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Every new medicine has to pass through a clinical trial, and most of those trials are still designed in 200-page Word documents that teams retype by hand. Vivian DeWoskin is working to change that. Vivian is Chief Commercial Officer of Faro AI, the company bringing AI to how clinical trials are designed, backed by a $37.3M Series B in 2026. Her path started at home: watching her grandmother live with Alzheimer's made her ask what makes a person a person. That question took her to neuroscience at Princeton, where she taught herself to code in the lab, then into healthcare consulting, the launch of the first CAR-T therapy for adults with large B-cell lymphoma, and strategy at Komodo Health before joining Faro. In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw asks her where AI can genuinely speed up drug development, where it never will, and how to build a team that succeeds even when you are not in the room. IN THIS EPISODE - Why a grandmother's Alzheimer's led to a career in neuroscience - Teaching yourself to code with no experience - Why she left consulting to operate, and what launching a first-of-its-kind therapy taught her - Why clinical trial protocols run to hundreds of pages, and what that costs patients - Treating protocols as data, and why that unlocks AI - The one thing AI cannot replace: clinical judgment - Setting a company up for scale when the founder isn't in the room - Leading in line with your values CHAPTERS 0:00 Trailer 1:04 Introduction 2:10 Her grandmother, Alzheimer's and what makes a person a person 3:20 Neuroscience at Princeton 6:27 Learning to code in the lab 7:55 From research to healthcare consulting and Komodo Health 10:33 Choosing to operate: business development 12:13 Joining Faro 14:41 What Faro does and why clinical trials need it 15:22 200-page protocols and the data problem 17:41 Studies designed in Microsoft Word 18:11 Treating protocols as data 19:27 Making trials faster 21:50 What AI can't replace 23:12 Leadership at the next stage of growth 25:43 What matters most as an inspiring woman 27:53 Thank you ABOUT THE GUEST Vivian DeWoskin is Chief Commercial Officer of Faro AI (formerly Faro Health), where she was first Chief Strategy Officer. She previously held strategy roles at Komodo Health and worked in life-sciences consulting. She studied neuroscience at Princeton. ABOUT THE SHOW Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw is a podcast of honest conversations with women leaders in health, technology and business about how they built their careers and what they've learned along the way. #InspiringWomen #ClinicalTrials #AI #HealthTech #Leadership #WomenInLeadership

In September 2014, Ebola was killing people at the gates of her treatment centres every morning, and Dr. Joanne Liu went to the United Nations to tell member states the truth: the world was losing. A year later, on 3 October 2015, a US airstrike destroyed the Médecins Sans Frontières trauma hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 42 people, 14 of them her colleagues. Dr. Liu led Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders as International President from 2013 to 2019, through Ebola in West Africa, the bombing of hospitals in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen, and the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw asks her what those years taught her, how ready we are for the next pandemic after COVID-19, and why she wrote her new book, Ebola, Bombs, and Migrants: Humanitarian Crises in a Security-Obsessed World (House of Anansi Press, out 13 October 2026). WHAT YOU'LL LEARN - The line from Camus's The Plague that sent a teenager into medicine: never trivialize death - What leading the Ebola response in 2014 was really like, and why the world waited - Why TIME named the Ebola fighters Person of the Year - What happened in Kunduz, and why a hospital must never be a target - Why the 2025 WHO Pandemic Agreement still leaves one big question open - How fear and the "security agenda" shape who gets help, and who doesn't - Why she tells every young ER patient: you have agency - How Louise Arbour, now Governor General of Canada, became her sounding board for every hard decision - Her advice to women: never apologise for being right CHAPTERS 0:00 Trailer 0:50 Introduction 2:20 The book that sent her into medicine 3:40 Becoming a humanitarian doctor 5:15 Ebola, 2014 8:35 Kunduz: the hospital that was bombed 11:20 COVID-19 and the next pandemic 13:15 The pandemic agreement 15:20 A security-obsessed world 17:55 You have agency 18:50 Where are the leaders? 21:15 "Call me Louise": Louise Arbour 23:15 Why we need more women leaders 24:00 Advice to women ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Joanne Liu is a paediatric emergency physician, a professor at McGill University's School of Population and Global Health, and director of its Pandemics and Emergency Readiness Lab. She was International President of Médecins Sans Frontières from 2013 to 2019, and TIME named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. ABOUT THE SHOW Inspiring Women is hosted by Laurie McGraw. Each episode features women leaders in health, science and business sharing how they built their careers and what they learned along the way. #InspiringWomen #Leadership #GlobalHealth #DoctorsWithoutBorders #Ebola #WomenInLeadership

