DGTL Voices with Ed Marx - Ensuring No One Goes Through a Health Journey Alone: Be Unapologetically Yourself (ft. Tia Newcomer)

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

In this episode of DGTL Voices, Ed welcomes Tia Newcomer, the CEO of CaringBridge. They discuss the mission and vision of CaringBridge, which is to ensure that no one goes through a health journey alone. CaringBridge is a platform that allows individuals to rally their community for support during a health journey. It helps activate the community, capture the journey, coordinate help, and foster a sense of community. CaringBridge, a nonprofit organization that provides free online platforms for people facing health challenges. Nearly 320,000 people visit CaringBridge every day, with a new page created every 12 minutes. Tia emphasizes the importance of community support and encourages healthcare leaders to integrate CaringBridge into the care process. She also highlights the value of having a diverse range of experiences in one's career and offers leadership hacks, including creating a 30-60-90 day plan and conducting one-on-one conversations to uncover themes. 

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast, where we chat digital transformation, challenges and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now, your host, Ed Marks. Hey, it's Ed. Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. Thank you for listening. You have so many choices of great podcasts out there. I listen to a bunch of them myself. You've chosen time with us. I just want to share how thankful I am. And we're going to make it worth your while again, because we have a fabulous guest, as always, and this time, it's Tia newcomer. Tia, welcome to Digital Voices. Thank you so much, Ed.

I'm really excited to be here. So Tia is, we have some visual, but this is mostly a non-visual podcast, but wrote the forward for Diagnose. Yes, we both have, and we both have our Carrying Bridge shirts on, and it'll make a lot of sense here in a second. She wrote the forward. Thank you so much for the book that Chris Roth and I've been working on for years. years that's finally coming out in September of 24.

It's super excited about it. And Tia, thank you so much for writing a forward. And that's essentially how we first met is Chris Ross is a member of your board at Caring Bridge. And he brought us together. And since then, we've developed a friendship. And I was like, man, I love Caring Bridge. You're the CEO. And I was like, oh, you have to be on digital voices so we can share more about the great things that

Caring Bridge does. So with that, Tia, again, welcome to digital voices. And the most important question that we asked here is what songs are in your playlist? I love this question. I have a wide, vast genre of music that I like to listen to, electronic, indie country, 80s to 2000s to present. So I'm going to give you a couple. So one, I just discovered this great new artist called Chapel Rhone.

my girls laughed at me. They're like, she's popular. You didn't discover her, but for me, at my age, she's great. Chapplerone and one of my favorite songs that she has, that is called After Midnight. I love a good Chicago and Peter Saterra. One of my favorite is along comes a woman. I can also rock out to some rap type music, so players by Coila Ray, which is very popular. And then my daughter is a commercial vocalist, and so she introduced me to a lot of music. And so she introduced me to a lot of music. lot of really cool songs. There's one called July by Sir Chloe, if you've heard of that. And then my country list is quite extensive. It's all from the 80s, things like strawberry wine by Diana Carter. I could go on. I can't forget, Erasure, OMD, those are some of my favorite back from the 80s and 90s. And then I always, always, and I will end with this, have a song from, or songs, plural, because I love Britney Spears and her collection of music. So that all blocks me, but I got to tell you a lover. So there you go.

You're not the first one. You're not the first Britney fan. And we do have a Spotify playlist for digital voices, and we'll be sure to add some of those on, especially the first one you mentioned, which was chaperone. Yep. Yeah, okay.

Chaperone. All right. And we're going to, yeah, definitely add that. What about a life message or mantra? Is there some words that you live by? Absolutely. What you do today is important because you exchange. change a day of your life for it.

And I'll just give you context. My husband's a two-time cancer survivor. And when I first met him, the first time I went into his home that he was living at, that was this tattered piece of paper on the refrigerator. And I found that that was his motto when he was 18 years old, actually 17, going on 18, through his first cancer journey. So, you know, it changed his life clearly, and it changed his outlook on life. And because of that, it's helped me change my outlook.

So it's one of my favorite. Yeah, I love that. And we have a playlist for everyone's mantras as well that we're going to publish soon. And that's another great one. So, yeah, thank you so much for sharing. So, Tia, we jumped right into the whole thing, you know, Caring Bridge and everything. Tell us, before we go deeper to Caring Bridge, tell us a little bit about your story, personal, professional, and sort of all the way up to today. Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm going to start with that, you know, my husband, right? So meeting my husband has actually changed both the way I approach what I do as well as my career. And so I also want to mention he is now retired, a firefighter paramedic. So I've been on the front lines for almost 30 years. And what that does and why I bring that up is, you know, live with someone that comes home every day. And it's, you know, you think you have a hard day. I used to work at HP, selling season printers. And then you have someone that's like, you know, we're debriefing on our day.

