Master Your Healthcare Career
Master Your Healthcare Career
Empower Your Healthcare Career: Insights from ACHE CEO Deborah Bowen on Leadership, Education, and Growth
On this episode of "Master Your Healthcare Career," we sit down with Deborah Bowen, FACHE, CAE, an influential leader in the healthcare industry and president and CEO of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE). Deborah shares her inspiring journey, from her academic roots in social work and psychology to navigating the complexities of healthcare systems and government relations. Discover how her strategic thinking and ability to influence key decision-makers have driven her success and shaped the future of ACHE over the years.
Deborah and Anthony delve into how volunteering, networking with a mindset of helping others, and building genuine relationships can accelerate your career and create lasting connections in the industry.
Building a lifelong healthcare network is essential, and this episode highlights the significance of joining professional organizations like ACHE. Deborah emphasizes the critical link between the healthcare marketplace, professional communities, and continuous learning. Gain insights into how partnerships and professional networks can enhance your career journey.
Well, melissa, thank you very much for that introduction and, deborah, welcome to Master, your Healthcare Career. Appreciate you being on the show today.
Speaker 2:It's an honor, Anthony. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Deborah, you know, you and I have known each other for a long time and I think you know you've been at ACHE for 34 years, am I?
Speaker 2:I don't think it's quite that long, but it's long, it's long. Probably 28 or 29.
Speaker 1:I left for a little while, and then I came back, so that might be where your math might be different than mine. Okay, all right, you know, I think you know. When we begin something like this, it's always helpful to give the folks who are listening in a little background. So could you tell us how your career trajectory started and how you wound up at ACHA?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd be happy to. First of all, I don't have a traditional MHA or any variation around that. I actually started out getting a master's degree in social work. So I got a bachelor's degree in psychology. For a while I wanted to be a French teacher and while I was in graduate school in Madison, wisconsin, at the University of Wisconsin, they had programs where you could get experiences, which are always good, as you know internships, postgraduate fellowships but I was counseling heroinics and alcoholics and that's a very difficult thing to do. Even those of us who wanted thought we wanted to be social workers and, of course, the rate of recidivism is very high, which means that they don't get well. So I started learning more about systems, thinking about how can you change systems to help people, because even though you cure a physical ailment and you put people back in the systems that actually got them there in the first place, it doesn't work for them right. So I got into systems thinking. I got into that.
Speaker 2:I started meeting one of my professors who worked at the Department of Health and Social Services. When I graduated I went to work there. Then I met a doctor who was very influential in my career. His name was Daryl Trefford. He worked in Fond du Lac, he was a psychiatrist and he happened to be president of the Medical Society in Wisconsin. And from there I got a taste of what the association world was like. So that's a state medical society for physicians. And so from there I started out as many different things government relations, field relations I ran the cafeteria for a while. That was fun.
Speaker 2:And then I decided I wanted to move to Chicago because this is where my family is, this is where home is for me. And from there I met Tom Dolan. Tom had just become president of ACHE and he was interested in starting a government relations program because in those days it was one of the many eras of health reform. Cost quality and access were always an issue. So he wanted to start a government relations program and I wrote the original plan that actually is still in existence today although we do update it, anthony, I'd like for you to know. And from there I went to being an HR person. From there I went and got my MBA. Then I left and I went to work for the Society of Actuaries, another association all based on risk. Then I got recruited back as a COO and I was COO for 10 years and now I've been CEO for 11 years.
Speaker 1:Wow, it's really interesting how the career journey just kind of goes, and some of it is the doors are open in other areas and some of it is where do your interests lie and how do you kind of move into those the? How do you take advantage of those opportunities? You?
Speaker 2:know, I always think it's important to think of. I always never, I never really wanted to be a ceo. I never thought, oh I'm, you know, that's what I'm gonna do. Uh, I, what I thought about was how can I have a positive influence in the world, how can I make a difference? That's what drew me to social work. Yeah, that's what drew me to the whole systems way of thinking. That's what drew me to my other roles. That's what drew me to ACHE, and I've always been interested in influencing decision makers, because I think if you can influence decision makers, you can create a ripple effect that can be very, very powerful.
Speaker 2:So, I'm fortunate to have the job I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that influencing the decision makers is now really what you do at the American College of Healthcare Executives, so that's it's interesting that you talked about that. I know a lot of people who are listening to this do know about the American College of Healthcare Executives and what it does, but could you tell, give a little bit of the origin story about how ACHE started and you know the? To me being a lifelong member of the, to me being a lifelong member of the American College, of.
