Joe Williams, PharmD, MBA
Inventory & sync
Joe owns and practices in five community pharmacies in rural North Carolina, including Brisson Drugs in Saint Pauls (acquired 2015), Clinic Pharmacy in Hope Mills (2018), Fairmont Drug Company in Fairmont (2019) and Village Pharmacy in Fayetteville (2023). Across five acquisitions and one startup, he grew his first store roughly twelvefold.
He co-founded Apex Pharmacy Consulting in 2023, advising community pharmacy owners on inventory management, Medicare plan configuration and PioneerRx workflow, and was previously principal consultant at Indy Rx Consulting (2017 to 2024). Before ownership he managed Medical Village Pharmacy and, earlier, was a Walgreens store manager. He entered pharmacy school at 27 while working in a community pharmacy.
Credentials
Owner of five community pharmacies
Regular guest on PioneerRx’s Catalyst Pharmacy Podcast
Conference speaker on pharmacy operations and growth
Leads
SyncIQ · Inventory Intelligence (coming soon)
Ben Jolley, PharmD
Third-party plans & reimbursement
Ben is a third-generation pharmacist at Jolley’s Compounding Pharmacy in Salt Lake City, founded by his grandfather in 1954. He has worked in the business since 2004 and practiced as a pharmacist since 2018, with a clinical focus on compounding for pain management, hormone therapy and veterinary care.
He co-founded Apex Pharmacy Consulting in 2023 and consults on drug pricing, PBM contracts, PSAOs and reimbursement. He contracts directly with PBMs rather than through a PSAO. Jolley’s runs on PioneerRx, and Raichel works in his store just as she does in Joe’s and Neal’s.
Credentials
Senior Fellow for Healthcare, American Economic Liberties Project
Author for Drug Topics on pharmacy economics and closures
Lead Luminary, CPESN Utah
2017 PQA Competitive Scholar
Leads
Third-Party Mastery · Plan Reset
Neal Smoller, PharmD
Refills, e-scripts, vaccines & marketing
Neal founded Village Apothecary in 2006, one of New York’s first nationally accredited compounding pharmacies, now in Woodstock, New York. He founded Woodstock Vitamins in 2013, an e-commerce supplement business, and Supplement School, an online education program for pharmacists and practitioners.
He earned his PharmD at Albany College of Pharmacy in 2004 and worked in consultant, hospital and chain pharmacy before going independent. At PharmacyAI he is the product architect and lead builder of Raichel, and runs her in his own pharmacy.
Credentials
Host of The Big Mouth Pharmacist podcast
Led a community COVID-19 vaccination effort: more than 36,000 immunizations with 500 volunteers
Owner of an accredited compounding pharmacy since 2006
Leads
Refill automation · E-scripts · Vaccines and marketing (coming soon)
Alongside the pharmacists
Operators who have done this before.
Nick Brooke
Go-to-market & partnerships
Eleven years in pharmacy technology. Joined iMedicare in 2015 as one of its early sales hires, stayed through its rebrand to Amplicare, and saw the company through to its exit, representing sales and product in the buyer’s due diligence. Later led business development, enterprise revenue and sales strategy at Lumistry (2021 to 2024). Co-founder of MedSmart Insurance, a Medicare brokerage serving pharmacies.
Ryan J. Peterson
Engineering & security
Designed the AI development tools and platform that let Neal build Raichel from his pharmacy expertise, along with the distribution system and the subsystems that connect her to the pharmacy management system. Built so pharmacists define every workflow and every release passes engineering review before it reaches a store. Twenty years building software: founder of Serenity Software (100+ products for clients including Google, Dow Jones and PepsiCo), former EVP of Technology at Lottery.com, and a member of Toptal’s top-3% architect network.