Figuring It Out

Figuring It Out is the fascinating memoir written by Elizabeth “Libby” Connolly Alexander, detailing her role in the meteoric rise of a company started from scratch by her father, a company that later went public at a significant market valuation and after that was sold at an even greater price tag.After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in History from Tulane University, Libby joined her father’s payment integrity firm, Connolly, learned the business from the bottom up, and quickly advanced through the ranks. With her brother, Larry, and tech-savvy husband, Robert, they formed the proverbial “three-legged stool,” the triumvirate that drove exponential growthby figuring it out.Figuring it out, indeed…Initially, the trio created a significant technological competitive advantage by establishing a personal computer-driven data mining and analytics capability. Then, they pivoted the company into the unknown healthcare payment integrity industry, harnessing a growth engine unlike any previously leveraged.Libby took the lead in establishing and building the healthcare business, serving as CEO of Connolly Healthcare and subsequently as CEO of the entire company.Thanks to Connolly’s data analytics capabilities and the incredible growth prospects of its healthcare business, Advent International came aboard as a major private equity investor and strategic business partner. Advent helped Connolly engineer a synergistic acquisition of Atlanta-based iHealth Technologies, at which point both companies merged and Libby became vice chairman of the board of the new company, which was renamed Cotiviti.Cotiviti subsequently went public in May of 2016 at a market valuation of $2.55 billion.Two years later, in August, 2018, Cotiviti was acquired by Veritas Capital-backed healthcare data solutions provider Verscend, at a transaction value of $4.89 billion.That’s called creating serious value… by figuring it out.