DGTL Voices with Ed Marx - From AC/DC to AI... Engineer to CEO (ft. Eduardo Conrado)

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

On this episode of DGTL Voices, Ed interviews Eduardo Conrado, the incoming CEO of Ascension, discussing his journey from engineering to healthcare leadership. They explore the role of data-driven insights, and strategies for career growth. Eduardo shares his experiences and insights on how CIOs and technology leaders can effectively connect with operations to drive transformation in the healthcare sector.

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. Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. I have a longtime friend and former colleague of Vine, Eduardo Conrado. Eduardo, welcome to Digital Voices. Thanks, Ed. Great to see you again. We met back in 2018.

You were the chief digital officer for Ascension. I was at the Cleveland Clinic and we got together just sort of compared notes and I've followed you ever since. And it's been really cool to see your Meteororic rise to become president and soon CEO, right, of Ascension. Yeah, thank you. Here at the end of December, I'll become CEO. Yeah, that's so cool.

I can't wait to dive in a little bit how that'll unfolded. But, Eduardo, the first thing everyone wants to know that listens to digital voices is what songs are on your playlist? What kind of music do you like to get down to? Oh. A little bit of everything to tell you the truth, but I grew up in the 80s when I first moved to the U.S. I'm a big fan of the 80s fans,

you know, ACDC back in black, I would say. But the more relevant stuff, my daughter is always sharing her playlist with me. So, you know, when you're in Spotify, we're sitting in the car with there and we love that song. And then she's like that. I'm just going to push you my playlist forward. So I got this hybrid.

The 80s of stuff that I'm used to, which never gets old to tell you the truth. And then the new stuff that my daughter listened to. And the funny thing is some of her playlist has 80s songs on it. So full circle. Yeah. I found that the same too, actually, with one of my daughters where she got really into the 80s music, kind of like her dad. So that was kind of cool to see that happen.

And I thought about it. I think I did that with my parents too. You know, I started listening to Frank Sinatra and stuff from their And so, yeah. You know, the other funny thing, my wife is from Norway. So there's always an ABBA song that sneaks into the playlist. And the name of the music also timeless, I would say. Yeah, that's super cool.

What about life message or mantra? Is there a quote or sort of words that you live by? Yeah. I'm not sure if you've read the book from Friedman, New York Times writer. But he wrote a book a while back called That Used to Be Us. which compares the U.S. to China and then kind of how both of the countries developed and the competitive spirit that the U.S. had. So one of the quotes that he asked at the end of the days,

act like an immigrant. And, you know, an immigrant in the country, I migrated here in 79, which I think the U.S. is one of the best countries in the world. They're the only country where, after moving to the U.S., you actually feel American on it. I would say that another country allows you to do that. But, you know, come moving here. Also, you kind of have to have that immigrant spirit to, you know,

don't take no for an answer and then just work hard on it. And I sent that one of the guys that the harder or work, the luckier I get. Yeah. That's a good one too. Yeah, Friedman's a great author. I've had several of his books. And yeah, there's all sorts of stats that show that how well immigrants can do, right, when they come to the U.S. and take advantage of everything.

So tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? Where did, were you raised, that sort of thing? Sure. I mean, I moved here at late 70s, as I mentioned, from Nicaragua. Unfortunately, in the 70s, there was a bunch of civil wars happening in, you know, Central America, Latin America, a lot of civil unrest. Nicaragua had a civil war from 79 to 89.

It lasted 10 years on it. So we were going to move here, you know, wait it out because we lived in the capital. And when it came to the capital, my dad said, but he was a full bright professor. So he said, I just come up for the summer and we'll wait it out. You know, 10 years later, I'm in graduate school here in the U.S., Philly and American, right? So, you know, I got an undergradman engineering, industrial engineering. And then so my first jobs were as an engineer for Texas Instrument on it.

And when I got started working as an engineer, I thought, you know what, I love the technology component, but I'd like to get more onto the business side. So at that point, I decided to go back and get my MBA, but I also wanted to work international on it. And then so I got a Master's of International Managers from Thunderbird thinking, you know, I'll get the MBA component, but also kind of with the international slant. While with the Thunderbird, I met my wife now, which were both studying there. When I got a second degree in Esade in Barcelona, where the focus of that MBA was more financial, Thunderbra was more international in marketing. And then so Caroline and I ended up moving to Europe, to Spain, and then we moved to Norway.

