Justin Bayless always planned to be CEO of his father’s healthcare company. He just wasn’t prepared to take charge so soon.

“The plan was for me to become CEO at age 30,” Bayless says, “but that was fast-tracked when my father had a nearly fatal heart attack.”

In 2010, at the tender age of 26, Bayless assumed leadership of Bayless Healthcare Group, the integrated healthcare company that his father, Dr. Michael Brad Bayless, founded in 1982, before its current CEO was even born.

“That succession plan that was supposed to be worked on and put together was fast tracked,” Bayless says.

That was nothing new for Bayless, who has always been of the fast track. He started his professional career by accompanying his father to work from the time he was 9 years old. He attended Morehouse College on a presidential academic scholarship and went to work after college as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in New York City, where developed capital market solutions to mitigate strategic, operational, credit, and market risks. Bayless helped raise more than $1.7 billion dollars in equity financing for Einstein Noah, Fresh Del Monte, Burger King, Hanes Brand, Range Fuels, and many other companies.

He returned to work at Bayless Healthcare in 2008 as vice president and CFO before his father’s health crisis forced him to step into the role of CEO.

“I lead by example,” Bayless says. “I was mentored by someone who taught me that perception is often reality. So even though I come at healthcare from the business side, I have learned to understand what goes on in our healthcare workers’ world and how to speak their clinical language so I can foster those relationships, which has helped our clinicians understand the business side.”

While unifying the fragmented worlds of business and healthcare workers and getting them on the same page is a major accomplishment, Bayless has a greater goal.

“I want to help people understand how integrated health benefits patients and clinicians,” he says. “All of our innovation is done for one thing: to improve value for patient and providers. Most companies have their mission statements hanging on the wall. We try to live ours.”
Lubna Ahmad, 29
President and CEO
Invoy Technologies
Ahmad has spent nearly a decade innovating and developing medical devices with an emphasis on biosensor technologies. In 2008, she founded Invoy, which is engaged in the development and commercialization of breath analysis devices for a broad range of applications. Invoy plans to offer patients the ability to monitor their health with a prescription-based breath analysis device.

Billy Malkovich, 34
CEO
Mountainside Fitness
mountainsidefitness.com
Over the course of 12 years, Malkovich has worked his way up from front desk attendant and personal trainer at Mountainside to CEO. He helped lead the company through the economic downturn to where it stands today at $30 million in revenue, 10 locations and nearly 1,000 people employed in Arizona.

Jamie Fletcher, 30
CEO
Mach 1 Global Services
mach1air.com
After graduating from ASU, Fletcher founded Mach 1 Global Services, an international and domestic freight forwarder that offers a full portfolio of transportation, logistics and supply chain services via air, ocean and ground. Mach 1 has more than 30 offices located in the US, Mexico and Asia along with best in class strategic partnerships around the globe.