About Us

Alice Shade
CEO & Founder of A-Team Partners, powered by 4A Ventures
Education
Alice earned a BA in Accounting from Kentucky Wesleyan College, and her Master’s in Health Administration from the University of Kentucky.
Personal Background
As a Kentucky native, Alice supports the commonwealth’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and its founders and CEOs.
Alice loves spending time with her three lively daughters and sharing her joy of all things outdoors. She especially enjoys exploring and hiking national parks, gardening, and playing tennis.
Alice Shade is a seasoned executive with nearly 30 years of expertise in business strategy and organization development. As the CEO & Founder of A-Team Partners, Alice provides businesses with the advice, access, action, and accountability they need to grow.
Through her customized support, she prepares teams in three key areas to accelerate their impact:
- Strategic planning and execution
- Executive coaching & leadership advisory
- Team development & optimization
Among her successes since founding A-Team Partners’ parent company, 4A Ventures, in 2019, is launching a multi-million-dollar independent physician practice. Alice was instrumental in securing financing, establishing systems and teams, and guiding the owners through strategic decisions during the planning, implementation, and growing phases.
CEOs turn to her to support their strategic execution efforts, developing the teams and accountability systems that position their companies to achieve exceptional profitability and become national industry leaders. In some instances, she serves as a board member, bringing her depth of experience to the boardroom.
Among her other current roles, Alice is a Vistage Chair, which includes leading a CEO Group, a Key Executive Group, and an Inside Group. As Chair, Alice facilitates monthly group meetings and executive coaches during one-on-one engagements to help members establish their visions and seek clarification to make optimal decisions that lead to true innovation, strong teams, organizations, and communities.
Alice also serves as chair of ed-tech company Clover Learning, an emerging leader in the educational technology sector. Additionally, in her previous capacity as an Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Louisville, Alice co-founded Awaken Digital Health Solutions, a digital health company developing applications to detect, prevent, and treat eating disorders, a top deadly mental health disease.
Additional Experience
Before founding 4A Ventures, Alice spent a decade as Founder and CEO of SentryHealth. Through fundraising, client creation, and strategic partnership development, she led the technology-enabled health management platform firm from being an idea to a successful Series A company. When she left in 2019, leading healthcare research institutions nationwide, including Johns Hopkins University, were using SentryHealth’s programs.
In her time with SentryHealth, Alice earned several awards:
- Greater Louisville Inc.’s “Fast 50” list
- Kentucky Chamber of Commerce’s 2018 Emerging Entrepreneur
- Greater Louisville Inc.’s 2019 Inc.credible Health & Wellness Award
- Worksite Wellness Council of Louisville’s 2019 Worksite Wellness Gold Award
Before SentryHealth, Alice worked extensively on the payor and clinical provider sides for various healthcare companies, including United Healthcare and the University of Louisville Physicians.
Throughout her career, Alice has also invested her time and expertise in executive roles at the University of Louisville Physicians, the University of Louisville’s Product Bootcamp Program, Launch-It, and Kentucky’s Passport Health Plan.