Jess Fogal and Clark Seiling Talk Rivera Rebranding, AI Integration and Startup Growth

I had the pleasure of talking with Jess Fogal and Clark Seiling. Jess Fogal learned how to sell an idea long before she knew marketing was a profession. Growing up in a small Georgia town, where entertainment often had to be invented, she created miniature worlds and persuaded her parents to support themed parties, front-yard pop-up shops, and whatever scheme came next. Clark Seiling’s early ambitions were more formal. Raised in Columbus by a professor and an entrepreneur, he decided he wanted to work in mergers and acquisitions after watching the career of a friend’s father. One practiced persuasion through childhood projects. The other imagined himself engineering deals.

Both eventually found their way to Rivera, a Columbus-based pharmacy payment integrity company, where Fogal serves as vice president of marketing and Seiling as chief operating officer and chief financial officer. Their different backgrounds meet in a shared appetite for building. They also share a harder-earned understanding: the instincts that help someone thrive inside a startup, speed, ambition, optimism, and a willingness to take responsibility, can become liabilities when they are not matched by patience and restraint.

Fogal started college on a pre-med track, then realized a few semesters in that years of science wasn’t the path for her. What was for her, she discovered while taking business courses in Florida, was the same thing she’d been doing her whole life without a name for it: selling ideas. She later entered health technology without fully understanding what a startup was or whether working for one constituted a stable career. What she found was an environment where ideas could move before committees diluted them. “You could be creative, take risks, and chase big ideas without a mountain of red tape,” she recalls.

Larger companies only clarified the preference. Fogal wanted a small organization with few boundaries and a high tolerance for experimentation. Early in her career, however, that enthusiasm sometimes arrived before understanding. Two weeks into one job, she told her boss she had a plan to redo nearly everything. Her boss listened, then gently exposed how little Fogal yet understood about the company or the work that had already been done.

The lesson was blunt enough to last: “Don’t come in too hot in a new role.” Fogal now spends her first weeks listening, studying the business, and building relationships before trying to transform it. The marketer who once wanted to change everything immediately has learned that speed works best after trust.

Seiling’s education in restraint was more punishing. He became a lawyer and spent roughly a decade around transactions, but the mechanics of a deal interested him less than the reasoning behind it. He wanted to understand why companies and investors made their choices. A friend who led a healthcare startup eventually offered him a useful proposition: “Worst-case scenario, you come out as a better investor. Best-case scenario, you love what you’re doing and want to stay on the operating side.”

Seiling chose the operating side. Building, he discovered, was more satisfying than evaluating what others had built, particularly in healthcare, where business decisions can affect what organizations and patients pay. Yet his earlier career had already shown him what unchecked endurance could cost. While preparing for the bar exam, he was also leading work on two multibillion-dollar deals. For six months, he studied at five in the morning, worked through the day, then resumed studying until eleven at night.

He finished completely depleted. The experience changed how he defines commitment. “I need to give my best every day, but not to the point where I can’t give my best tomorrow,” he says. A startup may prize urgency, but Seiling describes company-building as a multiyear undertaking. He now protects time with his family, makes room to recharge, and encourages Rivera’s employees to do the same.

That balance became especially important during a period when, as Seiling puts it, “doubt outweighed belief” about Rivera’s future. The pressure extended beyond financial projections. Employees and their families were depending on the company’s leaders to find a safe landing. Maintaining focus when positive momentum had disappeared tested the kind of leadership that cannot be demonstrated through titles or presentation decks.

Fogal identifies a related danger: the absence of alignment. Smart people can still exhaust one another when priorities compete and teams begin rowing in different directions. For her, culture is not office decoration or a collection of values printed on a wall. It is the practical condition that allows a small company to move quickly without pulling itself apart.

Rivera’s transformation from HealthPlan Data Solutions into a new brand gave Fogal a chance to apply that belief. She rejects the idea that a rebrand is merely a change of colors. The company had been operating for 15 years and had reached a point where its identity no longer fully expressed what it had become. The question was, “Who is this new version of us, and who do we want to be moving forward?” The process gave employees a clearer story and, in Fogal’s view, something around which they could rally.

Seiling is most proud of the approximately 30-person team that carried the company through its uncertainty. Fogal is quick to redirect some of that credit toward him, arguing that his leadership helped create the culture he prefers to praise collectively. Their exchange reveals something about the partnership: she instinctively articulates and amplifies; he tends to distribute recognition.

