Her Story
About Heather
I started my career doing website design on the side while working as a CNA and raising my kids. Once my children graduated high school, I went back to college to make technology my professional career. While taking electives, I took a database course and fell in love with it. After school, I began working with a geolocation company, then moved into antibody research, and eventually found my home in healthcare informatics. Now I'm full circle back into healthcare. My typical day involves managing and shifting business priorities to get things out there that best suit our members and make sure they're able to get the patient services they need. I run the full gamut of technical services that support that, excluding claims processing. I work on making sure we're getting authorizations back to providers as quickly as possible, getting things automatically approved wherever we possibly can, making sure providers don't have any blockers to actually getting authorizations to us, ensuring the data needed on our website is there and functional, that we don't have downtimes, and integrating with third-party vendors. People at my company call me a unicorn because I do everything from incoming data to outgoing data to things on our front-end and external website - anything technical except networking.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Heather
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
In the technical realm, every time you touch a process, try to improve it.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don't be scared. People think of what I do, and they think of The Matrix, that movie, and it can be very intimidating. When you talk about coding and things like that, people used to think of biocoding, using AI to do everything, and that puts a bad taste in some people's mouths, or they think of the matrix. And either way you go, it can be intimidating. But don't let that stop you.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think one of the biggest opportunities in my field is actually utilizing technology to make it so that our patients are getting services without technology becoming a block.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Expanding my professional network and validating that women in a professional environment belong there are the most important. I think it's important for generations that are upcoming to see that women in the workplace, women in professional careers, are valid. I don't have a personal brand or that kind of stuff - I do me.
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