Company leader
Jeff Brandes
Founder
Azara Healthcare
Jeff Brandes is the founder of Azara Healthcare, a company in Burlington, Massachusetts, that makes data and reporting software for community health centers and other safety-net clinics, the providers that care for low-income and uninsured patients. He ran Azara as president and chief executive from its start in 2011 until June 2026, after a first career building software companies.
Working at a Ski Lift Company
He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University. After college he spent three years working for a company that built ski lifts, because he loved skiing.
A Career in Software Startups
He moved into software and worked for a run of startups in enterprise software, data storage, security, and consumer internet services, and co-founded several companies. In 2000 he became chief executive of TidalWire, which distributed storage networking equipment. When the technology bubble burst in 2002, TidalWire was sold to a public company. He worked as an executive there and then at two other software companies.
Founding Azara Healthcare
In 2010 a former colleague phoned him about spinning off a joint venture to bring a new healthcare software platform to market. That spinoff became Azara Healthcare, and he led its formation in 2011. When he started, he did not know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid.
Azara's main product is Azara DRVS, a population health platform. It pulls a clinic's medical records together with insurance claims, health information exchange records, and information about patients' social needs, such as unstable housing, so its staff can see which patients are missing care, who is at highest risk, and where costs are climbing. Health centers also use it to file the quality reports that state and federal programs require.
He worked closely for years with the primary care associations of Massachusetts, Missouri, and California, which represent the health centers in each state. By 2025 Azara served more than 1,000 healthcare organizations in 48 states.
In a 2025 Authority Magazine interview, he set out how Azara decides what to build: "Our goal is to create a platform that meets 80% of our healthcare clients' needs, no matter the setting."
For Azara's first ten years he sat in on customer calls in place of the account leads, so he could hear clients' questions himself. Early on, when two long-serving employees left at the start of a year, he and his business partner paid them their full annual bonuses even though they would be gone before the payout dates.
On June 15, 2026, Mary Lantin became Azara's president and chief executive. He stepped back from day-to-day management and stayed on full time as founder, executive advisor, and a member of the board, working with clients and on company strategy.