Rivera’s work centers on helping health plans and employers examine pharmacy claims, reduce unnecessary costs, and make a notoriously complicated part of healthcare more understandable. Seiling finds the greatest satisfaction when recovered money reaches an individual plan member rather than remaining an abstract organizational saving. The company is also incorporating artificial intelligence to reduce manual work, while Fogal emphasizes that new product decisions are being driven by existing client feedback rather than growth for its own sake.

Their leadership principles reflect the corrections each has made. Seiling stresses care for people, honest communication, resilience, product-market fit, and autonomy. Fogal argues for humility, intense focus, and the willingness to “give away your Legos,” handing portions of a role to others as the company grows.

Both remain attracted to motion. Neither confuses motion with progress anymore. For Fogal and Seiling, building a company now means knowing when to push, when to listen, when to surrender control, and when to preserve enough energy to return the next morning. Their conversation begins inside that tension.

Yitzi: Jess and Clark, it’s such an honor to meet you. Before we dive in deep and talk about your amazing work, readers would love to learn about each of your respective origin stories. We’ll start with Jess. Jess, can you share with us the story of your childhood, how you grew up, and particularly the seeds and genesis of all the amazing creativity that has come since then?

Jess: I grew up in a small town in Georgia, where there wasn’t much to do except invent your own fun. My biggest production was convincing my parents to let me turn our garage into a beach party, complete with a tiki bar my dad built from scratch and every grass skirt and lei we could find. That’s where it started: not just being creative, but pitching the idea, getting buy-in, and pulling it off.

I actually started college on the pre-med track. A few semesters in, I realized years of science wasn’t for me. What was for me was the same thing I’d been doing my whole life without a name for it: selling ideas. A few business courses later, I found my fit in marketing. Looking back, it’s no accident I ended up in health tech. It’s the one place I get to blend both worlds, healthcare and marketing, in the same job.

I found my way into that world through startups, though I didn’t even know if “startup” was a real job title at the time. What I found was a place where you could be creative, take risks, and chase big ideas without a mountain of red tape. That became my thing.

I’ve also worked at larger companies, and I learned quickly that world wasn’t for me. I need small, fast-moving environments with few boundaries. That’s what led me to Rivera. In the past nine months we’ve rebranded, grown significantly, and built real momentum. That high-momentum energy is exactly what I’m wired for.

Clark: I’m from Columbus. My mom was a professor here at Ohio State, and my dad was an entrepreneur. My parents were a little bit older, so my dad was already retired when I was born, which was a cool, unique experience. I was able to travel a lot with my parents growing up because of that.

I always wanted to go into M&A when I was growing up. One of my best friend’s dads was head of the M&A team at a law firm here in town, and I thought that was so cool and wanted to do it. So I ended up becoming a lawyer. However, I realized I was much more interested in the strategy behind the deals. The actual deal itself was fine, but I was much more curious about why companies or investors made the moves they did.

I worked in that space for 10 years and then joined the operating side about four and a half years ago. One of my good buddies who was the CEO of a healthcare startup said, “Worst-case scenario, you come out as a better investor. Best-case scenario, you love what you’re doing and want to stay on the operating side.” I realized it’s so much more fun to be part of building something, especially in healthcare, where everything we do really matters. Focusing on driving positive change and innovation that helps people makes working in a healthcare startup incredibly rewarding.

Yitzi: Amazing. So, Jess, in your own words, tell us what problem Rivera is coming to solve.

Jess: We’re bringing transparency to pharmacy spend, an area of healthcare that has almost none. There’s a misconception that audits already handle that, but those are one-time checkpoints that miss the much larger picture. Everyone looks at the results and says, “okay, that’s enough, we’ll move on,” but the real problem just keeps multiplying.

We’re only solving one piece of a massive, complicated system, but that piece doesn’t stay contained. While it starts with health plans, it eventually touches the member who has no idea any of this is happening behind the scenes. This isn’t a niche fix. It’s a small lever on a very large machine.

As pharmacy spend keeps climbing, we’re tackling this at scale, across every plan type, in a way no one else is. That’s a real part of what brought me here. This team is building something because the need is real and growing, and it ultimately impacts everyone we know at some point.

Clark: I think Jess captured it well. We’re trying to help folks navigate through an overwhelming amount of complexity. With that complexity comes a lack of transparency and rising costs, which overwhelms health plans. They lack sufficient resources, have too much going on, and face constant cost pressure. We are there to help them navigate all of that — that’s our ultimate mission.

Yitzi: Are your clients companies, organizations, or individuals?

Clark: Mainly organizations. We work with larger health plans, employers, and consultants — organizations that have members, whether patients or employees. Ultimately, our goal is to help them reduce costs so they can share those savings or drive new innovation for their members.

