics platforms. At Quik!, he focuses on improving reliability, scalability, and customer experience through API-driven architecture, automation, and AI innovation.

Modern businesses rely heavily on complex software systems, yet even small disruptions can halt operations and frustrate customers. Maintaining reliability while continuously improving and scaling technology is a constant challenge. How can companies innovate rapidly without breaking the systems their customers depend on?

Shawn Bowen, a seasoned technology leader and software architect, explains that the key lies in building strong feedback loops and resilient processes. He emphasizes conducting root-cause analysis after failures, implementing CI/CD pipelines with safeguards like contract and playbook testing, and deeply understanding how customers actually use products. Shawn also highlights AI's role as a force multiplier — helping teams improve code quality, accelerate development, and reduce errors — while stressing the importance of treating AI as a tool that still requires human oversight and context.

In this episode of The Customer Wins podcast, Richard Walker interviews Shawn Bowen, CTO of Quik!, about improving customer experience through reliable software and AI innovation. Shawn discusses incident response culture, API consistency, and proactive testing. He also explores AI-driven development, developer productivity, and balancing innovation with stability.

Eden Ovadia is the Co-Founder and CEO of FINNY, an AI-powered platform helping financial advisors identify prospects, automate outreach, and grow their client base more efficiently. She leads the company's mission to solve the organic growth challenge in wealth management through data, machine learning, and automation. Eden has a background in software engineering and machine learning, and previously worked at Boston Consulting Group, focusing on financial institutions and private equity.

Financial advisors often struggle to grow their businesses efficiently, relying on outdated methods like referrals, manual prospecting, and fragmented data systems. This makes it difficult to consistently find high-quality clients and build meaningful relationships at scale. With increasing competition and rising expectations, how can advisors modernize their approach to growth and client engagement?

Eden Ovadia, an expert in AI, data, and financial services, explains that solving this challenge starts with leveraging large-scale data and automation to identify high-potential prospects. She highlights the importance of combining public and proprietary data sources, continuously updating client insights, and using AI to surface timely opportunities. Eden also emphasizes automating repetitive tasks like outreach and follow-ups, while preserving human connection for relationship-building. Additionally, she encourages teams to adopt AI tools internally, break complex workflows into smaller tasks, and rethink growth strategies with a data-driven mindset.

In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Eden Ovadia, Co-Founder and CEO of FINNY, about using AI to transform client acquisition and growth. Eden also discusses agentic workflows, the future of user interfaces, and how AI enables leaner teams.