And, you know, he's had 17 calls, slept all of three hours and has saved, you know, three lives. And it's like, no big deal. And so it definitely puts perspective on what's important today along with, obviously, his cancer survivorship. So I'll get to my career. But one other significant moment is that second bout with cancer that my husband had was when I was six months pregnant with our second daughter. And so, you know, my passion for where I am today and my leap into health care, which I'll talk about, is because of the things I've gone through both as a caregiver, but as a spouse of someone that's on the front lines day to day. So my career, you know, where has gone? And this will be part of my life lessons, right?

So I graduated with a degree in journalism and mass communications, thinking I was going to go into advertising. I suddenly found myself catapulted into sales. The sales role. The best decision I ever made was, I call it, carrying the bag on the front line because it has informed everything I've done going forward because when you're on the front line and see, you're trying to sell the things that people, as we used to call it, the glass palace have designed, which I guess now I'm in the glass palace.

So it's changed my perspective in my career. So I started in sales at a company called Reblon Cosmetics, which I think everyone knows. the Revlin brands along with the Power Grill and all of that. I also who then had to hold it into from sales into analytics. We now call it, you know, business intelligence, all the things. But back then we called it category management. Also essential.

That analytics lens coming from sales into analytics also has been foundation. I worked at X for a little bit. I worked at Free Away PepsiCo. So the beginning of my career, I kind of define it in four. four pillars was all around consumer package kids. So lots of blue chip exposure to how you focus on the customer. And that also has been foundational in my career. I then made the leap into technology and worked for a Hewlett Packard for eight years.

And I had seen that technology was kind of a burgeoning feel. This was during and after the dot com bus is when I was at HP. But yeah, HP is still around in phenomenal culture to learn from. also global in nature. So I got a lot of global experience in that across. I ran I ran P&Ls for what we would call small businesses at HP, $250 million in annualized revenue on and was a global VP of marketing and several other roles.

So a myriad. And then I made the leap into healthcare. And that was again, back to my beginning story of my personal life, was really watching my husband and what he does. really wanting to make a difference. I have two daughters. They are now teenagers. One's getting ready to go to college. One's going to be a junior in high school. And so when you work, right, you're away from your family, a certain amount of, you spend more time at work generally when you're in your working years than you do at home. And so I was like, I really want to do something

that's meaningful. So it jumped into health care, primarily women's health and fertility. And that has been highly rewarding and it led me to Karenbridge and really that Karen Bridge I would call it. It was my first nonprofit role. But importantly, it was that time where I could grab something that was so meaningful that is helping people that are going through health journeys and really create a culture but also the opportunity to transform. Yeah, that's super fascinating, both on the personal side, thank you for sharing. And I'm so glad your husband's good, mine, being a two-time survivor. And yeah, thankful for him being a first responder for so many years and, yeah, saving a lot of people's lives and improving the quality of their care and stuff as a paramedic. And then, yeah,

your whole professional side, which I want to talk about a little bit later when we get into careers, because it's been fascinating the different areas that you've spent your time in. So, Caring Bridge. So I think we're may know the answer to this already. I was going to ask you sort of what drew you to Caring Bridge, but I think you may have led on to it already. Yeah, I think, yes, and I will add to that. It's definitely around that ability to help people. And I always, in one of my headlines, right, I am a person that wants to work for and in companies that care about and for humans. So, wow, Caring Bridge, there you go. But I would also say that this was a opportunity to transfer.

form and build on a legacy of a strong mission. And that was very attracted to me because I love strategic pivots that drive transformation, but have that human element. So that's really what drew me to bridge. So Tia, I want to ask you about the mission, vision of Caring Bridge and the founding. And as you build that out for us, remember, there may be a few of our listeners, and I didn't provide any sort of framework that are not familiar with Caring Bridge.

I hope everyone is, but in case they aren't, assume that they don't. So when you talk about the founding and the mission and vision, be sure to sort of let everyone know what Caring Bridge is all about. Yeah, so I'm going to take you back to 1997. 27 years ago, our founder, Sana Marrying one of her best friends, had a premature baby, baby, Bridget. And Joanne called her and said, can you reach out to all of our friends?

It's overwhelming. We're just focusing on Bridget right now. She's in the NICU. Can you please call and tell everyone what's going on because we're getting overwhelmed with calls? And so Sana on her second call, she's like, it was 45 minutes, emotional. She's retelling the story.

