Meet Joey Kennedy

We took this Friday to interview our new head of Sales Joey Kennedy about Enterprise Software Sales in healthcare and the new era of AI.

Question 1: Why did you decide to join actAVA.AI now? 

My management style is the quintessential player-coach. Meaning, I work deals alongside my team, not from the sidelines. I lead by example and try to be the hardest worker in the room, because effort is contagious and a team mirrors its leader; and no one wants to be managed by someone who hasn’t done it themselves first. That is part of the reason I’m excited to join at this point in the company’s timeline. 

actAVA already has happy, live customers won through founder-led sales; the next chapter is building the team around our workflow-to-model platform and operational long-tail workflow story. As we build the playbook and the value story, we will scale into a larger enterprise sales effort. I have done this many times in my career, twice actually with Kevin Riley and Frank Wang, two of the Co-Founders. 

We are hiring sellers, and this is a great rocket ship of a company to join. 

Question 2: What is unique about selling into healthcare vs. other industries?

For the most part, people get into healthcare because they genuinely care about helping people, so that means your solution must speak to that. 

But you're also selling into a risk-averse, heavily regulated environment. HIPAA, patient safety, and reimbursement dynamics mean the sales cycle is longer, and trust has to be earned before ROI even enters the conversation. 

However, in 2026, healthcare leaders recognize that they can’t be slow to adapt or they will die, so the urgency is stronger than it was 10 years ago. 

This is what makes this space so exciting and complex. The amalgamation of a desire to do good, to use AI to do it faster, with an eye on absolute safety. It really takes a decade of selling into this space before you begin to understand it. I am going on my 3rd decade, so I am completely bought into the larger meaning and mission of the customers we sell to. 

And I know actAVAs AI can transform their business. Our philosophy is simple: companies should own their agentic sovereignty, which means building their own long-tail workflows, choosing the right mode for the job, ensuring full agentic governance, and owning the intelligence for all core workflows. 

1. actAVA KORA is a model-independent harness for building agents and managing their ROI. 

2. actAVA CHRYSO is a governance suite to ensure AI transformation is carried out safely. 

3. actAVA χ-BENCH is a simulation & benchmarking suite to ensure agents are correctly trained.

4. actAVA CURA is a 1-trillion-parameter model built for the realities of enterprise healthcare. 

We enable organizations to move AI from pilot to production across enterprise operations without incurring additional risks or unpredictable costs. We provide model-independent AI orchestration to build, evaluate, and improve agents across complex operations, with measurable ROI from day one.

Question 3: What has differentiated you as a salesperson or manager throughout your career?

The best sales manager I have ever met is my dad. He taught me: “It is more important to be trusted than to be liked.” When working with prospects, customers, or my sales team, I always prioritize trust and engage with the utmost integrity, even if it requires delivering bad news. Within Enterprise Sales, companies are literally betting their future on our solution. They need to trust you first. I am also contagiously optimistic. We will win every deal, but if we don’t, it is just a matter of time before the customer comes back around. I have heard Kevin Riley call these deferred wins very often.

This foundation of trust is more than just a sales tactic; it is core to how we build long-term relationships at actAVA.ai. When you’re introducing transformative AI into a healthcare ecosystem, you aren’t just selling a license or inference consumption; you’re entering into a partnership that requires deep alignment and transparency. By prioritizing trust, we ensure that our customers feel supported through the inevitable complexities of adoption, fostering a resilience that turns initial skepticism into long-term advocacy. Our optimism is rooted in this belief: that when the solution is truly right, the deal is never lost; it’s just waiting for the right moment to align.

Bonus Round: What is your prediction for the biggest AI trend impacting your customers in 2026?

Healthcare organizations will evaluate potential AI partners by focusing on how AI agents drive strategic gains and create new forms of operational value. The ROI story has been turned on its head. It’s no longer about FTEs; it’s about true transformation via AI. 

This shift signifies a transition from a narrow focus on "efficiency"—doing the same work faster with fewer people—to a broader, more profound "effectiveness" that redefines how healthcare work gets done entirely. Historically, healthcare AI was often positioned as a way to trim headcount—the "FTE replacement" model—which frequently led to fragmented outcomes and "AI fatigue." Today, leaders recognize that true competitive advantage lies in the "Long Tail" of unserved, manual workflows that characterize the modern health system. By moving from legacy point solutions to a comprehensive Agentic Lifecycle Management approach, organizations can stop renting intelligence and start owning their agentic futures. This evolution requires closing critical gaps in People (workforce training), Process (governance and policy), and Technology (healthcare-native orchestration), allowing systems to transition from reactive manual processing to proactive, agentic-driven care orchestration that compounds value with every task performed.

Thanks for your time today, Joey.

Visit us at https://actava.ai/ to learn more.

Meet Joey: View LinkedIn Profile