Bootstrapping A Healthcare IT Startup To 50 Million: Eliza Corporation President Alexandra Drane (Part 1)

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Alexandra Drane is a serial entrepreneur who has launched four successful healthcare ventures over the past 15 years. Alexandra is currently president and co-founder of Eliza Corporation, a leading provider of integrated healthcare communication strategies. She is also the co-founder of two nonprofits, Engage with Grace, aimed at helping people understand, communicate, and have end-of-life wishes honored; and SeduceHealth, which adds greater passion, joy, and inspiration to how the healthcare industry communicates. Alexandra sits on a number of executive boards, including Eliza, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Society for Women’s Health Research, Operations Committee of the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC) and Germaine Lawrence Board of Advocates. She also serves on the board of two technology startups and is a member of the Health Executive Leadership Network, Women Business Leaders of the U.S. Health Care Industry Foundation, and is a trustee of several charitable trusts.

Sramana: Alex, where are you from? What is your background?

Alexandra Drane: I am a product of the 128 Beltway. That is the best way to describe it. I was raised in Lexington, which is a suburb of Boston. I was raised by two entrepreneurs, but they were two very different types of entrepreneurs. My dad was a very successful business person who started Atex, a business that revolutionized newspaper publishing. My parents got divorced when I was seven. He would take me to meetings with him as a way of spending time with me. After he sold Atex to Kodak he retired. He then got incredibly bored and he became an angel investor. He was part of a group called The Breakfast Club in the New England area. Much of my upbringing was spending time with him at those meetings or at his work. As a result of that experience, I encourage my people to bring their children into their environment as much as possible.

My mom was an entrepreneur a well. She was a CPA. We are Quakers, and we believe very strongly that you should go put your money where your mouth is. You should act. At one point she was very troubled by how the homeless were treated in Boston and around the country. In Boston they were put into housing systems that had no public transportation systems or childcare. There was no way for a woman to get herself off of that cycle. She led the effort to build a housing system in a bad part of downtown Boston for those people. They converted a house and made it into a community where women would care for each other’s children while the others went off to study. My mother has gone on to do multiple other things along those lines. I was raised locally by two people whom I think embody taking on challenges.

Sramana: I think what you described, in terms of entrepreneurial parents exposing their children to entrepreneurism, is very effective. I had a similar experience. I used to go to my parents’ office from the time I was young. The notion of running a business was engrained early on. My mother had an office in the house. Formal methodologies that are taught today are things we learned as part of the environment.

Alexandra Drane: I could not agree with you more. We talk about the need to be ferociously passionate about what you do in order to be successful. To have that consistency and persistence you have to find joy and love what you do. We wake up every day to add value to the world around us. When you have been exposed to that as a child, that work is not a thing you go to but it is about being part of the community, that it helps create the bravery to become an entrepreneur. They have the wonder of entrepreneurism in their soul, and I don’t think you can underestimate the value of giving that to your kids.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Bootstrapping A Healthcare IT Startup To 50 Million: Eliza Corporation President Alexandra Drane
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