Company leader
Stephanie Strong
Founder and CEO
Boulder Care
Stephanie Strong is the founder and chief executive of Boulder Care, a Portland, Oregon, provider that treats opioid and alcohol use disorder through an app, mostly for patients covered by Medicaid. She worked in health policy and venture capital before she started the company in 2017.
A Diagnosis at 19
She was drawn to public policy in high school and to health care in particular. A cancer diagnosis at 19 put her inside the medical system younger than most, and she saw how small administrative breaks could have an outsized effect on patients' lives.
Policy Studies at Duke
She studied public policy at Duke University and graduated with highest distinction. She spent a semester in Washington, D.C., in 2010 while the Affordable Care Act passed, and later consulted there on new programs for Medicaid members. She also worked on World Bank-funded research in India and on systems innovation at Duke University Medical Center.
Investing at Apple Tree Partners
She moved into venture capital at Apple Tree Partners and took strategy and board roles at startups in opioid addiction treatment, mobile oncology, dermatology and palliative care. In one portfolio company's outpatient clinics she watched patients with opioid or alcohol use disorder return weeks later healthy, working and back with their families.
Founding Boulder Care in Brooklyn
She saw that proven treatments for substance use disorder were hard to reach and founded Boulder Care in Brooklyn, New York, in 2017. Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital backed the seed round and introduced her to David Lerman, who became chief technology officer. Demand grew quickly in 2020, when the pandemic lifted the in-person visit requirement for addiction medication.
Forbes put her on its 30 Under 30 list in health care in 2019, and she won GeekWire's Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2021.
Building Around Medicaid
She chose to grow through Medicaid health plans, which most of Boulder Care's patients rely on, and to enter new states "one state at a time". She has pressed the DEA and state officials on rules for prescribing addiction medication by telehealth. Her view of the stakes is blunt: "We need to take radical steps or risk losing an entire generation of Americans to addiction".
She sees the clinician relationship as the core of the model. "Part of the magic of the Boulder model is that every patient feels like they're the most important patient to their clinician and their care team."