Katie Barnes

Katie Barnes is a fractional COO and startup advisor with 15+ years of experience helping early-stage companies turn messy growth into scalable operations.

She has worked across healthcare, health behavior change, SaaS, fintech, legal services, and B2B technology, with a focus on the moments when founders are still carrying too much of the company in their own heads. Her work often sits at the intersection of operations, customer success, revenue, team communication, and founder support.

Katie began her startup career in healthcare at Viven Health, an interactive health behavior platform, where she partnered closely with the founder and CEO, supported investor and board communications, helped shape revenue models and go-to-market strategy, and led partnership conversations with Fortune 500 companies. She later led operations at early-stage SaaS and professional services companies, building systems for onboarding, renewals, finance, team cadence, internal communication, and cross-functional execution.

Through Rise & Optimize, Katie helps founders clean up the operational drag that shows up as unclear handoffs, inconsistent customer experiences, tool sprawl, churn risk, and too many decisions flowing back through the founder. Her approach is human-first, practical, and built for teams that need systems people will actually follow.

She is especially excited to advise healthcare founders who are translating deep clinical, operational, or industry expertise into scalable companies.