A Year of Inspiration: Carina Edwards Reflects on Her First Anniversary at Kipu

As I celebrate my first year as CEO of Kipu, I’m filled with pride and gratitude for the journey we’ve embarked on to provide behavioral health technology that empowers our customers, their teams, and their patients to thrive.   

When I arrived at Kipu, my first area of focus was reaffirming our customers as the center of everything we do. Since August, I’ve met with over 100 CEOs and their teams.  This was a critical step to ensure I deeply understand their businesses, challenges, and how, with our scalable solutions, we can help lift the industry. I’m pleased to report I’ve come away with valuable insights. 

For example, we’re seeing the beginning of a major shift in the industry. The traditional boundaries between Substance Use Disorder, Eating Disorders, and Mental Health are dissolving.  When you combine that with the growing demand for services, operators are facing pressure to grow and scale.  To support rapid expansion, it is imperative that customers have best practices at their fingertips so that they can focus on achieving their more strategic goals.  

I recently published a white paper along with Kipu’s Principal, Dean Fitch, focused on this exact growth challenge. As the adage goes, no money, no mission. Providers need to find a way to balance their growth to support a healthy bottom line and deliver uninterrupted quality care.  To support that, we’ve doubled down on our efforts to ensure our customers can reach and acquire patients, treat them effectively, and get reimbursed for the care they provide—all while supporting increased efficiency to combat staff burnout.  

My second area of focus was to ensure that the Kipu team had clear direction, starting with expanding our mission: We provide behavioral health technology that empowers organizations, their teams, and their patients to thrive. Our mission is more than words on a page—here are some examples of how we started living it in the last year: 

• We’ve revised our product vision to more effectively align with our customers’ needs.  Our clients need to reach and connect with patients through our CRM, document and coordinate care through our EMR, and bill and collect through our RCM, all while maintaining compliance and capturing insights to scale a business.  Kipu continues to drive focus on optimizing operations across the care continuum. 

• We’ve aligned and centered our values around our customers.  One of our 3 values is “Customers for Life” and calls us to build relationships and products with customers for the long term—one way we do this is by opening every company meeting with a customer to hear exactly how we can grow together.  

• We’ve invested in improving our internal systems and communications to drive efficiency and improve our knowledge and understanding of the industry. Our leaders are focused on ensuring that every Kipu employee has the right information at the right time to support our customers and the patients they serve. 

• We’ve also invested in growing our people, and we’ve already hired and upleveled amazing talent at all levels of our business. 

• Lastly, we have developed a 3-year strategy in full alignment with where our customers are going.  The future is looking bright.   

It’s an exciting time for behavioral health.  While there are still challenges ahead, we are ready and excited to tackle them hand in hand with our customers, partners, and amazing employees.  I couldn’t be more excited for what my second year with Kipu will bring.