Jodie Morrison never planned to run a company. Her career goal was VP of Clinical, and when the board at Tokai Pharmaceuticals first offered her the CEO role, she said no. She eventually took it on one condition: her board chair would meet with her every week until she felt ready. Six months later, he asked her to take the company public. Today Jodie is CEO of Q32 Bio, a public biotech that went through a painful restructuring in 2025 and came out the other side. In 2026, Q32 reported positive Phase 2 data for bempikibart in severe alopecia areata and completed a $200 million public offering to fund its registration-directed program. In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw talks with Jodie about what it takes to lead through the hard years, why asking for help is a CEO skill, and how she built one of biotech's most trusted CEO networks. In this episode - Why she moved from bench science to clinical research, and the stroke patient who made her stay - Turning down the CEO role, then taking Tokai Pharmaceuticals public in 2014 - The weekly board chair meetings that helped her learn the job - Why first-time CEOs get into trouble when they "fake it till they make it" - Q32 Bio's turnaround: choosing alopecia areata, selling the kidney asset, and holding the team together - Explaining tough strategic calls to a board and to public investors - Starting The CEO Forum in March 2020, growing from 10 CEOs to more than 100 in weeks - Bringing COVID testing to Cambridge biotech employees - Using CEO survey data to push back on boards about return-to-office - How Q32 Bio is setting AI governance and training employees - Learning that the Tokai IPO had set records for women in leadership - Why women's college networks produce so many executives and board members - Her advice for early-career women: do the work, and find people who tell you it's possible About Jodie Morrison - CEO, Q32 Bio (Nasdaq: QTTB) - Former CEO, Cadent Therapeutics (acquired by Novartis) - Former President & CEO, Tokai Pharmaceuticals (led 2014 IPO) - Former interim CEO, Keryx Biopharmaceuticals; former COO, Syntimmune - Earlier clinical roles at Dyax, Curis and Diacrin - Founder, The CEO Forum - Board of Managers, Life Science Cares - B.A. Neuroscience, Mount Holyoke College About Inspiring Women Inspiring Women is hosted by Laurie McGraw. Each episode features women leaders in health, science and business sharing how they built their careers and what they learned along the way. #InspiringWomen #Biotech #WomenInLeadership #CEO #LifeSciences #AlopeciaAreata #Leadership

Bryony Winn graduated from Oxford just after the banks crashed, applied for 102 jobs and got one offer. Today she is CEO of BAYADA Home Health Care, a $2.2 billion organization with 44,000 employees, and the first leader from outside the founding family in its 50-year history. In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw talks with Bryony about growing up in Zimbabwe, becoming a partner at McKinsey, running health plan operations at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and Carelon Health, and why the founder of BAYADA asked her for a 50-year plan. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN - How growing up in Zimbabwe shaped the way she sees healthcare - The McKinsey value she still leads by: the obligation to dissent - Why she felt she had to know the data better than anyone else - What consulting doesn't teach you about leading 11,000 people - How she helped fix a claims mess after the pandemic - Why partners matter as much as mentors - The questions she asked before taking the BAYADA job - Why 11,000 people a day turning 85 changes home care - Her goal: serving one million clients a year CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 0:49 Moving house with three kids 1:55 Growing up in Zimbabwe 3:47 102 job applications, one offer 5:09 The obligation to dissent 6:44 Why she over-prepared 8:00 From consulting to running operations 9:13 It takes a village: leading 11,000 people 10:11 Learning what she didn't know 12:03 Fixing claims after the pandemic 13:31 Partners, not just mentors 15:16 BAYADA's first CEO from outside the family 16:42 The 50-year plan 17:48 BAYADA today: 250,000 clients a year 20:54 11,000 people a day are turning 85 22:20 From individual care to population health 24:39 The vision: one million clients a year 25:43 What she expects of herself ABOUT THE GUEST Bryony Winn is the Chief Executive Officer of BAYADA Home Health Care. She was previously President of Carelon Health at Elevance Health, held senior roles at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, and was a partner at McKinsey. She grew up in Zimbabwe and is a Rhodes Scholar. ABOUT THE SHOW Inspiring Women is hosted by Laurie McGraw. Each episode features women leaders in health, science and business sharing how they built their careers and what they learned along the way.

