This week, Alex is joined by Lori Dwyer, President & CEO of Penobscot Community Health Care.
Podcast Transcript:
AS 00:06
Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Serra Speaks. I am so excited today to be joined by Laurie Dwyer, the President and CEO of PCHC, Penobscot Community Health Care, am I right?
LD 00:21
Excellent job.
AS 00:22
I did it, I did it. It's so nice to meet you.
LD 00:25
It's delightful to be here. It's wonderful to meet you. I'm very excited to have this conversation.
AS 00:30
It's really great when I get to speak with women in kind of non traditional fields, because I think there's a lot of women in communications, there's a lot of women in media, there's a lot of women in certain industries, but in healthcare, it for a long time was a industry dominated by men. And you've had an interesting path because you're actually an attorney. So tell me about your journey a little bit.
LD 01:02
Well, I, I did not take a straight line, I did not walk a straight road, very circuitous journey to get where I am now. And I would say, you know, the diversions are the probably the most important parts of the journey. So that's one of the I guess one of my takeaways from the story I haven't yet shared. So let me share. So I began my career actually, as a teacher, so I was a teacher in really all levels, seventh grade all the way through community college law. And I, I first got a graduate degree in English, and I started teaching English overseas in international schools. So I taught there for four years, two years in Luxembourg, and two years in Venezuela. That was punctuated in the middle by a stint as kind of a ski bomb out in Taos, New Mexico. It was great.
AS 01:55
That sounds awesome so far.
LD 01:58
And I so I did that. I came back and then I moved back to Maine. Well, not back to Maine. I've never lived here, but my mom's from here. So I moved to Maine, met my now husband here. We already knew each other but we had never lived in the same place. So we moved to Maine together. He started a program at UNE. And I started teaching in Maine at Cape Elizabeth High School. So taught there for a little bit, then took another detour. So this is this is my theme, took another detour into starting a small business, very short lived, but a lot of fun. Almost bankrupting me.
AS 02:34
Doing what?
LD 02:35
So I started an import company. So I had spent time in South America, I started an import company called Equatots. And I was importing goods and wholesaling to retail establishments and really across the country and a couple places in the Virgin Islands. So I did that for a little tiny bit, and learned a whole lot of lessons, you know, and a whole lot of lessons from failure, let me say, and then moved on to teaching at the community college system. And then I went to law school.
AS 03:05
At Maine Law, my alma mater, as well.
LD 03:10
That is wonderful. And it is one of my favorite places in the world. And one of the really, just a fantastic part of the journey to kind of get where I am today. I loved my time there. And I loved it both because of the school and all the professors and the wonderful students that I got had the privilege to get to know but also because it was a second career for me. And so I was you know, much further along non traditional student, a lot of non traditional students there, as you know, and my you know, in my class was, you know, the sheriff of Cumberland County, and, and, you know, politicians and lots of people from across the state. So that's really a wonderful part of being there. So anyway, I went to Maine law, I got out and took a very traditional path after law school and practiced in private practice at Bernstein Shur in Portland, did that for about seven years and really learned a ton, gained a lot of really important experience. I mean, private practice of law could not possibly be more different from teaching, although there's lots of crossover. And then I took the job at where I am now at PCHC to become their general counsel from there, and moved north to Bangor from Portland to take that position. And then about three years, three and a half years ago, I assumed the position of CEO for the organization. So I've been there to total nine years at this point. And everybody can guess my age.
AS 04:36
Well, it's interesting to hear you share that because and this is a theme that's been coming up a lot with all the women that I'm speaking with in this podcast, which is women don't have in general linear careers, right. We try on different things, and we find our way and I think as you kind of said earlier, some of our greatest lessons are in the things that don't fit, right or in the things that don't feel quite right. And that pushes us to the right direction. There's only one person that I've spoken with so far, that was like I knew what I wanted to do in eighth grade. And that's what I'm doing. And that's the assistant district attorney in Cumberland County, who was my law school roommate at Maine Law. She knew what she wanted to do immediately and is still doing to this day, but you bringing all of that depth of experience, especially to the medical field, you must understand people and where they're coming from and patient struggles and all of that much more so than you would if you had just had this linear, I'm going to do medical administration. And that's what I'm going to do.
