October 2, 2024: Rebecca Woods, Founder and CEO of Bluebird Leaders, Maureen Nylin, Portfolio Manager at Oracle, and Dawn Whitney, Founder and CEO of ElevateX Leadership Collective, discuss the significance of building deep, authentic connections in healthcare leadership. What happens when female leaders in IT and healthcare break away from daily technology talk to focus on trust and friendships? How do vulnerability and transparency help executives overcome the isolation often felt at the top? Rebecca shares insights into balancing exponential business growth with maintaining the intimacy of leadership networks, while Maureen and Dawn reflect on the importance of authentic relationships and the power of community. This episode explores how such relationships influence leadership, personal growth, and even sales cycles without explicitly talking about technology itself.
Key Points:
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Bill Russell: My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare one connection at a time. Our keynote show is designed to share conference level value with you every week.
Now, let's jump right into the episode.
Sarah Richardson: (Main) We are joining you live from Atlanta, from the SOAR Conference. An amazing partnership between Bluebird Leaders and Ms. Week Health. And I cannot tell you how amazing it is to be here with the founder of Bluebird Leaders, and who made all of this happen, Rebecca Woods. Thank you. And the power of Rebecca is that she believes that you never have to go it alone, and you certainly don't.
She brought the three of us together, Maureen, and Dawn, and myself. And we literally are NEST best friends. Our friendship that has grown quickly and is now forever, which is a testament to the power and the intent of Bluebird Leaders. This is a room [00:01:00] of 150 plus women with several male allies and champions, realizing that when you bring women in healthcare and IT together, amazingly, How do you create better bonds, better trust, better friendship, better intentions, and very likely a better sales cycle and pipeline when you don't talk about technology?
Because that's what we talk about every day, all the time anyway. And this is about how we bring those things together to make all these amazing things happen. We know that technology is there. How do you actually get it to work and exceed everyone's expectations? Maureen, I'm going to start with you because you are a clinician and you've been hearing all of these different aspects coming through.
What has been the most powerful aspect of technology?
Dawn Whitney: Okay, setting all of the wonderful speakers aside, which have been amazing, and I'm going to touch on that in just a second. I think it's the friendships with the women that have happened organically in this conference, and we've felt it with the four of us.
beyond that, even just entering the room, that's been the best part. The [00:02:00] energy and the sanctity of female friendships, even at this point in my life, I would have never thought that I'd be at the age I am in this. I'm not telling how old I am. But I wouldn't have thought that I would have been here still gaining deep friendships.
In a way that I wouldn't have been able to imagine.
Sarah Richardson: Rebecca, the bluebird is your baby. And you have this fledgling nest and a couple of birds in there. And now you have an army of bluebirds. Tell us what this means for you.
Rebecca Woods: Oh it's been amazing. I think the one key takeaway that I want everybody to know Hopefully they're taking it away as well.
And we touched on it with one of our talks is that it doesn't have to be lonely at the top, right? Whether you're at the C level, you're an entrepreneur. As I became in that, CIO, or then became an entrepreneur, it was very lonely at the top. And so creating Bluebird Leaders to help form this community of other executives.
That we can rely on and have phone a friends for personal or [00:03:00] professional questions and not have it be so lonely at the top. I hope that's the takeaway that everyone's bringing home.
Sarah Richardson: Dawn, you said it best, it was great. You're like, I didn't think I needed any more friends, and now I want all of them.
Yeah. You're in this group quite a bit as well, and you shared some of the powerful messages with us today. What do you want people from this conference to walk away with from your messaging about how we allow ourselves
Maureen Nylin: to be successful? That's such a great question. I think one of the things that I really saw through all the conference, throughout the last couple of days is that we talked about authenticity and transparency and vulnerability.
I think that a lot of times as executives or as leaders or even as employees we don't think that's what we should be doing at work and that we shouldn't be talking about those things to be able to get ourselves to the next level or to be able to connect with someone else and have a true authentic connection because we're afraid that maybe they will judge us, right?
