Experience you can count on
How We Work
Advice
As your trusted advisor, you will clarify the issue. This will provide you with the activating insights and market intelligence to shape a business strategy that propels your vision forward.
Access
As your access partner, you will connect to high performing resources. You will receive the benefits of the systems, solutions and deep network required to accelerate your vision.
Action
As your action partner, you will create results, empowering your teams and customers.
Accountability
As your accountability partner, you will catalyze your teams, aligning the mission to gain the momentum needed to sustain meaningful impact.
Learn More
Our process is designed to empower you and your team, provide actionable solid plans, and support you with the tools you need to succeed. Talk to us today about how we can support your growth, improve your team performance, and put you on a solid track to success.
Alice Shade
Education
Alice earned a BA in Accounting from Kentucky Wesleyan College, and her Master’s in Health Administration from the University of Kentucky.
Personal Background
As a Kentucky native, Alice supports the commonwealth’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and its founders and CEOs. She recognizes that growing up as one of 14 children helped her develop the valuable people and teamwork skills needed for her entrepreneurial ambition. She attributes learning many of those skills to her father, who co-owned a grocery store chain in Western Kentucky.
Alice loves spending time with her three lively daughters and sharing her joy of all things outdoors. She especially enjoys exploring and hiking national parks, gardening, and playing tennis.
Meet Alice
Founder & CEO of 4A Ventures
Alice Shade is a seasoned executive with nearly 30 years of expertise in business strategy and organization development. As the Founder and CEO of 4A Ventures, Alice provides businesses with the advice, access, action, and accountability they need to grow.
Through her customized support, she prepares teams in four key areas to accelerate their impact:
- Strategy design and execution
- Leadership and team development
- Financial operations
- Business and innovation development
Among her successes since founding 4A Ventures in 2019 is launching a multi-million-dollar independent physician practice. Alice was instrumental in securing financing, establishing systems and teams, and guiding the owners through strategic decisions during the planning, implementation, and growing phases.
She has experience leading strategic advisory councils to support innovation and continued value creation.
CEOs turn to her to support their strategic execution efforts, developing the teams and accountability systems that position their companies to achieve exceptional profitability and become national industry leaders. In some instances, she serves as a board member, bringing her depth of experience to the boardroom.
Among her other current roles, Alice is a Vistage Chair, which includes leading a CEO Group, a Key Executive Group, and an Inside Group. As Chair, Alice facilitates monthly group meetings and executive coaches during one-on-one engagements to help members establish their visions and seek clarification to make optimal decisions that lead to true innovation, strong teams, organizations, and communities.
Alice also serves as chair of ed-tech company Clover Learning, an emerging leader in the educational technology sector. Additionally, in her previous capacity as an Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Louisville, Alice co-founded Awaken Digital Health Solutions, a digital health company developing applications to detect, prevent, and treat eating disorders, a top deadly mental health disease.
Healthstat engaged Alice Shade and her organization 4A Ventures to help pull together industry thought leaders as an advisory board that helped review our existing work processes to look for refinements and search for barriers and solutions to our quest of solving how healthy a population can be.
Working with Alice Shade became a must-have for our leadership team, and it helped position our organization as the true thought leader among its peers.
Previous Experience
Before founding 4A Ventures, Alice spent a decade as Founder and CEO of SentryHealth. Through fundraising, client creation, and building strategic partnerships, she led the technology-enabled health management platform firm from idea to successful a Series A company. When she left in 2019, leading healthcare research institutions nationwide, including Johns Hopkins University, were using SentryHealth’s programs.
In her time with SentryHealth, Alice earned several awards:
- Greater Louisville Inc.’s “Fast 50” list
- Kentucky Chamber of Commerce’s 2018 Emerging Entrepreneur
- Greater Louisville Inc.’s 2019 Inc.credible Health & Wellness Award
- Worksite Wellness Council of Louisville’s 2019 Worksite Wellness Gold Award
Before SentryHealth, Alice worked extensively on the payor and clinical provider sides for various healthcare companies, including United Healthcare and the University of Louisville Physicians.
Throughout her career, Alice has also invested her time and expertise in executive roles at the University of Louisville Physicians, the University of Louisville’s Product Bootcamp Program, Launch-It, and Kentucky’s Passport Health Plan.
