DGTL Voices with Ed Marx - Navigating Leadership (ft. Laura Wilt)

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

On this episode of DGTL Voices, Ed interviews Laura Wilt, Chief Digital Officer at Sutter Health. They discuss Laura's journey from her upbringing in rural Missouri to her leadership role in a major healthcare organization. Laura shares insights on her career growth, the importance of collaboration in leadership, and her strategic priorities at Sutter Health, particularly in enhancing patient access. She emphasizes the significance of connecting to one's purpose and being kind to oneself as a leader.

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. It's Ed here. Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. Get to spend some time with one of my good friends and I don't get to see often enough. Laura, Will, welcome to Digital Voices. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, Laura, it's so great to see you. I'm so proud of everything that you're doing and how you're such a pioneer in the industry.

And so I want my audience to get to know you a lot better. I think people know you already, of course, but maybe going down a level deeper and we'll just have a lot of fun. And I think the first time we met, I didn't come up with a date, but I think it's probably 10 years ago. We met maybe at a time boot camp or something, maybe before that. But I was always super impressed with you. And so it's kind of been fun to watch you just. grow into the fullness of your leadership. So congratulations on everything that you do. Today being the chief digital officer of Sutter Health. Well, thank you so much. And likewise,

super impressed by your career as well, Ed. And yeah, I think it was at a boot camp. It was a really great experience for me and really appreciated learning from you and everybody that was there. Yeah, they're great faculty. So, Laura, the most important question we ask on digital voices is what's on your playlist. So what kind of music do you like to listen to? Like if we were to look at your Oh, like my Spotify end of the year. Well, I have three kids. So there's a good mix of the Laurie Berkner band, who I don't know if everybody knew to see that is.

She sings a lot of fun children's song, a lot of Taylor Swift. Of course. My older kids are getting into different kinds of music. So they like the black keys and they're like getting into some more rock. Yeah. And then I. And I more recently, I've always liked classical music, but I started to try to listen to classical music in the morning every day. Just for a little bit on my commute into the office, I was listening actually to a different podcast where someone was saying it organizes the mind.

And I thought, I need my mind to be organized. So I do a little bit of a mix of music. Yeah, I do that sometimes when I work too. yeah, I just play some that kind of music, some mellow music, but there's a lot of math in it, you know, that probably some sort of in our deep subconscious kind of like organizes our minds. What about life message or a quote? Is there something that sort of guide the way that you live or operate?

I have two that I have on my desk. Actually, this one says do more of what makes you happy. So I think that's a good reminder to keep at work. Sometimes we can get a little bog down in the business. And so trying to just remember to make sure you're doing something that makes you happy. And then the other one that's in my calendar notebook is one person can make a difference and everyone should try, which is one of my favorite one, just trying to remember, you know, what everybody does matters a lot. and you don't know the kind of difference that you can make any given day. So show up and do your best and think that you can.

Yeah, I love it. And since this is 99% audio, yeah, Laura was actually lifting up these quotes. Sorry. I was just showing you. It's like, what are legit? When you said, it's on my dick. It's literally on their death. That's super cool.

So tell us a little bit about Laura. We already know you have three kids. Tell us a little bit more. Where did you grow up? Oh, I grew up. I'm adopted by a family. And I grew up, I was born in South Korea and was adopted when I was about three or four months old. So I grew up in rural Missouri, kind of near Kansas City, on a farm, actually. And I grew up living next door to my grandparents. My dad's family, it's their farm. And had a great childhood. growing up there and really enjoyed it. It's so much actually, my husband and I just built a house on the farm so we can bring the kids and my brother and his family and everybody can meet up in the summers at the farm.

Oh, I love that. I did not know that about you. That is so, so cool. Have you been back to South Korea? Sadly, I haven't. I have been to the farm quite a bit, but not to South Korea. Yeah, it's on our short list of our next trip. All right.