And this was early 90s. And we thought we were going to stay there, but there was an economic downturn in Europe. So we ended up moving back to the U.S. early 90s, moved to Florida. That's where Motorola hired me. 26 years later, I kind of moved between Florida, Argentina, to the headquarters in Chicago, many years in Chicago, and then multiple roles in Motorola. Being a technology company, I could use my engineering background, but then I was working on the marketing side. I was a chief marketing officer of the business to business side of Motorola. Then from there, ended up moving into technology.

So if remember, at early days of technology, and when CRM first came out, Sewell and stuff, the IT teams that don't touch. It was mostly the marketing teams that were touching that. And then so the CIA at that point said, hey, you know what, you go and deploy the CRM. And so I kind of got into the tech stack at that point, ended up picking up IT as a responsibility at some point in our career.

And as I picked up IT, it was just to kind of make it easier for customers to deal with our tech. More and more, the hardware-centric world, Motorola was moving to a cloud-based, application-based, you know, centric product offering.

So from IT, I ended up moving into the chief technology officer responsibility because we were shifting our portfolio from making chips to actually doing cloud-based products. From there, it moved into, okay, we can build the products,

but we can also buy products in terms of, expanding our portfolio by buying companies and using our balance sheets. So I ended up picking up strategy role within Motorola. So my last role in Morolla was the chief innovation and strategy officer where I had CIO, CTO, and strategy under me, which allowed me to learn the business side of Motorola, which was great. Yeah, no, it's super fascinating.

And your kids are lucky to have sort of that multicultural background, too, with moving all to those different countries and having those experiences. That's pretty cool. So you make your way into health care. How did that happen? What was a catalyst? So when I was in Motorola, probably 22 years into my career there, I got a call from a, you know, recruiter saying, hey, we got a nonprofit healthcare that's looking for a board member. And the profile that they won is somebody that's been in an industry that has been disrupted. to think about telecom in the 90s, every 2000s was getting disrupted everywhere.

Paging got disrupted by cellular, cellular analog got disrupted by digital. Digital cellular got disrupted by smartphones, you name it. So, you know, portfolios were changing, I mean, disruptive. So they wanted to have somebody that was in an industry that was disruptive, have technology background, and had strategy in their role on it. So kind of match my profile. I interviewed with Tony Tracini and the board at that point.

I got to learn a little bit at high level in terms of what the focus was and the mission of vision of ascension. I kind of like what they did. There were some similarities in terms of the mission criticality of the products and services that we sold in Motorola. Main customers were police, EMS, and fire. Think about it. Yeah. So I joined the board, and I was in the Ascension board almost four years. And then Tony asked we to join the management team

and we ended up creating a role. This is early days where, you know, the technology stack on healthcare was going to a transformation on how do you architect and simplify it on it. Also, data was trapped in a silo and then innovation needed to happen. And then so I came in, you know, putting all those three pieces together.

IT, the innovation team, and then the data science component. And then seven years later, I went from that role, similar to my trajectory in Motorola. You come in through IT innovation, I ended up picking a strategy along the way to kind of accelerate the transformation.

As I picked up strategy, that enabled me to kind of learn the details and idiosyncrasies of healthcare from cytokare, interaction with the clinicians, payer models, P&L, you name it. You know, I got to pick up knowledge across the board, and that allowed me then to kind of move in post-COVID where health care was disrupted into the precedent rule.

Yeah, that's a great journey, and you're super well-rounded and prepared for that role. I think everyone understands the pristine brand of Ascension. Can you share with us maybe one thing that someone might not know, the average person might not know about ascension. Yeah, we're, you know, I think everybody can know our scale, presence that we have on it, our mission, and serving everybody.

When you think about birth in the U.S., we probably have one of the highest volumes across all the healthcare system, and I think our clinic team says one out of it every 50 birth is an ascension birth, and not of those 53, percent are, you know, Medicaid on it. So it kind of straddle to both the mission and then, you know, the impact that we can

have on the communities that we're in. Yeah. No, it's a, it's a great organization and great mission and vision. You're very blessed to be able to lead that. What would you say, Eduardo, to other individuals mid-career? And maybe they've just been going down a single path. You've described your journey. You know, you went multiple paths.

Do you recommend that for individuals and how might a technology leader, you know, diversify their skill set and experience? What's a good point? I mean, I think you can have two ways of kind of growing your career. One of them just going deep on the trade that you read, right? Yeah.

