Her Story
About Terri
I have been working in healthcare IT technology since 1986. Once you work in healthcare IT, it is very difficult to move to other industries because in healthcare, everything is life and death. It is not about profit or making money, it is about saving lives. That sense of urgency is really what gets you up every morning and makes you feel like a hard day's work made a difference. I have tried other industries off and on and just could not care as much. Throughout my career in corporate America at UPMC, I worked long hours while raising kids, experiencing all the pressures involved in being a working mom. In the later years of my career at UPMC, I created a new type of service that competes really well with the consulting industry in healthcare IT. A year ago, I went out on my own and now I run my own business. I have the best job there ever is, and I love what I do, and it is all value-add. I could not have done that if I had not gone through all of that growth and experience in corporate America. I do not think I could have appreciated what I have now as much if I had not gone through all that.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Terri
01What do you attribute your success to?
If I were to say what is the most unique thing about me, it is that I am seriously mission driven. You give me a mission, and I am a whole new person.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Be really good at something you love to do.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Number one, nothing is forever, and nothing is designed to be forever, so that makes your decisions much easier, because the decision you need to make is, what is the next best step for me right now? You do not have to have the whole plan, because you are going to change a lot. Your life position is going to change a lot, and what you need out of your career will change over time. So my best advice is always focus on the present, what will make you the happiest right now? What will meet your goals right now?
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Everything just takes too long when you work with data and do analytics in healthcare. It is hard. Our data is complex, it is vast, and everything just takes longer than it should, and we really need to speed that up. We need to be faster so that we can progress and heal more people much quicker. I also would love to see a volunteer national healthcare data repository. I mean, just think of the power of it. I am not saying people have to participate, but if we make it volunteer, think of the diseases we can cure now with artificial intelligence on top of all of that great real data. The problem is, we do not have all the data in one place, so we are very limited with what we can figure out, because we have limited data sets.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Make deposits.
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