LD 05:43
Yes, I think, you know, often our greatest strengths are our greatest weakness, right. And so I think a great strength that I bring to healthcare and my to my organization right now is the diversity of perspective. And the fact that I didn't grow up in healthcare, it's very easy to get locked into a particular perspective in a particular way of thinking. So I think that is a benefit. I think, also, like, I'm a huge believer in just the liberal arts, like studying things that aren't, quote, unquote, practical, you know, that make you a much deeper, more rounded person. So that, because life doesn't... all that happens all day long, or curveballs, right, you don't get softballs, most of the time, especially in positions of leadership, especially really, any time but So I think, you know, life throws, you curveballs, things are hard. And the more you the more widely read you are and the more different kinds of things you've exposed yourself, I think the more capable you are of handling them, and gaining a perspective on them that helps you manage it.
AS 06:54
And the broader your perspective is for things that are so important, like inclusion, like responsiveness to crises and society. Yeah, tell me a little bit about in your role, some examples of moments of inclusiveness or moments of, you know, crises that you've had to handle that may or may not have been so, you know, pliable for you? How do you not have your breadth of experience?
LD 07:24
Well, we just went through a pandemic, you might have heard. And so I would say, you know, obviously, the most obvious emergency to talk about is, you know, the fact that we are still in a state of emergency that we have gone through a pandemic, we're still coming out of it. And I'm the leader of a health care organization that's played a significant role in addressing and responding to this health crisis as public health emergency. I think that one of the things we did, which I don't think is necessarily typical, and probably comes out of my other experiences was get together with the entire leadership team and kind of our incident command and, and talk about our guiding principles, like, what's our philosophy of how the hell we're going to get through this? Like, what matters? How do we, who and what do we prioritize, because there's so much to think about, there's, you know, it's it, the list is endless. So we created a list of guiding principles and that's not like new or all that interesting, except that it is kind of in an emergency to sort of pause and say, all right, like, who matters the most? Obviously, our patients and the people we're serving matter, and, but also our employees, like we got to keep them safe. We got to keep them healthy. Just like we got to keep our patients safe and healthy. And so how do we make sure that we're constantly and always coming back to that kind of Northstar and grounding ourselves and then thinking about what really matters? So, I think always questioning the sort of philosophical foundation or the of what you're doing and why you're doing it comes from having lots of different experiences. And then I will say it was just just empathy. I mean, you know, you I, as a private practice attorney, I didn't always, I spent a lot of time doing pro bono work. And I did asylum cases for I Lab and I worked for the volunteer lawyers project, and I worked in dv court and those sorts of things and developed... learned so much from my clients about human suffering and the plight of so many people who are, you know, from very different backgrounds, very different countries, cultures, ethnicities, races, and what they've experienced and I think that that alone was a diversion from sort of what I was supposed to be doing as an associate, although I was supported by the firm, I don't want to say that I wasn't. But it enabled me to see what it feels like to be vulnerable. Because I haven't experienced those things. So I was able to see what it feels like to be vulnerable and experience all of the twists and turns and sort of small challenges that add up to just giant barriers for people when they're trying to get what they need. So that helps when you're thinking about something like how do you get vaccines to people, like it doesn't occur to everybody that you know, while you may be able to get a ride, you might not be able to walk from your car to the to the door or you may be able to get a ride but the ride doesn't have a reliable car and it breaks down and you're you know, I mean it's just there's there's endless sort of things that can happen when you are living in a vulnerable state. And so how do we focus on those and and design a system to respond in emergency that addresses that?
AS 11:08
Tell me a little bit about the area that you serve, the people, what your service population looks like, because not everyone listening to this will know inherently what Penobscot County is comprised of and the folks that live there.
