Thank you for spending some time with us and the rest of the event sponsors in the other room, we really appreciate it. We're thrilled to introduce a powerful panel of women who have overcome incredible obstacles and are driving real change in diversity, equity, and inclusion. I'm honored to have the opportunity to moderate this session and hear their stories. So can I have my panel come up? All right, there's a second one, all right, perfect, there we go, all right. So with me are three fabulous women, Alyssa Ashley High, Practice Administrator of Orthopedic Associates of Marlboro, I can never pronounce it, thank you, I'm sorry, Rochelle, which we already heard from, thank you so much, yesterday's session was amazing, so thank you. She's the Patient Access Director at Midlands Orthopedic and Neurosurgery, and Erica Knoll, Chief Operating Officer at Peachtree Orthopedics. So this is our wonderful panel today, ladies. All right, I'm Molly Van Aert, I said that yesterday, but just in case, I'm Specialty Solutions Director at NextGen Healthcare, very honored to be here and be able to spend some time talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion with these wonderful ladies. NextGen Healthcare also values diversity and encourages everyone to be themselves and embrace the diversity of our team and the communities we serve. A quote on our internal diversity, equity, and inclusion website states, diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is when they play your song. I thought that was really cool, and something we could maybe take with us. But let's dive into our discussion today. And I will, they were given their questions ahead of time, so at least they've had a little time to prep. I'm not going to throw anything at them that they haven't at least been a little prepared for. So, you want to start? All right. Can you share some of the specific obstacles you faced as a woman in orthopedic practice and how you overcame them? That's a good one. I will say for myself, the biggest obstacle for me would be overcoming the imposter syndrome. Of course, being promoted into a director's position, I felt as if I had to change who I was, I had to change my appearance. Of course, trying to fit in. They didn't hire me to fit in, they hired me to stand out. They hired me because I was willing to challenge, right? So it was really important for me to know that I had to be willing not to fit in, but to stand out. And being willing, of course, comfortable in my skin, comfortable with my hair. If anyone knows, I have a huge afro that is covered up with these braids, very convenient for me, I would say. But any time that I would come in, my work ethic spoke very loudly. No matter if I have braids, no matter if I have my hair natural, I've always heard I'm very polished if my hair is pressed. No. I'm polished whether I have my braids, whether I have my afro. So I would say the biggest obstacle was overcoming the imposter syndrome. Wow. That's powerful. Alyssa? So mine is a little opposite of Rochelle's in the fact that, obviously, I'm sitting up here as a white woman, and I, you know, first I want to say, you know, looking at me, you might not realize why am I up here talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. I just want to say that I am the proud wife of a black woman, and I have two beautiful black children mixed. One very obvious, you can tell that she's mixed, and one not, and I want them to embrace themselves and be very happy of, you know, who they are. And so when I got hired in my job, it was a very white office, all white women working in the, you know, the lower, the front line, all the medical assistants, things like that, and then all white men as the surgeons. So I got hired as, we're hiring you to be the mom of the practice. And I had to make a conscious decision that while I took that job, that that wasn't going to be the role that I was going to take, that I was going to change things. And I wanted to make sure that I broke that glass ceiling, broke those barriers, broke it down, and, you know, to say, you know what, I don't want to just be seen as the mom. I'm the administrator. You're going to treat me as such. Thanks for being here, everybody. It's been great to see everyone. I really appreciate the inclusion on this panel. Similar to Alyssa, you may be wondering why am I here. I want to take some time today to speak to the power of advocacy and allyship. And so when we have some other questions, that's really something I'm really passionate about. For me personally, some challenge, I think all of us at different points have experienced especially in orthopedics, which is at least 90% male from the surgeon side, some different things by virtue of that, right? So we've had, you know, I personally have experienced some glass ceiling moments in my career where there's been an expectation that I'll do the work without the title or the compensation. And so I think, you know, as an ally, as an advocate, I have to do that for myself and for everyone in my work community, which is my local, you know, orthopedics, Atlanta, Georgia, you know, and then this great group of people from all over the country. Wonderful. What systemic barriers do you believe are still prevalent in this field? So it's, again, you have a role, you have a place in breaking what that looks like. And so one of my main goals specifically in the past two years is hiring with intention. I specifically am seeking out diversity. I have added medical assistants that are males. We've never had that in the 50-year history of my company. The surgeons were actually against it. They didn't want males as medical assistants, you know. I've hired all ethnic diversities, races, religions, different people speaking different languages, and I think that is so important that, you know, when you're looking at candidates, you know, it's all, it is all about the culture, but how do you want your culture to change? Now you have to make sure that you're not hiring someone that they're going to fail, you know, you're going to put them in a place and they're going to be discriminated or they're going to feel not included, but to make sure you seek out people, let them know of what my, I let them know what my plan was going to be and found my champions to say, you know, I'm going to take them under my wing and get them, and then we share things. And part of that was just saying, you know, let's do some other things in the office to make people feel included. And that really was a huge barrier. And just by breaking down that, how the pattern of how we hired has changed, and it's been this domino effect. I