Care team lifer, tech convert

Alicia Band, BSN, has spent 20 years as a nurse – telemetry, medical-surgical nursing, pediatrics, the cardiac catheterization lab, interventional radiology, even a stint teaching pharmacology to Licensed Vocational Nurse students. So when she left bedside care, she wasn’t chasing an escape from healthcare. She was chasing a different way to help it.

“I’ve been a nurse for over 20 years, and I knew I was ready for a new challenge, but I also knew I wasn’t ready to leave healthcare,” she says.

The turn came in an earlier role, wrestling with software that wasn’t built with nurses in mind. “It wasn’t very user friendly, and there wasn’t much training for the nurses,” Alicia recalls. So she taught herself. Then she taught everyone else – homemade guides, makeshift reports, informal training sessions. “I joked that I had cracked the code and wanted to give everyone else the cheat sheet.”

That instinct – figure it out, then hand over the shortcut – is basically her whole job now. As Director of Customer Success at BettrAi, she leads client onboarding, training, and implementation for population health and value-based care programs, while acting as the bridge between clinicians in the field and the product team building for them.

Nursing skills in a new setting

Alicia says the biggest surprise in health tech was how much of nursing transferred directly. “People think nursing is all about clinical care, but so much of it is teaching, communicating, solving problems, and helping people through change. That’s exactly what I do every day in Customer Success.”

A typical week bears that out: training client teams, troubleshooting workflows, translating clinician feedback into product input. “I usually tell [people] I teach clinicians how to use our healthcare software. But there’s so much more than that… I’m the customer’s voice.”

Onboarding, in particular, isn’t something she treats as a checklist. “For me, onboarding isn’t just about teaching someone how to use the platform. It’s about helping them feel calm and confident before they ever go live.” Adoption, she believes, only sticks when people both know how to use a tool and actually want to, because it makes the job easier, not harder.

That bar, “Does this actually save time,” comes straight from her clinical years. “Nurses don’t have time for extra clicks. Anytime I’m reviewing something, I’m counting how many clicks it takes to get there. If it takes too long, they’re not going to use it, and honestly, I don’t blame them.”

It also shapes how she troubleshoots. Instead of assuming a problem is a software bug, she starts by asking questions – what were you trying to do, walk me through it. “Sometimes it’s a workflow issue. Sometimes it’s a training opportunity. Sometimes we’ve actually found something that needs to be fixed. That’s probably the nurse in me. Before you can fix a problem, you have to figure out what’s actually causing it.”

Where Sophie fits

Alicia is clear-eyed about what technology should and shouldn’t do. “I don’t think technology will ever replace a nurse, and I don’t think it should. If technology can take some of the busy work off a clinician’s plate, then it gives them more time to do what only they can do: take care of their patients. To me, that’s where Sophie adds value. It’s there to support the care team, not replace it.”

Her advice to skeptical clinicians is equally grounded: “It’s okay to be skeptical. If I were in their shoes, I’d probably feel the same way too. Ask questions. Challenge it. See how it works… Good technology shouldn’t make your job harder. It should help you spend less time behind a computer and more time taking care of your patients.”

Clarity, heart, and accountability, especially on hard weeks

Alicia’s LinkedIn profile lists “clarity, heart, and accountability” as her guiding traits, and she says that shows up most when things go sideways. “Even if I don’t have all the answers, I’ll let people know what I do know, what I’m waiting on, and what the next step is. I never want a client wondering if I’ve forgotten about them.” Her promise is persistence: “I can’t promise that everything will go perfectly, but what I can promise is that I’m going to stick with it.”

That philosophy traces back to something she learned at the bedside: people remember how you made them feel, more than any specific detail. “I take the time to get to know my clients and build real relationships with them. I encourage them, I want to be their biggest cheerleader, and I always try to leave room for a little laughter. Healthcare is stressful enough, you gotta be able to laugh.” To her, that’s the real meaning behind BettrAi’s “better care starts with better connection.”

Outside of work

At home, Alicia’s grounded by her husband and kids. “No matter what kind of day I’ve had, they have a way of putting everything back into perspective” Her faith reminds her to slow down and extend grace, to herself and others. Weekends usually mean a home project and a trip to Home Depot. “My husband would probably tell you I can’t leave a room alone.”

And the detail that surprises people most: after 20 years in nursing, Alicia now spends her free time learning AI and vibe coding. “I never in a million years would’ve guessed I’d enjoy coding, but here we are. It’s a brand-new world, and I’m here for it.”