How has your personal life influenced your leadership style?
My family’s varied interactions with the healthcare system—from barriers in personally accessing care, to perceived equity and even interfacing with suboptimal facility designs—have all influenced my leadership style. Although I began my career clinically in healthcare, experiencing the passing of my mother just seven years ago and the loss of a few other close family members over the last decade have all changed my perspective and improved my compassion in leading day-to-day.
How do you balance strategy and everyday work?
I view operations as a necessity to ensure the facilitation of day-to-day care for our patients we’re fortunate to serve. Strategy is equally critical to ensure that our organization remains relevant in the years ahead.
The Balanced Scorecard at Trinity Health, just like many other organizations, keeps me focused on attaining goals relative to both strategy and operations. These are regularly reviewed during our monthly operating reviews, so it’s critical that both are balanced. My weekly calendar is uniquely balanced with meetings to address operations and strategic growth.
How does your expertise in acute care inform ambulatory services and vice versa
My diverse experiences in acute and ambulatory care provide me with a unique perspective to understand both sides of the coin; from our traditional fee-for-service acute-care business, which has essentially “kept the lights on” for years, to our emerging value-based, ambulatory, virtual and home care models of the future.
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What’s your best advice to keep your leadership skills sharp?
Learning does not end when you complete your education, so be sure to immerse yourself in lifelong learning best tailored to your individual needs and development. Attend conferences, participate in webinars, research best practices, listen to podcasts, read relevant journals and magazines such as Modern Healthcare and network with others. Listening to all stakeholders, especially front-line employees, nurses and physicians is critical. They often provide unique perspectives that are valuable in helping executives lead and keeping one’s skills sharp. As leaders, we must realize that we will not always have every answer, so listening to others can pay dividends.
Who is your healthcare role model?
One healthcare leader I have always admired is CommonSpirit Health’s Lloyd Dean. As just one of several sitting Black healthcare system president/CEOs, he has been a role model for me coming up in an industry that still has work to do to become more diverse. He has been unwavering in his commitment to health equity, has successfully transitioned legacy organizations to financial sustainability, and is respected as a national healthcare leader.
