“She looked before she leaped: Onetime health care chief Laura Campbell thrives as own boss”

 Nashville Business Journal, by Keith Russell, February 8, 1999

It took a "leap of faith" for Laura Campbell to leave the Nashville Health Care Council to start her own business.

"I guess I came to a point when I asked myself if I were a company looking for some help, who would I hire?" Campbell says. "And my answer was that I would hire myself. It was a total leap of faith."

Campbell is one of the best-known female insiders in Nashville's health care industry, having helped create the Nashville Health Care Council.

Now, two years after her departure -- partly due to a dispute over her role as executive director -- how is Laura Campbell doing?

"We're doing great," she says with a smile. The "we" she refers to, of course, is Laura Campbell & Associates, the consulting business Campbell runs with the help of four flex-time employees.

Since starting operations in 1997, she has performed consulting work for approximately 50 companies, 20 of them in what she describes as "longer-term projects."

Whatever the time intervals, the vast majority of Campbell's clients have been health care-related. She says projects have seen her help a vast array of health care companies at "various stages of development."

In particular, Campbell has proven to be a popular conduit in the area of venture capital. A partner at the venture capital firm Massey Burch before helping form the Nashville Health Care Council, Campbell now assists companies hoping to secure funding as well as venture firms looking for new investments.

Jim Hoover is the co-founder of Dauphin Capital Partners, a recently formed health care-focused venture capital firm based in New York.

Hoover recently hired Campbell to help Dauphin Capital scout investment prospects in Nashville's health care market.

Hoover is a former partner with Welsh, Carson Anderson & Stowe, the prominent New York venture capital firm led by Quorum Health Group chairman Russ Carson. But even with such connections, Hoover says it's hard for an outsider to crack Nashville's tightly knit health care circle.

Therefore, Campbell, who you might say was born into the network (she used to "work" as a 10-year-old in the office of her father, Vic Campbell, now senior vice president at Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp.), is a ready-made connection for those looking for a way in.

"To a fair degree, the Nashville health care community is still a closed community," Hoover explains. "So with Laura, it helps to have an insider on your side."

On the other side of the coin, Campbell says the current shaky state of circumstances in Nashville's health care industry hasn't hurt the level of funding that is available to companies.

"There's still a significant amount of resources available through private equity," Campbell asserts.

However, Campbell says the volatility that has plagued public health care companies has created more competition for private capital, as companies once sure about going public are now thinking twice.

"This is causing greater competition for funding from private equity sources," Campbell says. And for smaller companies in particular, she says, such funding can be tough in the best of times. "Many venture firms invest in less than one of every 100 investment opportunities."

For Campbell, helping such fledglings beat the odds has become a large share of her consulting business. She says work with start-up or "seed stage" companies has constituted two-thirds of her time.

Campbell recalls her role in helping one recent start-up health care company. "I had one executive from a health care company come to me with a few scribbles on a piece of paper," she remembers. "I worked with the management team to develop the scribbles into a business plan, and then secure funding for the venture."

Ask Campbell who the company is, though, and she's as mum as a Buckingham Palace guard. "I have to be careful about what I say," she says with a sheepish grin. "A lot of the people I deal with can get nervous about things getting out in the media."

This from a woman whose high profile work at the Nashville Health Care Council compelled her to boast on her resume of having "been the subject of or assisted in the development of several hundred articles during her career."

Campbell says the new attitude is just one of things that goes with the new job.

"I have to keep a little lower profile with this." But in or out of the spotlight, Campbell insists she now relishes her lifestyle.

"Up until now, I had spent most of my career within a business, as opposed to being in charge," she relates. "There's no steady paycheck, but it has allowed me to focus my time on what I love to do."