LD 11:25
So, PCHC, we operate in three counties, so we're in Waldo County, Penobscot County and Somerset County. We have a clinic in Jackman, clinic in Winterport and Belfast in Waldo County. And then in Penobscot County, we have Brewe,r Bangor, Old Town for our locations. Our patient population, so we're a federally qualified health center, also known as an FQHC, because we need lots of acronyms in healthcare and in life. And we federally qualified health centers are required by federal law to fill gaps, fill needs for that are not being met by the current healthcare system in the primary care outpatient care space. PCHC, we've taken that further, we definitely do. You know, we do tons of primary care, which includes mental health care and dental care, we believe like your brain and your teeth are actually part of your body. And so we we do all of those things as part of primary care, but we also look for other things that are other things that people need, like housing, we have emergency homeless, shelter, and other other programs like that, to address the social determinants that people face. Our population is everybody. We serve from the very most vulnerable people who are living in poverty, experiencing racism or oppression. You know, and who have, you know, multiple chronic conditions, who may be you know, all that, that a person who may be living through all of those incredible challenges, all the way up to, you know, a professor at the University of Maine with a commercial insurance plan and everything in between. What we specialize in really is taking care of those, the most vulnerable among us. And in doing so, we learn how to take the best care really, of everybody. So our population is, you know, you know, we have lots of people on Mainecare, lots of people, you know, with Medicare as their insurance, but also lots of people with commercial insurance, and then uninsured folks as well.
AS 13:40
That's a lot. What do you find the most rewarding in in your work? Is it serving these underserved traditionally underserved populations? Is it creating and developing new programs? I mean, the fact that you have a shelter is pretty unique and pretty remarkable. What what are some of the highlight points for you that feed you in your work?
LD 14:10
I think innovation comes from the heart. So there's a lot you know, everybody in business talks about innovation and Google and you know, sort of how we can create companies and cultures that constantly innovate. And that's absolutely necessary in healthcare, because we're doing, frankly, a terrible job of taking care of people right now. But I think what drives me is there's a lot of love when you have a mission that people really believe in, right? The people who work at PCHC and the thing that drew me to PCHC see was people love what they're doing. They want their desperately want to help the people in front of them and they have incredible amount of empathy. So that drew me but I also love like, you know, I'm a lawyer by training, I love the intellectual challenge of complicated problems and systems that are difficult to break down and byzantine and crazy. And you know, when you get into a mission driven healthcare organization, you've got, you know, connection to people and a lot of love and the drive to innovate, because you know you're not doing enough for them, like, you know, you need to do better for them. So I think that's my answer.
AS 15:28
I think that's a great answer. And I love that you said innovation comes from the heart, I think that's really, really true. A lot of it is gut, isn't it? It's not all, like analytics. I mean, it's it that must be a hard balance, in some ways for you as an analytical person by training, right? Do you think that women bring a certain element to the conversation that men just inherently haven't been allowed to? Because of our gender, you know, opportunities, and we're, we're guided and education and all that, do you think, as a woman leader, you're able to bring added heart to your innovative choices?
LD 16:09
Um, so I, so I realize this is a podcast about women in leadership, but I, I have a hard time making generalizations, really. But let me answer it this way. I do think there is a women are culturally guided towards empathy service helping, right? I mean, that's not news to anybody. And I think in a health care organization, that is obviously critically important, and it is a difference you see in men and women in the workplace, in that men haven't always been culturally driven in the same direction. But yet they're in a helping profession. I mean, that that's what it is. So I think women bring that perspective. And I also think they bring a license and freedom to talk about it, if they're brave enough, like to just say, you know, it's, it's easy, I think it's easier to get mired in the data. And the evidence, we all talk about evidence based care, which is really important. It's really important, but to speak about those things, and constantly lose sight of the people that we're serving, and you know, the patients, we talk about patient centered care, but really, then everybody talks about the data Well, okay. But you know, we're our colonoscopy rates are 50% and they really need to be 60%. But I think the ability to really think about the people we're serving and their experience and their life experience and have empathy for that, and then talk about it and care about it is something that women come to more naturally, based on the way we're culturally, I think, driven.
AS 17:54
You must be so proud of all of your team members, especially having gotten through this massive COVID crisis. What are some of the traits that you learned about your people? Or some of the highlight points they learned about your, your whole team there? in getting through this? Was it resilience? Was it hope? What were some of the things that you learned about your own, your own friends at work?
LD 18:29
Wow. We have, we all have much deeper wells and reserves than we know, then we think we do. And I learned how, how much the team, my team, which has just been amazing, could bring to the table, how often they showed up to those very difficult, relentless conversations about adapting this changing this adjusting that, dealing with it, you know, all of those things in in a very uncertain environment. We didn't know if we were all going to get sick. We didn't know you know, it was just very uncertain. So I think, you know, I learned, I mean, I knew they were amazing, like, I have a wonderful team around me. But I learned how deep and broad their expertise and their emotional resilience really is, and how much they cared about our staff and our patients that that it really was everyone's focus and down to, you know, how are we going to make sure people can, you know, get into the bathroom, you know, without violating Infection Control Protocol, and I like just....
