Her Story
About Jenelle
I've been in my field for 3 to 4 years, and in my current operations role for a little over a year. My journey began in biotech, but I realized I wanted to use technology to help people in a more direct way. When I learned in my undergrad studies that 200,000 people died from medical malpractice, I saw technology as the answer to that problem. During COVID, I watched my mom, who was a nurse, and thought about who was taking care of the providers and nurses taking care of us. That's when I decided I wanted to support the people who are taking care of patients. I went into medical assisting specifically to understand what issues physicians and medical staff were dealing with when it came to technology - the best way to understand the problems was to actually do the job. I discovered the real challenges were in the transformative piece, when a clinic switches from physical record keeping to electronic systems like EMRs, and in optimizing workflows with new technology including AI. Now in my operations role, my key responsibilities include onboarding staff on day one (which was previously taking a week or two), maintaining systems like our scheduler Next Health and our EMR, managing vendor relationships, implementing new tools like Zendesk for patient feedback and complaints, and escalating patient issues. My main area of expertise is workflow optimization - finding bottlenecks and figuring out how to work faster and more efficiently without completely overhauling how we work on-site. My background in medical assisting gives me real insight into what works and what doesn't. I work in dermatology currently, where the risk is a little bit lower, but my full desire is to really do data analytics in a hospital setting.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jenelle
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would say my parents - their hard work, their dedication, their sacrifice. There is a reason why I am the way that I am, and I'm always striving to, in a way, I know that it's impossible to pay back, but making sure that I'm doing the things that make them proud.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
You do not have to do all of the things all at the same time. Everything has its time and its seasons. When it aligns, it goes so much more smoothly than when you try to force it at the wrong time.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say stay curious. Ask as many questions as you need to get something done. Don't be afraid to advocate for yourself - I think that's a big one. You might feel like you're in a small box, but you should be able to voice how you're feeling in a moment and have it be received, right? And if it's not received, then you understand the environment that you're in and can advocate for yourself.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge is that there are a lot of people who are stuck in their ways and don't want certain things to change because it's how we've always done it. But the biggest opportunity is that there are a lot of people who are excited about the change and want to change. It's a two-sided coin - you have those who are like 'we've always done it this way, why are we changing it,' but then there's other people who are like 'oh, this does make my process easier, it makes it so much better.' I feel like there can be a bridge to both of them, where we can meet in the middle. That's why I kind of like healthcare informatics, because it doesn't necessarily say that we get rid of every single system that we have, but it gives opportunity to say, hey, where can we meet in the middle and then eventually transition to what could be optimized quicker and faster.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Making sure that the people around me feel supported is a value that's most important to me, and just making sure that they're okay. I feel like we can get so caught up in outputs and making sure that we're doing the right thing, that we're not focused on how is this thing affecting us or how it might affect somebody else. Having that empathy is really important.
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