She's like, there's got to be a better way. And she went to her basement and coded the first Caring Bridge page. So, you know, I, and I want to remind everyone, this is my favorite thing. I told Sana this is Mark Zuckerberg was 13 when she went down and coded that Carington page. Right. And so I always take care, you are the inventor of, I'll call it social connection for good. And look at us 27 years later that still exists. And it's been fantastic.

So Caring Bridge is a platform that really rallies your community. in support for your patient that's going to go through that said journey. And we do that by doing four things. We activate your community because you're able to communicate what's going on in one simple way. We allow you to capture that journey, which by that very simple act of capturing a journey helps you actually emotionally feel. And then we help coordinate help. And that community around you is really where when you ask for help, it's met immediately

with help. And then the last thing is community. And we've done that for 27 years. We help rally and activate that community of your choice. That's important in the ways that you need the most, whether it be emotional, social, or even functional kinds of health. And so that's what Caring Bridge does today and has in the past. And I'll end with our vision, which is so,

it's so expansive and so important to what we do. and it is a world where no one goes through a health journey alone. Yeah. And so that is what we do. Everybody is focus on that vision. Yeah, I love Caring Bridge. It was a no-brainer for me when Chris mentioned you in Caring Bridge as being part of the book and the forward because I've had friends, for the reasons that you cited from the founder, friends in difficult circumstances and leveraging Caring Bridge.

Chris leveraged it quite effectively. when he went through his second bout of cancer. So in the book, we talk a lot about this. We call it the village, right, the concept of community. And so we cited Caring Bridge, you know, in the book because it's like, hey, this is a way to build that community. You've got to have it. And there's all sorts of science behind it, which we may talk about a few numbers here

in a second. Can you give, well, I just gave one example with Chris. Can you give maybe one other example of someone that it helped just to make it practical for those listeners who have not, you know, ever engaged with Caring Bridge. Absolutely. And I'll bring us back to there's a universal truth when people are going through a health journey. And that's that feelings of being overwhelmed, isolated and lonely are prevailed.

And that's for multitude of reasons I could go on, but we've got to limited amount of time, but overwhelm isolation and lonely. And so we know Caring Bridge addresses that those feelings by helping people come together in support of feeling, all the things I just talked about. So two facts and then that I'm going to talk about, I'm going to give you two quotes from our users that are so powerful. When two-thirds of Caring Bridge caregivers receive a matched offer support within 24 hours of their request. That's just huge, whether it be emotional, whether it be a functional need, two-thirds, receive a matched offer of support, which is fantastic.

So when you think about how that translates, here's two quotes, powerful, very, very short. but two quotes from our users, and this will bring to life how we need them. One, there's quote, in this process, everything is so difficult, insurance, your daily life. When you find something like Caring Bridge that works and it's simple, it makes things easy, it's a godsend. So that's one quote. And then the second is it's the best place that you can share your journey, share your wins, share what you need for support. It's the best place for everyone to come and see your daily ups and downs and to encourage you and help live. experience. So that's what Caring Bridge does. Yeah, that's pretty impactful. And as you were sharing that,

I saw back of another friend of mine who leveraged Caring Bridge quite effectively and was able to get a lot of his help from friends and neighbors and the community that he otherwise wouldn't have had the ability to network to reach everyone. And people wanted to be part of that, right, and to be part of their healing process and help help out. I know there's, impact numbers about Caring Bridge and how Caring Bridge has helped. I was really impressed when I saw those. Can you share some of those impact numbers so people get a sense of the breadth and depth of Caring Bridge? Absolutely. So nearly 320,000 people a day visit Caring Bridge and surround that person with support. So phenomenal. 320,000 people a day. We also know that every 12 minutes of Caring Bridge page is

created. So huge impact. And then the last thing I'll I'll share when we think about that community of support is 5.5 million messages of support are shared every year on Caring Bridge and growing. Yeah. Yeah. And it means a lot because again, I'm kind of, in one way, I'm so happy for Caring Bridge. Another way, I'm like, wow, I've had a lot of friends, you know, to have to need it, which is never a good thing, right, if you have to need it. But I'm glad that it's there where I would post messages every time. So every time I got to update, like, hey, there's been an update from the patient. You go on there and you post messages and support and love and prayers and things like that. And it means a big deal to the patient and their family. So it's so