Yitzi: Each of you probably has amazing stories from your successful careers. Jess, can you share one or two stories that stand out in your mind?

Jess: I’ll start with Rivera, since that’s where I am today. Going through our rebrand was huge. We used to be HealthPlan Data Solutions. A rebrand can sound fluffy, like it’s just new colors and a new logo, but for us it was much more meaningful. We’d been around for 15 years, started as one thing, evolved over time, and hit an inflection point where we started gaining real traction. That’s when we asked ourselves, “Who is this new version of us, and who do we want to be moving forward?”

The rebrand is the answer to that question. It’s what driving clarity and innovation actually looks like in practice: how we look, speak, and show up as a business. Culturally, it did even more. It gave the team real pride and something to rally around.

My other story isn’t really one company. It’s a pattern that’s repeated across my career in healthcare, insurance, and fintech. I come in early, usually as the first marketing hire, when almost nobody in the market knows we exist. I build the brand and marketing strategy from scratch, which is a core piece of what drives the company’s growth. None of that happens alone. It’s only possible because of the amazing people I’ve had the chance to work with, whether I hire them or work alongside them. The biggest wins come from trusting people to do their jobs and building a team that learns from failure and celebrates the wins together. By the time I move on, we’ve gone from invisible to a real category leader, often against competitors with far more scale and name recognition than we ever had.

That’s the story I’m actually most proud of. Not one big win, but a pattern I can point to and repeat.

Clark: The thing I’m most excited about and proud of is the team we’ve built here. We have a wonderful group across the board. We are only about 30 employees, but everyone is deeply committed, caring, and dedicated to doing what’s best for our clients and employees.

If anything, I constantly encourage our team to talk more about their work, because so many great things happen behind the scenes that get lost in the flurry of a startup. We went through a lot of changes, as Jess alluded to, and coming out of that with such a wonderful group of people is what I’m most proud of.

Jess: Clark won’t take credit for any of it, but he should. He’s a big reason the culture works and why we’ve been able to bring on people this good.

Yitzi: Amazing. There’s a saying that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Jess, do you have a story about a funny mistake you made early in your career and the lesson you took away from it?

Clark: That’s a good question. Earlier in my career, I was very bad at saying no to things. There were times when I worked on too many deals simultaneously. I remember taking the bar exam while serving as the lead on two multi-billion dollar deals. I would wake up at 5:00 AM, study for the bar, go to work on those deals, and then study again from 6:00 PM until 11:00 PM. I did that for six months and was completely burnt out by the end.

That taught me that life is a marathon, not a sprint. I need to give my best every day, but not to the point where I can’t give my best tomorrow. I focus on weaving in time to recharge with my family and for myself, and I encourage everyone here to do the same. Building a startup is a multi-year endeavor, not a mountain you climb in a week. I want our team to have the time and mindshare to think strategically, see the bigger picture, and unlock new opportunities.

Jess: Mine is simple: don’t come in too hot. Early in my career, I’d walk into a role wanting to make an immediate impact, before I’d met anyone, understood the business, or respected what was already there.

About two weeks into one job, I marched into my boss’s office and told her I had a plan to redo basically everything. She didn’t shut me down. She just asked me to walk her through it. And the further I got, the more I realized what she was actually doing: letting me hear for myself that I didn’t understand the landscape yet, or appreciate what the team had already built. It was the kindest possible way to make the point land.

Now, whenever I start something new, I spend the first few weeks listening and building relationships before I try to change anything. Speed is one of my strengths, but I’ve learned it only works once you’ve earned the right to use it.

Yitzi: That’s a great answer. There’s a related saying that “no” is not rejection, but redirection. Do you have a story where a “no” to a business opportunity led to an even better success?

Jess: Early on, I took a role I hadn’t vetted well enough. I had big dreams for it, but I realized pretty quickly it was a mismatch in both directions. They weren’t right for me, and I wasn’t right for them.

The hard part wasn’t leaving. It was saying no to my own ego first, accepting it hadn’t worked, and resisting the urge to force it. I stepped back, left, gave myself some breathing room, and started a consultancy. That’s what opened the door to my next role, which turned out to be exactly the right fit.

The lesson was that a “no,” even one I had to say to myself, isn’t a failure. Sometimes it’s the thing that clears space for what you were actually supposed to be doing.

Clark: I’ve had a lot of “nos” in life — that’s just how it goes. Resiliency and comfort with uncertainty are the two most important traits for working in a startup.

Earlier in my career, there were times when I felt personally ready for an opportunity, but management didn’t see it. It took time to realize they saw things I couldn’t yet see. I learned to self-reflect, focus on what was within my control, and excel at what was in my camp. When you focus on what you can control, everything else falls into place.