And rise through the ranks, kind of becoming CIO, which now is CIO, CIO, right? Yeah. And then that kind of has the AI component. So I think the role of the technologies are growing. within the companies in terms of the importance. But I think on the other side, you can become a generalist.

You know, you have a center of gravity, which for me is engineering and kind of being data-driven. But you can expand into other areas where, you know, I was in marketing, I was in the tech side, I was in the innovation front. I was in the strategy area. So, you know, part of it is not being afraid to kind of learn new muscles. Yeah. And if you go deep, you play to your strength. You know, so you develop on it.

If you're going to go wide, you've got to build on your weaknesses. So that means that you're constantly learning something new. And, you know, at some point, you become enough of an expert to kind of put everything together. And then you become a general manager, right? Right. And then I would say if you step back and the Motorola CEO, luckily, I got to change. chance to work with them for 10 years. And he said, hey, there's three things that I do as a CEO. And it's a simplifying it, right? He said, strategy, capital deployment, and talent. Now, if you

think about anybody that wants to expand beyond the functional role and go broader, you got to kind of peel those apart, right? So strategy, what does that mean? And in many cases, it means you got to question the status quo every day, right? Yeah. And especially in health care, right? This is a tradition. It's been a slow-moving segment, which is starting to move way faster just because of, you know, headwinds, a tailwinds that we're getting, and then, you know, the government

kind of accelerating cytok care changes. So I think the strategy piece is leads you to learn the business, but also take an outside in perspective, right? You've got to learn the business from the inside, but you've got to be well-bursts on what's going on on the outside and kind of say, hey, three, five years out what's going to happen and kind of come up with the point of view. And the point of view, more than likely will lead you to question the status quo on it. Yeah. And then you've got to kind of dig in deeper to know all the implications. What does that mean?

It's not just a portfolio change, but it's also process and tech change in some cases, right? Then you go in, if you're leading strategy as the CEO, in order to accelerate the change in the strategy that you have, you're going to have to deploy capital on it. Right. So then making sure that you're putting a focus on for every dollar you deploy has an impact on the strategy, right, and ultimately changing the trajectory. And more than likely, if you're changing strategy, you've got to be constantly developing the talent inside the company to be able to kind of have new muscles as you change your performance. or you're going to have to be able to kind of bring new talent in to be able to complement your existing team, right? That's kind of like at the highest level. So then I think that too hard.

And then when you step back and you think about most industries, the other one that I think we got to view a role at, which I think the CIOs have a strong focus in the area is simplifying the complex, which is taking the barriers out and also making sure that we can move at a faster speed, right? So that would be my advice on it. I mean, I think the CIO roles are, like I say, and I getting bigger and bigger. So you can kind of continue to evolve on the trade.

But if you want to move to different functions, you've got to kind of start learning the different areas and eventually become a general manager that can take on on bigger roles. Yeah. And what's going to be really interesting to continue to follow you as both current president and future CEO, you're one of the very few that has,

this sort of background and definitely a tech background. And about 50% of our audience listening have sort of that tech angle. And so how do you think that having that tech background will shape you as CEO? Do you think, when you think about some of your colleagues that may have preceded you or other organizations, you know, are you thinking tech first or is it always in the back of your mind? How does it influence you? So, you know, not everybody that's in tech is an but a lot of them are, right? Yeah. And if you're not an engineer,

you learn it while you're on the job. And then so part of it, and my background is industrial engineer, right? So it's process, redesign, and simplification. That's basically what we do. And industrial engineers know all the technologies that work good at none, right? You wouldn't want an industrial engineer designing chips. But we can optimize the process all day long, right?

But also as an engineer and as a technologist, you rely on data. So I think that's one of the areas of strength coming from the tech side or engineering side is just being data driven. Yeah. And then being able to simplify the data because there's always going to be noise, right, on it. So you're going to be looking at what are the KPIs that, you know, impact and running the business and making sure that just looking at those KPIs or they're the ones that are going to be driving something. They're going to be driving quality or they're going to be driving consumer experience or they're going to drive the P&L. So being data-driven and insights driven on everything that you do will educate you on the

strategy that you're going to follow. Healthcare is data-rich, right? So it's not so much the application that we use is how do we simplify the architecture over time. And if you can't simplify the architecture, how do you kind of explain? extract the data and put it in a cloud layer. Yeah. You know, now everybody talks about AI, but AI is driven by the data set that you provide, right?