important what you're doing. I know Caring Bridge is a non-for-profit organization that relies heavily on donations. How can people get engaged? Yeah, thank you for asking. Simply go to caringbridge. org, you'll see a donate button. And that is anything from a one-time donation to recurring to part of your state planning, if you appreciate anything. We are 100% funded by those that use Caringbridge and that believe in what we're doing. So that's how you can get involved, Caringbridge.org. And I think the only other thing I'd add is that if you are listening and you are a leader in

healthcare, what you just described earlier, and as we're talking about the numbers and the impact. We know that Caring Bridge fills in the gaps that health care cannot see. It's, so my ask is if you're in the health care industry, our goal is to be integrated at point of diagnoses and discharge, and we need healthcare leaders to stand up and bring us in. We're no cost. This is a hit, you know, and so if you're listening, the other way you can get involved is to contact me or Caring Bridge directly and we'll have a conversation of how we get your leverage to your patients and caregivers at discharge and diagnosis. Yeah, that's a really good point.

The other book that Chris and Ross and I wrote is a booklet for those who have a visual. We'll see it now. And it's just called Patient Experience, How to Improve the Patient Experience. And this is written for healthcare and it's just kind of five best practices. And we talk about that, Tia, and that you have to, as a healthcare leader, you have to, because we all know how important it is to the healing process and the care process, you have to help your patients and their families have a community, have a village if they don't have one. And most don't. And so Caring Bridge is this simple, right? Easy to use, easy to get involved

and it doesn't cost anything for people to utilize. And so I agree with you. That should be on a list, that all the patients are given, whether it's online or on a piece of paper, which they tend to have a lot of, is Caring Bridge, you know, get activated. So that's great. We'll put some more information in the show notes as well. So I want to turn down a little bit to your career. So it's been very broad. Like you mentioned, I had four major, you know, areas, everything from sort of consumer

products to all the way to healthcare, not-for-profit world. How has having this breadth and depth of experiences and other verticals been helpful to you in your career? Yeah, I've thought about this a lot, and it's done two things. It's helped me transition to different roles in industries quickly, because when you're going, I mean, think about a CPG to technology, to health care, women's health, to nonprofit. I mean, those all have very different components,

but I think what my career breadth and depth of experience has shown is that one, I'm a risk taker, but importantly, I'm always learning. And so that ability in that, I think my career has shown that I'm always learning, which is I think all you do, and I think one of the most important things as you think about how you go from career move to career move. Yeah. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

What are one or two common themes when you go through those four different verticals, what are one or two common themes to connect all of them together? I think you may have alluded to it earlier, but be interested in your perspective. Yeah, transformation, for sure. Almost every role that I've been in, I used to label it NBDB, never been done before.

And so I'm always coming into a that either is in needs transformation and also innovation. And so that NBDB, I love it because I love innovation that leads to transformation. So that's the theme that, I mean, I can go back to my first role, sales role, where I got the worst sales territory. And all of a sudden it was one of the top. And my manager's like, how do you? you do this, you know? And so a lot of innovation and different things. So I could go on, but every one of them has that component. What has been, obviously the CEO of Caring Bridge is the

main answer, but aside from that, what has been the most fulfilling role to date? I was, that's what I was going to say. Now you got me, because I was like, cliche, but it's this one. You know, if I can't say Caring Bridge, I would say when I was at Hewlett-Packard, They put me in a role that led at the time we called it shop or we called it it wasn't shopper marketing. Basically I got to invent coming from my CPG background, I got to invent an organization within Heila Packard called Shopper Marketing, which was a maniacal focus on looking at customer insights to how we showed up and partnered with our retailers in the store. So that was my second one because it's never been done before. And I was just went out and did it. Yeah.

And that's for forgiveness later. Thankfully, they liked it. No, that's great. I can understand why. And like you said, I could see the interconnects between each of these verticals. Is it something that you would suggest for someone in their career, you know, that maybe someone's just starting out and listening and they're just focused in one vertical? Do you recommend maybe dabbling in a couple others as long as there's this common connect? I do.

I do. And I hesitated for a moment because there are some people that have that trajectory that's just in one area. So if you're that kind of person that always be learning, I think you know, you can't go wrong either if you're looking inside your organization or externally to other opportunities. Okay, you've had this great track record of success and leadership again across all these different verticals. What are one or two key leadership hacks that you go to oftentimes no matter what role that you're in? In other words, what are two things you can share with the audience that are really important to you from a leadership perspective? Love this. And one that has always worked for me. And when I haven't done it, it's a bit me. And that is writing my own 30, 60, 90 day plan. And so I do a lot of, before I start a role, I do a lot of work and investment in writing that out. It typically becomes my 30, 60, 90 day plan because most organizations or leaders aren't really good about giving you that. So the other thing that it does, and I think this is important, is I actually look at that at the end of every year.

