Story by Ryan Gauthier, rjgauthier@health.missouri.edu

When Gail Peace was just 11 years old, she made her first business pitch.

The St. Louis native felt she wasn’t earning enough income from babysitting gigs, so she carefully crafted plans for a cake-making business. Her parents listened intently to her proposal, which would see her turn a hefty profit by baking and decorating Barbie and Tony the Tiger-themed cakes.

“I’ve worked a lot of crazy jobs,” Peace said. “I mean, I took an Avon route at 12. I’ve just always had the entrepreneurial bug.”

Decades after pitching her parents on that cake venture, Peace is a seasoned health care executive and entrepreneur. As she begins the next chapter in her professional journey, she’s focused on giving back to the people and places that made her successes possible — including her alma mater.

The University of Missouri alumna is establishing the Gail Matejcic Peace Innovation Scholarship, a full-ride undergraduate scholarship supporting College of Health Sciences students interested in innovations that improve health care but who might not have the financial means to pursue higher education.

“I had parents who could afford to send me to school, but not everyone has that opportunity,” Peace said. “Sometimes the difference between graduating or not can be just a thousand dollars. I want to remove those financial barriers so students can focus on learning and growing.”

Peace is a dual graduate of the Mizzou College of Health Sciences, having received her Bachelor of Health Science in 1988 and Master of Health Administration in 1992. She built a successful career at the intersection of health care and technology with software startup Ludi, Inc., where she partnered with health care organizations to streamline provider compensation management and performance.

Over the past decade, she grew Ludi to serve hundreds of hospitals nationwide before selling the company to a private equity firm in late 2023. She’s become an investor and mentor to other entrepreneurs in the health sector, shifting her focus toward helping the next generation of health care leaders.

Investing in the next generation

Peace was inspired to start a scholarship in the College of Health Sciences based on her own experiences at Mizzou as well as her broader passion for empowering students — particularly women — to pursue careers in STEM fields and business.

Although she wasn’t always geographically nearby, Peace remained closely connected with the Mizzou MHA program throughout her career. She hired numerous MHA graduates and mentored many more young Mizzou grads.

“I’ve probably hired 20 students out of the MHA program over the years,” she said. “I loved it because they already understood how health care works when they came to join us. Mizzou grads are humble and hard-working people.”

As a female entrepreneur who successfully raised both venture capital and private equity funding, Peace is a vocal advocate for women in business and STEM careers. She is particularly focused on encouraging young women to pursue careers in health care technology and leadership, where she said they remain underrepresented.

“It’s not because they aren’t capable — it’s because they aren’t encouraged,” she said. “I want to change that.”

In addition to mentoring young entrepreneurs, Peace has been working to chronicle her experiences building a multimillion-dollar software company into a book, titled “No Shortcuts.” It’s set to release later this year.

By educating others and providing financial aid to future generations through her scholarship, Peace hopes to open doors for students who might otherwise struggle to afford higher education.

“Mizzou shaped my career path,” she said. “This is my way of paying it forward.”