Ep 30: Michelle Billingsley: Hands On Techie Turned CIO

Diva Tech Talk was honored to chat with Michelle Billingsley, Vice President and Chief Information Officer for nonprofit Blue Care Network. In her role, Michelle manages a team of 105 full-time IT professionals, supplemented by 150 consultants/contractors, and directs information technology operations and solution delivery to meet the dynamic business needs of Michigan’s largest HMO, serving over 800,000 members.

Michelle fell in love with technology early in life.  A high school science project in programming led her to “the love of solving problems and the love of programming.”  While obtaining her undergraduate degree at Western Michigan University in computer science, with a minor in math and business, she worked in the computer lab and taught computer classes.  “I find it fun and energizing,” she said.  “The people you get to meet and work with are funny, quirky, different and so intelligent.”

Post-college, Michelle began her career at National Tech Team, a large IT supplier and training company, where she delivered training in UNIX and C programming for automotive engineers and programmers. Then she went to Wayne State University in Detroit as a systems analyst, and obtained her Masters Degree in Education, Instructional Technology while working full-time, for 8 years, on university IT initiatives (and also “met my telecommunications administrator husband.”)  From there, eager to apply her skills to the business world, she went to a small healthcare company. “Healthcare, for years, has lagged behind in technology,” said Michelle.

She saw that gap as an opportunity, and worked for a small supplier of Medicaid programs.  “It was the best learning ever for the field because I did everything from write code for reporting to being a leader for the claims team to doing cabling for the networks to installing software.  It helped me to learn about a broad spectrum of the healthcare business. ”  

HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act) was taking hold then, and Michelle saw her next opportunity to become a consultant, “to help people be prepared to meet the HIPAA mandates.”  She went to Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan as a contractor, and was then offered a job.

“In my earlier days at Blue Cross, I used to say ‘oh, I’m only going to stay for a little while’…and here I am 14 years later!  Because there’s so much that goes on, I didn’t really need to go to another company to have different projects to work on.”

Michelle enthusiastically discussed the growing audience being served by BCN after passage of the Affordable Care Act.  “There have been changes in our business model.  We used to have more group business.  Now we have had a huge insurgence from the federally-funded marketplace of individuals. Serving them vs. serving our group customers has really changed our business, and our focus.  We are balancing both; serving our group customers and new individual customers, who are used to a more ‘retail’ environment…trying to continue to provide products that engage those members, that help them stay healthy, and help them think about their care, and control their cost of care.”

Michelle is excited about her career future in healthcare working with “disruptive” technologies.  She mentioned the impact of wearable devices, BIG data, telemedicine, cognitive predictive analytics and pharmaceuticals on the business. “All of those things are really starting to disrupt healthcare.  I would love to be a part of developing and leading projects, using disruptive technology, that helps in bringing the cost of U.S. healthcare way, way down to make it sustainable. The future is knowing how to keep you out of the ER or out of the doctor.”

Michelle’s personal leadership strengths include a strong goal orientation (“I like to see outcomes”); her ability to communicate her team’s impact and their accountability to them; and a strong, empathetic focus on “servant leadership.”   “I’m not here to tell everybody ‘we have to get this done,’ said Michelle.  “I’m here to facilitate and remove roadblocks for them.  I always made a rule, throughout my career, to never ask somebody to do something I wouldn’t personally do myself.”  She also cites balance and courageousness as a personal hallmark.  “As a woman, I was pregnant during one of my projects.  I powered through it. Balancing my career with being a mom, balancing my job responsibilities with my husband’s military career and deployments,” are all exemplary of that, to Michelle, since she continuously focused on her career simultaneously with her personal life.  “When you’ve worked on projects around-the-clock, when you’re pregnant and your husband is in Iraq,” she exclaims, “there is nothing scary. People say ‘this project’ is really hard’.  (I say) Bring it!”

Michelle’s advice for aspiring women technology leaders is:

• Make your communications “relatable.” (“Remember how they hear you.  Forget acronyms; use analogies.”)

• Be courageous, but recognize that part of courageousness is being vulnerable. (“You have to be able to accept help.”)

• Have goals for yourself and for your family. (“Then you know what you are working for.”)