Dr. Beth Shapiro, Chief Science Officer at Colossal Biosciences, explains how her team brought back the dire wolf, what they've learned since, and how de-extinction tools are already helping endangered species like the red wolf. Hosted by Laurie McGraw on Inspiring Women. Beth Shapiro is a world-leading ancient DNA scientist, MacArthur Fellow, Rhodes Scholar, member of the National Academy of Sciences, and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz. She is the author of How to Clone a Mammoth (2015) and Life as We Made It (2021). IN THIS EPISODE - How Colossal de-extincts a species: ancient DNA, genome editing, cloning - Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi: life on a secure ecological preserve - Why the dire wolves will not be released into the wild - Red wolf clones and the Ghost Wolves Project with Bridgett vonHoldt - Bringing back the dodo to Mauritius, and the woolly mammoth and thylacine - New ancient DNA findings on cattle ancestry in North American bison - From broadcast journalism to Oxford and the new field of ancient DNA - Being a public face of science and changing your mind with new data KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED What is de-extinction? Using DNA from fossils and remains to edit the genomes of living relatives so extinct traits return in living animals. Did Colossal bring back the dire wolf? Colossal announced three dire wolves in April 2025: Romulus and Remus (born October 1, 2024) and Khaleesi (born January 30, 2025). Will the dire wolves be released into the wild? No. Beth Shapiro says they will stay on a secure preserve because they would compete with struggling gray wolf populations. How does de-extinction help living species? The same cloning tools produced red wolf clones (Hope, Blaze, Cinder and Ash) to add genetic diversity to the most endangered wolf in North America. Why bring back the dodo? To restore ecosystems in Mauritius, remove invasive species, support ecotourism and protect endangered native species. Can dinosaurs be brought back? No. Ancient DNA does not survive that long. Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton was inspired by early ancient DNA research from Allan Wilson's lab at UC Berkeley. PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS MENTIONED Colossal Biosciences · UC Santa Cruz · University of Oxford · University of Georgia · Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute · Princeton University · Alan Cooper · Allan Wilson · Bridgett vonHoldt · Michael Crichton ABOUT INSPIRING WOMEN Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw features conversations with women leading in science, health, business and technology. #BethShapiro #ColossalBiosciences #DireWolf #DeExtinction #AncientDNA #Dodo #WoollyMammoth #RedWolf #InspiringWomen #LaurieMcGraw #WomenInScience

Susannah Fox spent 14 years at Pew Research mapping how Americans actually behave online, then became the third Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Somewhere between anthropology fieldwork and the federal government, she found the through line that has driven her entire career: wherever there is an imbalance of access to information, there is unnecessary suffering, and closing that gap is where health begins. In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw talks with Susannah, author of Rebel Health, A Field Guide to the Patient Led Revolution in Medical Care, about what happens when patients stop waiting for permission. She tells the story of John Costik, a father who jailbroke his four year old son's continuous glucose monitor so he could check his son's blood sugar from an Apple Watch instead of stumbling down the hallway every few hours, then shared exactly how he did it online. What started as one dad's hack became a global, patient built movement, and eventually an open source artificial pancreas system the FDA never saw coming. The conversation moves into caregiving, a