Marilee A. Benson, President

Bringing a boundless positive energy to everything she takes on, Marilee is passionate about leveraging technology to improve the live of health outcomes for patients.  

Marilee has over twenty-five years of experience in the healthcare information technology sector, most recently as Vice President of Sales for Mirth^®, LLC, a leading health information exchange and interoperability technology company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Quality Systems Inc.

As Vice President of Sales at Mirth^®, Marilee grew the sales team and revenues significantly.  Under her leadership, Mirth^® became the preferred vendor among state and regional health information exchanges across the U.S, with customers such as the State of Maryland HIE  (CRISP), the State of Arizona HIE (Arizona Health-e Connection), the State of Arkansas HIE, regional HIE’s such as HealthShare Exchange of SE Pennsylvania, and three leading New York RHIO’s (in Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo) during her tenure.  

“Working with clients over my career it has become clear to me that healthcare organizations (both provider organizations and healthcare IT vendors) face significant hurdles to achieve true interoperability, so essential for value-based care, and most of those hurdles are not technology dependent.  The healthcare industry, today more than ever, needs seasoned experts and nimble solutions-oriented companies to support a rapidly growing demand for interoperability and data acquisition/integration tools and projects.  

As President, I want to ensure that we are laser focused on filling that gap and helping healthcare organizations walk that most difficult “last mile” of interoperability on the path to value-based care.  That is my Zen moment.”                                                                                                

Marilee also has extensive experience with Practice Management and Electronic Medical Records technology.  Marilee previously co-founded (with Jim) MicroSense, Inc., a healthcare IT company specializing in practice management and electronic health records systems that was acquired by WebMD in 1999.  Later as a National Product Manager for WebMD/Medical Manager she successfully orchestrated the roll-out of one of the first mobile applications for ambulatory physicians. After an acquisition by  Sage, Marilee was promoted to Vice President of Sales for Strategic Markets where she led the sales team dedicated to helping Federally Qualified Health Center’s adopt electronic health record technology.

Marilee received her B.S. in Microbiology from Texas A&M University and her MBA in Engineering Management from University of Dallas.  She is a member of the WBL, Women Business Leaders of the U.S. Healthcare Industry Foundation, and has served on the Board of Directors as Board Secretary for a non-profit, Mar Vista Family Center in Los Angeles, CA. 

A self-described “science-nerd” she enjoys volunteering for Citizen Science Projects and taking edX MIT classes.  

A “Zen Team” in both their personal and professional lives, Marilee and Jim, married more than thirty years, are one of those rare couples who thrive by working closely together, whether hashing out the best growth strategy for Zen, counseling (or being counseled by) their adult children, or co-supervising playtime with their two adorable grandchildren.