• Build a broad network of people inside and outside your organization. (“You need it so that you have people you can reach out to as resources; you need a subset of it for feedback.”)

• Get a mentor. (“My mentors have been invaluable for me.”)

• Take risk with your career, it stretches you. (“Take on things that are really hard.  It’s sometimes scary, but it’s like riding a bike.  You get used to it.”)

Michelle Billingsley can be reached on Twitter @mebillingsley.   

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Ep 29: Karla Thomas: Leading Her Way in a Global Career

Diva Tech Talk chatted with Karla Thomas, Director of IT, Global Cyber Security and Audit at Tower International.  Tower is a Tier 1 leading global manufacturer of engineered automotive structural metal components and assemblies primarily serving original equipment manufacturers ("OEMs").  Tower’s products are manufactured at 27 facilities, strategically located in North America, Europe, Brazil, China and recently Mexico; and they have manufacturing operations through seven engineering and sales locations around the world.  The issues surrounding global cyber security and audit are manifold, so Karla is an extremely busy woman.

Karla had not originally intended to enter the tech field. Her first career goal was to become a math teacher and she did end up teaching. However, her very first class she taught was for a large company who was switching all their computers from Microsoft DOS to Microsoft Windows operating systems.  Her students asked “why Windows?” Karla’s empathetic response was “I don’t know,” but now she “cannot imagine going back to those early days!”  After teaching for several years, she was recruited by the President of now defunct Simplex, when he was one of her students, and she made the switch into corporate life as a PC Analyst/Trainer which was a tough decision.

Karla marveled at the experiences that her career has brought her, taking her leadership and experience around the world.  At her first company, she was sent to California to do some work (“My first business travel within the IT world!”) and now she has worked in Asia, Europe and South America, as well as throughout North America.  

Karla is now on the information technology leadership team at Tower and has been there for 12 years.  

“I was brought in as a help desk manager,” she shared.  “During my first two months, I spend half of that time in China, which was an amazing adventure.”  From Help Desk Manager at Tower, Karla progressed to an Infrastructure Manager, then to an Infrastructure Director.

“All along, one of the things key to what I do is the ability to communicate with non-technical people, bridging that gap between IT and the business,” she said.  This has been a very positive thing for Karla’s career up to today, where she has frequent meetings with Tower’s Audit Committee, including board members.  Very occasionally, the skill has also been a detriment, since it has sometimes tarnished her image within the IT organization.  

Fifteen years ago, Karla shared a memory of having to take a network administrator behind closed doors to say: “Maybe I don’t talk the way you do.  That doesn’t mean I don’t understand the technology.”  In dealing with bias like that, Karla said “Basically, you just have to be upfront and explain that you have a different way of approaching things; being very confident, yourself, is difficult, sometimes.”  For Karla it comes down to “being firm and explaining that you can’t do the job that you do, without understanding the technology” but expressing it in a non-technical way.

What excites Karla about her work at Tower International is that it is constantly changing. Five months into her tenure, Tower declared bankruptcy and information technology was very important in the restructuring.  Two years after that, Tower emerged from bankruptcy, and was acquired by a financial investment group.  Now, it is flourishing and has recently declared an IPO, and returned to being its own growing corporate entity.

“Through all those business changes, you have to understand how much the technology is relied upon,” Karla said. “And how much the technology changes, and the needs change.  It made every day, every year, every month a very different experience.”  

On top of her other current responsibilities, Karla is excited to project manage infrastructure standardization in Mexico, where Tower has recently expanded.  This is a first for her, since a number of her IT colleagues are not English-speaking.  She found Google translation tools imperative in successfully delivering on the team’s commitments.  She discussed her global role, terming it exciting, but not without some personal compromises.  She noted that it “takes more energy” to carefully discuss key tasks/topics with speakers, for whom English is not their primary language.  She also discussed the need to enforce U.S. policies and procedures in other cultures as being a challenge.  

“You have to get colleagues to accept doing things ‘our way’ and to understand why,” she said.

Karla cited flexibility as being key “to advance, and just be able to survive in a challenging role.” She recommended that professionals not “pigeonhole” themselves into “just understanding what you do. If you want to be successful, you have to have your ears open, understand and listen to what the business is doing not just what IT is doing.”

