Rootwise is built by a physician and a decorated Navy veteran — two people with fundamentally different skill sets and a shared commitment to the same mission. Elise leads strategy, clinical direction, and platform vision, and manages the company day to day. Steve serves as operations consultant, advising on operations, deployment, and veteran outreach.
Elise Matichak
DPM, MHSA, MSMEd
Co-Founder & Managing Member · Clinical Direction & Platform Vision
Elise is a podiatric physician whose training spans clinical care, health services administration, and medical education. That combination is unusual, and it is the reason Rootwise reads the way it does: the problem of a patient leaving an appointment without understanding what was decided is simultaneously a clinical problem, an operations problem, and a language problem.
At Rootwise, Elise is the managing member and runs the business day to day. She sets clinical direction, owns product strategy, and designed the multi-entity structure the three companies sit inside.
-
Doctor of Podiatric Medicine (DPM)
Clinical training & patient care
-
Master of Health Services Administration (MHSA)
Healthcare operations & strategy
-
Master of Science, Medical Education (MSMEd)
Applied linguistics & curriculum design
-
Platform Architecture & Venture Development
Multi-entity corporate structure, product strategy
Stephen Matichak
HMC, USN (Ret.)
Co-Founder · Operations Consultant
Steve served 24 years in Navy Medicine, retiring as a Hospital Corpsman Chief. Corpsmen work where the clinical and the operational meet — his assignments ran across oncology, emergency medicine, mental health, field medicine, pharmacy, and education and training.
That range is directly relevant to who Rootwise serves first. Veterans moving between VA and civilian providers are navigating two systems that do not talk to each other, and Steve has worked inside one of them for over two decades. He serves as Rootwise's operations consultant, advising on operations, deployment, and how the platform reaches the veteran community.
-
Hospital Corpsman Chief, USN (Ret.)
24 years, Navy Medicine
-
Clinical & Operational Specialties
Oncology · Emergency Medicine · Mental Health · Education & Training · Field Medicine · Pharmacy
-
Operations Consultant
Advisory · VA systems navigation, veteran-owned business development
Why both halves are necessary
A tool that organizes a medical appointment has to get two very different things right. It has to be clinically sound — the language has to survive contact with what a provider actually said, without flattening the nuance that matters. And it has to work reliably on an ordinary phone, in an exam room, for someone who is anxious and not thinking about software.
Those are not the same skill. Most health tools are built by people who have only one of them. Rootwise exists because two people with the opposite halves of the problem decided to build it together.
Questions, or want to talk to us? Email info@rootwisehealth.org.