Speaker 1:Healthcare Executives. The changes that have occurred over the past 15, 20 years has been phenomenal, certainly bringing more people in.
Speaker 2:Well, anyway, I'll let you tell the story, debra. Yeah, well, it probably seems like ancient history to a lot of your listeners and, just for clarifying, I was not around in 1933 when this was founded, but really it came about when you think about what was going on. In were really on the outskirts of towns because they were really called sanitariums, because they didn't really know how to manage illness. The people who were running those institutions were physicians and they were called supervisors of things like the Flexner Report, which talked about the standardization of medical education and how there were gaps and how we needed to fix that. So you had a group of, I think, visionaries really, who were starting to think about the complexity of healthcare and enter in, if you will, insurance coverage. You know Blue Cross, blue Shield, started, I think, in 1929. You have, after the war you had insurance coverage.
Speaker 2:So all of a sudden you have this idea that more and more people could get healthcare and, as a result, the complexity of where and how healthcare was delivered was getting very prevalent. So this notion about professionalizing how we use our resources, what goes on inside the walls of a hospital, became very front and center to people like Arthur Bachmeier and some of the founders of ACHE, and their whole journey and their whole passion was about educational excellence and I think educational excellence you know they believed, and I think Cami believes this and I believe this I'm going to guess you believe it is that education is a means to success and excellence and and and that means education in a lot of different varieties. But again, this is a business. You have to know the operations, but it's also a business with a calling business and the business side of the business. So that commitment to education, that commitment of providing the best, the commitment to understand, what does the body of knowledge look like?
Speaker 2:In healthcare We've been credentialing executives for 80 years, so we know a little bit about leadership. And the other thing that's interesting is how much more widespread healthcare has become. In 1934, there were 227 members. Today, in 2024, we have 49,000. And 76 chapters. So when you think about all the different settings and that care is no longer delivered in a hospital, right, it's delivered on your phone and in, you know, in all kinds of different environments, I think it's really exciting for students to really think about all the opportunities available to them and I'd like to believe ACHE will be their professional home. Just like a lot of other associations, can play important roles in helping people advance their careers.
Speaker 1:And ACHE serves many different purposes within the professional field. I mean I think I'm a proud fellow of the American College of Health and Health Executives. In fact I'm a proud I've got one little star on my fellow thing, which relates to the amount of commitment that I've done to the field. Very proud of that too, deborah, I really want to say I'm also in admiration of the people who have the two stars and the three stars and their level of commitment to it. So one of them is the credentialing part. You know you're also talking about research. I think the educational components that ACHE does myself, you know, being able to participate in them have really kind of raised your capabilities and yeah, yeah, you know the other thing that that that is another dimension of us is career services.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, which which is something that probably is near and dear, uh, to your audiences as well uh, and, and I'd like to say, you know, ach, you know, opens doors. You still have to do the work, but, yeah, yeah, we can provide for opportunities for people to learn and grow and be more intentional, perhaps, about their career growth and how that looks like. We have mentoring programs, we have other types of networking programs, so all of those things, I think, contribute to the fact that, yeah, we represent a wide variety of early men and senior careerists, and I think that that richness in our community, across disciplines, across age groups, really adds to the quality of the experiences you can get and the opportunity to learn.
Speaker 1:I'm going to add one part to that, because you talked about age groups and chapters and stuff. But ACHE is truly international and you yourself have a leadership role at the International Hospital Federation. I do yeah. So talk about that growth and you talk about 220 some people to start out with with the american college and you know that the international part is interesting yeah, I always say, you know, ach is small but mighty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we, we're not a large organization, but the way we influence sort of the world is through the ecosystems, our higher education networks, cammyi, other organizations, and IHF is one of those organizations the International Hospital Federation so there are probably 60 different countries represented in the ranks of the International Hospital Federation, from every continent across the globe. Ihf does a number of important things. One thing that they're very committed to right now is sustainability, because you probably many of your listeners know, healthcare is the eighth largest contributor to issues in the environment, and so obviously that's an important arena and a growing arena of importance. So they have a whole sustainability effort that's going on, which I think is really important. But they also do education.
Speaker 2:And, most of all, I think the thing that's interesting about IHF is they're interested in the same things the rest of us are Quality access, patient care, how to advance, how to use AI, how do we leverage these powerful tools? And if COVID taught us anything, I think it taught us that we work in a borderless environment. Right, I mean, there are. Yes, we may work domestically, but we are part of a global community that cares deeply about healthcare, cares deeply about moving things forward. The other thing that I'm personally particularly excited about I just got off my tenure as president. I'm now the immediate past president of IHF, but when I was president, we started the Women in Leadership Forum and there are thousands of women around the world who are getting involved in that. So this notion about just not only getting yourself into a network and an environment where you're learning from other people and being open to that very much plays out at IHF as well. So thanks for asking me about that.