AS 19:43
It was something of a movie. I mean, no one knew anything. I mean, I remember literally washing our groceries which means, you know, like our before we brought him out I was afraid to bring the bag into the house because that's what there was a time when we thought we had to Lysol everything before we brought. We're like but what if Someone touched the outside of this loaf of bread? Where do we keep the bread? Like, I mean, we no one knew what to do. Right? And so to be on the front line of that relentlessly.
LD 20:08
Yep. Well, and the other thing that was really interesting, I think the, the pandemic, you know, it provided us obviously, with opportunities and learning, you know, in addition to all that stress and anxiety and fear, and all the terrible things, lots of opportunities to get to know ourselves. And so you could see people's natural, so everybody's got sort of a natural leaning, or a natural inclination, where they're comfortable at work, where they're not comfortable at work, you could see people gravitate toward those areas where they were comfortable and really dig in, but also flex to the areas that made them less comfortable in ways that were really, you know, really impressive. And, also, stay attuned to the fact that like, the thing people miss the most were potlucks, like they missed eating together, you know, just connecting with each other and being in relationship with each other. And we didn't appreciate that at all, until this, I mean, really, honestly, right?
AS 21:11
I mean, I, the three things I miss most during pandemic are the three things that I loathe to go do in normal life, which was go to some sort of church experience, right? Go to the gym, which is like so strange for me and go to yoga, which I don't loathe going to those look forward to it, but I can't ever seem to carve the hour out but those were like the three things that's like, when COVID lifts, I am doing all these three things every single day, and I haven't, of course gotten on any of them. I did take one yoga class, what did you learn about yourself during the pandemic as a leader? What was the big takeaway about yourself?
LD 21:50
Um, okay, this is this is a very hard question. It should be, I should have expected it. I should have anticipated this question at all. But it's a hard one. I think that I found reserves, I think similar to what I saw on my team, I found a reserve of strength I didn't really know was there. I mean, I worked longer hours, which was hard to believe, but I worked longer hours, and found myself both in the weeds and sort of at the high level as an incident commander much more often in the weeds more often, and also at a high level as incident commander, and also found a precision in organization and sort of execution on the ends on the emergency operations plan that I honestly didn't quite know I had in me, you know, the structure and systems and communication became incredibly important. That is not my natural go to, I understand how important it is, obviously, but it's not my like I like, I like innovation so I lean in the sort of ideas, space and strategy and innovation and, and so having to pivot into that other area. And that really be this exclusive focus. I think I learned that I can do it, how powerful it is, how incredibly important it was. I also learned, this isn't as much, I mean, I learned that that might need to connect with other people is profound and connect in ways that are not just about work. You forget those casual exchanges that you have with people, when you're in the office, that are unrelated to work, are as important as the work related exchanges that you have. And when you end up on Zoom meetings all day, you're only having work related exchanges, and it feels so cold and sort of stilted.
AS 23:59
I agree with that Ben, who's producing this podcast right now, and I early on decided we would simply just make ourselves part of each other's pod, because we couldn't, we were just like, we can't work for an indefinite amount of time just on Zoom. So we've been Covidien worlding together for the whole duration. But we've missed our other colleagues so much, and they're just starting to come back to the office and be part of our world. And it feels so good to be together at least once or twice a week.
LD 24:28
We had and we had our first in person executive leadership team meeting, maybe a month and a half ago. Everybody's vaccinated, you know, kosher. And I think it took everybody by surprise. And actually our you know, we had it we did an exercise where everybody talked about what they you know, most what they most admire and sort of, you know, what the what they most admire about each other, you know, sort of what what talents and skills do you bring.
AS 24:57
What did they say?
LD 24:58
Oh god, it was like... what did they say about me?
AS 25:02
Well about each other and you. What were the themes?
LD 25:05
You know, they talked a lot about kindness. You know that. They appreciated how kind we were as an organization and as leaders of the organization. They talked about, you know, I have, well, the woman who runs our vaccination clinics right now is, is a has a capacity for work like you can't even imagine. And so, you know, that came up. She's, she's just got more energy than anybody I've ever met in my life. And I've met a lot of energetic people. So she just runs circles around all of us.