That's really cool. And that's a great, great story. And so you then moved, tell us a little bit about your career. So you were on Oshner for 10 years. And that's where you kind of grew up in terms of your, I mean, you were. Yeah. Things like that. Well, that's where you grew in your leadership.

Yeah. I actually started working as a consultant at Oshner over, I guess, in 2011, trying to think back in time. So I started on their project. They actually were installing Epic. I was living in New Orleans and got connected with that team and was super excited to be able to work on that project. And they just really enjoyed the people I was working with and felt like we were really,

you know, helping that system really start using technology in a different way. And so joined full time a couple years after in 2013. And then I moved into the CIO role. I want to say like 2016. Yeah. And then you just continued your maturation, raising up other leaders, and then you had this opportunity with Sutter. How did that come about?

Yeah, that's right. Well, I have really proud of the work that we did together as a team at Aschner. But it was probably time to think about doing something new, you know, just as I think you should consider after being somewhere I was there for over 10 years and had a great time there. had this opportunity at Sutter, which was a big personal move for our family. You know, all of my kids are born in New Orleans and had lived there their whole lives, but really thought this was just such a great professional opportunity to have that experience and to move. So it's been really good.

I've been here. The kids, my husband have been here just over a year. They joined maybe like August of last year, but I started actually in March. So I was commuting for the first six months. Yeah. Well, your parents and grandparents must be so proud, especially the community, right? Yeah, you know, you grew up in this sort of rural community, as you described it. And then now you're in the big city.

I mean, like a large health system. That is so cool. Yeah. You know, one of the things that makes me laugh that I sometimes don't remember that much is when I was applying to colleges, I wanted to go to college in California. My dad wouldn't let me apply because he told me California was going to fall off. He's like there's going to be an earthquake and it's going to be disconnected. And now I live here.

You have a great, great story. So your role at Oshner is called Chief Digital Officer. And there's also, right, the Chief Information Officer. And so how does a role, like at Oshner, how is that positioned with CIO, CDO type? Yeah. Well, when I was at Oshner, I was Chief Information Officer here at Sutter. my role's chief digital officer. And it's the first time Sutter's had a chief digital officer. And one of the ideas that I've been working on that our CEO had as well is to how do we bring

some of the areas that are part of digital and bring them together? Because the CIO reported through a different org structure, our security team, our info security team was a little bit separate, our informatics team was through a separate position leader. We had an innovation team also in separate parts of the organ. So one of the things that he wanted to do was to really bring all those together, which was a vision that I shared as well. And that's what I've been working on over the last year and a half. It's been, I think, really great to do that. I think the teams are definitely seeing the opportunities when we work together. And they were working together before. but they also just had, you know, differing priorities or different things would come up based

on those organizations that you could be a part of. So there's been a lot of benefit in bringing them together. It's been pretty cool. Yeah, no, it makes sense. And it's great. You get to pioneer all that as opposed, it's fine when you inherit something, but it's kind of more fun to create your own. And then it's good for everyone there too as you're doing it together. And so it helps build the team. So that's clearly one of your strategic priorities sort of bring everything together. Can you share maybe one or two additional priorities that you have there, et cetera? Yeah. Well, been partnering with our operations leaders, our physicians and medical groups, and then our chief consumer and brand officer to really focus on access.

Patients getting access to care is actually like a really big opportunity in Northern California, bigger than I expected. It's hard to establish care and really get in to see some of the doctors that you need to see. We have excellent care, but trying to navigate through can be a little bit more challenging. So that's been our big focus area is what can we do to really make it easier for our patients to come and see us. Can we use digital to enable new things? You know, we've been really focused on online scheduling and how we can improve that. And we already had great online scheduling numbers, but we know the demand is there and people want to come see us, and we know if we can put it online, that that's where they want to be. So that's been a big focus area. Yeah, I know

that's super cool. Makes a lot of sense. How do you work with your organizational peer? So you're in the C-suite. And what's your preferred method with working with your colleagues that sit to your left and right? Oh, well, we actually are all in person together at least one day, almost every week. So we rotate that and that's a lot of fun and we get a lot of joy out of being together and working together. I think my sort of preferred style is just sending me a quick text or giving me a call if we have something to talk about. I actually have been working on something with one of my colleagues today who is wonderful. And she texted me this morning and said, hey, I need to talk about this. And so we've caught up a couple times throughout the day just quickly.

