Member since August 2026
Jen Tagliaferro is Chief Commercial Officer at Koda Health, where she leads growth for a digital advance care planning platform used by more than a million patients across health systems, ACOs, and Medicare Advantage plans.
She started in 2007 selling home health services for Amedisys, then spent a decade across oncology nutrition at Abbott, population health operations at VillageMD, and 340B business development at par8o before joining Koda in 2022. She has built partnerships with Houston Methodist, MD Anderson, Memorial Hermann, UPMC, Cigna HealthSpring, and Privia Health.
Jen speaks about digital health for older adults, and why the industry keeps betting against a population that consistently shows up. 76% of the people who start Koda's care planning guide finish it, against 30 to 40% for the average digital health tool. Koda's peer-reviewed outcomes with Houston Methodist showed 79% fewer terminal hospitalizations, 38% fewer ICU admissions, and a 42% reduction in total cost of care.
She also speaks on go-to-market in regulated industries, where legal review and clinical governance gate every deal, and on using AI to make a small revenue team more effective. Recent and upcoming stages include the National POLST Collaborative Conference in New Orleans, the Chief Revenue Officer Summit in Boston in August 2026, Startup Boston Week in September 2026, and Opal Group's healthcare leadership forum in Nashville in October 2026.
Jen holds an MBA in Healthcare Administration from Plymouth State University and a BS in Biology from the University of New Hampshire. She is a member of Women Applying AI, Women Business Leaders of the U.S. Health Care Industry Foundation, and Pavilion. She is part of Primary Venture Partners' expert network and judges the Digital Health Hub Foundation Awards. She lives in Bow, New Hampshire.
Digital health for seniors, specifically the part where everyone assumes it won't work.
Every product decision in this industry quietly bets against people over 70. 76% of the people who start our guide finish it, against 30-40% for the average digital health tool, and 68% do it with no doctor involved at all. Average age 69.
They were never struggling with the technology. Nobody had asked them.
My parents are in their late 70s in rural New Hampshire. The next available appointment with their primary care doctor is 2027. Seniors have the most to gain from care that reaches them at home, and they are the group everyone designs around instead of for.
The other thing I will talk about all day is what a small team can do now. I run commercial at a startup and we are not out-hiring anyone. I went through Pavilion's AI in GTM School in March 2026 and then built the research and pipeline tooling I wanted instead of waiting on budget.
Women Applying AI and WBL are where most of that thinking gets sharpened. Those are the most useful conversations I have in a month.
In New Orleans in April 2026 I put our patient data next to the published POLST numbers.
The Oregon POLST Registry followed 18,285 people who died. Median time between signing a POLST form and death: 6.4 weeks. Average age at signing, 79.
Our patients complete theirs at an average age of 69. Not weeks before they die. Years.
Six weeks versus a ten-year head start, on the hardest conversation in medicine, and it happens with no hospital bed and no crisis.
I paid my way through a biology degree at UNH waiting tables and tending bar. I thought only one of those two things mattered. It took most of my career to figure out it was the other one.
When you walk up to a table you get a few seconds. Is this a celebration or a bad night. Is one person doing all the talking, and does anyone else at the table want to be there. You read it, you adjust how you approach them, and you never get to ask first. I did that a few thousand times before I ever sat across from a customer.
My first job out of school was pharmaceutical sales. The science was easy. Learning the craft of selling, asking for something and then sitting in the silence, took years. But the part people find hardest, walking into a room cold and knowing what is actually going on in it, I already had. I just had no idea where it came from.
That combination kept working. Home health at Amedisys, oncology nutrition at Abbott, population health at VillageMD, 340B at par8o. The clinical fluency came from the degree. The read came from the bar.
In 2022 I joined Koda Health as VP of Growth and Partnerships. The product is advance care planning, so the whole business depends on people being willing to talk about dying. There is no product where reading a room matters more. We scaled past a million patients, published outcomes with Houston Methodist, and I moved into the CCO seat in February 2026.
Same instinct last year. We are a startup and we are not out-hiring anyone, so I went through Pavilion's AI in GTM School and built our research and pipeline tooling myself.
I never thought I would end up in sales. Turns out I had been training for it since high school.
Most AI-in-sales talks are given by people selling AI tools. Jen runs a commercial team at a startup and builds her own.
She walks through what she has actually automated at Koda Health: account and prospect research, pre-call prep, a searchable internal knowledge base covering clients, competitors, and policy, and a recurring pipeline health check that used to be a manual exercise. She is equally direct about what has not worked, including the times AI produced a confident wrong answer that would have been embarrassing in front of a health system CIO.
The framing is for leaders of teams too small to hire their way out of a problem. What to automate first, and what to leave alone.
Jen completed Pavilion's AI in GTM School in March 2026 and its AI and Automation Strategies for GTM Leaders program in February 2025.
Best for revenue leaders, founders, sales enablement, and startup operators.
Jen has a biology degree and, for most of her twenties, a mental image of salespeople that involved a used car lot. She also spent high school and college waiting tables and tending bar to pay for that degree. It took her most of a career to work out that the second one was the real training.
When you walk up to a table you get a few seconds to read it. Celebration or bad night. Who is doing the talking and who does not want to be there. You adjust before you say a word, and you never get to ask first. That is the same skill that decides whether a meeting with a health system CMO goes anywhere.
This talk is about the credentials people discount on their own resumes, why the technical background was never the hard part, and what selling actually is when the product matters. Jen now sells advance care planning, a product that requires people to talk about dying, which makes reading a room the entire job.
A version of this story on LinkedIn drew more comments than any data or policy post Jen has written.
Best for career development, women in leadership, sales teams, and early-career audiences.
In healthcare the buyer says yes, and then the deal meets legal, security review, clinical governance, and procurement. Most go-to-market playbooks were not built for that.