role nearly 40 percent of Americans quietly carry without ever calling it work, and then into the subject most people avoid entirely: dying. Susannah is a certified death doula, and she and Laurie share deeply personal stories about caring for their own parents at the end of life, what it means to die with dignity, and why so few families ever get the chance to plan for it. Susannah explains why she believes the missing piece isn't more medicine, but better data and better stories about how people actually want to leave this world. Guest: Susannah Fox, health and technology strategist, former U.S. HHS Chief Technology Officer, and author of Rebel Health Host: Laurie McGraw Subscribe to Inspiring Women for more conversations with the women rewriting healthcare's leadership playbook. #InspiringWomen #SusannahFox #Caregiving #Healthcare #DigitalHealth

Katherine Stueland is President and CEO of GeneDx (Nasdaq: WGS), a $3 billion public company that diagnoses more children with genetic disease than any lab in the world. Since taking over in 2021, she has brought the company to profitability and launched new tests that are changing how rare disease is diagnosed. On the day of this recording, she was named a 2026 Fierce 50 honoree for Health Equity. In this episode of Inspiring Women, Katherine talks with host Laurie McGraw about: - Why it takes an average of 5 years to diagnose a child with a genetic disease, and how GeneDx now delivers a fully interpreted genome in 48 hours - GeneDx's origin story at the NIH under founder Dr. Sherri Bale, whose Gaithersburg, Maryland lab took the hardest-to-diagnose cases - How the 2013 Supreme Court ruling on gene patents opened the genomics industry - Making exome and genome testing easier for non-geneticists to order and understand, including pediatricians, cardiologists, and parents - Why "rare disease" is a misnomer when it affects 1 in 10 Americans, half of them children - Why 95% of genetic diagnoses have no FDA-approved therapy, and how more data can change that - Careful listening as a CEO skill, and balancing quick decisions with contemplation - Using gut and lived experience alongside data and AI to make big decisions Katherine previously served as Chief Commercial Officer at Invitae before joining GeneDx. Inspiring Women is hosted by Laurie McGraw. #InspiringWomen #KatherineStueland #GeneDx #RareDisease #GenomicMedicine #WomenInLeadership #HealthEquity #Fierce50

In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw (EVP, Transcarent) sits down with Paige Hendrix Buckner, CEO of All Raise, the nonprofit working to grow the power and influence of women and non-binary venture capitalists. Paige breaks down why having the title of "partner" no longer guarantees real decision-making power inside VC firms, and why that gap is quietly blocking capital from reaching women and non-binary founders. She shares the data behind All Raise's mission, the current headwinds facing women raising their own funds, and where she sees the biggest opportunities for change over the next five years. In this conversation: - Why titles don't equal power in venture capital - The data on returns from firms with more women partners - Only 1.6% of U.S. AUM is managed by women and people of color - Why deal attribution and board seat quality matter as much as headcount - The three groups of women founding their own VC firms - How the wealth transfer to women is creating new investing opportunities - All Raise's next five years: community, data, and storytelling About the guest: Paige Hendrix Buckner is CEO of All Raise, a nonprofit accelerating the success of women and non-binary venture capitalists. She previously served as All Raise's Chief of Staff and Interim CEO, and was COO of Founder Gym before that. About the host: Laurie McGraw is EVP at Transcarent and host of Inspiring Women, a podcast featuring conversations with women shaping the future of business and leadership.