And hopefully we can work through that challenge. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So you should make yourself available in all different formats. So that's cool. What about innovation? You know, we talk a lot about transformation, digital transformation, disruption, innovation. How do you get your ideas? Like where is your creative time?

Maybe it's why you're driving with classical music or maybe. But where do you get some of your inspiration? Um, inspiration comes from a lot of different areas, I think. So I, uh, I really enjoy reading. So I enjoy, uh, reading different kinds of books. Um, I get most, I mean, I think most people say this, but I think you get most of your ideas come to you when you're kind of like having some quiet time alone, whether that's, you know, working out or taking walk or, wherever that might be. So I don't have that much at that time. But when I do, I find it's always really beneficial to just take a minute. So sometimes it is when I'm driving. Sometimes just doing something around the house or very infrequently get a little workout in. Yeah. Oh, that's weird. Yeah, it's hard to sort of balance, you know, quote unquote, the balanced life, hard to balance everything and integrate it. But yeah, getting those quiet times away really help a lot.

Was there anything early in your life? Like, you already described sort of where you grew up. Was there anything early in your life that prepared you for your current role? Hmm. I have to give a lot of credit to my parents. They really, and my grandparents actually, they had a family business. In addition to like living close by to each other, we also all worked in the family business. So I grew up going. every day that I wasn't in school in the summers and things to the office. And so one of the things I think I learned was just that you have to have business, but you also can have, you know, there's just this relationship that you can have,

whether it's with your direct family members or with others. And you have to be able to separate that out a little bit. So I think that's helpful. And then they really demonstrated what hard work looks like to me. and and, you know, I really give them a lot of credit for my hopefully good work ethic. No, your parents sound great. I think we should have them on digital voices sometimes. Their grandparents, too, they sound like real, like genuine people.

So that's super cool. What can you share with aspiring leaders that want to be like you? So people are listening. And Lori, again, you know, you've got to have a great career. Oshner and now at Sutter, and you're raising this family and doing a great job with everything. What would you say to people who might be younger in their career who want to be like you?

Like, what are some things they might be able to do? I think, you know, doing a really great job and your current job is probably the number one thing that I think I learned. Sometimes you have folks that are focused on the next thing. And I think focusing on what you're doing, you know, being present in what you're doing then and making it the best you can be, I think is there's no better way to demonstrate that you're ready for the next thing than just crushing the thing that you're doing. So I think that's one. Another one that I try to remind myself of and some of the folks that I work with is be kind to yourself, be as kind to yourself as you would be to your team members. So I have one of my colleagues who I've worked with for a while who's amazing and super smart.

And he was upset that we didn't get something done. And he called me and he was so upset. And I said, what would you say if your employee was telling this to you? He's like, well, I tell her, it's totally fine. You've accomplished so many things. You, this, we missed one thing, but it's okay. Like, look at the grand scheme of things. And I was like, that is what I'm saying to you.

So just that reminder to be kind to yourself. I think it's pretty. I love that. I wish someone would have told me that earlier, but I'm going to talk to this. We tend to beat ourselves up quite a bit. And we don't give ourselves the same grace that we might give up people to us.