Jen has spent 19 years selling into hospitals, ACOs, and Medicare Advantage plans, most recently building the commercial engine at Koda Health from early stage through a $7M Series A. She covers how to bring compliance in early instead of treating it as a gate at the end, how to structure pilots that survive security review, and why national master agreements beat re-contracting region by region.
Jen speaks on this topic at Startup Boston Week on September 18, 2026, alongside counsel from Troutman Pepper Locke.
Best for founders, revenue leaders, and go-to-market teams selling into healthcare, fintech, or any regulated category.
Every product roadmap in digital health quietly bets against people over 70. The data does not support that bet.
Koda Health has guided more than thousand and thousands of patients through advance care planning. 76% of the people who start actually finish, against an industry benchmark of 30 to 40% for digital health tools. 68% complete with no physician referral at all. Average age at completion is 69.
Jen walks through what the numbers show about older adults and technology, and what changes when you design for this group instead of around them. She closes with Koda's peer-reviewed outcomes at Houston Methodist: 79% fewer terminal hospitalizations, 38% fewer ICU admissions, and a 42% reduction in total cost of care.
Best for digital health, aging, product design, and value-based care audiences.
In New Orleans in April 2026 I put our patient data next to the published POLST numbers.
The Oregon POLST Registry followed 18,285 people who died. Median time between signing a POLST form and death: 6.4 weeks. Average age at signing, 79.
Our patients complete theirs at an average age of 69. Not weeks before they die. Years.
Six weeks versus a ten-year head start, on the hardest conversation in medicine, and it happens with no hospital bed and no crisis.
I paid my way through a biology degree at UNH waiting tables and tending bar. I thought only one of those two things mattered. It took most of my career to figure out it was the other one.
When you walk up to a table you get a few seconds. Is this a celebration or a bad night. Is one person doing all the talking, and does anyone else at the table want to be there. You read it, you adjust how you approach them, and you never get to ask first. I did that a few thousand times before I ever sat across from a customer.
My first job out of school was pharmaceutical sales. The science was easy. Learning the craft of selling, asking for something and then sitting in the silence, took years. But the part people find hardest, walking into a room cold and knowing what is actually going on in it, I already had. I just had no idea where it came from.
That combination kept working. Home health at Amedisys, oncology nutrition at Abbott, population health at VillageMD, 340B at par8o. The clinical fluency came from the degree. The read came from the bar.
In 2022 I joined Koda Health as VP of Growth and Partnerships. The product is advance care planning, so the whole business depends on people being willing to talk about dying. There is no product where reading a room matters more. We scaled past a million patients, published outcomes with Houston Methodist, and I moved into the CCO seat in February 2026.
Same instinct last year. We are a startup and we are not out-hiring anyone, so I went through Pavilion's AI in GTM School and built our research and pipeline tooling myself.
I never thought I would end up in sales. Turns out I had been training for it since high school.
Most AI-in-sales talks are given by people selling AI tools. Jen runs a commercial team at a startup and builds her own.
She walks through what she has actually automated at Koda Health: account and prospect research, pre-call prep, a searchable internal knowledge base covering clients, competitors, and policy, and a recurring pipeline health check that used to be a manual exercise. She is equally direct about what has not worked, including the times AI produced a confident wrong answer that would have been embarrassing in front of a health system CIO.
The framing is for leaders of teams too small to hire their way out of a problem. What to automate first, and what to leave alone.
Jen completed Pavilion's AI in GTM School in March 2026 and its AI and Automation Strategies for GTM Leaders program in February 2025.
Best for revenue leaders, founders, sales enablement, and startup operators.
Jen has a biology degree and, for most of her twenties, a mental image of salespeople that involved a used car lot. She also spent high school and college waiting tables and tending bar to pay for that degree. It took her most of a career to work out that the second one was the real training.
When you walk up to a table you get a few seconds to read it. Celebration or bad night. Who is doing the talking and who does not want to be there. You adjust before you say a word, and you never get to ask first. That is the same skill that decides whether a meeting with a health system CMO goes anywhere.
This talk is about the credentials people discount on their own resumes, why the technical background was never the hard part, and what selling actually is when the product matters. Jen now sells advance care planning, a product that requires people to talk about dying, which makes reading a room the entire job.
A version of this story on LinkedIn drew more comments than any data or policy post Jen has written.
Best for career development, women in leadership, sales teams, and early-career audiences.
In healthcare the buyer says yes, and then the deal meets legal, security review, clinical governance, and procurement. Most go-to-market playbooks were not built for that.
Jen has spent 19 years selling into hospitals, ACOs, and Medicare Advantage plans, most recently building the commercial engine at Koda Health from early stage through a $7M Series A. She covers how to bring compliance in early instead of treating it as a gate at the end, how to structure pilots that survive security review, and why national master agreements beat re-contracting region by region.
Jen speaks on this topic at Startup Boston Week on September 18, 2026, alongside counsel from Troutman Pepper Locke.
Best for founders, revenue leaders, and go-to-market teams selling into healthcare, fintech, or any regulated category.
Every product roadmap in digital health quietly bets against people over 70. The data does not support that bet.
Koda Health has guided more than thousand and thousands of patients through advance care planning. 76% of the people who start actually finish, against an industry benchmark of 30 to 40% for digital health tools. 68% complete with no physician referral at all. Average age at completion is 69.
Jen walks through what the numbers show about older adults and technology, and what changes when you design for this group instead of around them. She closes with Koda's peer-reviewed outcomes at Houston Methodist: 79% fewer terminal hospitalizations, 38% fewer ICU admissions, and a 42% reduction in total cost of care.
Best for digital health, aging, product design, and value-based care audiences.