Penguin Ai Strengthens Executive Leadership Team With New Chief Strategy Officer, Additional Key Hires and Advisors

Company Brings On Former CIO/CTO From Regional Health Plans

PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Penguin Ai, a healthcare artificial intelligence company that solves administrative burdens, announced today that it has augmented its leadership team with several new hires following the close of its Series A funding round. The round was led by Greycroft with participation from UPMC Enterprises, SemperVirens, Snowflake Ventures, Watershed Ventures and Horizon Mutual Holdings Inc., the parent of New Jersey's largest and oldest health insurer.

Founded by Fawad Butt, the former Chief Data Officer of Kaiser Permanente, United Healthcare and Optum, Penguin Ai is on a mission to reduce the $1 trillion annual cost of healthcare administration inefficiencies through its cutting-edge AI solutions.

Mark Caron has joined the company as Chief Strategy Officer, bringing years of healthcare C-suite experience across health plans and large health systems. Caron was formerly CIO at Capital BlueCross and held the same title in the Collaborative Care division of Optum Health. He has also held senior leadership roles at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wisconsin and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Earlier in his career, he served as CTO at Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), a healthcare system with more than 90 hospitals, and was Vice President of Information Systems at Healthsource.

"I came to Penguin Ai originally as an angel investor and then converted to an active advisor," said Mark Caron, Chief Strategy Officer. "Like Fawad, I have sat in many executive positions across regional blues plans and large health systems and have been a prolific buyer of healthcare technology. As a technical leader, my teams were always grappling with multiple point solutions and vendors. This is why I was fully aligned with Penguin Ai's market approach: a fully-purpose built AI platform that allows both payers and providers to run all of their back-office use cases and workflows from a single platform."

Terry McMann has joined Penguin Ai as Head of Partnerships, coming from Pager, where he led partnerships and business development. He has also held similar roles at Oura, Blue Spark Technologies and Salesforce. Abigail Crenshaw has joined as Chief of Staff, most recently from Scan Health Plan, where she held the same title for the CIO's office. She previously worked at Afiniti, in the healthcare division, Kaiser Permanente, and Accenture. Lastly, Mike Espy, a seasoned healthcare technology sales leader with over 30 years of experience has joined Penguin Ai as a Sales Executive, coming from organizations such as LeanTaaS, Infor, OnShift, PeriGen, Allscripts, McKesson, and Hill-Rom.

All of this talent joins a stellar founding team of deep industry veterans with over 100 years of combined experience in payer and provider technology and operations, including:

• Kishore Ayyadevara, Chief AI Officer, formerly of UnitedHealth Group, Amazon and American Express, with 20 AI patents filed and six published books on AI, ML, computer vision;
• Vamsi Bhandaru, Head of Technical Implementation, formerly from UnitedHealth Group and ADP;
• Srini Rudraraju, Head of Engineering, formerly from UnitedHealth Group and Dell;
• Peter Longo, Chief Revenue Officer, formerly at McKesson, Blue Spark Technologies (sold to Sun Bridge Partners), Sunquest (sold to Vista Equity Partners) and Sirono; and
• Missy Krasner, Co-Founder & Advisor, formerly from Google, Amazon, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services/Office of the National Coordinator, and Canvas Ventures.

"As one of the earliest seed investors in Penguin Ai, we backed this team from the start as we believe their platform will reshape the future of healthcare infrastructure," said Kristina Simmons, founder and managing partner at Overwater Ventures. "The company's entire leadership team is comprised of operating veterans from some of the largest healthcare companies in the nation and their solution set will ultimately help clinicians spend less time on administrative paperwork, and more time with their patients."

About Penguin Ai
Penguin Ai is a healthcare AI company focused on transforming operations for healthcare payers and providers by leveraging cutting-edge generative AI technology. Its flagship platform combines task-specific Small Language Models (SLMs), Digital Workers and Agents, with a full-service healthcare AI platform to streamline healthcare administration processes such as prior authorizations, claims processing, medical records summarization, and appeals management. Designed to streamline healthcare workflows and enhance operational efficiency, Penguin Ai leverages advanced AI models, compliance capabilities, and Digital Workers and Agents to transform the way healthcare enterprises manage their data and operations. Founded by the former Chief Data Officer of Kaiser Permanente, UnitedHealthcare and Optum, Penguin Ai is on a mission to reduce the $1 trillion annual cost of healthcare administration inefficiencies. Through its cutting-edge AI solutions, Penguin Ai aims to streamline healthcare operations, lower costs, and enable better outcomes for patients and providers alike.

For more information about Penguin Ai and its transformative solutions, visit www.penguinai.co.

Media Contact:
Penguin Ai
Grace Vinton, Amendola Communications
[email protected] 

SOURCE Penguin Ai