Dr. Rebecca Mitchell is a physician, product leader, and venture investor — and co-founder of Scrub Capital, a venture firm that's only three years old but has already made close to 20 investments. Her thesis is different from most of Silicon Valley: put clinicians at the center of the investment process, because they're the ones who actually know how care gets bought, used, and ignored. In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw talks with Dr. Mitchell about her winding path — from doing home care visits with her mother as a kid, to global health work before medical school, to a career-defining project bringing a NASA-designed garment to treat obstetric hemorrhage in low-resource settings, to roles at the American Medical Association and Livongo, and finally to building Scrub Capital's clinician-led venture model from scratch. They dig into why most VCs lack real insight into how healthcare actually works, what the Livongo story reveals about proving ROI in a skeptical market, and what she looks for in founders navigating a market where capital, technology, and buyer behavior are all shifting at different speeds. Topics covered: - Why Scrub Capital built a model letting clinicians invest and advise without leaving clinical work - How Livongo trained the market to measure and pay for healthcare outcomes - Portfolio examples: Phil (digital prescriptions) and Conceivable Life Sciences (IVF automation) - The founder traits Dr. Mitchell looks for: grit, humility, and mission alignment - Why "unsexy" problems — pricing, distribution, workflow — often matter more than new tech - Her reflections on Dolly Parton and what real authenticity looks like in leadership Dr. Mitchell closes with advice for women building careers that don't fit inside one box: do the work to figure out who you are, and don't be shy about sharing it with the world. Guest: Dr. Rebecca Mitchell, Co-founder, Scrub Capital Host: Laurie McGraw #InspiringWomen #HealthcareVC #WomenInMedicine #VentureCapital #Healthcare #FemaleFounders

Dr. Eve Cunningham never planned to leave the delivery room. She was a practicing OBGYN — delivering babies, doing surgery, building her family — until a conversation with a Microsoft exec pulled her into virtual care leadership right as Covid forced Providence Health to move its entire clinical operation online in a single week. That crash course became a career. Today Dr. Cunningham is Chief Medical Officer at Cadence, an AI-powered technology and care delivery company that just raised $100M and now works with 25+ health systems and over 120,000 patients. In this Inspiring Women conversation, host Laurie McGraw sits down with her to unpack how Cadence goes beyond passive monitoring — actually titrating medications, ordering labs, and triaging patients remotely on a health system's behalf. They cover why roughly half of hypertension patients are poorly controlled, why a single office blood pressure reading is often misleading ("white coat hypertension"), and how trend-based data lets clinicians safely up- and down-titrate medications for frail, older patients. Dr. Cunningham also explains why simplicity — no apps, no passwords, no Bluetooth pairing — is the reason over 70% of Cadence's senior patients self-activate their devices without ever calling for help. IN THIS EPISODE: - Why 50% of hypertension patients are not in good control - How Cadence intervenes on hypertension, diabetes, and heart failure remotely - The "white coat hypertension" problem and why trends beat single readings - Why 70%+ of patients self-activate devices with zero tech support - How Covid forced Providence Health to go virtual in a week - Building and selling a clinical decision support tool, Med Pearl - Why remote monitoring lets PCPs manage ~100 more patients per panel - Advice for clinicians moving into health tech leadership ABOUT THE HOST: Laurie McGraw is EVP at Transcarent and the host of Inspiring Women, a series spotlighting the founders, executives, and physicians reshaping health care. Full episode on Inspiring Women. Link in comments. #InspiringWomen #DigitalHealth #AIinHealthcare #RemotePatientMonitoring #WomenInLeadership #HealthTech #Cadence

She led moonshot projects at Google X. Then she walked away to take on one of America's hardest problems: a youth mental health crisis where roughly 20 million teens and young adults need care — and only half get it. In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw talks with Obi Felten, founder and CEO of Flourish Labs, about a different model for closing that gap: training young adults with lived experience to become accredited, professional peer supporters — and scaling it with telehealth and AI through Peers.net. In this conversation: - Why Obi left Google X moonshots for mental health - The care gap: ~20M young people in need, only half reached - Peer support as a way to expand the mental health workforce — not just add clinicians - Winning Medicaid contracts to reach underserved youth - Peer support in high-risk moments, like post-ER care for suicidal teens - What it takes to scale a mission to a million supporters