Orange County’s healthcare sector has been known for its share of female executives over the years, including several at the top of the area’s major hospitals.
Many of the women who own businesses in the healthcare sector have tended to keep a lower profile. Their companies range from weight-loss products and service provider Lindora Inc. in Costa Mesa (No. 16 on this week’s list of women-owned businesses, which starts on page 30) to medical supplies distributors, such as Anaheim-based Hospital Associates Inc. (No. 31) and a range of smaller enterprises.
Women still represent a small fraction of company owners in the healthcare sector. The Business Journal spoke with three of them about their businesses and what they believe can be done to encourage more women to become entrepreneurs in the field. An edited version of the discussion follows.
Melissa Fontes
President and owner, A&M Biomedical Inc.,
Laguna Hills
A&M is a contract manufacturer of medical devices. Fontes says she aims to focus on quality and regulatory compliance. A&M, which moved to California from Nevada in 2004, generally fluctuates between 20 and 40 employees.
My company was originally created as a dedicated manufacturer for another family company. My mother [Patricia Passy] had started a medical device company [Passy-Muir Inc., a maker of a speaking valve for people who’ve had tracheotomies] in 1985, and I grew up in the business and ultimately ran it as president for about five years.
Eventually, I chose to focus on the production side of the business and grow my own company. In 2009, my mother and I decided to part ways, and since then I’ve been working to establish a more diverse customer base and expand our capacity.
I realized how critical the production side [of devices] was. I ran A&M at that time, as well, and we were only supplying to my family’s business. The whole reason we set up that structure is because we had used contract manufacturers in the past, and just maintaining the quality that was so critical to us is very difficult when you’re outsourcing it to a contract manufacturer. You’re putting your baby in someone else’s hand.
Our clients run the gamut. We have startups, but then we’ve also worked with big companies like Johnson & Johnson. We produce everything from a hand-held dental imaging device to a biological indicator that’s used in the validation of sterilization cycles.
There hasn’t been a specific instance where I feel like I haven’t been able to achieve what I wanted to do. I would say that not having [the] opportunity to work with other woman owners in my industry can make it isolating.
I think everybody benefits from networking, and I think women are kind of natural networkers with other women. We like to share and support each other. There are definitely women represented in medical device [but] not really on the ownership side.
Debra Hoffmeyer
Chief Executive, CITrials Inc.,
Costa Mesa
CITrials is an independent clinical research organization that assists drug makers in developing products by conducting clinical trials and research. Hoffmeyer founded the company in 2001 after serving as a clinical researcher in both academic and private company settings. CITrials is known for its work in researching drugs for psychiatric and central nervous system disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s disease and autism spectrum disorders. It also does extensive internal medicine work, including hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes.
The company has about 120 workers and several facilities, including in Orange, Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Hoffmeyer estimates the company’s revenue will be close to $10 million this year.
I left [my previous job to start CITrials] because I really wanted to find something that I could do [that was] a little more meaningful—if I could find a way to connect, collaborate with private clinical trials and also do academic work. That’s really kind of been my motivator—find a better way to actually conduct clinical trials and research for drug development and for safer treatments.
One of the best growing steps we took was actually opening our own [hospital] units. So we have our own inpatient unit called the Clinical Innovations Medical Unit. This year, our unit has expanded in L.A. … other researchers are actually contracting with us, utilizing our beds. It’s a very big switch, a dynamic switch.
I’m a rare bird in my industry—being a female-owned research company and a nonphysician-owned research company.
My clients really trust and value the relationship and rapport and our structural organization and what you put into regulatory [efforts].
I [also] think it’s a process [to get more women owning healthcare businesses]. I have a client who owns an institutional review board [for approving, monitoring and reviewing biomedical and behavioral research]. She started out working for a physician in the L.A. area and worked on a lot of institutional review boards, became very familiar with regulatory [matters], went out and really worked hard. I always recognize women-owned businesses; I think it’s important.
Karen Nixon
President and founder, Nixon Benefits,
Newport Beach
Nixon’s company, established in 2001, is an employee benefits brokerage that serves employers with 500 or more workers. She says she’s built the business through targeting particular professionals with large companies and building relationships rather than tactics such as cold calling.
Nixon, who describes herself as “analytical” and “on the shy side,” worked for Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente and Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. in senior management roles before establishing Nixon Benefits.
To be honest, [I started my business because of] the realization that healthcare’s broken and now I was one of the suits that was part of the problem, and I didn’t like being part of the problem. Nothing against Kaiser or Health Net—I think they’re good organizations—but I didn’t want to be part of the problem anymore, one of the suits carrying out those directives.
[Being in] senior management, they treat you well, and you get paid a lot, but I was willing to leave and take the risk and bet on myself and do something a little different on the distribution side.
It’s a small world. We all know each other. I kept those relationships that I still use today in negotiating with insurers on behalf of our clients.
And I also pulled folks who work for me from the carrier side, as well as who I’d run across [in the past], so I’m able to change those relationships into them coming over to work for me.
On women owning businesses—if I were to take a stab at that, I do think it’s a process. If you want to start a company in any industry, it gets down to if you’re willing to take a risk. Are you willing to put in your own financial resources, or are you willing to go into debt and try and get venture capital and use somebody else’s resources?
The more women that become senior executive level and run organizations, then you’ll start seeing more that want to leave that and take the risk and start something, have an idea that’s different and start anew.