AS 25:45
Do you want to give her a shout out? Yeah.
LD 25:47
Teresa Knowles.
AS 25:49
Teresa Knowles, thank you.
LD 25:50
Yeah, she's been remarkable. And we have vaccinated by the way over 20,000 what we've delivered over 20,000 doses of vaccine. Which, you know, if you're in Connecticut, that doesn't sound like a lot, right. It's not a million. It's not half a million, but but those have been hard fought doses.
AS 26:09
In rural Maine that's a whole nother ballgame.
LD 26:13
Yep. So um, so they talked about, you know, sort of the capacity for work. We talked about the, you know, people's sort of very innovative spirit we talked about, we have people in roles, like CFO, my CFO Crispin McGlaughlin. Who are none of us fit a terribly traditional mold, I guess, like your typical CFO and your typical CIO. And I think so all of that came out in that meeting. But my point, what was my original point, when I started this was to say that we were... people were crying like, I just and you know, we're not a bunch of criers. In fact, my CMO, Noah Essen, always says there's no crying in healthcare, like, you know, and he, he says it jokingly, but, but we're not criers. But we man, there were, you know, there were some, it was pretty emotional, just to be physically in each other's presence and say kind things to each other.
AS 27:08
You must be really proud that kindness was a theme that was brought forward. Another theme that's come up in this podcast a lot with women leadership is just simple compassion, and how women leaders bring that compassion to the forefront when it's it's not that men don't. Right, it's not that and another another thing I should say is that it's not that women leaders in Maine seem to find men as a barrier, or even a non willing participant in growth, change, elevating women, problem solving any of that. It's just, there's a lack of awareness, we had one person on who was the first woman ever to hold her position. And so they had to all of a sudden have maternity leave, a policy that they'd never had, because there never been a woman in her role. And so it's not there. There's no resistance. It's that there's just it's still new. It's still a new moment for women. To this day.
LD 28:09
Yeah. Well, I'm the first CEO, I'm on the second CEO. So I'm the first woman CEO of PCHC. But I will I can, I can tell you, I'm the first CEO at PCHC, and to have hot flashes. So like, and one of my friends, I was talking to them about this whole, like, the ridiculousness of it, if you you know, for for any woman who's experienced this, which is, you know, all but 20%, or something of women experience this. Anyway, I was talking to a friend of mine about it. And he said, Well, how cool is that, that you're normalizing hot flashes in high powered meetings, right? Because you know, at some point, you got to like, you got to like, take the layers off, right? Start fanning yourself, right? You got a cold glass of water. And if you don't say anything about it, you know it, but moments like that, where you think, how is this never been normalized? It's like what every woman experiences, right?
AS 29:03
Well, I mean, I recently had to put on high heels again, for a day at the State House. I was like, my feet are not used to this. Like why do I think that wearing high heeled shoes is the standard still, like I know better than that. I've been trained better than that. And yet the normal, right is this. So I'm like, wait a minute, women have been doing business with feet in pain for 50 years or 60 years. Why can't our feet be comfortable? I don't understand why that's normal. And just regular shoes for women aren't so thank you for normalizing hot flashes, maybe we'll get to the feet at some point in business.
LD 29:43
Well, I'm gonna do that too, because you'll see I'm wearing Birkenstocks. today.
AS 29:48
I'm wearing Dansko sandals today, which I'm very proud of because they just started making sandals so we're going to bring comfortable to the fashion forefront in business.
LD 29:56
But yes, so so small things like that, though do add up. It adds up to an environment and a culture that makes it more welcoming for women makes more space for women, makes them feel like they don't have to check their humanity at the door and check sort of their whole selves at the door and can actually bring it all to the table literally. Like their hot flashes it all bring it right to the conference table.
AS 30:22
I commend you, and thank you on behalf of women who are all going to tomorrow be in a meeting with a hot flash and say, thank God, Laurie Dwyer brought that one.
LD 30:32
Yeah, I didn't really have a choice. No, because because I'm leading half the meetings, right. You know, at some point, you just have to say, look, here's what's going on. And let's just let's all just move on.
