An Elizabethtown College education is for people who feel the pull to contribute to the world. With a network of 24,425 living alumni, our graduates leave Etown to become the influential advocates and changemakers the world needs more of.

Meet Cathy Connolley-Kluck ’90, a Communication and Public Relations alumna who is the CEO and Founder of Doctivity Health, an organization that works to improve healthcare organizations’ growth and development through actionable data analytics.

“Paying it forward is important to me, whether it’s my employees or people who just reach out and want to know more, or they want a shot at being an intern. I just believe in taking a chance on people.”

What defined your Etown experience?

At Etown, I had a variety of different friend groups and professors who encouraged me to try different things, take different classes, and run for class VP. It was a great launching pad for me because of the relationships that I built and the different courses that I took. I was a Communications and Public Relations major, but I took a marketing course, and it stuck and resonated with me. That course, and the principles of marketing I learned, have guided me and my career growth because marketing is pretty much in every aspect of any business. I’ve always been fascinated by it. I also took a lot of art classes. The liberal arts experience worked for me, and I think it shaped me to think differently.

Talk about your career path after graduation.

When I graduated from Etown, I went into higher education and became an admissions counselor at Neumann University outside of Philadelphia. I left my position at Neumann in 1994 to go home and run my family business after my father became ill, and I did that for five years before reaching a point where we could sell it.

I went into raising money for a land trust, and while giving a presentation, there were several executives from Geisinger in the audience. They told me after the presentation that they had a marketing position open, and that’s how I got into healthcare. I started in Geisinger’s marketing department and worked my way up to Vice President of Marketing Strategy and Operations for the entire health system. During my time there, we took it from an organization that was $200 million in the red to a $7 billion organization.

When the CEO announced he was leaving, I felt that if Geisinger needed these types of strategic programs, other health systems must need them also. So, I jumped out, started a consulting company, and hired some of the people who were on my team at Geisinger. It was at that point that I realized the big deficit with data in the business side of healthcare. I knew an organization needs to be fiscally sound in order to continue to deliver quality patient care, so I went to work to develop the software that today is Doctivity.

We’ve been in business for just three years, and have experienced tremendous growth. We’re ahead of the curve, and we really fill a niche in the market right now. We focus on just the business side of healthcare, accelerating business advancement and new revenue generation, which ensures that the clinical work can continue.

Where do you think your entrepreneurial drive comes from?

The wholesale food distributing business taught me a lot about the relationship-building side of business that absolutely must happen. And I realized I could rely on myself and bet on myself. I knew that there were certain gaps in the way the business was being delivered or looked at in healthcare. I developed a business plan and went for it.

Why did you choose Etown?

When I came to Etown, it immediately felt like home with how welcoming the campus is. It was just a really great experience.

Why do you feel compelled to come back to campus to talk with students? What do you hope they take away from interactions with you?

I’m a big believer in paying it forward because there have been key people in my life who believed in me and invested in me when I wasn’t sure what my next step was going to be. I feel compelled to do the same thing, to talk about what it takes to move forward with a goal, to not let anything stop you, and to have confidence. I think a lot of people don’t have the confidence that they need to take the next step. And I hope that I can instill to not think about the barriers in anything in life.

How have you incorporated Educate for Service into your career and life?

At Doctivity, our mission is to ensure that healthcare organizations have a healthy bottom line so that they can continue to deliver quality patient care. I’ve seen firsthand the challenges that health systems have, and we can, through our software, immediately drive new revenue quickly.

My family gives back by helping with local food banks. Paying it forward is important to me, whether it’s my employees or people who just reach out and want to know more, or they want a shot at being an intern. I just believe in taking a chance on people. I’m a big believer in personality first. You can teach people how to be strategic and understand the business part, but you can’t teach character, integrity or personality.

View more Etown Changemakers at etown.edu/125.