Career full of mission-driven initiatives ignited by executive’s YSPH training

What is your current job?

I am founder and principal of Transitions Consulting, LLC, based in the Greater Boston area, which I founded in 2021.

Describe your work and why you find it rewarding/challenging.

In my current job, I drive consulting engagements, philanthropic initiatives, and leadership development. Throughout my career, I have been an executive leader, consultant, and social entrepreneur with extensive for-profit and nonprofit leadership experiences. I have worked with Fortune 100 organizations, top financial service companies, best-in-class consulting firms, and nonprofit, educational, and healthcare organizations. I have held a range of professional and volunteer leadership roles, in the areas of financial services, insurance, health care, education, and social justice.

How did YSPH prepare you for your current work?

My passion for mission-driven organizations and people began with my training as a YSPH student and, later, a Yale employee. After graduating from YSPH with a joint degree in public health and hospital administration, I took a hospital administrator role; later, I returned to Yale and spent several years working for Yale School of Management on groundbreaking case-mix reimbursement work that changed the health care industry forever and launched my consulting career. My experiences influenced my life and grounded me in the importance of social impact, health care, public health, health equity, wellness, executive education and lifetime learning, and the role of nonprofit and for-profit organizations.

My YSPH education and experience were both transformative and engaging. The greatest influence has been on my deep commitment to civic, philanthropic, corporate, community, and volunteer engagement. I am an active supporter of diversity, equity and inclusion, women’s leadership groups, voters’ rights, educational equity for first-gen and underserved students, financial literacy, retirement advice and readiness, diversity of thought, work that dignifies, public health, and overall well-being and fundraising. My lifetime dedication to volunteering has included a number of well-known organizations and roles.

Most notably, as an advocate, fundraiser, and alumni volunteer, I have served as YSPH class agent for the past 44 years, and recently, at 1stGenYale, Yale Boston, the Yale Alumni Nonprofit Alliance (YANA), and the Yale Campaign School. I have mentored and provided career advice on consulting and health care management to undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni.

Were there any faculty/staff mentors who influenced your YSPH experience?

I have always been incredibly grateful for my time at Yale and YSPH, and for Yale’s leadership, faculty, and alumni excellence. I received a superb education within a collaborative, engaging, loving, and learning community. I was surrounded by leaders, professors, and classmates who had a profound impact on both my professional and personal growth.

So many of these people were generous with their time, scholarship, and expertise, and were so approachable. Each faculty member understood their responsibility to equip us with broad-ranging tools and skills that we would need as future leaders and lifelong learners. They inspired us to be confident, independent, intellectually curious, and to think critically, dream, and even imagine. John D. Thompson, Robert Fetter, Arthur Viseltear, Henry Dove, Edith Baum, Sam Webb, Viola and Nicholas Spinelli, Clearance Bushnell, David Pearson, John Q. Tilson Jr., George Palade, and Jim Jameson significantly influenced my life and career, as well as my husband’s, as colleagues, mentors, and good friends.

A special thanks to John D. Thompson and Robert Fetter for their groundbreaking work that changed the healthcare industry forever and launched my consulting career and passion for this work. They were widely recognized for their contribution to conceiving, developing, and implementing diagnosis-related-groups (DRGs) case-mix reimbursement approach for Medicare. This fundamental change to Medicare reimbursement gave new economic incentives to hospitals, changed the industry, and marshalled in managed care. This approach reshaped utilization review, quality-assurance requirements, and related programs. Through this body of work, I also had the opportunity to work with Richard Averill, Ronald and Leslie Mills, Henry Dove, Richard Burford, Jean Freeman, and the Health Care Financing Administration healthcare leaders.

A call-out also goes to Arthur Viseltear for his contribution as my first-year advisor, friend, coach, teacher, and mentor. His dedication to teaching and scholarly work, his unwavering commitment to his students, his enthusiasm for planning and development of healthcare policy, and his passion for the history of public health opened a door to health policy for me and my classmates. When I met him, he was one of the inaugural group of six Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy fellows working on his second staff assignment to the U.S. Congress. Professor Viseltear engaged several of us in this research, igniting our interest in health care policy. He worked with LeRoy Goldman, principal staff assistant to the Senate’s health subcommittee chairman, and Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Viseltear interested Goldman in his ideas about health education. These concepts were incorporated in a bill that became the National Health Information and Disease Control Act of 1976.

These faculty members were extraordinary role models for innovative thinking and analytics, prolific writing, varied leadership styles, interdisciplinary energy, teaming, and collaboration, balancing academic achievements with focus on family and the arts, truly caring about the impacts of these health policies, and mentorship of the next generation of leaders and innovators to carry on this important work. They all truly influenced me to provide that same mentorship to others.

What advice do you have for current YSPH students?

There are many lessons, but these are my favorite top 10:

• Think about your personal and professional goals and what you want from your career; find your real passion.
• Promote a public health framework that protects and improves the wellness and health of people and their communities (population-based planning, and healthcare & education as a right for every individual), and influence the day-to-day quality of life in our communities, schools, and homes.
• Venture outside your comfort zone – consider a post-college fellowship award for academic and international exchange opportunities; don’t be afraid to change your career path, since the path is not linear.
• Place importance on networking to foster your career development throughout your career – seek out relationships.
• Make sure you know what you are being hired for and what success looks like.
• Promote leadership through communication, collaboration, teaming, and authenticity.
• Trust your sources and make fact-based decisions.
• Character and values matter, and kindness is magic.
• Balance your life and career in a way that delights and brings fulfillment and joy.
• Take advantage of Yale resources throughout your lifetime: Yale College, professional schools, Office of Fellowship programs, athletics, galleries, theater, New Haven, alumni lifelong learning, etc.