Yeah. How do you recharge your batteries and remain fresh? Again, because you have a very full life. So how do you like stay fresh and, you know, not get, quote unquote, burned out? You know, I think part of it is like getting up and really being excited to do what you have to do that day, whether it's something like get to talk to one of your old friends, even though it's also doing some budget review. That's what I was doing. But, you know, I think you got to put it all in perspective and the context of it is to help, whether it's to help your colleagues, help your teammates, help patients. That's what you're going to. That's what we're doing. So that's kind of how I approach things and just appreciate the opportunity. I don't know. Yeah. I'm also normally pretty tired. So some coffee mixed in. I can relate. Although today, this afternoon, my wife was very kind. She, she dropped in from her

clinical practice and made some chat. So it sounds lovely. It was very good. So one thing that you're most proud of both in the workplace and non-workplace. So we'll start with the workplace first. So you've done so much. So it's hard to get to one, but just share one that comes to top of your mind. Oh. Well, I'm really proud of the team here that we've been working on over the last year, took on a really daunting project that's sort of, we call it one set or one platform. And it's really this idea of how can we make consistent experiences for both our patients and our employees and the users, clinicians, and our physicians. And so we started that project at the beginning of this year. It is a monster project. It's going to be a couple of going to take,

it's going to go through 2025 too. But I'm super proud of the team and them just figuring out every single day, figuring out a new problem and figuring out a solution to it sort of in real time. and they've really done such a good job. I believe that by the end of next year, our patients are really going to truly have that one experience that we want for them to have. And so the work that they've started this year will just continue.

So I'm super proud of them for that. That's really cool. What about on the non-work side? Like what's one thing you're super proud of? Well, I'm definitely proud of my children. Probably you're looking for something more specific for that. Okay. I think they are super fun and great to be around and they're, you know, growing up. And the oldest just started middle school. So that's been a, you know, exciting and different experience, but really good. Yeah. No, I mean, that's talk about a monster task, right? Raising kids.

having them grow up to be like just good people. And definitely a lot to be proud of. Laura, we covered a lot of ground pretty quick. We talked about, we got some new music. So we did not have the, what was it, Lauren Berkner band. But you'll have to listen to it. Yes. We have a voice of Spotify list.

So be a new one. And then I love do more of what makes you happy. And one person can make a difference in everyone to try. Because we're also creating, you know, we've done two or 50 some episodes. So we have 250 or more different mantras or quotes. So we're going to create something for that that people can download. So that was cool.

And then learning about you. And in some ways, I'm not surprised about your adoption story and just how you grew up because you're like such a good, kind-hearted person. And so I don't know what else to say about it. But it's like I'm very touched by your story. And then we talked about your role, the things that you're doing, etc. How you came through, Oshner, learned a lot, grew a lot,

and doing some cool things, bringing everything together, et cetera, not just organizationally, but also this sort of this single platform for the one Sutter consistent experience. And we talk about what things that you do for innovation and disruption, which is about reading and learning and then trying to get the quiet time when you can, and it was sneaking a workout or two and have coffee. That was also the key.

So we talked about so many different things, things that you're proud of. And then, you know, how do you charge your batteries? I liked your answer because it was really about remembering the why. So that gives you the passion, which generates energy to do all the things that you do. What did I miss? Or is there anything you want to double down on? I'm going to give you the last word.

Gosh, huge is a great summary, I think, Ed, super impressive. If I had to double down on anything, I would say connect to your purpose, whatever that is. and let that drive you and let that help you make decisions for how do you spend your time. So I think that it's really important. And then if I had to say another thing, I would just also, I talked about my kids a lot. I should also talk about my husband who is wonderful and a great partner and couldn't do anything without him. So I shouldn't say that too. It takes a family.

Everyone's super important. Well, this has been fabulous, Laura. Thank you so much for spending time with us. and thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story. And I think the people of Sutter, they're lucky to have you and definitely the communities that will benefit from all the things that you and your team are doing with technology to enable this experience. So thanks again for being part of Digital Voices.

Oh, thank you. Thank you for listening to Digital Voices Podcast with Ed Martin. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review. and most importantly, thanks again for listening.