Speaker 1:No, you know, Deborah, I've looked on admiration with what you've done with the International Hospital Federation and I think your role and the American College of Healthcare Executives role in IHF has been significant and I think has been a really good force in there for them. So just want to kind of share that with you. You mentioned so the role of women and so you've been at ACHE for, like I said, you know 30 some years and with CAMI it's really kind of interesting when you look at who the students were, the gender of our students, and how it's kind of changed over time. Talk about that, because when you started at ACHE, healthcare leadership was definitely a male dominant yeah totally it was.
Speaker 2:you know it's. It's funny because and I hope I don't sound like a dinosaur to those listening here but you know, when I was first, so, even though I was in a very male environment and people would say things, you know, will you take notes, will you do this, will you do that? You know, but I didn't really, I didn't really focus on it because I didn't think it would really be helpful. You know, to focus on it. But when I became president of ACHE, I totally underestimated what it would be like for other women to know that I was in this role, because I was the first woman of seven presidents at ACHE and I totally underestimated what that meant to women and what it might signify. So I've been more in touch with that, which is probably in part why I started the International Hospital Federation Women in Leadership.
Speaker 2:And of course now it's so important for women not only to have a seat at the table but a voice at the table. And you know we almost half of our new members, anthony are women. You know I believe this will be a female dominated profession in the future and I just think you know, sometimes those of us who are women I mean people struggle with all kinds of different things. Right, and the first, I think, secret of success for anybody, women included, is to just know yourself and try and figure out you know where you might be vulnerable, what you need to develop, and not be afraid of that and lean into it.
Speaker 1:You know, deborah, when you were talking about that, it reminded me of the letter I wrote to my daughter when she was born and my wish for her was be a great leader, not just a great female leader, but a great leader. And when you said that, it reminded me of that part with there, that you aspired to be a great leader and then you, you became one, but then you kind of leveraged, you know, your uh, your position in a lot of different ways to inspire other people too. So I think that's really uh, um, it's, it's uh heartwarming to kind of hear.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a beautiful thing you. You gave to your daughter too.
Speaker 1:Thank you. So I'm, I'm a student. Let's, let's pretend I'm a student out there and I'm going. Oh geez, you know, american college does sound interesting, let me, let me join it. Um, so I'm brand new. What do I do Like? So you know? Um, certainly, you know, I fill out the application and I come in, but what's my immediate first steps to success?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the secret to ACHE. It's sort of like when you join, you know, a fitness club, you can have the digital card or whatever you have, but if you don't go it really doesn't do you much good right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I always tell people you got to get active and the best place to do that for anybody is at a chapter. We have 76 chapters all around the country, including Canada, and no matter where you are, you should be able to take advantage of something with chapters. And the best thing is you know you don't have to sign up for. You know long term commitment. But you know sign up for something, whether it's volunteering at an event, getting on a committee, activating at that level, engaging with your local network, seeing what's available, raising your hand and getting meeting people and getting that experience, and I think the momentum for people really builds from that. I mean you can go to Congress too, our Congress on healthcare leadership, which happens every March, and we have student opportunities there. You can certainly do that as well, but that's once a year. So really getting involved at the local level because chapters are doing things all year round, and getting to know where your program is in the chapter mix, what the chapters are doing, that's a great place to start.
Speaker 1:You know I think back to my early career and yes, I mean that's. You know it was going to the chapter and one of my little secrets that I tell students out there is, your first area to volunteer is go to the chapter president and say I'd like to, I'd like to be at the signup table when people register to bring them in, because that's your opportunity to meet everybody as you come in and no one wants to do that role, but it's actually the best role to get as a new, as a new member.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because me, I mean, this is a people business. It still is, and relationships do matter and people matter. And you know, I have heard countless stories about ACHE and how they have helped people grow their careers, advance their careers, and not so much in a. I mean there are formal ways we do that, but mostly in a spontaneous way, right, the person you happen to sit next to at lunch, the person you happen to be in the elevator with, the person you happen to run into in a hallway, or you know there's countless kinds of serendipitous types of meetings that allow for introductions and that's kind of the way it is. It's just being human in the world, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I agree, and you know the secret to there is don't go into a chapter meeting going. How can I don't, how does this benefit me? Go into the meeting thinking how can I help other people succeed and I think, if you switch that mindset and think about how can I help others, you will be seen as an important resource and people will want you yeah and you don't.
