Meet the Simpliant team.
After witnessing the inefficiencies and disparities in healthcare staffing compared to staffing in other industries, Simpliant founder, Mark Ludwin, set out to change this.
With deep roots in the industry—having launched the first vendor-neutral open-market VMS tool, Medefis, in 2003—Mark has brought a talented team together to bring you the most comprehensive and user-friendly technology the healthcare industry has seen to date.
Mark Ludwin
President & CTO
In 2001, Mark Ludwin began his career in medical staffing as a national accounts manager for Aureus Medical, a healthcare staffing company. After 18 months, Mark realized that there were many inefficiencies in the current hospital staffing model and set out to co-found Medefis, Inc., a healthcare staffing vendor management firm- the first of its kind in the industry.
Mark served as President of Medefis, taking the company in six years from fledgling start-up, to market leader with over 1.000 client sites. In 2009, Onward Healthcare and Welsh Carson Anderson and Stowe, one of the nation’s leading healthcare venture capital groups, acquired Medefis.
After serving as president-in-transition under Welsh Carson, Mark left to pursue various successful startup opportunities; from Deal Garden, a daily deal company, to Remote Health Access, a telehealth company focused on delivering psychiatric services to underserved communities, to Xprit, an innovative professional network for the hospitality industry. In 2018, Mark joined AMN Healthcare, the nation’s largest publicly held healthcare staffing company, to serve as the Vice President of Product for their VMS technologies.
In 2022, realizing the void in vendor neutral healthcare staffing technologies, Mark returned to his roots to found Simpliant, a vendor neutral end-to-end workforce technology company, the first of its kind in over a decade.
Mark has a BS in Business Administration from Creighton University. He currently resides in Fort Collins, Colorado with his wife, Laura. He has two sons in college.
Scott Crook
VP, Client Relations
Scott began his career helping local businesses across the United States modernize their marketing and CRM automation needs. He held various roles including inside sales, outside sales, training and management. After 17 years in that industry he made the jump to healthcare and spent three years with AMN in different sales and client success roles before joining Mark at Simpliant.
Scott believes success is a by-product of helping people. He has always been very passionate and loyal to his company, clients and co-workers.
Scott was born and raised in Fort Collins, Colorado and now lives in Omaha, Nebraska.
Hobbies & Interests: Scott loves playing golf, any type of racquet sport, the Denver Broncos, cooking and science fiction. He has found Omaha to be home to some of the most authentic and caring people he has ever met. He and his family have really enjoyed their time there.
Favorite Sport: This is a toss-up between Golf and Ping Pong. He enjoys both very much. He’s a better ping pong player than golfer. He also loves watching NFL games whenever he has time.
Family: Scott has been married to his wife Dani for 21 years. They have two children, Robert (18) and Ashley (17). They have two dogs (Cooper and Kenzie) and a cat (Snicker). Their daughter REALLY loves animals and has named all of them.
Favorite City: Rome was fascinating. The architecture & history took Scott’s breath away.
Favorite Food: A tie between Mexican & Indian. Scott has tried to make Indian at home but it is never any good. He does make a really good pork green chile. When they go back to Fort Collins they usually hit their favorite Mexican and Indian restaurants – He is still struggling to find good spots in Omaha. Feel free to send any recommendations his way…
One thing I really want to do: Scott’s family would love to rent an RV and explore some of the hidden gems out in the Midwest. He is very familiar with Colorado and all the sights – he would love to learn more about Nebraska.
Xander Harris
Sr. Technical Product Manager
Xander has been immersed in product management and healthcare staffing since he wandered out of college with a now underused political science degree. After building a deep customer/user/human focus through front line SAAS customer support with AMN Healthcare’s ShiftWise VMS, Xander quickly expanded into product management and specialized in the technical data analytics and API application capabilities. Before returning to healthcare staffing at Simpliant, Xander worked at two startups building API-first, data heavy products to simplify HR information exchange during employee hiring and onboarding. He believes in building tools and structures that center and empower people doing the day-to-day work that make businesses thrive.
Xander lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, dog, and too many plants.
Hobbies & Interests: Xander loves exploring, particularly in two contradictory environments: outdoor natural spaces far away from other people and urban centers full of busy lives. Alpine meadows and dense, misty coastal forests lend an enveloping earth-scale historical perspective to the machinations of the day. Human-centric environs offer explanations into different ways of thinking, relating, and being as well as physical manifestations of human decision making and aspiration.
Favorite Movie: Movies are not something he spend much time thinking about, but Rubber (2010) sticks with him for ‘no reason.’
