TruSage International Announces New Management Team

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TruSage International, a mobile health and wellness company headquartered in San Diego, today announced a new Management Team and Board of Directors. The new leadership structure, effective immediately, brings together top talent in behavioral health, technology, product development and operations to support the company’s commitment to helping individuals/patients become active participants in their own health.

“Our goal is to reduce healthcare costs by keeping individuals on track with their health goals and by motivating them to stay the course. To accomplish this, we’ve assembled a top-notch team of executives with exceptional depth in management and innovation.”

“We understand how quickly the mobile-health sector is growing – and how rapidly healthcare costs are rising, especially when hard-to-break habits and chronic conditions are in play,” said Dr. Brian Alman, TruSage International’s founder. “Our goal is to reduce healthcare costs by keeping individuals on track with their health goals and by motivating them to stay the course. To accomplish this, we’ve assembled a top-notch team of executives with exceptional depth in management and innovation.”

The TruSage International team includes:

Brian Alman, Ph.D., Founder and Chairman. During his 30 years of private practice, Dr. Alman has coached and trained more than ten thousand individuals, patients, doctors and healthcare professionals on quality-of-life issues such as weight loss, stress reduction, pain control, disease management and relief from addictions. Through TruSage International, he reaches many thousands more. Before founding TruSage, Dr. Alman was a clinical instructor and counselor at San Diego State University’s Health Services. He is the author of five books on weight loss, stress reduction and self-change.
Carla Zilka, Chief Executive Officer. As Principal Advisor at NexGen Advisors, she helps Fortune 1000 companies and private equity firms achieve growth and operational excellence. Ms. Zilka is bringing these same disciplines to TruSage International, where she is acting as interim CEO. In addition to TruSage International, Ms. Zilka has worked with numerous multi-national clients, including Hertz, ServiceMaster, Whirlpool, NCR, Phillips, Deutsche Bank, CD&R and others. Ms. Zilka’s experience includes working at Towers Perrin, where she was the Practice Leader for Restructuring and Talent Management, and at General Electric where she held various management roles including VP Growth for GE Capital’s consumer business. She also sits on numerous for-profit and non-profit boards. She is the author of the books Business Restructuring: an Action Template for Reducing Costs and Growing Profit and CEO Confidential, to be released Summer 2011.
Paula Colbert, Chief Financial Officer. A senior Advisor at NexGen, Ms. Colbert has deep expertise in finance and product/service life cycle management. Before joining NexGen, she spent 12 years at GE in various businesses and roles, including corporate audit, market research and competitive analysis, strategy and M&A. She also served as a CFO of GE’s $9B power/energy business. Ms. Colbert is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt and has served on GE’s Diversity Board.
Meg Wildrick, Chief Marketing Officer. A Managing Director at BlissPR – a B2B marketing firm headquartered in New York – Ms. Wildrick has directed numerous market planning and public relations programs for healthcare companies, insurers and professional services firms. Before joining BlissPR in 1998, Meg directed marketing strategy for FGIC, a subsidiary of GE Capital. She began her career as a management consultant at McKinsey & Co.
Phil Baker, Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Baker is an expert in bringing new products to market rapidly. He has held senior product development positions with Apple, Polaroid, Seiko and Think Outside, with a focus on handheld mobile products and services. His products have won numerous awards, including Best Computer Product of 2000 from PC Magazine. Mr. Baker holds more than 30 patents and was San Diego’s Entrepreneur of the Year for Consumer Products. He is the author of From Concept to Consumer from Financial Times Press.

TruSage International currently delivers personalized wellness calls and services to a broad range of corporate clients, insurance companies, wellness clinics and weight loss centers.

About TruSage International

First founded in 1995 by Dr. Brian Alman – a leading practitioner in the field of mind-body health – TruSage International combines positive psychology and mobile technology to deliver personalized support to patients through text messages, emails, calls and videos. All TruSage messages are based on a patented algorithm, developed by Dr. Alman and specialists at MIT.

In a long-term clinical study with Kaiser Permanente’s Positive Choice Wellness Center, TruSage clients reported 69% fewer office visits, higher satisfaction and better self-care.

For more information about TruSage International, please visit us at www.trusageinternational.com