About the guest — Obi Felten: Founder and CEO of Flourish Labs, scaling professional peer support via Peers.net. Previously led technology moonshot projects at Google X and was Director of Consumer Marketing for Google across EMEA. BA in Philosophy and Psychology from Oxford; based in California. → obifelten.com · flourishlabs.com · peers.net About the host — Laurie McGraw: Laurie is a 30-year health technology executive and creator/host of Inspiring Women. She's Executive Vice President at Transcarent, and previously served as President and Chief Client Officer of Allscripts and SVP at the American Medical Association. A Brown University cognitive science graduate, board director, speaker and advocate for health equity and women's leadership, she started Inspiring Women to close a stubborn gap: women make up 70% of healthcare's workforce but hold only about 20% of C-suite roles. — Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw advances women to healthcare leadership — and keeps them there. New episodes every Tuesday. #InspiringWomen #MentalHealth #HealthcareLeadership #WomenInHealthcare #PeerSupport #DigitalHealth #GoogleX

Caroline Stokes tells CEOs something most of them don't want to hear: the AI question everyone is asking is the wrong one. She is the founder of FORWARD, a human capital solutions firm for pioneers, and the author of AfterShock to 2030: A CEO's Guide to Reinvention in the Age of AI, Climate, and Societal Collapse. Named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2026, she was shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Leadership Award for a book she deliberately published digital-only to keep its carbon footprint near zero. Her route here was unusual. Raised between the UK and Singapore before the age of ten, she went from PR at Virgin to the early PlayStation team, then to executive search, then to coaching, and then back to school three separate times during and after the pandemic to study ESG at MIT, AI business strategy, and the new space economy. She is neurodivergent, and she credits that with how she reads systems and spots what a room is missing. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT CAROLINE COVERS IN THIS EPISODE 1. THE FOUR SHOCKS ALREADY HERE Economic instability, climate disruption, AI acceleration and societal fragmentation are not separate agenda items. They are one interconnected system, and leaders who treat them separately are already behind. 2. WHY AI IS THE WRONG FIRST QUESTION Yes, learn it, the way you had to learn email in 1994. But the question a board should actually be asking is how long the organisation can sustain itself at all. 3. THE CEOs WHO ARE QUITTING INSTEAD OF ADAPTING Many are cashing in their chips rather than building the polymathic organisations this moment demands. Caroline explains who she will and will not work with. 4. THE 100-DAY REINVENTION Built after she watched leaders at a top-three technology company shrug off a mandate from their new CEO with "it'll take two years." Her warning to them: you will be laying people off before that. 5. FIGHT, FLIGHT, FREEZE, FAWN The four avatars every leader defaults to under conflict. Not knowing yours is how you quietly sabotage your own strategy. 6. CLIMATE AS AN OPERATING CONSTRAINT Not an ESG line item. If your people are breathing smoke and getting migraines, the work does not happen. Maslow, applied to the modern workforce. 7. THINK LIKE A SCIENTIST OR AN ARTIST Michelangelo started with a block of marble and no finished image. Everyone has to start somewhere in a reality with no playbook. 8. HER ADVICE TO WOMEN LEADING RIGHT NOW Follow the curiosity that keeps stalking you. Ask what your seven-year-old self would want from you, and then go learn something new. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT CAROLINE STOKES Founder of FORWARD and a global leadership strategist for the Fifth Industrial Revolution. A Sony alum who worked on the PlayStation launch and a PCC-level, EQ 2.0-certified coach, she moved from executive headhunting into leadership reinvention. She is the author of AfterShock to 2030 (2025) and Elephants Before Unicorns (Entrepreneur Press, 2019), and a co-author of the HBR Guide to Navigating the Toxic Workplace (2024). Her 2019 TEDx talk predicted the convergence of AI, climate and societal disruption now shaping boardrooms. Website: theforward.co Book: AfterShock to 2030, on Kindle, Audible, Spotify and Apple Books ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT LAURIE McGRAW Laurie McGraw is the host of Inspiring Women and Executive Vice President at Transcarent. A health technology executive with three decades of experience, she has led product and commercial organisations, served on public and private company boards, and advises early-stage ventures. She started Inspiring Women around a gap she kept running into: women make up roughly 70 percent of the healthcare workforce but hold about 20 percent of the C-suite seats. Each episode is a direct conversation with a woman who has built something, aimed at the practical questions that rarely get asked in public. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ INSPIRING WOMEN WITH LAURIE McGRAW Website: inspiringwomen.show Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. #Leadership #CEO #AI #Climate #WomenInLeadership #Thinkers50