AS 30:42
Right, be real about it and honest about it. Yeah. So what are some things that you think just getting back to the healthcare industry in Maine in general, what are some things that you're doing right, that you'd like to see throughout the state? What are some opportunities in your space that you think could possibly be mirrored elsewhere?
LD 31:04
Well, from from its very beginnings, PCHC was committed to integrated care and care includes everything about your life, community conditions, you know, the circumstances that make it difficult for people to be healthy. So that means we've incorporated social workers, mental health providers, dentists, pharmacists, you know, peer support, navigators, etc, on to our, within our care model. And that's talked about a lot in healthcare right now. It's not necessarily implemented on the ground. And integration is a complicated enterprise. It means really, that you have to learn how to talk to each other and relate to each other, when you have very different roles, credentials, qualifications, expertise, there has to be a flattening of the hierarchy that's traditional in healthcare where the physician is at the sort of top of the food chain, and it sort of rolls down from there, which is not to in any way, sort of discount or discredit the qualifications of our physicians, they are critical, obviously, we need them, we need their expertise. But in order to have a robust team, and all of the different perspectives that we brought to the table, you have to honor everyone's voice and everyone's role at the table. And that means flattening hierarchy and having, you know, everybody learns from everybody all teach, all learn in that environment. So I think because we've been integrated since the beginning, we had Dr. Tripp-Gardener was our chief psychiatric officer until very recently, and was sort of has been one is one of the pioneers in sort of bringing mental health into the primary care space, so that your primary care doctor is actually communicating with the person who is helping you with any kind of brain disease or mental health issue, whether it be temporary or chronic condition. And that informs your health. We now know much more than, you know, the actual medical and physiological things that we typically think of so it broadens everyone's perspective. We all know more diverse group, you know, teams with women on them, teams with people of other races and ethnicity on them are more effective, they're smarter, the collective intelligence is better. Same with I think, healthcare roles. So I would say that is something that we've been doing and federally qualified health centers, there's, there's 19 of them in Maine, that do that really well. Because that's sort of our origins are in the civil rights movement. We're a social justice movement, we've sort of looked at the whole thing from the beginning.
AS 33:56
Wow, that's amazing. So it also sounds like you're open to some Eastern verse and Western influences, too, right? By incorporating some of that Integrative Health model. That's very Eastern, right? Do you ever discuss that at all officially, I'm always fascinated by the merging of like Eastern and Western medicine theories.
LD 34:17
So mindfulness, mindfulness based meditation yoga, our chiropractors do acupuncture. So I think, yes, even food, you know, yeah, even God forbid, we talk about nutrition, which is like the single biggest driver of whether we're going to be healthy or have a chronic disease. So, you know, I think, yes, we do incorporate that I would, I would be remiss if I said it's robust and deliberate that we've brought in on the eastern you know, Eastern medicine Eastern, but what we do do is follow the evidence and and seek to incorporate those aspects of... Well, we really bring anything in that's going to help people be healthy. And, you know, healthcare, as you know, doesn't focus on health, it focuses on disease treatment. We need primary cares about health, like we want to keep you from getting disease, right? We want to get you to a dietitian, before you get type two diabetes, we want to, you know, and so trying to get way upstream and look at the house you live in the you know, the the conditions of your life as well as to how habits you have. And but how can we do that? We know we're looking earlier and earlier, we have a very large pediatrics practice, we just introduced a program to that treats pediatric obesity, you know, just continuously trying to get up river and treat the whole person.
AS 35:51
What would you say to people considering entering the healthcare field today, especially women, women, men, other genders? What would you say to everybody?
LD 36:08
It's, you know, it's, it's among the most noble and important things you can spend your life doing and thinking about and learning. It is also very complicated, very intellectually challenging. And that is also wonderful if you like that kind of thing. So I would say it's a wonderful profession to go into. Primary care is especially wonderful and it gets it gets a bad rap, I will say primary care is kind of the, the for the expression, ghetto, but not, there's a lot of, you know, among physicians, you have a hierarchy, even within sort of people who graduate from medical school, and you've got specialists, and we have a system that prioritizes disease treatment at a highly specialized level, as opposed to broader prevention, and people who take care of people over a long period of time and have a relationship with them and understand them and look at all aspects of their life as well as diagnose conditions as they arise. So I think I would say, number one, it's an incredibly noble profession. It's changing all the time. So it is a little bit like the Wild West, but, but if you like that, that's a good thing. And then I would also say that, to really think about primary care, like really think about, you know, going to medical school, or getting your master's in, you know, getting an advanced practice nursing degree. And thinking about primary care, because it is intellectually complex, it is the most important thing we're doing in healthcare. And it is the way we're going to get to a point where our system is sustainable, that's going to it will save the system if we just invest there, and people go into that area.