Speaker 2:You don't ask for something right away, right you? Just, it's not a transaction, it's a relationship you're building, so I think, cultivating that, being a good listener, you know, trying to understand what questions are top of mind that you may want to ask of somebody you know. How are you using AI? What keeps you up at night? You know? I mean, you can ask things, you know, regardless of your stage and careers. I ask people all the time. You know about things, and and, and people love to talk about what they're doing, um, and, and what their successes are, and and also their failures, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. It's interesting, debra, cause you know, I can remember it of course feels very awkward when you're, when you're starting out your career, to find someone who's a little seems a little bit older, a little bit wiser and who's standing there and to go up and introduce yourself. But I still do that. I still look around for people who aren't talking to anyone and go up and introduce myself and begin a conversation and it's just interesting to kind of see where those lead oh yeah, it's happening to me all the time too.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, that's that's the funny thing about leadership, is I don't know that you really ever arrive. You know, you're constantly learning and I'm always. I was excited to meet one of our speakers last year was Fareed Zakaria, and I was really excited to meet him. Yeah, so I mean, there's always somebody that is interesting to meet, that you can learn from, that you may want to know a little something about. I mean, I think that's always there's, there's always something to gain from that.
Speaker 1:You know, I remember of course we were. I saw him at the, the large session, the the plenary session, but then I actually got to participate in the smaller session that ACH had for for for executives, and he was just so gracious, very warm. I remember watching people wanting to go up and get their picture with him. And he just, you know, just very nicely kind of worked with the crowd.
Speaker 2:Very nice, humble.
Speaker 1:Humble.
Speaker 2:I told him about my Women in Leadership Forum that I was doing globally.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he shared with me. He said it may not be obvious to viewers, but I work very hard at getting a woman on every single one of my shows. Wow, which wasn't really something that was top of mind for me, but I thought it was nice of him to share it with me and it was interesting. Now I'm sort of watching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, let me talk about another thing with ACHE. And then I want to do that and then go into why did ACHE do things with Cami. But the third part. So you talked about the. You talked about ACHE Congress, which is an amazing event. I think I've been to every Congress over the past 15 years. It's not even longer, but just just an amazing event. You talked about the chapters and their educational sessions, and then Deborah, there is something else that ACHA has that, to me, is one of the most amazing things to ever participate in, and it's the clusters.
Speaker 1:And my favorite cluster and you know I think you probably attended this cluster it's almost every executive out. There is the techniques and process of negotiation.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know, Negotiation, yeah, everybody needs to know it. And yeah, and it's it's experience-based too, which I think people like you know you're actively doing it. Yeah, so well, we probably aren't familiar what a cluster is, because it's not, it's not a headache, it's not a migraine.
Speaker 2:Um, it's a series of seminars, you know, that come together and because they're a cluster of seminars, we call them clusters and they happen all around the world, all around the country, sometimes actually in other places too. We're actually having one of our largest clusters in Boston next week. So, but yeah, I mean, any kind of networking opportunity is a good opportunity. Clusters aren't really designed for students, but that doesn't mean that you can't gain. But the beauty of our education is you can get it in a webinar, you can get it online on demand, you can get it at a chapter, you can also take, you know, a six hour seminar, a 12 hour seminar. So you know there's a variety of different formats.
Speaker 2:You know, if you only get to go to one thing, I think Congress is probably the best display of what ACHE is about, because you also have your alumni groups meeting there. You have, you know, the federal sector meets there, which is a component of our industry, right, and a very important one. So that's the military branches and the VA. So I mean, it's where all the richness is on display. You know, and we have speakers there that you don't usually get to hear everywhere the Wright Lasseters of the world, greg Adams of the world and many other thought leaders. So, yeah, I do think that that's the education and just the components of that. We also do resume review, as you know, lots of different components to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so ACHE has this wonderful education arm, credentialing arm, research arm, publications arm. You know we didn't even talk about the publications part, which is, you know, I read Healthcare Executive cover to cover every month that it comes out. It's just an amazing magazine and gives you a background. But there's Frontiers, there's the Journal of Healthcare Management. What am I missing?
