Leadership Spotlight: Simon Maas, Chief Operating Officer

Simon Maas is originally from Vancouver, BC where he grew up in a family of physicians. He earned his BA from Harvard where he was also on the varsity lightweight rowing team. He’s been the COO at Certify since October 2023 and lives with his family in Los Angeles.

Background and Career Journey

How did your upbringing in a family of physicians prepare you for your role as COO at Certify?

My mother recently retired, but for her entire career she was one of those rare types of doctors who cared so deeply about her patients. She routinely worked with the most vulnerable populations and developed relationships with patients over decades, going above-and-beyond the call of duty and doing things like spending lots of her time on non-billable work and spending a month of every year volunteering in Africa to treat patients with HIV.

This was evident to me from an early age, and the emphasis she placed on giving everyone access to affordable care ingrained in me that healthcare is a right, not a privilege. And that’s a truth that has been reinforced throughout my life, time and time again.

My dad had a chronic condition that left him mostly paralyzed, and my two brothers and I grew up as de facto part-time caregivers. So we naturally intersected with the healthcare ecosystem regularly. That experience shaped my perspective on operations — not just as something that exists in the workplace, but as an essential part of life. Managing care, coordinating schedules, problem-solving in real-time — these were all lessons in operational efficiency long before I ever stepped into a leadership role. In many ways, my upbringing gave me an intuitive understanding of how systems need to function seamlessly to support people in their most vulnerable moments, which directly informs my work as COO at Certify.

I honed my skills as a professional operator later on when I started my career, and even though I didn’t begin in healthcare, it’s not surprising to me that I was ultimately drawn here.

Can you tell us about your career journey and what drew you to Certify?

A few core themes have defined: my career: high-growth companies, powerful human-centric missions, operations, & technology. I began as a management consultant, gaining invaluable hands-on experience in operations and strategy across industries like aviation, insurance, banking, and automotive. However, it didn’t take me long to realize that I was most energized when I was building — creating something from the ground up and scaling it. That passion led me to the high-growth startup world, where I’ve spent the last decade.

If the operator of the 20th century was the Lean Six Sigma Blackbelt, then the operator of the 21st century is the Tech-Enabled operator — a leader who is analytically fluent and embraces technology not just as a tool, but as a lens for solving problems at scale. To me, great operators don’t just execute; they uncover the problem behind the problem. That means knowing how to ask the right questions, how to find the answers — often by pulling and analyzing data firsthand — and how to continuously refine and scale solutions. If I’m doing my job well, I’ve made the challenges I was focused on last year, last month, last week obsolete.

Certify is the ideal place for this kind of work. We have a powerful mission and get the privilege to serve some of the most influential and premier healthcare organizations in the country; we have access to vast amounts of data; and the problems we’re tackling are all about driving efficiency, speed, and quality in a high growth environment. It’s the exact type of company where the Tech-Enabled operator thrives — leveraging data, technology, and strategy to create real, scalable impact.

Leadership and Management

What did you learn from rowing about being a team player?

I was a walk-on to the crew team my freshman year at Harvard — I knew I wanted team-based athletics to be a part of my college experience but knew very little about the sport. What I came to love about rowing was its competitive nature, the mixture of art and science and how objective the success metrics were. But above all, the team — it requires the absolute necessity of trust, synchronization, and collective effort. Rowing taught me that individual strength means nothing if the boat isn’t moving as one.

Our top racing boat won back-to-back national championships my junior and senior years. I’ll be clear — I was never in that boat! Half of those guys went on to the Olympics. But what I loved about being in our 2nd or 3rd racing eight every year was the mentality of constant improvement and how deeply interconnected our progress was. In rowing, there are always more guys than there are racing seats by about 20-30%. That means that everyone is fighting for a racing seat. I’m being pushed to be better by the guy who’s one second slower than me; I’m pushing the guy who’s one second faster than me; and he’s pushing the guy right ahead of him. You get this cascading intra-team competition wherein everyone is elevating each other every single practice and it creates an incredible camaraderie.

On top of that, if someone on your team misses practice, your boat can’t go out. It’s the definition of commitment to team trumping commitment to self, even though there’s room for personal bests and individual success within the team.

Those same dynamics are crucial in high-growth startups. Individual talent is critical. But we ultimately have the same aligned goals, and we only achieve them by rowing in the same direction, pushing each other to be better, and maintaining a fast and steady pace.

What is the most meaningful piece of advice you were ever given?

I apologize that this is a bit of a cop-out answer… but just as I believe that it’s more important to walk the walk than to talk the talk, I’ve learned the most from being around world class people at the top of their game and seeing them thrive in action. Seeing excellence in action has taught me more than being given a piece of specific advice.

I’ve been incredibly lucky to work closely with folks like Niyum Ghandi and Sid Sankaran who were among the youngest ever partners at Oliver Wyman. My old manager at Oscar, Brett Lotito, who is an aerospace engineer and the best structured problem solver I know. And Mike Swartz, a friend and mentor who used to run Amazon’s entire Process Improvement division back in the late 90s / early 2000s. You pick up on things like how they communicate, how they drive results and hold others accountable, and even their daily habits.

How do you view culture building as part of the long term success here at Certify?

My good friend, our Chief Growth Officer, Nick Helfrich, often says that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” I think they’re both necessary conditions for success. You need a well-crafted strategy and a team culture that attracts and retains the right people who can execute on that strategy. People are the key ingredient. That means setting an exceedingly high bar, but also ensuring that teams are resourced, challenged but not drowning, and equipped to do the job that's expected of them. This creates a team that wins and a culture that's rewarding.

At Certify, I’m constantly evaluating both myself and our teams to make sure we’re turning up the dial on both the standards we hold and the support we provide.

The Certify Experience

How do you see Certify evolving in the next five years?

We’re on the path to becoming the definitive source of truth for provider data. Along that path we’ll continue to grow with some of the premier healthcare organizations in the country, and eventually will become the go-to source of truth not just for organizations, but for providers themselves.

What at Certify are you most excited about right now?

Automation initiatives and driving even more value to our clients. That means continuously increasing efficiency, speed, and quality — pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in provider data management.

What about Certify’s long-term potential most excites you?

I’ve seen up close how provider data is a critical input to so many downstream core functions in healthcare — scheduling, directories, claims, care models, medical management. And yet, for something so critical, it’s shockingly unreliable. We have the opportunity to fix that, creating a system where accurate, trusted provider data makes healthcare more efficient and improves overall quality. We’re already seeing the impact of our work, and knowing how much more potential there is on the horizon makes every day at Certify exciting.

Are there other companies operating alongside or adjacent to our space that you find interesting, inspiring, or give you worry?

Competition excites me. It pushes us to be better and ultimately benefits consumers. I love it when we launch a new product feature and then see a competitor replicate it or when language we use to describe our vision makes its way into a different company’s pitch. It starts to create a bigger and bigger wave in the provider data space.

What’s your favorite thing about working for Certify?

We have what in my mind is the golden trifecta: (1) an incredible product with strong product-market fit; (2) a powerful mission that I’m passionate about, and (3) a collaborative, driven and fun team. Everyone at Certify embodies being a starting player on a championship winning team.

Thank you, Simon, for sharing your experiences with us.

You can learn more about Simon’s leadership journey in his bio.

If you are interested in joining our team, see our Careers page to find open positions.