Riley Rees is the founder and chief executive officer of Sofia Health, a nationwide health and wellness marketplace that helps people discover, compare, book, and pay for care from trusted health and wellness providers.

A U.S. Air Force veteran with more than 20 years of service and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Riley founded Sofia Health in 2019 to close a gap she had seen from every side — as a caregiver, as a patient, and as a marketer who understood how people actually search: whole-person care was too hard to find, and the qualified providers who deliver it were too hard to discover.

Under her leadership, Sofia Health has grown from a provider marketplace into a broader platform. Through Sofia Prime, it delivers virtual wellness programming for employers, health plans, and government agencies. And through Veterans First by Sofia Health, it brings that same programming to millions of eligible Veterans, VA staff, and caregivers at no cost, in partnership with VA Health Care Systems across the country. Sofia Health is a Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB) and a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB).

Riley's connection to health care began in uniform. She started her Air Force career as an Airman in Aerospace Medical Services, working alongside doctors and nurses — from routine lab draws to delivering babies to caring for wounded soldiers and airmen during aeromedical evacuation. A certified EMT and Aeromedical Evacuation Technician, she helped transport the nation's wounded out of harm's way and to their next level of care, often in difficult and austere environments and in critical-care conditions aboard medical aircraft.

That firsthand experience — years of caring for patients directly in acute-care settings, from an early point in her career — gave Riley an unusually grounded understanding of what people face when they're navigating their health, and of the challenges service members and Veterans encounter when they return home to their communities.

Sofia Health came out of Riley's own experience as a patient. Years of flying jets on night-vision goggles in the Air Force left her with a herniated disc and chronic back and neck pain. She wanted real solutions — not just a prescription. Instead, she remembers sitting in a doctor's office explaining her pain only to be told, "You look fine." A surgeon said she was too young for surgery and handed her pain pills. As a pilot, masking the pain wasn't an option; she wanted to actually get better. She left those appointments feeling dismissed, unheard, and stuck.

The providers who could actually help — complementary and integrative practitioners like acupuncturists, chiropractors, and physical therapists, the kind who work alongside conventional medicine — weren't showing up. They marketed their credentials ("Doctor of this, Specialist in that") rather than the problems they solved, and their websites, when they existed, were often invisible to search. The care existed; these practitioners were just nearly impossible to find. The one question she cared about — can this person help me with what I'm going through right now? — went unanswered.

That growth opened a new chapter. Organizations kept asking for the same thing individuals wanted — reliable access to wellness support — so Sofia Health built Sofia Prime, a managed virtual wellness program delivering hundreds of live instructor-led classes each month, plus an on-demand library, to employers, health plans, and government agencies.

For Riley, the most meaningful expansion brought her career full circle. The Airman who once cared for wounded service members aboard medical aircraft now leads a company that delivers wellness programming to millions of eligible Veterans, VA staff, and caregivers at no cost — through Veterans First by Sofia Health, in partnership with VA Health Care Systems across the country. Having served on medical missions around the world, Riley knows firsthand the health challenges Veterans face when they return home, and Veterans First is her answer to them.

Riley holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. She combines that business training with her health-care experience and her background in consumer marketing — a deep understanding of consumer behavior and how people search for and buy services — to lead Sofia Health.

That marketing expertise is built into the platform itself: it's what powers Sofia Health's approach of meeting clients where they actually search and giving providers the visibility they can't build alone.