Favorite Platonic Solid: Dodecahedron.
One he hasn’t quite figured out yet: How to compose a photo so that it doesn’t look like an afterthought.
Meg Tripoli
VP, Client Development
In 2014, Meg directed her passion for healthcare into a career with Aya Healthcare and landed on a team focused on launching their allied division, but soon after transitioned to assisting in their MSP launch. Over the next 10 years she worked with various staffing and MSP organizations securing hospitals, health systems, and post-acute facilities and repositioning their staffing under the traditional healthcare MSP model.
Having spent a great deal of time with healthcare leaders and observing the changing landscape that the Covid pandemic brought about, Meg, knew a solution was needed that would give hospitals an opportunity to regain their control over staffing. Noticing the burden that a tradition healthcare-led MSPs could ultimately place on hospitals she began to focus on opportunities that would lower staffing cost for hospitals while providing efficiencies for managing their labor in a way that would result in greater retention, continuity of care, and overall give time in their day back to staffing managers. Meg focused her time developing a sourcing technology that allows healthcare facilities to source in a way that has not been done in healthcare thus far – delivering candidates at much lower rate and focusing first on building and maintaining their own core staff and staffing pools. She realized throughout her conversations with healthcare executives that for sourcing to be a success, having a strong technology to help facilities manage these labor pools would also be a necessity.
After working for a staffing company-led VMS, Meg noticed many inefficiencies and realized the best option for healthcare organizations was one that shared the same goals and truly had the ability to focus on facilities needs ahead of their own. Meg, is proud to have joined a true vendor-neutral team, Simpliant, and is excited to be helping teach healthcare facilities a new way to manage labor.
Hobbies & Interests: In her free time, Meg enjoys summers on the boat, skiing in the winter, and biking with her family in Connecticut. She is a big fan of healthy cooking (more importantly eating) and would always love to share a recipe with you!
Dan Kennedy
VP, Client Development
Dan has had nearly two decades in healthcare and healthcare staffing. He is a Graduate of the University of Nebraska at Kearney with a degree in Exercise Science and Sports Nutrition. From there he worked for nearly 14 years as the Supervisor of Wellness Operations, Programs, and Facilities for one of the largest hospital systems in the United States. During that time, he also owned a functional fitness gym and custom fitness equipment manufacturing company. In 2018 he made the decision to sell the business and move to into healthcare staffing.
In 2018 he entered the role of Business Development Executive which progressed over the next 5 years to Senior Business Development Executive/Senior Account Manager. In those five years he directly contracted with facilities that ranged from small critical access hospitals, long term care systems, stand-alone hospitals, all the way up to some of the largest hospital systems in the US. Throughout those nearly 5 years he was able to place a wide range of agency staff into over 80 different facilities and over 1500 individual assignments. From there he transitioned into a role as the Executive Vice President of Business Development. He was responsible for overseeing growth of VMS/MSP partnerships, account management, business development, contract oversight, CRM flow process, the marketing division, as well as the launching a perm staffing division.
Hobbies & Interests: Dan is committed to his philosophy of things should never be transactional in staffing and healthcare. Creating trust, doing what you say you’re going to do, and building an authentic relationship is what is important. In his personal time, he enjoys spending time with his wife of 16 years and two beautiful daughters. As a family they love boating, fishing, and supporting the girls’ cheer and karate events.
Brianna Wille
Technical Support Manager
Brianna began her career as an educator, and taught elementary and middle school for twelve years. Although very passionate about her work in helping children, she was ready for a new career challenge. She moved into the healthcare staffing industry as a Healthcare Employee Associate for PRN Healthcare where she supported travel nurse recruiters in an administrative role. She quickly moved into a training position in which she created training materials, as well as ran a wide variety of training sessions. She is thrilled to have joined Simpliant as the Technical Support Manager. She is passionate about helping people and believes in differentiated learning to help others succeed.
Brianna has a Masters of Education degree from Quinnipiac University. Briana has traveled extensively with her husband due to his role in the navy, and has made a home in Virginia Beach, VA. They have two young children and an old German shepherd.
Hobbies & Interests: Brianna loves to travel. Her favorite places so far have been Split, Croatia and Capri, Italy. She is hoping to soon visit her 19thcountry and 50th U.S. state!
She also love audiobooks, country music and Mexican food.
Favorite Sport:
Although she love most sports, Brianna played D-I basketball in college so she would have to say, ‘ball is life’! She has enjoyed coaching youth and high school sports and will watch just about any game that is on.
