Celebrating a Leader in Eye Care Technology

We're excited to share that Colton Calandrella, CEO and Co-Founder of Barti, has been named to Vision Monday's "40 Under 40" for 2026 — recognized in the C-Suite Achievers category, which honors senior executives and chief officers leading their companies forward.

It's the second year in a row Vision Monday has recognized Colton, who was named to the publication's inaugural "30 Under 30" class in 2025. Earlier this year he also received the Olin Emerging Alumni Award from Washington University, his alma mater.

Why This Recognition Matters

Vision Monday's 40 Under 40 highlights the next generation of leaders shaping every corner of optical — retail, product design, manufacturing, technology, and vision care. Colton stands out for a focus he's held since day one: giving independent practices software worth using.

As his nominator put it, Barti "promises to be one of the great future EHRs in optometry. Colton is leading its innovation."

It Started with 150 Phone Calls

Before Barti, Colton was a management consultant at Bain & Company, where he built software for Fortune 500 transformations and developed an AI product inside the firm's accelerator, the Baincubator. In 2016 he launched his first startup, CheckTheQ, helping venues like St. Louis Airport cut wait times.

The idea for Barti came from a gap he kept noticing.

"While working in health tech consulting, I noticed that every other medical specialty (e.g., dental, chiropractic, med spas) has at least one well-funded startup tackling the problem of outdated practice management software. Not vision care: there had never been a single [venture capital]-backed system of record."

So he picked up the phone. Colton cold called 150 eyecare practices and asked each one the same question: on a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your EHR?

The answers confirmed it. Most providers didn't like the software they used every day. Soon after, Colton connected with Kelly Cai, OD — an optometrist who became Barti's Co-Founder and COO, and who Vision Monday recognized as one of the Most Influential Women in Optical. They've been building Barti ever since.

Colton's Impact on Eye Care Technology

Since co-founding Barti, Colton has helped build the AI Operating System for eye care — one platform, one log-in, designed with input from 30+ eye care providers:

• Quinn, Barti's suite of AI agents — QuinnScribe for AI-assisted charting, Quinn Receptionist for scheduling support, and AI History and AI Smart Scan for less manual data entry and faster access to the patient information that matters. Together they save providers and staff hours every day.
• The first fully integrated VoIP phone system for an eye care EHR — patient calls and records in one place, not two.
• One platform instead of ten vendors — EHR, practice management, phones, billing, and marketing together, so practices can eliminate 3–5 separate tools.

The goal behind all of it is a number Colton repeats often:

"Our suite of AI agents, which we call Quinn, saves doctors and staff hours per day while helping fill their schedules. The ultimate goal is to automate 70 to 80 percent of the routine admin work in a practice to help independent practices thrive. We are well on our way there."

Why the Future Belongs to Independents

Ask Colton where all of this is heading and he'll point straight at the independent practice down the street.

"Because independent practices are more agile than many of the bigger chains, they have been faster to adopt AI. The future for independents has never been more bright in my opinion as AI collapses many of the operational and scale advantages the large players previously had a monopoly on."

The advantages that used to come with size — back-office depth, staffing bandwidth, marketing budgets — are exactly the ones AI is flattening. A one-doctor practice with the right tools can now run like a much bigger one. That's who we build for, and it's why we build the way we do.

Empowering independent providers stays at the heart of how Colton thinks and how Barti operates. He's a member of the American Optometric Association and a new member of the Business Outside Executive Forum.

What's Next for Barti

Recognition is a nice milestone. What actually drives Colton and the team is the work: more AI agents, more of the busywork handled automatically, more practices spending their day on patients instead of paperwork.

Congratulations, Colton — from all of us. What we've taken on here is hard, and it's the kind of thing eye care has needed for a long time. We're glad you're the one out front.

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