Karla does not think that her gender has had a negative effect on her career. “I was the third daughter to a father, born in 1902, who raised me to say ‘there’s nothing you can’t do’. He was a contractor, and he started out by putting a hammer in my hand, and teaching me that the role was ok. If I wanted to be the first woman to fly in space, that’s (also) ok!” However, in technology, Karla commented: “You do have those people who discount women. But it’s the success that so many of us have had that has proven that women certainly can be leaders in the field.”

Karen recommends community groups to help build networks.  Personally, she has been involved with MCWT (The Michigan Council of Women in Technology), SIM (the Society for Information Management), and the CIO organization supporting Midwest Technology Leaders.  She also noted that SANS, a cooperative research and education organization reaching more than 165,000 security professionals around the world, has a “Women in Technology” arm. She recommends that colleagues reach out through national and regional events, outside of their specialty.

Karla’s advice for aspiring leaders is:

• Develop a strong, firm, consistent, authentic personality “that you aren’t going to change.” (“As women, we are different in the way that we converse with people, inspire people, motivate people. Lead your way.”)

• Be willing to do what you ask your people to do.

• Ensure that you thank and recognize people.

• Be a conscious role model.

Karla Thomas can be reached at kft2358@gmail.com.  

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Ep 28: Carey Pachla: An Intentional Path to Fulfillment

Diva Tech Talk recently interviewed Carey Pachla, President of Fast Switch, a rapidly growing information technology consulting company, with 750 staff members and 2015 sales of $80 million  (a 30% annual growth rate) specializing in contract, contract-to-hire and executive search services.

Carey’s journey in technology was an intentional one. Graduating as a business major with a human resources concentration from Western Michigan University, Carey thought, long and hard, about which industry would be best for her. Discussing information technology, she said “I actually sought it out. When I got out into the field, my first job was in sales for a logistics and shipping company. Loved it, but really thinking long-term, I talked to many people and I researched.  At that time, IT was booming and everything I learned pointed me in a technology direction.”  She learned much more on the job.  “I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what all that meant,” she said.  “But I started out seeking jobs in IT and that led me ultimately into staffing and recruiting in the field.”

Carey said she couldn’t be happier about her choice. “The main reason is that there are so many wonderful, smart individuals in this industry, and I learn every day.”  

Having spent the subsequent 10 years in tech companies, after her stint in logistics, Carey is also enthusiastic about her company of the last 14 years:  Fast Switch.   “It is extremely forward-thinking.  Our motto is ‘fast, flexible, creative, and honest.’  Fourteen years ago we were doing things other IT staffing companies were not.”   Carey’s customers range from Fortune 100 organizations to startups.  Her biggest regional clients include Ford Motor Company, Nationwide Insurance, Cardinal Health, United Health Group, General Motors, and a number of automotive suppliers and financial/banking companies.

Having evolved into President of Fast Switch, Carey spends much of her current time strategically evaluating how she and her team can consistently improve in delivering on their overall mission. “I’m always looking at how we can do things faster; how we can do them better; how can we deliver better value.”  Carey said that she is extremely fortunate in her timing as she joined Fast Switch when the company was developing the Midwest region.  “We had an open drawing board. No one knew who we were. “ Now, through focused efforts, the Fast Switch team is very proud of their level of positive recognition.

Carey discussed her continuous creative efforts serving her customers.  She described a program that Fast Switch initiated with nonprofit Focus Hope equipping individuals with technology skills to become part of the talent pool for one of her largest customers.   Because of this program, and other initiatives like it, “I would say that the one adjective that describes my job is fulfilling,” Carey said.

Asked about her personal leadership strengths, Carey said that self-awareness and her propensity to surround herself with people who are dissimilar to her, filling in for her weaknesses, is very important.  She also thinks that always taking a genuine interest in her colleagues, her customers, and her team is powerful and positive.