AS 38:05
So this is my final question. And I ask everybody this question, because I'm always fascinated by the answers. What do you digest outside of work? What do you read? What do you listen to? What do you watch? What's in your intake diet, as we talk about nutrition, what's in your, what's in your mental diet, intellectual diet?
LD 38:28
So outside of work, meaning non work related?
AS 38:31
I mean anything on your own time by choice, whether that's in your field or outside your field.
LD 38:37
Okay. So I try to reread some, this is gonna sound sort of intellectually snotty, but so I was an English teacher. And so I spent a lot of time teaching classics and I'm air quoting, you can't see that on a podcast. But and so I do try to reread books like that I that I used to teach or that I studied when I was getting my graduate degree on a pretty regular basis, you know, Jane Eyre and My Antonia and Faulkner and you know, other, so a couple of those a year if I can get to it, because like I said earlier, that stuff just makes you a broader, deeper, more empathic person. And I like to revisit that. I try to read a couple new novels. I'm also I've had a very hard time sort of narrowing down like I'm the kind of person that has a stack of nine books by my bed, and I read about the first quarter of all of them and then skim the table of contents, and I have a really hard time finishing them. So I joined the next big idea club, which you may have heard of, probably two and a half years ago now and I that I love because really, Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Pink sent me like, they send me three books a quarter and I commit to reading those. So those are about you know, sort of anthropology. It's like the history of work and human beings or they're about leadership or they're about you know, the joy of designing space and the impact of aesthetics on your mind and your imagination. So it's just interesting stuff that impacts sort of daily living, which is also useful in leadership. It's also useful in sort of creating culture. So I I read that's what I read. I also read like professional journals to try and shut up with what's happened. Sure. And then you know, I binge watch and so I try hard not to start shows.
AS 40:31
This is the good stuff. So what do you binge watch?
LD 40:35
I just finished The Handmaid's Tale.
AS 40:36
Oh my god. Okay, was the last 18 months so much like so many things in Handmaid's Tale, it's unbelievable? Between the masks and I just the whole thing, I won't get too into it. But so that's really life imitating art I feel like. There's really so much really, it's wild.
LD 40:57
Yeah. And, you know, I, I grew up, you know, I have I have a really pretty religious background. And when I was a child, my dad was a minister and I grew up in a pretty conservative church. And so it's, it speaks to me, resonated a little, just the, you know, the sort of the, the subtle and not so subtle misogyny of that can be you know, it's just on display in The Handmaid's Tale, which is not to disparage, really, I'm not trying to disparage Oh, no, I love religions like that. Right. It's real stuff. And fascinating. And I did teach The Handmaid's Tale to seniors in high school . So they've obviously gone way beyond but but it's it's been fascinating to watch how they've made that complete done an incredible job.
AS 41:49
And Elizabeth Moss is like, oh my god. Just to think that she was in Mad Men and did that so brilliantly, and then moved on to take on this role, which is like, the only role of its kind ever I think, I don't know how an actor would even categorize that role. And it's brilliant. She's just brilliant.
LD 42:06
Yeah, she says way more in her silence than her words. And like, she's got the fiercest stare I've ever seen. I love it.
AS 42:15
Like when she's just about she's like plotting and planning. And like, if we could capture that in a bottle, right? This has been so great. Thank you so incredibly much. I can't thank you enough for everything that you and your team did for that region of our state during COVID. And thank you for having such an integrated, thoughtful approach to health and well being. I hope that that's something that catches fire in a good way across our state. Even more so. So Laurie Dwyer, thank you.
LD 42:46
Oh, it's been wonderful to talk to you. Thank you.
AS 42:48
Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Serra Speaks.
AS 42:58
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Serra Speaks where we talk with women about business, not about women in business. Please be sure to hit subscribe and stay tuned for upcoming episodes.