The operator teaching AI to talk like a nurse - and to know when to hand the call back to a human.
Linda Finkel spends her days on a question most of healthcare would rather avoid: what happens when an AI voice agent answers the phone, and what happens the moment it shouldn't. As CEO of OutcomesAI, a Boston company that closed a $10M seed round in October 2025, she is betting that the future of nursing is neither pure software nor pure scrubs. It is both, stitched together.
OutcomesAI's engine, Glia, pairs voice agents with licensed nurses to handle the routine calls - intake, triage, follow-up - and to escalate the ones that need a human. The pitch is unglamorous and exact: 3 to 5 times more nursing capacity, 40 to 50 percent lower cost than outsourced triage. The name is a tell. Glia are the cells that support neurons. Finkel is building the support layer, not the replacement.
"People rarely sat back and let things happen. They went out and happened to things."
The interesting part of OutcomesAI isn't the AI. It's the seam. A voice agent takes the call. When the conversation crosses a line only judgment can read, it routes to a licensed nurse. Most automation pitches hide the human. Finkel's design depends on her.
The argument lives in two numbers, and both point the same direction. More capacity from the same nursing staff, at a fraction of the cost of shipping triage overseas.
For fifteen years Finkel ran services companies that had nothing to do with medicine. She co-led Bowne Business Solutions to 3,000 employees across four countries. She ran Donnelley Business Services and grew it roughly 40 percent a year. The resume read like someone who would retire fixing margins.
Then her father had a severe accident. Ninety-one days in an ICU. She watched doctors and nurses perform what she calls heroic work, and she watched communication errors slip through the cracks between shifts. The contrast didn't make her grateful and quiet. It made her switch industries.
Early on, a 360-degree review came back blunt: difficult to get to know, even inauthentic. Most people file that away and resent it. Finkel rebuilt her leadership around it. "Be yourself" became less a poster and more a correction she had to keep making.
The other half of her operating system is two words long: "just say yes." Say yes to the room you're not ready for. She stepped into the AVIA CEO seat at the exact onset of the pandemic. No hesitation on record.
Be yourself.
Just say yes.
Curiosity means caring more about the right answer than about being right.
Excellent care needs time - supplemented by digital tools - not the traditional 15-minute appointment.
A BA from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard Business School. The classic bookends.
Before healthcare, she ran a services empire of 3,000+ people spread across four countries.
OutcomesAI's engine is named for the brain's support cells - the ones that keep neurons working.
A member of The Chicago Network and The Economic Club of Chicago.
She wants AI to give nurses their time back - not take their place.
The October 2025 seed round gives OutcomesAI runway to expand triage and virtual-care programs across more health systems.
The whole model rests on knowing when the AI should step back and a licensed nurse should step in. Get the seam right or nothing works.
Her stated aim: attack the root causes of disparities, not just the visible symptoms like ED visits and readmissions.