Entrepreneur Of The Year celebrates ambitious entrepreneurs who are shaping the future
FRANKLIN, Tenn., April 22, 2025 – Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) announced the finalists for the prestigious Entrepreneur Of The Year 2025 Southeast Award. An independent panel of judges selected Joan Butters among 36 finalists for their entrepreneurial spirit, purpose, growth and lasting impact in building long-term value. Butters is CEO and co-founder of Xsolis, an AI-driven technology company that reduces administrative waste by enabling collaboration between healthcare providers and payers.
The Southeast program celebrates entrepreneurs from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Now in its 40th year, the Entrepreneur Of The Year program celebrates the bold leaders who disrupt markets through the world’s most ground-breaking companies, revolutionizing industries and making a profound impact on communities. The program honors bold entrepreneurs whose innovations shape the future and pave the way for a thriving economy and a hopeful tomorrow.
“The forward-looking vision of creating more frictionless healthcare when we founded Xsolis in 2013 has not wavered, but that’s not to say the company hasn’t pivoted, learning from client needs to inform different product capabilities along the way,” said Joan Butters, CEO and co-founder of Xsolis. “Thank you to my nominators for this recognition; to the hardworking team at Xsolis for your resiliency and relentless pursuit of excellence; and to our clients – true innovators who put their trust in Xsolis when AI was a little-known technology at the time – who have each played an integral role in our ongoing success.”
Xsolis was born from the idea that too many unnecessary silos exist in healthcare, particularly between providers and payers, and has grown to serve over 500 hospitals, around two-thirds of whom are connected to payer partners on the Xsolis AI platform, providing more objective medical necessity decision-making and reducing administrative burden during concurrent review processes. Under Butters’ leadership, the company has been ranked on the Inc. 5000 for fastest growing private companies in America for three years, as Modern Healthcare’s 2025 Best in Business in Artificial Intelligence alongside Oracle and Ambience Healthcare, as the Nashville Technology Council’s 2025 Tech Company of the Year, and as No. 1 Best in KLAS for Physician Advisory Services for four years, among other awards.
Entrepreneur Of The Year honors business leaders for their ingenuity, courage and entrepreneurial spirit. The program celebrates original founders who bootstrapped their business from inception or who raised outside capital to grow their company; transformational CEOs who infused innovation into an existing organization to catapult its trajectory; and multigenerational family business leaders who reimagined a legacy business model to strengthen it for the future.
Regional award winners will be announced on June 25 during a special celebration in Atlanta, GA and will become lifetime members of an esteemed community of Entrepreneur Of The Year alumni from around the world. The winners will then be considered by the National judges for the Entrepreneur Of The Year National Awards, which will be presented in November at the annual Strategic Growth Forum®, one of the nation’s most prestigious gatherings of high-growth, market-leading companies.
Sponsors
Founded and produced by Ernst & Young LLP, the Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards include presenting sponsors PNC Bank, Cresa, LLC, Marsh USA, and SAP. In the Southeast, sponsors also include VACO, LLC as the regional Platinum sponsor; ADP and King & Spalding as the regional Gold sponsors; and Babbit Bodner as the regional Silver sponsor.
About Xsolis
Xsolis is an AI-driven technology company that reduces administrative waste by enabling collaboration between healthcare providers and payers. Dragonfly®, its AI-driven proprietary platform, is the first and only solution to use real-time predictive analytics to continuously assign an objective medical necessity score and assess the anticipated level of care for every patient, enabling more efficiency across the healthcare system. Xsolis is headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee. For more information, visit www.xsolis.com.
About Entrepreneur Of The Year
Founded in 1986, Entrepreneur Of The Year has celebrated more than 11,000 ambitious visionaries who are leading successful, dynamic businesses in the US, and it has since expanded to nearly 60 countries globally.
The US program consists of 17 regional programs whose panels of independent judges select the regional award winners every June. Those winners compete for national recognition at the Strategic Growth Forum® in November where National finalists and award winners are announced. The overall National winner represents the US at the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ competition. Visit ey.com/us/eoy.
About EY
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