For Ashley Curl, MSN ’16, nursing has always been about more than treating symptoms. It’s about restoring quality of life, dignity, and hope. Curl is now the founder of AgeWell Medical, a nurse-owned, woman-led concierge clinic redefining how patients experience care.
Curl’s leadership journey began during her graduate education, where she served as a graduate teaching assistant for the College of Nursing’s bachelor’s program. Over the course of three semesters, she worked directly with undergraduate students, an experience that shaped her passion for mentorship.
“That role was incredibly rewarding,” Curl says. “Helping train the next generation of nurses showed me how powerful our profession really is.”
Her early clinical career took her into urgent care, where she treated a wide range of illnesses, from minor to life-threatening emergencies. While the fast-paced environment sharpened her skills, it also revealed a troubling reality: many patients relied on urgent care as their only access point to health care, with little opportunity for long-term treatment or prevention.
“I didn’t want to be the provider who had to say no,” she explains. “I kept asking if no one else is going to help these patients, who will?”
After the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread burnout, Curl made a career shift. She joined a hormone clinic, where she saw firsthand how insurance-driven models often denied care to patients who needed it most. Many had been told their lab results were “normal,” even as their quality of life deteriorated.
“I believe care should be based on how people feel and function. Not just a number on a lab report,” Curl says. “So many of these patients had exhausted every option and were still suffering.”
Within months of treatment, she watched patients return with measurable improvements and renewed lives. That experience sparked the vision for AgeWell Medical.
Curl launched her clinic without outside investment, handling everything from licensing and compliance to branding and marketing. Drawing on prior small-business experience and a self-taught design skillset, she built a practice that was intentionally personal.
“I saved for a year to open and went more than six months without a paycheck,” she says. “It was hard, but I believed in what I was building.”
Operating outside the traditional insurance model allows Curl to remove barriers to care. Without third-party restrictions, treatment decisions are made collaboratively with time, trust, and individualized plans at the center.
“It becomes a true provider-patient relationship,” she explains. “Care moves faster, and patients have autonomy.”
AgeWell Medical focuses on proactive, root-cause care, addressing issues like obesity, hormonal imbalance, and metabolic disease before they escalate. The results have been transformative.
Curl has seen patients reverse prediabetes, discontinue blood pressure and cholesterol medications, eliminate the need for CPAP machines, and regain energy and confidence they thought they’d lost forever.
“This is about quality of life, more energy, less risk, and more years lived well,” she says. “The ripple effects are endless.”
Mentorship remains central to Curl’s work, shaped by her own experience navigating entrepreneurship without a clear roadmap. From licensing hurdles to leasing space, she learned many lessons the hard way and now shares that knowledge freely.
“I want other nurses to know they can do this,” she says. “We can own businesses. We can fill gaps in care. We can build the future of healthcare ourselves.”
She’s already helping fellow nurse practitioners take their first steps toward opening clinics, and she’s actively developing a nonprofit to support underserved veterans. Motivated by disparities in how hormone deficiencies are treated within the VA system, Curl hopes to bridge the gap so veterans don’t have to pay out of pocket for life-changing care.
“This will save lives,” she says simply.
Curl credits her graduate education at UT with teaching her adaptability and confidence across specialties from rural health and women’s health to dermatology and NICU care.
“UT showed me the gaps,” she says. “And it taught me that nurses are capable of filling them.”
Now, just seven months into opening her clinic, receiving an alumni award feels humbling.
“Having my dream and small-town business recognized by UT and the college is truly unbelievable,” said Curl. “Two years ago, this dream felt out of reach. Today, I’m living it. I hope to serve as an example that when you have a dream and are willing to work for it, incredible things can happen.”
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CONTACT:
Kara Clark Cardwell ([email protected], 865-974-9498)