Jennifer Rozenich

I attribute my success to the way I was raised by my parents, especially my mom. She was a very hard worker, and seeing her work as hard as she did when she was younger while raising us as kids made me want to do that and do better. My parents really instilled a good work ethic in me and a caring heart, and I think those values have carried me through my career and helped me achieve what I have today.

The best career advice I've received is to practice active listening and to sit back and let others have their aha moments. I tend to see things before others because I come from a non-healthcare background with a diverse set of experiences, so I look at things through a different lens. I've learned that sometimes it's good to keep insights in the back of my mind and not always speak up immediately. Instead, I listen and let others eventually get there and experience that aha moment themselves. Active listening has become one of the most important skills I've developed, especially as I've moved into more senior leadership roles.

My advice to young women entering healthcare and data analytics is to keep learning and never give up on researching and educating yourself. This field is changing so fast with technology and data, and healthcare is trying to catch up, so you have to keep educating yourself, keep learning, and be willing to be teachable. That's one of the reasons I love healthcare - it's never boring and it's always fast-paced. I'm always learning something new. But I also want to emphasize that you need to take time for yourself to avoid burnout. You can't fix everything and actually be successful at fixing it long-term unless you sustain it, so it's really about picking a couple things at a time and seeing them through rather than trying to do everything at once.

Right now, the biggest challenges in healthcare from my perspective are interoperability of systems, which impacts the ability to share information and create a complete picture for decision-making. As a senior leader running an organization, you have pieces of information everywhere, but nothing is condensed or connected, so interoperability of data and information is a major challenge I'm facing. Another significant challenge is the public policy changes happening at the presidential level that directly impact hospitals and how we operate. And finally, the aging population and workforce retirements are creating challenges - a lot of folks are retiring, and I can see how that's going to impact access to care, even for me as a patient. It's going to be harder to get appointments and receive timely care. On a more personal operational level, I'd say prioritization is one of my biggest challenges. There's so much that can be changed, fixed, and transformed, but understanding what's most important and sticking to it - not boiling the ocean, as the saying goes - is critical. Staying focused on the top three priorities and seeing something through to sustain it is better than working on 30 things that never sustain.

Ethics, integrity, and accountability are the values that are most important to me in both my work and personal life. If you say you're going to do something, you need to be accountable and follow through on it. Being ethical in your decision-making is critical, especially when you're working with data like I am. These are values I hold myself to as an individual, values I bring to the table in everything I do, and values I look for in others when I'm building teams and working with colleagues.