And so what I loved about the conference is that everybody was so open and exposed to not only sharing their story. [00:04:00] But receiving it back, receiving the love back, and having that moment where everyone felt like they were all in this good feeling that was happening. And I was meeting women that I've known over like LinkedIn and they're coming up to me and they're like, I want to meet you, and I would see women and I'd think the same thing and I'd hug them.
And it was like instantly there was this energy connection that , you just can't describe unless you're in this kind of space. For me, it was magical, and I feel sad that there were a lot of people that weren't here, that should have probably been here, to have this energy. There is next year.
Sarah Richardson: Growth trajectory as business leaders, as entrepreneurs, it's tough The intent of the organization, while having exponential growth, which is a problem most people want to have. Rebecca, you've opened your own company, Propel is well underway, Bluebird is a lot of support structure around that. Two questions.
How you can balance both of these organizations, because they're going to keep just growing [00:05:00] crazily, and how do you want to keep the intimacy of this type of conference as it continues to grow.
Rebecca Woods: So for balance my motto is I'll sleep when I'm dead. Always keep going.
We're going to work on that. We're going to work on that. Yeah, I'll sit still when I'm dead. But, I think they complement each other as well, so it's keeping me relevant with industry related topics, but also pulling women together, gaining those phone a friends. And really Bluebird Leaders is my passion project, right?
And so just to keep That just makes my heart full so that I can then go out and do my day job. And then to your question about keeping intimate, that's near and dear to my heart. And next year we hope to get about 300 people. It will be in Colorado September 24th to the 26th venue to be determined.
But I think that will be it, the 300. If it's still growing and everybody likes what I'm, creating in the wee hours We'll probably branch out to two and do an East and a West or a North and a South or something like that a year. What a [00:06:00] great problem to have
Sarah Richardson: created, truly. Maureen, as you leave SOAR and you head into your weekend, how do you keep this energy going?
Oh, gosh.
Dawn Whitney: I wish I could bottle it up and just keep it going. Serve it out to all of my colleagues that I work with and my family and my friends because it is such a feel good space. Being able to see you shine brought me such joy. You referred to it as her wedding day and I felt that sense of attachment to it.
So how I'll take it home, it's all right here. And so it's going to live here forever. And it's going to be shared out with the world. And that is the way we continue to love it how about
Sarah Richardson: you?
Rebecca Woods: Taking it with me? It is my baby, so it's coming with me and I'll start planning the next year. But just maintaining all these connections and partnerships, right?
Because we wouldn't have, this many people here without our partnership with This Week Health. So we really appreciate working with you all and not being alone in this bubble, right? Not being alone at the top. This week health has been a huge part of that [00:07:00] and having you ladies literally with me every text for every ticket sold over the course of the last four months.
And all the shenanigans around all of those text messages. I
Maureen Nylin: appreciate it. Thank you. I want to say one thing on this. Because she just touched on it and I thought about it. When you say it's your passion project, all wonderful things start there. But this is becoming a movement. This is becoming a movement.
And sometimes we don't even realize what we're asking for until it starts happening and it starts evolving into a movement. That's what you're creating here, like bringing all of these beautiful souls together, and you should be extremely proud of that.
Sarah Richardson: This is what female friendship and leadership looks like.
This is what happens when people decide to come together for a cause. I say that because it can be lonely, and you could be striving for that next opportunity in your career and you don't know how to get there. Join VUPR leaders. Become a part of this group. This nest will always welcome you in. We will keep soaring to new heights together, and I cannot [00:08:00] wait to see where this takes all of us.
I love it. Rebecca, for creating something exceptional. We love you. We are grateful for your friendship. That's all for now. Thanks for listening
Bill Russell: Thanks for listening to this week's keynote. If you found value, share it with a peer. It's a great chance to discuss and in some cases start a mentoring relationship. One way you can support the show is to subscribe and leave us a rating. it if you could do that. Thanks for listening. That's all for now..