Jun Fabella and the business of finding a simpler way

In 2003, Michael Pruett had a business plan with a software problem inside it. He was preparing to start a laboratory and needed an information management system suited to the work. He thought of Jun Fabella, a classmate from his MBA days. Nine years after graduation, the connection still had practical value. There are more theatrical ways to begin a business. This one began with somebody remembering who might be able to help.

Pruett and Fabella spent the next six months studying the market and refining the plan. DYNALABS began operations in 2004. The sequence is pleasingly concrete: a requirement, a person with relevant skills, an investigation, then a company. Before there was a growth story, there was work to understand. Before there was a company to lead, there was a system to figure out.

Fabella would become DYNALABS’ president, later lead ANiGENT as CEO and managing partner, and see that company acquired by Omnicell. Across those changes of title and business, the original assignment offers a useful way into his career: making complicated work manageable enough for other people to do.

The value of a familiar name

Fabella and Pruett both earned their MBAs at Webster University in 1994. In 2019, the university’s business and technology school chose both as Outstanding Alumni recipients. By then, the venture they had planned together was reporting annual revenue above $13 million. The honor brought the classmates back into the same sentence, this time as business partners with a company behind them.

A classroom relationship is an unglamorous business asset. It sits quietly among lecture notes, group assignments and names one hopes to remember at a reunion. Here it became a way to connect a commercial idea with technical capability. The distance between 1994 and 2003 matters: a useful professional relationship need not produce an immediate transaction to be worth keeping.

The connection to Webster continued beyond the award. Fabella appears on the Walker School of Business & Technology’s advisory board, alongside Pruett and other business leaders. An advisory board is a different sort of room from a startup planning meeting. It extends the relationship between a school and the people whose working lives have carried its education into practice.

Software has to survive Monday morning

The technical side of Fabella’s work is visible in a testimonial he gave to software partner Data Dynamics. Identified there as DYNALABS’ CTO, he described a development relationship lasting more than a year. What he singled out was the team’s method: establishing scope, writing code, testing it and getting it deployed. His appreciation was directed at the sequence as much as the people.

That is a revealing set of things to praise. Software buying can be a theatre of demonstrations; software ownership is a calendar of decisions. Scope determines what gets built. Testing asks whether it behaves as promised. Deployment puts the answer in somebody else’s working day. Fabella’s comments suggest that he valued being able to follow the work through those stages.

The testimonials also complicate the easy distinction between a business founder and a technical executive. His public career includes both responsibilities. The information system in the original business plan was an operating requirement. The software partner’s process was something he evaluated directly. In this part of the story, the executive title still has an engineer’s fingerprints on it.

A company is a system of people, too

Fabella applied similar language to staffing. Discussing ISO 10018 and employee engagement while president of DYNALABS, he argued that human resources deserved the same process discipline as quality management. He wanted people to understand the company’s culture, values and objectives. He also connected recruitment and retention to the demands customers and regulators placed on the business.

He said the human resources function would lead the initiative under consideration. That detail gives the idea an owner. The proposal was about how the company would organize its work, anticipate requirements and explain its practices to outsiders. He also saw potential value when dealing with future investors. People management, in that account, belonged in the operating design of the business.

This is a more everyday view of leadership than the familiar portrait of a founder surviving on intuition. A company needs ways to recruit, retain and orient people even when the founder is occupied elsewhere. The relevant question becomes how a team knows what it is trying to accomplish. A good process leaves fewer occasions for everyone to stand around waiting for a revelation.

“our culture, values and objectives”Jun Fabella, on what employees should understand

The deadline was yesterday

His comments about creative work have a less procedural, rather more recognizable rhythm. In a recommendation for designer Chris Brauss, Fabella described a working relationship of more than 15 years. Brauss had handled branding, website design and marketing materials across two of Fabella’s ventures. Fabella admitted that his own preferred delivery schedule was often “needed yesterday.”

It is a compact confession. Founders may speak eloquently about planning and still have an urgent request for their designer on Thursday afternoon. Fabella praised Brauss for both the quality of the work and the determination to finish assignments on time. The relationship spanned different businesses, suggesting the practical value of keeping a collaborator who understands the brief and can deliver it.

His testimonial for Concannon Insurance Agency offers another small-business view. He described relying on advice about coverage for personnel and cybersecurity, including what the company needed immediately and what could wait. A business purchases plenty of expertise it does not produce itself. In that account, the useful adviser helps decide the order of decisions, as well as the contents of the policy.

Taken together, these comments show the less photogenic work around a technology venture: a website, a development plan, a coverage decision, a deadline. They also show Fabella publicly crediting outside partners. The business has a founder’s name attached to it, while much of its daily capability arrives through relationships with people who have their own companies to run.

Building the next company with partners

ANiGENT’s public launch in March 2020 put Fabella in the CEO and managing partner role, with Charles D’Amato as chief product officer and managing partner. The St. Louis company brought together DYNALABS and Mayo Clinic. Fabella’s previous role was president of DYNALABS. The new venture gave him a different organization and a software platform to bring to market.

The allocation of roles matters. A chief executive and a chief product officer arrive with different responsibilities, and a collaboration carries knowledge from more than one institution. The company’s technical story also had a history before its launch. A 2021 exhibitor description explained that the platform drew on years of development and refinement, and that Mayo retained a 35 percent ownership interest.

In November 2021, ANiGENT announced a strategic partnership with ConsortiEX. Fabella described the agreement as a way to reach more facilities across the United States. The business logic was straightforward: combine capabilities and widen distribution. A company can spend years making a product, then discover that getting it into the right organization requires another kind of construction altogether.

His business connections extended to consulting. A 2021 statement submitted to South Dakota’s public boards and commissions described Fabella, Russell Odegard and Michael Pruett as silent partners in AMICUS, with Kristopher Le as CEO and principal consultant. AMICUS had previously been a DYNALABS division. It is another instance of familiar collaborators appearing in a new organizational arrangement, with a different person responsible for running it.

The consulting company’s stated work included compliance audits, remediation and validation services, as well as auditing suppliers and testing laboratories. Those assignments depend on examining how organizations actually operate. In that setting, a silent partnership is a distinct role from an executive appointment. The record places Fabella among the owners while naming Le as the person leading the company. Keeping those responsibilities clear makes the business connections easier to understand.

A simpler way still needs a willing passenger

In May 2022, Fabella offered an explanation of his approach that began far from a business plan. As a child, he had endured long family drives on his father’s favored scenic routes. Eventually, he learned that familiarity was the attraction: his father knew the way. Fabella connected the memory to the uncertainty customers can feel when asked to adopt unfamiliar technology.

He also connected his leadership to engineering’s preference for simpler solutions. The two observations fit together without making change sound easy. A shorter route on a diagram still requires somebody to take it. His essay treats hesitation as something a business must understand when presenting a new approach. Technical improvement and a customer’s willingness to use it occupy the same journey.

On October 27, 2025, Omnicell announced its acquisition of ANiGENT. The announcement described ANiGENT as established in 2019, separating the company’s formation from its public launch the following March. It placed the venture’s software within a larger portfolio and outlined additional capabilities anticipated for the first half of 2026. Those were plans in the announcement, rather than evidence of completed delivery.

The acquisition adds a new corporate name to a career already shaped by classmates, developers, designers, advisers and product partners. Fabella’s story keeps returning to the practical business of getting people and systems to work together. It began with a classmate who knew whom to ask. That remains a rather good place for an enterprise to start.