In terms of her philanthropic life, Carey is currently the Vice President of The Michigan Council of Women in Technology (MCWT), a nonprofit dedicated to advancing women in tech. She is slated to become that organization’s President in 2017.   She described a number of MCWT programs aimed at helping girls consider, and join, the tech field including six Camp Infinity summer camps for middle schoolers, and a 1-day event for both middle school and high school girls called “Girls Are IT,” teaching inner city girls about IT.  Carey also discussed an MCWT event for women coming up in May 2016: EXECUTIVE CONNECTIONS SUMMIT, which convenes 1000 people and thought leaders.

In a common theme throughout her career and life, Carey talked about women and what they bring to the workplace.  “Women bring a lot of great things.  We bring compassion.  We bring resilience,” she said.  She also discussed achieving life balance.    The mother of two growing daughters, she ensures that she takes time for them, being present but supported by technology when necessary.  “If they see you happy, and healthy, and putting a good effort forward in your career, they are learning from you.”

As part of her support system, Carey credits several mentors for their support. And she has four key pieces of leadership wisdom for other women:

• Work hard. There is no substitute for hard work.
• Take the “long cut.” There are no shortcuts.  Learn your trade, dig in, and take the long road.
• Take a genuine interest in, and listen to your team. 
• Lead by example.

In conclusion, Carey strongly advises other women:  “Don’t be afraid and learn.” Carey Pachla can be reached at carey@fastswitch.com.  The Michigan Council of Women in Technology can be viewed at www.mcwt.org.

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Ep 27: Valerie Rogers: Forging The Path Toward Connected Health Systems

Our latest Diva Tech Talk interview is with Valerie Rogers, MPH, Director of State Government Affairs for HIMSS, a global organization focused on better health through information technology. As a cause-based non-profit, HIMSS North America provides thought leadership, community building, professional development, public policy, and events; and represents 61,000 individual members, 640 corporate members, and over 450 non-profit organizations.  

The granddaughter of a breakthrough woman leader, who owned her own successful business in the 1930’s, Valerie’s selfless path was strongly influenced by two older female cousins (a toxicologist and a primary care practitioner) who she described as “smart, sassy women.” All three of them became involved in health care, in her opinion, to fulfill the dreams of her grandmother, who had always wanted to help her community as a nurse but didn’t have the same opportunities as later generations of women.

Originally obtaining her undergraduate degree in Sociology, Valerie found herself first drawn to the environmental health field.  She initially worked for the Southeast Rural Community Assistance Project, Inc. (SERCAP) helping small rural towns and communities upgrade their water and waste water systems. Her first exposure to technology was the use of GIS and GPS systems, emerging in the late 1990’s, for mapping toxic waste water sites. She instantly fell in love with what that technology could do.

Returning to get her Master’s Degree in Public Health from Tulane University with a concentration in environmental health policy, Valerie then spent the next 12 years at NACCHO (The National Association of County and City Health Officials) in ever-evolving roles. While at NACCHO, she credits a health informatics course at Johns Hopkins Institute of Public Health for her burgeoning romance with data.  “I fell in love with informatics because of the promise it holds,” Valerie said “for those of us working in the health space. “

At NACCHO, one of Valerie’s proud accomplishments was the convening of a group of diverse stakeholders across a broad spectrum of the public health field, which turned into the Joint Informatics Public Health Task Force —a profound influence on public policy surrounding health IT, and the secure exchange of medical information and records.  Valerie considers that experience exemplary of one of her personal strengths: “bringing together people working at the grassroots level” and being a catalyst to connect people in the field and change-making innovators. “We can’t move forward if we are ‘siloed’, ” she explained. “We need to work toward connected health in the deepest sense.”

Valerie kept asking herself the questions: “How could I be a mechanism for building greater awareness and understanding of the value of health information exchange?” and “How can we leverage this technology across the spectrum of health, including behavioral health, public health, clinical care and overall human services?”  In her mind, HIMSS, which she joined within the last year, is part of the answer to those questions.

The broad and intelligent use of data in health care, for Valerie, is indicative of leaders “aspiring to something much greater than the technology and innovation, itself. It’s really to impact lives.”  On this podcast she shared just one heart-wrenching anecdote of a woman, living in an abusive situation, whose circumstances were profoundly and positively improved by the fact that data was being collected and exchanged among the health systems treating her.

