Ashley Banek is the founder and CEO of Samara Health.

 

She started Samara because she lived the gap it was built to close. A near-miss when serious abdominal symptoms were dismissed as routine pain. A hysterectomy recommended at thirty-five — and refused. The financial wall between her and the specialists who could actually help. Years of being the only person holding the thread between her own providers, her own records, her own decisions.

 

She knew what was missing because she had been asked to be it.

 

Samara is what she built instead. A care intelligence layer for women with endometriosis and other complex gynecologic conditions — sitting beside her doctors, never above them. Translating between specialists who do not speak to each other. Coordinating the parts of care the system leaves on the patient. Staying long after the diagnosis lands.

 

Ashley brings more than fifteen years of work at the intersection of healthcare, human performance, and operational design. She has built and led wellbeing programs inside elite performance environments — places where recovery is treated as infrastructure, not indulgence. She brings that same standard to Samara. Women navigating chronic, cyclical, and systemic conditions deserve continuity of care that matches the complexity of what they are actually living with.

 

Samara is the company she needed. It is now the company she is building — for the woman who has been waiting.