SHE THREW AWAY EVERY FINANCIAL MODEL SHE HAD BUILT IN EIGHT YEARS ON WALL STREET. Whitney Johnson graduated from college with a music degree, arrived in New York newly married and broke, and took the only job she could get: secretary to a retail stockbroker. She watched the brokers around her open accounts and thought, I want to do that. So she took business courses at night. A boss took a chance on her and moved her into investment banking. Then, while she was pregnant and on the strength of good performance reviews, she was pushed into equity research, a move she did not want and that felt like a step down. It became the making of her career. She spent nearly eight years as an equity analyst and was Institutional Investor-ranked every single year. Then she read Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma and realized disruption theory did not just explain the Latin American telecom stocks she covered. It explained her. She left Wall Street without keeping a single one of her models, cold-emailed Christensen one of her research reports, and eventually co-founded the Disruptive Innovation Fund with him. Today she is the CEO and co-founder of Disruption Advisors, ranked by Thinkers50 among the top ten management thinkers in the world, and the author of four bestselling books with a fifth on the way. In this conversation with host Laurie McGraw, Whitney breaks down the S Curve of Learning: why the launch point feels terrible even though your growth is mathematically at its fastest, what the sweet spot actually feels like, and why mastery is the most dangerous place to linger. IN THIS EPISODE - From music major to secretary to Institutional Investor-ranked equity analyst - The maternity-leave moment that turned an unwanted job into a career-maker - Reading The Innovator's Dilemma and realizing it applied to people, not just products - Leaving Wall Street and burning the bridges on purpose - How she reached out to Clayton Christensen, and what came of it - The S Curve of Learning explained: launch point, sweet spot, mastery - Why growth feels slowest at the exact moment it is fastest - Dopamine, inaccurate predictive models, and why beginners feel like imposters - Dr. Dan Siegel's "name it to tame it" and how to talk yourself through the discomfort - Why mastery is where careers quietly stall - "If I don't disrupt myself, the market will do it for me" - The research on women needing 100% of qualifications versus men needing 70% - Being judged on track record while men are judged on potential - Getting her hand slapped asking for compensation, and what she'd do differently - Sally Helgesen's How Women Rise and Sheryl Sandberg on naming the discomfort before the conversation - Whether Whitney still disrupts herself, and what that looks like now - AI as external disruption, and why self-regulation and calm are the real response - Pulling the stake out of the ground: self-limiting beliefs women carry - Her closing advice on connection, intuition, and discernment as superpowers Hosted by Laurie McGraw. Full episode on Inspiring Women. Link in comments. #InspiringWomen #WhitneyJohnson #LaurieMcGraw #DisruptYourself #SmartGrowth #Leadership #WomenInLeadership #PersonalDisruption #CareerGrowth

LORI PRESTESATER SPENT HER CAREER BUILDING COMPANIES AND RUNNING P&LS. THEN SHE JOINED A 175-YEAR-OLD INSTITUTION AND ASKED WHAT IT COULD BECOME. Laurie McGraw sits down with Lori Prestesater, former Senior Vice President of Health Solutions at the American Medical Association, on the eight years she calls the pinnacle of her career, and the transition out of it. Most people would not describe the AMA as a high-growth opportunity. Lori came from payers, provider groups, and high-growth technology, and took on the work of turning a traditional publishing organization — one that put out books, codes, and data formats — into a data organization. She is candid that the hard part was never the technology. It was culture, change management, and leading by influence rather than authority, including with the physician volunteers who sit nowhere on an org chart. The conversation also goes where most leadership interviews do not: what happens when a woman who worked seven days a week and put herself last finally has to decide what she wants next. In this episode: - Why a high-growth executive chose a 175-year-old association, and what surprised her when she arrived - The CPT code set as the backbone of revenue cycle, and why it has to evolve as medicine does - CPT Intelligence — built on a private large language model, with content tagged using graph database technology — and how it supports autonomous coders, EHRs, payers, and prior authorization - Why the biggest challenge in any transformation is cultural, not technical - Building the data labs team with Sandeep Dhamale, and the platform he left behind - The credentialing product launched during her tenure: under