Yitzi: Jess, what has been the most challenging project or role you’ve taken on so far, and why?

Jess: The hardest moments haven’t been specific projects or roles. They’ve been the times when a company lacked alignment. When there’s no clarity on where you’re headed, or when competing priorities have people rowing in different directions, it creates a kind of friction you can’t push through by being smart or working harder. The best team in the world still can’t outrun a lack of alignment.

So now it’s the first thing I look for. When I’m weighing a role or a company, alignment matters more to me than almost anything else, because it’s what everything else depends on. It’s really the same thing as culture: the sense that you’re all in it together, solving a real problem with a shared purpose.

Clark: The hardest moment at Rivera was during a period of significant uncertainty regarding the future of the business, when doubt outweighed belief. Staying focused, positive, and keeping everyone pointed toward a safe landing was tough. You feel an immense weight of responsibility when so many people and their families rely on you.

It’s easy to build when you have positive momentum, but pushing through moments where you aren’t sure you’ll make it takes everything you have. We knew we had a chance because we believed in each other, and we pulled through.

Yitzi: Let’s talk more about Rivera specifically. Without using names, can you share a story of how your work helped an organization achieve meaningful savings or prevent a major issue?

Clark: Sure. We strive to achieve at least a 1x ROI every year for all our clients, and we usually surpass that. Beyond saving client teams time and resources, the most rewarding outcomes are when we return dollars directly to individual health plan members.

Returning savings to a health plan is great, but putting money directly back into an individual member’s pocket makes a tangible, immediate difference in their life. Those are the outcomes I’m most proud of.

Yitzi: Are you working on any new initiatives or projects you’d like to share?

Clark: You can’t go 30 minutes today without hearing about AI. We are taking the best of what we’ve built over the last 15 years and leveraging AI to drive better efficiency, remove process bottlenecks, and support our clients faster.

Eliminating manual work allows our team of experts to focus their minds on high-level strategy, innovation, and creative problem-solving. Jess is leading those efforts on the business side while her counterpart leads the technology side. AI is a powerful new lever for us as an already innovative startup.

Jess: What I’d add is that I’m proud of how customer-centric we’ve stayed. A lot of growing tech companies chase new revenue at the expense of the clients they already have. We’ve kept ours at the center of everything. Our next product update is a good example: it’s built almost entirely from direct client feedback, aimed at making the output they rely on clearer and even more useful to them.

Yitzi: Amazing answer. Looking back to when you first started, based on your experience, can you share five key elements needed to lead a successful health technology company?

Clark:

1. A deep care for people as human beings. Everything else is built on whether you actually see the people you work with, and the people you serve, as more than roles on an org chart.
2. Authentic leadership and open communication. People can tell the difference between a leader who’s managing them and one who’s being straight with them, and that difference is what earns trust.
3. Resilience and comfort with uncertainty. In a startup you rarely have the full picture, so you have to be able to make good decisions and keep the team steady without waiting for perfect information.
4. A relentless focus on product-market fit. Everything else is noise until you’ve built something the market genuinely wants. That has to stay the center of gravity.
5. Structures that empower people to work with autonomy. Hire people you trust, then build the kind of environment where they can actually run, rather than checking in on every decision.

Jess:

1. You have to be okay not knowing everything, and give your team the grace to learn alongside you rather than expecting anyone to have all the answers on day one.
2. There has to be a willingness to let go. Molly Graham calls it “giving away your Legos”, handing off pieces of your own role every few months. It feels counterintuitive, but it’s the only way both you and the company keep growing as the startup evolves.
3. You can’t boil the ocean. Pour your energy into the few things that actually move the needle, for the business and for you personally, and be willing to ignore the rest.
4. In a startup, the thing that worked six months ago often isn’t the thing that works now. Leading well means knowing when to change the plan, not just when to push harder on the old one, and bringing your team with you when you do.
5. Maintain a strong network outside your own walls. The fastest way to learn is from people solving the same problems somewhere else. Don’t try to figure everything out from inside one company.

Yitzi: How can readers continue to follow your work, engage your services, or support your mission?

Jess: Readers can follow our personal LinkedIn pages, connect with the Rivera company LinkedIn page, or visit our website.

Yitzi: It’s been an honor to meet you both. I wish you continued success and hope we can do this again next year.

Clark: Thank you so much for the wonderful questions. It was great meeting you. Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help on your journey.

Jess: Yes, thank you! This was a great conversation and a nice chance to step back and appreciate how far we’ve come.

Yitzi: Thank you all so much. Bye!