agree first. Well, it was one of those things of looking at what does your practice look like? What does, when you're onboarding or when you're hiring, what are you looking for? Of course, when your patients are coming in, they see, they need to see that representation. When they're going to your websites, they want to see their representation. And when they're presenting to your offices, they need to feel welcome. And sometimes feeling welcome needs to see someone that looks like them. You know, someone that can truly understand what they're going through. And even helping them to overcome that. They feel supported, I would say, throughout their journey of what they're presenting to the office for. So representation is really important. I'd like to echo that representation that both ladies have discussed. But one of the things I've been really passionate about is development and recruitment and retention of female orthopedic surgeons in our group. So we've just hired our third. We had a long history of having one who, when she retired, we had none. And so, you know, having some hard conversations with the guys, right? Like, hey, this is great for the practice. This is something, you know, as a woman, and as we know, you know, the people who make medical decisions for their families and themselves, we want to see people that we identify with, right? So that's been something I've been passionate about, and we'll talk a little bit more about. But you know, just kind of breaking down these feelings, like, that's going to make my life difficult if we hire a woman. I'm like, why? I mean, can you please explain that? I think, as we heard a little bit yesterday, like, just asking questions, being curious, trying to understand, why do you feel like that, right? Is that how, oh, you came up in training. You actually never encountered a female orthopedic surgeon. The entire time you trained, oh, okay, okay, I get it. But let me kind of be a person that can talk to you about what the reality of that is and what benefit we're going to see in our practice. I just wanted to echo on what Erica was saying about hiring women and how our perception of what they're going to be like. We just recently hired our first woman orthopedic surgeon in the past 15 years. So I've been with my company for eight years. And in the previous iterations of hiring, we've had males, all exactly the same, fresh out of residency and fellowship, so very green. And the other day, they came to me and they said, we don't know if she's going to make it. And I said, why? They said, well, the nurses told us that she had a really rough case and she just gets frazzled really easily. And she was back in the break room and she was crying. She's just not going to take it. And so I sat there and I thought about it. And I said, well, you know, maybe she had a frustrating case. Let's talk to her. But how do we, you know, talk with her and mentor her and get her there? It doesn't mean that she's not going to make it. Then I sat there and I looked at her, looked at my surgeons again and I said, well, let's think about this. What have we done for our other surgeons and why was it different? And I said, because our previous surgeon, who's no longer with us, threw a scalpel at a nurse in the OR because he got mad. And not once did they say, we don't think he's going to make it. The anger that he exuded was okay. But the tears that she did in private were not okay. And as we talked about yesterday, we all have the same amount of emotions. We just express them differently. And I wish I knew that saying then to go back and say, listen, this is what it is. And we need to do the same thing. So if we got him some anger management, we got him some counseling, maybe we need to see about getting her some counseling and just change the perception of that emotion. And those dynamics are so critically important to understand and be able to talk to the physicians the fact that it's okay to have emotions. They just aren't used to seeing that from another surgeon. And yeah, that's powerful. What practical approaches have you seen or implemented that effectively promote diversity, equity, and inclusion? So we actually do bias training with all of our employees. And I think that's really important. Something you may not know about me is I came up on the provider side. So I've only worked in healthcare. I've worked in healthcare 25 years. The first 15 years was with patients. The last 10 have been administrative. We bring bias to our interactions with patients and I think for us to serve our patient population, it helps us interact with each other. It also helps us interact with our patients. If we have a patient come in the door and we've made assumptions, we might get the diagnosis wrong, right? So I think it's really important. We've really approached our DEI training and bias work not only from creating culture and a better community within our practice, but how can we use that to really serve our patients? We live in a very diverse city here in Atlanta. And so, and having practiced in this city and all over the country, I think it's really important that we have some education that we can kind of go back to when we have challenging situations, i.e. a woman showing up to our office in a burka and the doctor saying, how do I know she is who she says she is? Sir. Right? Like that kind of stuff and being willing to sort of challenge this bias that we do interact with on a routine basis in healthcare. I think by my new hiring practice, I've also with everyone else has had severe staffing shortages. So I have sought out for my medical assistance recent college graduates, undergrads who want to get into med school. And we've actually so trained knowing that, I used to hire lifers. I don't necessarily hire those anymore because those haven't really been working out. So now I hire short term. And to help that, so as my medical assistants become more diverse, my doctors are now mentoring younger, diverse women. Everyone has something that's very different from what they look like. And it's great because they're training them like med students. It's hopefully fostering the next generation of women coming in. I can't guarantee they're gonna come to orthopedics. We've had four successfully get into med school, which is great in the past two years. And so they're gonna be physicians of some sort. And I think that's important that they're breaking down what they thought was. Because before if they were gonna do any kind of mentoring, it was always just kind of the again, the traditional male coming in, doing some sort of externship or just brief little shadow. And