Because when you go into a new role, you are the most clear. You haven't drank the Kool-Aid, right? You're not embedded. And so you're most clear on the things that need to be done, those 30, 60, 90s. So I always revisit and go, is this still true? Am I ignoring this thing that I saw when I first came in the organization, untainted, so speak? So that is a thing that I highly recommend. And there's a book that I've used.

It's called a 90-day plan, I think. I've got to go look for the 90-day plan, which is highly helpful. I don't use all of it, but you always draw the good things that resonate with you from that. So that I would recommend. The second as a leader, particularly as I've gone into leadership role, is it was easier at Cairnsbridge, a small organization. But nonetheless, I do one-on-one. down to, you know, front-line individual contributors. And I ask five questions that uncover themes.

And you can get, you know, your executive team, you might talk to them and you get different strikes and opportunities, but this really does a great job of uncovering things. I'm going to give you the five questions. They are. One, what are the biggest challenges the organization is facing or will in the near future?

Second question is why is the organization facing or going to be facing these challenges? Third question, what are the most promising unexploited opportunities for growth? Fourth questions, what would need to happen for the organization to exploit the potential of these? And then last question, one of my favorite, if you or me, what would you focus attention on? And so those five questions again, so imagine I came into carrying care. bridge, I have 50 people that I talked to. Some were quite different, but the themes that arose really helped me focus that 30, 60, 90 day plan and then catapult us into the transformative things we did. Yeah, that's brilliant. Because you're obviously getting people engaged also.

Like, this person cares. They want to hear my opinion. They feel valued. It's so good on so many levels. As you know, people always leaders can sometimes feel rushed and pressured and they don't want to take that time, but it's so key as you're helping us remember to do. So thank you for that. So you're speaking at your daughters are about to leave. They're both teenagers. I think you said one's about to leave for college. So you're speaking at their graduation, high school graduation. What's one thing that you tell their class at graduation? This one hit hard because, yes, she just graduated. So I was like, yeah. I'll kind of call your mom because that's important.

Trust your gut. Trust your gut. Love it. That's great. And you're obviously live a very full life with teens, career, hobbies, husband, all that kind of stuff. How do you integrate it all or do you? I mean, how does it, what's one thing maybe you can share that has helped? You maybe haven't perfected it, but maybe it helps. Yeah, very good partner. Outside of that, a great partner. So honestly, what helps is being present and blocking time.

And that being present is so hard. And I learned it, you know, sometimes the hard way. But being present, like I put my phone down, even in my one-on-ones with my team, my phone is down and upside down, right? When I'm with my girls or with my husband, just blocking that time and being present. I just leave it at being present, which is really hard for all of us.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're spot on. I think that's a struggle that everyone feels, and that's a good way of handling it is sort of the phones down and being present makes a big difference. We covered a lot in a short period of time, everything from some new music for our playlist.

Chaparone, right? Chaperone and getting it right. and then a great quote that you picked up from your now husband. And you shared a lot about Caring Bridge and what a great mission, what a great organization. And the best of all, it's free to people who need it, which is just amazing. There's not very many things like that in life. Talked a lot about the mission and vision and how it works and how others can get engaged. And we talk a lot about your career.

So it's such a fascinating career amongst different verticals and some of the common themes in between all of them. and then we talked a lot about leadership and you gave five, I'm sure people are going to stop, press pause on the podcast and make sure they get all those five questions because they're really great questions that get the conversation going with your team

and then the clarity about the 60-90-day plan and reviewing it at the end of the year because like you said, there's no more clear time about your role as when you first begin. So it's important not to forget that. Just gave a lot of great ideas about life in general and cover

like I said, a lot of different areas. So Tia, what did we miss or anything that you want to double down on? I'll give you the last word. You know, as I'm hearing all the great questions that you asked, I would say, be unapologetically you.

And that is, you know, that's sometimes, there's a mantra, like I'll be going into board meetings or I'll be going into, you know, different big presentations. And the thing that I'm chanting in my head and just like getting myself prepared as I was like, be yourself, be yourself.

And so I think if you're unapologetically yourself, you will succeed. And sometimes people won't like you, and that's also hard, but it is what it is. If you're unapologetically you, you will succeed. Love that. Great way. That's a lesson for me, too, that I need to learn, pocket away, and learn.

And thank you again, Tia, for being on digital voices. Thank you, Ed. This is great. That wraps up another edition of Digital Voices. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to Digital Voices Podcast with Ed Mart. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review. And most importantly, thanks again for listening.