In her rich career, thus far, Valerie amassed leadership skills and knowledge and shared the following three tips with our audience:

• Be true to yourself.  Start early. Build on your strengths.
• Keep learning. Don’t ever stop. “You never know, down the road, how you might be able to leverage your knowledge to help someone,” she simply said.
• Don’t be afraid to be a teacher, and build a cohort of women and girls.

Clearly Valerie, herself, is a very connected teacher and giver! She can be reached at vrogers@himss.org or on Twitter at @vnrogers74.

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Ep 26: Nadine Heinen: VP Taking Action to Cultivate Her Success

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Nadine Heinen, Comcast Corporation’s Vice President (VP) of Field Operations for Indiana and Kentucky.  Comcast, an American multinational mass media company, is the largest broadcasting and cable company in the world measured by revenue.  Nadine describes the corporate culture as highly communicative, and constantly working to improve and serve its employees.

In her current role, Nadine leads 650-700 technology staff for those two Midwestern states.  She does this, successfully, by visiting every location as often as possible; meeting with all new hires, and conducting roundtables with her team members at least twice a year.  She is a dedicated hands-on practitioner of “getting in the weeds.”

Starting out,  Nadine never imagined she would become part of the tech world.  “I wanted to be a writer from the fifth grade on,” she shared.  But while working her way through college in the fast food industry, she was referred by a friend to the local cable company, in Cincinnati, Ohio, where her first job was as a dispatcher. She says she “took to the technology” and credits her innate aptitude for innovation as a key to career progression.  Having figured out improved methods to accomplish things, she said “I wasn’t afraid to speak up and say ‘I think we could do it better this way’.”   That approach quickly enabled her to move into her first management roles.

Nadine helped create and lead one of the first cable industry NOC’s (Network Operation Centers) in the mid-1990’s. She became familiar with fiber networks, and spent much time in the field, mastering fiber splicing, and performing a variety of field technical tasks alongside technicians who worked on her team.  

She points to that experience, and her willingness to absorb as much knowledge as possible, as crucial to her adoption of her next challenge: Director of Affiliate Authorizations for HBO in New York City.   Nadine’s team monitored uplinks for HBO, Cinemax and “on-demand” uploads. She was frequently involved in a number of new, exciting technology projects during this period, and, as usual, she gained knowledge from them.

This led Nadine to another leadership position where she created,in 2 years, and then managed a high performing NOC in Los Angeles for Time-Warner when Adelphia, Time-Warner and Comcast merged operations from 2005 to 2008.  Nadine shared that the project was so successful that the NOC was selected as the supervision endpoint for cable networks throughout the country.  Along the way, Nadine says that her philosophy has always been to always be involved in “building things that make sense.”  She emphasized that “I never wanted to go with the ‘status quo.’ I want to do it better than anyone else can do it.”  Much of Nadine’s inspiration comes from “developing teams --- moving them from point A to point Z,” and “seeing an idea come to fruition.”

Nadine learned a number of leadership lessons along the way.  “Treat people as you would want to be treated,” she said.  She advised that leaders, while needing to be tough, should also strive to be “good, likeable people.”   She spends a lot of time listening to people, to build trust.  She also counseled that excellent leaders must have the courage to deal with difficult issues, directly and immediately.

For budding women leaders, Nadine shared four key pieces of advice for women in tech:

• Believe in yourself
• Know your capabilities
• Work on your brand
• Step out of your comfort zone. You will expand your knowledge.

On a personal level, Nadine also says that her individual approach is to “stay humble” and “laugh at myself!”

Finally, Nadine explained that she thinks occasional sexism is still alive in the technology world.  “I started out in the ‘80’s. In my field, everyone was male. I dealt with discrimination,” she said, but “I decided I was going to ‘keep my eye on the prize’ and I wouldn’t let them do that to me.”  In a very recent example, she had a vendor challenge a request that she made of him, going behind her back to her male peer to check on the validity of it.  How did Nadine deal with the issue?  She took direct action, confronting the vendor representative.  Her advice to other female leaders is “Don’t let that kind of situation get you down!”

Nadine can be reached through Twitter at @nheinen1201

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