Ramstad: Like his dad, David Wellstone is trying to help people with mental illness

Anyone who inherits a successful family business knows it’s tough to live up to, or stand out from, beloved parents or grandparents.

So imagine being David Wellstone. He’s a businessman who wants to help people, but he is not allergic to making a profit. People can’t resist comparisons to his near-sainted parents, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone and Sheila Wellstone, who were tragically killed in a plane crash two weeks before the 2002 election at the height of their progressive political power.

David Wellstone rejected his father’s advice to become a teacher and instead went into business, farming and selling real estate. His father eventually told him he “was probably gonna have more money than the rest of us,” he recalled.

“The legacy I want to leave is not just a great guy, but a good businessperson,” Wellstone, who is now 60, told me recently.

Since 2002, he at times acted as an advocate for one of his father’s signature legislative ideas — extending insurance benefits to patients with mental health problems. Last fall, he began to restore an old green bus his father used to campaign around the state in the 1990s — with an eye toward using it for his current business.

Over the last seven years, Wellstone built Pathfinder Solutions that created a technology platform for people in recovery and the clinics and practitioners who serve them. Recently, Pathfinder opened a physical office called Pathfinder Care in Ramsey, a fast-growing northern exurb of the Twin Cities with unmet demand for addiction recovery and other mental health services.

He’s raised more than $12 million from investors who he said understand the business produces outcomes besides those measured in dollars.

The business is built around the idea that people in recovery who stay connected with peers and counselors have a better chance of taking control of their addiction and their lives.

Wellstone, with a team of developers, created a smartphone app for individuals in recovery. It lets practitioners keep in touch and streamline billing to insurers and government agencies. Pathfinder has lined up customers in Minnesota and Arizona and will soon expand to Washington state.

The company also works with more than half of the Native American nations in Minnesota, owing in part to the connections first forged by Wellstone’s father.

“It was the typical startup,” Wellstone said. “A bunch of us went unpaid. We hired the development people. We built a tool. And then, lo and behold, it worked.”

“Our tech stack is pretty robust,” he added, ticking off some of the company’s advantages: “Our ability to work in the Native American space is unique. We have many different revenue streams.”

“We’re not breakeven yet, but we’re getting there,” Wellstone said.

After the death of his parents and his sister, who also died in the 2002 crash, Wellstone moved to California. A couple years later, advocates on mental health issues urged him to lobby members of Congress to pass legislation requiring insurers to treat mental health on an equal basis with physical illnesses.

The law that passed in 2008, which is named for both Paul Wellstone and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., eliminated differences in copayments and deductibles for mental health treatments.

“I spent four years flying to D.C. on my dime and became known for getting that passed,” David Wellstone said. “So now I’m working on mental health and addiction. My path found me.”

After returning to Minnesota a decade ago, Wellstone started a company that built sober housing aimed at people who are in recovery. Pathfinder evolved from that experience.