two years in market, just under 150 customers, deployed across just under 700 locations, with customers reporting up to a 30% reduction in physician onboarding time - Six months to see a primary care physician in San Francisco, and why an incredibly cumbersome application process compounds the shortage for patients, health systems, and physicians alike - Taking the complex and making it simple — the skill she undervalued early in her career - Putting mission first when your instinct is growth: the art and science of medicine for the betterment of public health - Handing Health Solutions to Jeremy Knight, and why she believes he is better suited to the next chapter - Advising AMA CEO Dr. John Whyte on special projects during her transition - Moving back to Colorado after years of not living in the same state as her husband - Moving her mother, who just finished her term as board chair of a hospice organization at 88 - A new grandchild, a daughter navigating new motherhood, a newly married son - Where board work fits into what comes next, after years spent on the staff side of the table - Women Business Leaders, and the principle at its core: who mentors the mentors? - Why senior leadership gets lonely, and why you need people for the good times and the bad - The book Ask For It, and why she has given it to so many young women - Her closing advice: be confident, talk less and listen more, know your superpowers, backstop your weaknesses, and build a network that will advocate for you when you struggle to advocate for yourself Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw.

Kelly Nierstedt never planned to lead a hospital. She is a first-generation college graduate who worked on Wall Street out of high school, went to nursing school as a second career, and wanted nothing more than to be the best labor and delivery nurse she could be. Then the taps on the shoulder started. Take on this project. Take on this unit. Take on another. Today, Kelly is the president of Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center, one of the largest and most complex hospitals in Florida and home to the region's Level 1 Trauma Center — and senior vice president of the Orlando Region. She got there without an MBA, without a finance background, and without ever checking all the boxes first. In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw sits down with Kelly to trace the path from the bedside at Hackensack University Medical Center, to leading OSF Healthcare Children's Hospital of Illinois in Peoria — where she built a care-closer-to-home model so families no longer had to drive four hours to Chicago — to becoming the inaugural president of Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies, one of the busiest delivery hospitals in the nation. Then came the second yes: leading the adult flagship hospital, where the one thing they don't do is the one thing she was trained in. Laurie and Kelly met at the Women Business Leaders Conference, where Kelly spoke about complexity in healthcare today. Topics Covered: - From Wall Street in the late 80s to nursing school on loans — a second career with no roadmap - Why Kelly said yes to every tap on the shoulder, and the Plan B mindset that made her fearless - Why women wait to check every box before saying yes — and why she never did - The move from New Jersey to Peoria, Illinois, and convincing a resistant leadership team with data - Recruiting physicians to middle America — and why they stayed - Interviewing for the Winnie Palmer presidency while on vacation in Fort Lauderdale - Why she puts on scrubs in every role: answering phones, filling water jugs, showing the team she cares - Walking into a Level 1 Trauma Center as a mom-baby nurse — and why not knowing made her a better leader - Four years in, every member of her original team is still there or has been promoted - "The keeper of the culture": what a hospital president actually does - Why her team members — not patients — are the most important people in the building - Move fast, fail fast: why healthcare's caution can leave patients behind - Transforming a large, tactical board into a smaller, strategic, deliberately diverse one - The patient suicide that shook her — and the board meeting where she cried, said "I'm not doing well," and was met with open arms - Her advice to senior women executives: you're not perfect, no one expects you to be, and vulnerability will serve you Kelly's story is proof that the path to the top doesn't require a pedigree — it requires the courage to say yes before you feel ready, the humility to learn from the experts around you, and the heart to never lose sight of who you're serving. As she puts it: "We're not perfect. We're just people trying to do a good job every day. Be open about that, and you will be just fine." Inspiring Women is hosted by Laurie McGraw, Chief Commercial Officer at Transcarent, former SVP of the American Medical Association, former President of Allscripts, and a 30-year healthcare executive committed to advancing women into leadership. Full episode wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation.