London, UK — 19/05/2026
Former healthcare transformation leader joins Flexzo AI as the company accelerates healthcare workforce innovation nationwide and international markets
Flexzo AI has announced the appointment of Penny Smee as its new Chief People & Operating Officer, strengthening the company's leadership team as it continues to scale its AI-powered healthcare workforce platform after the successful completion of a £10 million Series A funding round led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from Fuel Ventures.
Penny joins Flexzo AI following an accomplished 10-year career in the healthcare, where she became widely recognized for leading complex workforce transformation programs and delivering operational innovation across healthcare systems. Her experience spans mental health, community, acute care, and integrated care board leadership roles across the South East, South West, and Midlands.
Penny will also be joining the Flexzo AI team at this year's healthcare ConfedExpo, where the company will showcase the latest evolution of its platform, including new AI-driven workforce features, enhanced clinician engagement capabilities, and future product innovations designed to support healthcare providers facing increasing workforce pressures.
Visitors attending the event will have the opportunity to meet the Flexzo AI team, explore the platform in action, and learn more about how Flexzo AI is helping healthcare organizations create more agile, efficient, and sustainable workforce operations.
During her healthcare career, Penny led several major initiatives focused on workforce sustainability and operational efficiency, including the creation of the Housing Hub in Hampshire and Isle of Wight, leadership of the Mental Health Integration Program at Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire (BSW), and overseeing the South West collaborative program, which transformed the region from one of the healthcare's most challenged areas for temporary staffing spend into one of its highest-performing regions.
Prior to joining the healthcare, Penny also held senior commercial roles within the finance sector, including Sales Director positions, giving her a unique combination of healthcare operational expertise and commercial leadership.
Her appointment comes at a significant stage in Flexzo AI's growth journey as the company continues delivering workforce automation technology to healthcare organizations nationwide while building momentum for expansion into the US healthcare market.
One of the platform's standout innovations is its autonomous clinician engagement engine, which proactively reactivates qualified but inactive healthcare professionals based on AI-predicted staffing demand. Through its integrated Reactivation Agent, the platform manages clinician engagement at scale using chat, mobile notifications, and automated communication workflows. This significantly reduces manual recruiter workload while improving database utilization, accelerating time to hire, and reducing dependency on expensive external staffing agencies.
By integrating Flexzo AI into workforce operations, healthcare organizations can improve fill rates, reduce staffing bottlenecks, lower temporary staffing spend, and maintain operational efficiency while continuing to expand patient access to care.
Former healthcare transformation leader joins Flexzo AI as the company accelerates healthcare workforce innovation nationwide and international markets
Speaking about her move to Flexzo AI, Penny Smee said:
"This is the first opportunity that truly tempted me out of the healthcare. I believe in the products, and I believe they will help deliver huge value to the healthcare, particularly across workforce spend and operational efficiency.
The challenges facing the healthcare are significant, especially around workforce pressures and delivering digital transformation within an incredibly tight financial envelope.
What excites me most is that Flexzo AI is not simply digitising existing workforce processes, it is fundamentally changing how healthcare organizations predict, engage, and deploy workforce capacity in real time. It's incredibly exciting to join the business at a stage where we are growing rapidly in the UK while also expanding into the US market."
Flexzo AI CEO Jack Henderson welcomed Penny's appointment as a key milestone in the company's continued growth and international strategy.
"Penny's experience across healthcare workforce transformation is exceptional, and her understanding of the operational realities healthcare organizations face makes her an incredibly important addition to our leadership team.
Flexzo AI was built to solve some of the biggest workforce challenges in healthcare through intelligent automation, predictive staffing, and autonomous clinician engagement. We are already seeing significant traction nationwide, and as we continue expanding into the US market, having leaders like Penny who understand both operational complexity and transformation at scale will be invaluable.
Her passion for innovation and customer outcomes aligns perfectly with the culture we are building at Flexzo AI."
Flexzo AI's platform is designed to modernise healthcare workforce operations through intelligent automation and predictive workforce management. The platform provides healthcare organizations with real-time visibility into clinician availability, automated credentialing and compliance verification, and AI-driven shift matching across multiple sites and services.
Using both historical and live operational data, Flexzo AI enables providers to predict staffing shortages before they impact patient access or operational performance. Unlike traditional staffing models that rely on reactive recruitment cycles, Flexzo AI functions as a proactive workforce engine continuously tracking provider availability, aligning compliance and compensation requirements, and intelligently matching clinicians to roles in real time.
About Flexzo AI
Flexzo AI is an AI-powered healthcare workforce automation platform that enables healthcare providers to predict staffing shortages, automate credentialing and compliance, and engage clinicians at scale. By combining real-time availability tracking with autonomous provider reactivation and mobile-integrated communication, Flexzo AI helps healthcare organizations reduce staffing bottlenecks, lower agency dependency, improve workforce utilization, and scale workforce operations efficiently across healthcare systems.
