About Legara | Our Story & Team
About Legara

Three partners. One decade. Built from the ground up.

Legara wasn't assembled from a pitch deck. It was built by three partners who came together over a decade ago and have spent every year since refining a workforce model purpose-built for FQHCs. The operational protocols, the PSR support structure, the compliance architecture, the encounter-based economics. All of it came from doing the work, not theorizing about it.

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We didn't set out to build a platform. We set out to solve a problem we kept running into at every health center we worked with: they needed behavioral health capacity, the hiring model wasn't delivering it, and nobody had built the operational infrastructure to do it differently. So we built it ourselves. That was ten years ago. We've been refining it ever since.
Roger Stellers
CEO, Legara Inc.
Our Story
How three partners built a new model for FQHC behavioral health.

The three founding partners came together through California's behavioral health system. Roger came from healthcare operations, where he'd progressed from a marketing role to COO to CEO of a primary care network. Roy had spent decades in behavioral health leadership, holding CEO positions at psychiatric facilities, acute medical hospitals, and primary care networks. Bill had spent decades as a psychiatric nurse working frontline behavioral health intakes before earning his doctorate in psychology.

What brought them together was a shared observation: every FQHC they encountered was fighting the same workforce crisis with the same tools. Hiring cycles that took a year. Turnover that erased progress. Employment costs that consumed the budget before a single patient was seen. And no vendor in the market was solving the structural problem.

So they built the solution themselves. Starting with a single FQHC partner, they designed and tested every element of what would become Legara's operational model: the dedicated PSR support structure, the encounter-based economics, the compliance architecture, the PRO relationship model. Over ten years and nine FQHC partnerships, every protocol was refined through real deployments, real patients, and real operational challenges. Legara is the formalization of that decade of work.

10+
Years building this model together
9
Active FQHC partners across California
50,000+
Patient encounters delivered every year
40+
Active behavioral health providers in the network
Our Mission
More clinicians in front of more patients at the health centers that need them most.

Every decision we make, from our financial model to our operational infrastructure to who we hire, is measured by one question: does this put another clinician in front of another patient? If it doesn't serve that goal, we don't do it.

Leadership
The people behind the model.

Legara's founding team brings together operational leadership, clinical depth, financial discipline, and decades of behavioral health experience. They've worked together for over a decade, building this specific model through real FQHC deployments.

Roger Stellers, CEO of Legara
Roger Stellers
CEO
Roger is a builder. He spots unmet needs in complex markets and constructs solutions around them. He entered healthcare through a California primary care network, where his strategic instincts were recognized quickly. Within a year he was leading the organization as CEO. When Bill and Roy approached him about a gap they'd identified in FQHC behavioral health delivery, Roger saw what they saw: a structural problem that hiring alone would never solve. He designed the Legara model, the entity architecture, the economic framework, the go-to-market strategy, and has spent the past decade refining it through real FQHC partnerships. Today Roger leads Legara's vision, growth strategy, and client relationships, personally working with health center leaders across California.
Jonathon Wheaton, CPA
VP Finance & Operations
Jonathon is a Certified Public Accountant with decades of experience as a financial consultant, fractional CFO, and contingent CEO, guiding organizations through launches, restructurings, and complex operational builds. Referred to by his partners and clients as their most trusted business advisor, Jonathon brings conservative fiscal management and a deep understanding of healthcare financial operations. At Legara, he oversees the financial and operational infrastructure that makes the platform work: provider onboarding, credentialing workflows, EHR integration, scheduling systems, compliance documentation, and the financial controls that ensure every encounter is documented, cleared, and paid correctly. His commitment to Legara's mission is personal as well as professional.
William Wells, Founding Partner of Legara
William Wells, RN, PhD
Founding Partner & Board Advisor
Dr. Wells spent decades as a psychiatric nurse working frontline behavioral health intakes in hospital settings before earning his doctorate in psychology. He served as Director of Clinical Services for a major medical center and worked in acute detoxification and behavioral health units across Southern California. His clinical depth in trauma-informed care and behavioral health service delivery ensures that Legara's model stays grounded in the realities of the populations FQHCs serve. Beyond healthcare, Bill serves as the Mayor of El Cajon, California and is a two-time congressional candidate, bringing a public service perspective to Legara's mission of expanding access to behavioral health care in underserved communities.
Roy Rodriguez, Founding Partner of Legara
Roy Rodriguez, MBA
Founding Partner & Board Advisor
Roy is a veteran healthcare administrator recognized as Mental Health Person of the Year and a former San Diego Hospital Council member. Over his career he has held CEO positions at a freestanding psychiatric facility, an acute medical hospital, and a primary care mobile physicians network. He served as Director of a methadone clinic at UCLA and administered a residential treatment program for adolescents. Roy was also owner and Chairman of the Board at Alvarado Parkway Institute, a San Diego-based behavioral health facility. He holds a bachelor's degree in Public Administration and an MBA in Healthcare Administration. His extensive network across healthcare organizations and community partners, built over decades of behavioral health leadership, strengthens Legara's positioning within the safety-net ecosystem.
What Drives Us
Principles refined through a decade of practice.
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Every Decision Serves Access

We measure every operational decision by one question: does this put another clinician in front of another patient? The PSR model, the encounter-based economics, the compliance architecture. All of it exists because it serves that goal. If it doesn't expand access, we don't build it.

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Incentives That Point the Same Direction

Legara earns when encounters happen. Health centers pay only for completed patient visits. Clinicians earn per encounter with full operational support. Nobody succeeds unless patients get care. There are no placement fees, no retainers, no economics that reward anything other than delivered care.

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The Operational Layer Nobody Else Built

Staffing agencies place a provider and move on. Telehealth companies connect a screen. Legara built the operational infrastructure between the provider and the patient that determines whether the deployment actually works: dedicated PSRs, named PROs, 24-hour chart completion, biweekly quality checks, compliance documentation. This is what a decade of refinement produces.

See how the model works in practice.

Walk through the operational infrastructure, the deployment process, and the results. Or talk to our team directly about what adding Legara capacity would look like at your health center.

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