Optimizer Day 2024

Vijay Sikka is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sikka Software Corporation. Under his leadership, Sikka Software has grown from a start-up to have over 35,000 practice installations and 120m patients on its platform for healthcare on the demand side and over 50 companies which have built applications on the supply side. Prior to Sikka Software, Vijay has worked in Artificial Intelligence and decision systems for more than 25 years of experience with large scale projects at Intel Corporation, National Institutes of Health, Glaxo Smith Kline, Roche and UCSF affiliates. In 1996, Vijay founded IBrain Software, Inc. that used to compete with Informatica, Hyperion and Cognos and served as its CEO until its acquisition in 1998 by Entigen Corporation, a healthcare information company that later became part of Roche. After that Vijay co-founded Bodha.com that was acquired by Peregrine Systems/Remedy that later became part of BMC Software. Vijay holds an M.S. degree in EE and AI from Syracuse University, New York, pursued doctoral studies in neurosciences at Stanford University (incomplete Ph.D), and is a Registered Continuing Education Provider in California. He is a frequent speaker at big data, AI, healthcare, technology and quality meetings. Vijay’s book on Maximizing ROI on Software Development was published by Taylor and Francis International and earns him a proud royalty check every few months.

Vijay was invited keynote speaker at the Digital Health World Conferences in 2019 and 2020, AI Global Forum 2020 and Biohacking Congress in London in 2020. He has published and presented in many artificial intelligence and neural network meetings and conferences including International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, SPIE, IEEE, AAAI and CHMT and the precursor of NeurIPS.

Nick is passionate about helping companies achieve their goals through strategic leadership, customer experience, and operational excellence. With over 17 years of experience in the dental industry, Nick has a proven track record of success in leading teams, driving growth, and improving profitability.

In his previous role as COO at Chrisad, Nick led a team of 70+ employees and oversaw all aspects of business operations. He successfully drove 13 years of financial and operational growth, mentored all sales and operations teams, and built sales processes and systems that resulted in increased revenue and stellar client engagement.

Nick is also an expert in developing and managing key customer relationships to ensure the results of our partnership are effective and impactful.

In his spare time, Nick enjoys spending time with his family, coaching and playing baseball and traveling.

Venesa Lewis has over 30 years of dental industry experience. Throughout her career, she has worked with both private and capitation practice management groups. Her various duties have given her the knowledge to understand and support dental practices by working with doctors and teams to implement innovative operational solutions that eliminate inefficiencies and improve practice bottom-line performance. Ms. Lewis has specialized in turnaround situations in which she identified practice problems and implemented corrective strategies.

Vincent Cardillo is the Founder and CEO of Maeva Dental Advisors, the most experienced dental practice advisors in the United States. Many of the industry’s management concepts for delivering value can be traced directly to Vince’s visionary work. Cardillo has been a trusted DSO leader since the industry was conceived, and is considered one of its founding fathers as owner and operator of one of the first DSOs in the United States.

As the leader of Maeva Dental Advisors, Vince is on a mission to revolutionize the industry once more with Pronto!, dentistry's sole performance management system and the only single source data warehouse in the market. Pronto! is a transformative and powerful dental practice performance concept that empowers dental practice owners, including DSOs, Group Practices, and large single operators to make more powerful, precise, better business decisions quickly and more accurately than ever before.

With over 20 years as a proven industry leader, Cardillo is a trusted advisor to dental industry CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and investors who rely on his experience and wisdom to help them navigate a dynamic, and often challenging marketplace. Vince brings impressive credentials as a successful dental practice DSO owner and operator, coupled with years of experience in front-line leadership and partnership roles in three successful dental practice management companies DSO’s. The latest ranked #14 on the 2014 INC. Magazine’s list of 500 fastest-growing private companies with explosive growth of over 12,000%. He is recognized as a leading industry advisor, including to the largest retailer in the world and to many investors and private equity firms.

With Pronto! by Maeva Dental Advisors as his latest and most important venture, he aims to revolutionize the industry’s approach to practice management and lead the way to deliver even more value.

Vince is the author of the widely read and regarded Six Stages of Growth, the industry’s blueprint for DSO success. He is the past President of Dental Group Management Association (DGMA) and is a sought out speaker at industry conferences. Academically accomplished, Vince earned an MBA from Clarkson University, a BA from SUNY Potsdam, and an Executive Degree in Managed Care from the University of Connecticut.

Ramona Colbert is the VP of Operations for Assure Dental Care, with more than twenty-five years of dental practice development strategy, and consultative experience. Seasoned and passionate about her work, Ramona has worked with multiple large DSO’s in her career. She offers insights and solutions for meaningful and positive change in practice development. Ramona understands the importance of utilizing effective systems and technology within dental practice whether signal practitioner or DSO to lead practices to greater success.

Ramona earned her Bachelor’s degree in Business from California State University, Fullerton. Continuing her professional development, she received advanced certification in Human Resources Management at University of California, Los Angeles. She is a member of The Academy of Dental Management Consultants (ADMC), American Association of Dental Office Managers (AADOM), Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), and Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

Prior to working as VP of Operations with Assure Dental Care, Ramona was founder of 1 Source Solutions, a dental practice development firm, she was VP of Administration and Director of Operations for 3 DSO’s, also served as a Regional Manager. She is dedicated to the dental profession and helping others.

Kase Peery has been in the dental field for 30 years and has a passion for growth, consulting/mentoring, innovation, and infectious optimism.

He has been the co-founder of three different DSO’s starting back in 1997.

He has consulted 134 private and specialty dental practices with the average production increase of 35% within the first 12-16 weeks.

He has helped appraise, broker, transition, and finance 91 private and specialty dental practices in Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and California.

He has assisted doctors in obtaining over $45 million in financing to purchase, refinance, and capitalize their business aspirations.

He designed and developed an online consulting program that identifies the weakness (future opportunities) of the business and then generates the reporting that shows who needs training, what do they need training on, why do they need the training, and how they need to be trained. He also designed and created a desktop appraisal program that reduced the time to produce a full appraisal from 4 business days down to 7 hours.

In addition to this, Kase loves to read and spend time with his wife and 3 sons.

Brian is a marketing professional passionate about helping companies drive growth through strategic marketing initiatives. With an eye for design and a penchant for analytics, Brian sits at the crossroads of creativity and data to construct essential marketing strategies and meaningful content.

As the current Marketing Lead at sikka.ai, Brian draws upon his background as a content and product marketer and his affinity for technology to drive company growth. Brian excels at working cross-functionally with product, engineering, sales, and operational teams in order to create strategies that increase growth and bring in revenue.

In his free time, Brian enjoys cooking, watching a plethora of sports, and staying active through swimming and training.

Andrew is a Product Management Leader with an affinity for helping companies and their customers succeed by creating engaging, effective solutions that allow users to achieve their goals. With a background in Product Design, Andrew is constantly seeking out areas of opportunity to enhance Sikka’s formidable product line and drive innovation.

Outside of work Andrew enjoys watching motorsports, growing carnivorous plants, art, and spending time with his family.