Speaker 2:Deborah, we actually do 23 different newsletters, one for students. We also help chapters with their newsletters, but we do them for almost every segment students, early careers, physicians all kinds of different groups um, physicians, all kinds of different groups, uh, so we do a lot of newsletters. Ceos also yeah, we have specialized newsletters for for those individuals and we do blogs and we have a linkedin uh group. That is phenomenal. Uh it, it will probably, by the end of the year, be close to 200,000 people. Wow, yeah, and I always say you know, membership is really important and 49,000 members is something I think that we all feel very proud of. It's a historic high. At the same time, there's a lot of people engaging with us across the board and I think the LinkedIn site is a very good example of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, All right, so let's talk about CAMI and ACHE. Okay, you know ACHE is a corporate the Association of University Programs and Health Administration in the American Society for Public Health that got together and said hey, we want to make sure that the students graduating from the great programs in the US and in Canada are well-prepared to lead, and ACHE really took a leadership role in doing that. And my question to you when we were talking about this podcast before was why, why did ACHE really kind of get involved in CAMI and still stays strongly involved with CAMI?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, I think education and practice are intricately locked. You know, and always have been, Many of the presidents of ACHE and maybe this has something to do with the fact that it's called the American College of Healthcare Executive were academics. So there's always been a strong commitment throughout time for excellence in education, and largely as a means to an end. I mean, education is not the end in and of itself, but it's what it stands for, it's the quality of what you learn, it's the standards that form a good experience, it's the values that you stand for as an individual.
Speaker 2:So I think this marriage of academia and practice, along with the growing complexity of healthcare, was really sort of the soil, if you will, to plant the seed for for CAMI, and this notion that standardization was coming was seen as an effective means to an end, Right. So so you saw a lot of similarities between the joint commission evolving and their standards and CAMI evolving their standards, et cetera. But it's always been about this commitment to really provide the best so people could, you know, live up to their highest potential. And I think that, like I said, I think that connection between the healthcare marketplace, you know, namely hospitals, health systems, other types of organizations the professional communities organizations, the professional communities, HFMA, ACHE, others like that and the educational faculty and programs is really an important one, because when you graduate, that's only the beginning of your leadership journey, it's not the end.
Speaker 1:It's so true, it really is a process of lifelong learning. But one of the things you talked about with ACHE, with me when we talked about that founding back in 1968, neither you nor I were in our organizations when that happened but you talked about how the leadership of ACHE really kind of came from academia, or several of the leaders of the past leaders.
Speaker 2:Our early roots were very much in academia. Tom was an academic before he came to the association. So you know I'm a little bit of a novel choice, I guess, because I'm the first one who really didn't come from academia per se. But you know, I think I'm a strong believer in you know, one of the things that we do as organizations in this healthcare ecosystem that we're all navigating through is you have to build a culture of ant. You know the, the programs who are going on the accreditation journey, the programs who are involved in teaching students all this great stuff that they need to learn and are hungry to learn, hopefully, and the marketplace. You know that combination of things is really important because you know when people come out of school they still have a lot to learn. So, and hopefully, the health care marketplace, the professional societies who are involved in the in CAMI, help make CAMI relevant and stay relevant in CAMI, help make CAMI relevant and stay relevant.
Speaker 1:And that's really important because things are moving very quickly in today's environment and Debra, you know, I think one of the parts around that is you know, you're not just talking the talk here, I mean you, for you and I both served on the board at a time prior to uh, prior to my role as the, the ceo, and then you were, you were board chair yes, I was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's true. So I'm, I'm a big believer in, in, you know this, this culture of, and you know things are better with each other. You know the the better together, collaborative, that we're involved with, with naz, nazi and Nali and others. I mean it's important and you know, too often you know it has to be sort of this or that. You know, and I'm a strong believer that a lot of the success of our community and our profession is because of this philosophy of, and we're stronger together for sure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and Cami is definitely stronger with our partnership with ACHE and I just really want to thank you for that and your long-term commitment to our organization. As we kind of go out and I know, we gave a lot of different levels of tips and advice to students. One final bit of advice for someone who's an early careerist, maybe a recent graduate or maybe a soon to go into a graduate, what would be your one key nugget of advice for them?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I think there's a couple of things really no-transcript. So I would say getting connected is really important and just taking care of others, just as you're taking care of yourself, take care of others. I think greatness and kindness go hand in hand and I and and you know you will you will never regret, you know, being being kind to another person and and you know, getting involved in a chapter. Really you know, if you do nothing else, you need to start getting involved.
Speaker 1:I agree, and I would add to that and you didn't say it my bit of advice would be join ACHE. You'll never regret it.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be a self-promoter too much, although everybody will be getting a digital brochure after this podcast.
Speaker 1:No, I'm kidding. Absolutely Well, Deborah, thank you very much for your time today and thank you for your ongoing support of Cami and the future of health care.
Speaker 2:Anthony, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for all you do. I really appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Deborah.