Yeah. On it. So we started doing that a few years ago when I took over the job, it's just moving the data into a cloud layer and bringing data engineering to the forefront. If you have good data engineering, your architecture really doesn't matter, right? Yeah.

You can take your time on simplifying the architecture, but then your data scientists can provide more insights, either in quality, operations, you name it. And they can start correlating clinical data with operational data, with, you know, consumer data. And then you end up driving operations or clinical based on real-time data on a daily basis, right? You don't want to be able to say at the end of the month, look back what happened. You want to see it on a daily basis and can you actually impact the trajectory? So, you know, kind of long-winded answer to your question.

At the end of the day, I think kind of having a technology background or engineering background gives you a leg up on the data component. And then coming in from the tech side allows you to know where to use it. Yeah. Not just on the technology from, but in terms of facilitating clinical or operational strategies that are there. Since you've had experience on both sides, Eduardo, both being sort of the engineering tech and also now president and, soon-to-be CEO, any advice for the CIO peer group on how to best connect and serve along with their president? You know, how to make sure that relationship is a good one so everyone prospers. Yeah, you know, the president or anybody that's an operation or clinical, they're trying to solve a problem, right?

On it, I mean, problem, it could be positive or negative, right, in terms of off of it. I think the technologies that can kind of figure out what the issue is and address that issue, all the complexities of the tech, 90% of the operational people don't know what you're talking about. Right. Or really don't care at some point because they're going to be lost on it. So if they trust you, they're going to trust the technologists to take care of the complexities in the background, but not necessarily they, you're going to say. see their eyes glass over, right, if you kind of go too deep. So it's this fine balance between

the depth of the knowledge that the technologists have, but don't necessarily have to show it. Right. And kind of have to focus more on what are the one or two things that people are looking for in terms of uniqueness to solve a problem and then deliver on that. What's your perspective on the future with tech and, you know, digital transformation, things like that. How do you think healthcare will continue to change? Well, I mean, I think the data component on health care is going to continue to grow, right? In terms of facilitating clinical or operational problems, and then how do you make it real-time, right? Everybody wants real-time data, and that allows us to kind of impact a trajectory on it.

Once you have the data, then as we're moving more into AI-driven insights, you know, how do you start feathering that in to be able to solve operational or clinical issues? So I think that's going to be huge going forward. And when I look at the data and the impact that technology has is helping us ride, you know, driver operating model that we have in Ascension. So we get real-time data on the valid. by side of care and the ability for the strategy teams to be able to impact it. Or efficiency teams are seeing real time in terms of lengths of state, discharges, you know.

So making sure that's visible for each of the teams, then we can kind of, you know, influence it. And then you lay your AI on top of it just to kind of like be able to draw the insights of where to put our eyes on even more. that's going to be critical. So when you think about simplification is don't give me everything, give me word to look at, and then it's like we'll do something with it, right? Yeah, I think that's spot on.

Eduardo, we covered a lot of different areas in our time together, talking about 80s music, which people can't see me, but I'm actually wearing an 80s band, concert, T, and fascinating discussion about Ascension and the great things that Ascension does,

your career, how it evolved and how you got to where you are today, how CIOs, CDOs can best work and partner with presidents and CEOs. And then we talked a little bit about digital and the importance of AI, in particular data and the importance of getting the data right in order to get the benefits of the AI and how to better understand the mind of a president and CEO. What did we miss or is there anything you want to double down on? I'll give you the last word. No, I appreciate all the topics that we cover from, like you said, from A-To-C, or should I say from ACDC to kind of AI. But I would say we're at a good spot right now for CIOs, you name it, in terms of all the roles are combining into one, right?

It goes down from the architecture, application management, data management, but ultimately, as we kind of go into the AI world, the impact that we can have in the world, both on the clinician and operational. And then so I would say more and more, go to the edge of that world in terms of the impact that you're having and learn the business itself. Because that's what's going to help translate what the technology and the data can do for the teams that are in the ground, kind of running the business or on the clinical side. That will do two things, have a huge impact on our outcomes. But also as you learn more about the impact of the data or the technology, on operations or the business,

you get to learn the business itself and allows you to migrate into some other areas if you want to. Yeah. Yeah, Sage Insights, Sage advice. Eduardo, thank you so much for being our guest on Digital Voices. Thank you very much, Ed.

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