we've purposely made that a different setting for them. I didn't really ask, again, I didn't ask for permission. I've just said, this is how we're gonna run things and they've adapted, which has been great. And I think that's important. That's, you know, again, fostering that growth of the next generation. I will kind of piggyback off of what Ms. Erica said. It's really important, of course, that you are having those conversations to break down those stereotypes and those biases of getting a better understanding of why this person has this covering over it. Instead of asking, that question would have pissed me off. I'm sorry. But no, we definitely wanna be real. But just having those hard conversations and of course, just gaining a better understanding to have a better understanding of the diversity of your patients and of course, your staff as well. So with all of that, how can practices actually measure success in their DEI initiatives? I mean, some obviously is hiring from a hiring perspective, but how can you really look at your overall practice and say, okay, we're actually making success or this is an area we need to maybe pivot? And that's a fair answer. I was gonna say the same thing. We don't do, again, very small practice. So we don't do satisfaction surveys or anything like some of the bigger practices do. But I think just looking at the retention rate is important. Me knowing that my retention rate is gonna be in flux because I'm only hiring short term for a year or two. But what I'm seeing is my staff is going back to their career services at their colleges and saying, this is a place you want to send your upcoming graduates. And that at least is something I've never experienced. And I think that's important because I'm still getting the applications in. And if I notice at least that is going away and people don't want to come and work with us, then I would say that there's a problem because they don't find the culture, they don't find acceptance, they don't find something that they need. I think it's kind of like research. It's qualitative and quantitative, right? And so kind of like the word cloud that Emory friends shared, that was very, you saw the tone and the words used change, right? And I think that's something we look for when we're looking at employee surveys, patient satisfaction surveys. There are some words that can kind of surface to tell you, are you headed in the right direction here? Obviously, there's the quantitative stuff too. So your turnover rates, your time to fill a job, your scores on Indeed, your financial performance. I mean, there's a lot of things we all measure, but I think you don't want to miss that qualitative piece. All right, so are there any specific tools or resources that you found particularly helpful in fostering a more inclusive environment? I stumped them, oh no. I would definitely say networking, reaching out to those that may be experiencing those same challenges within their practices. Of course, attending conferences. I've gained a lot of, I would say, useful information to take back to the practice. So I would definitely say networking and connecting with those, of course, that may be experiencing those same challenges just to learn more and helping you to navigate through it, of course, to help your team as well. I think the conference piece is huge. Just looking out here today, I have mentioned numerous times to my fellow AAU members that I've seen so many women here today that I've never seen before. Now, bad on me because some of you have been to conference and I haven't personally met you and I feel bad for that, but I'm looking out in this room and I see such a diversity and I am so excited for that. This is amazing to see everybody here and that's what we need. We need more rooms that look like this and more opportunities for this. And when we get excited and we get passionate, how do we bring that back to our staff? How do we bring that? Because we all know, I think you have two different kinds of surgeons. You either have the surgeon that's kind of done with things and it's like, I don't want to be in the office anymore. I don't want to be done and I want to be out. And maybe they want to go to conferences. And I, on the other hand, have surgeons that don't want to go out of the office. They don't want to come to conferences. And to tell them, no, you need to get out there. You need to be exposed to things. And not just in the surgeon world. Come to AOE where you can bring a managing physician with you to see what it's like to join those collaborative efforts that we can be together and express that. So I think that is very important. And I thank AOE for giving us that opportunity. And the education that is out there that maybe I can't bring my frontline staff to conference with me, but I can give them a recording of this conference. I can get them in touch with the AOE Learning Center to do some of the education, the opportunities that's available. And I can empower them to want to grow and develop. Something kind of practical that came up for me with this question. And this is specific tools and resources. I think you have to start from the top on how you're approaching work. Meaning, are you giving folks some flexibility in how and where they do their work? Are you designing a benefit plan for your group that kind of keeps in mind a lot of different types of people and you've got different options for people? I think also just, you know, I had a conversation with a manager last week and we run pretty hard in our industry. We work for people. I always tell people in our employee orientation, like the folks we work with think a hundred hour work week is normal, right? Like that's like, they're normal. That's no big deal for them. But we have to be that middle point where we say, okay, do we have jobs designed for the right amount of work for somebody? Are we expecting the right amount? And are we looking at, you know, not everyone is in this same life circumstance. In what ways can organizations support the professional growth of women? By allowing us to explore these options. We all know budgets are tight and maybe they cannot financially send us to these conferences, but at least allow us the opportunity to go on our own time. I think that's really important. Or if it is, it's maybe reallocating some resources to get these educational experiences because they are important in finding that return on investment, you know, because it's not as directly obvious as looking at a numbers of, well, if I do a surgery, I make X amount of dollars. So if I spend this much money on you going to a conference, what is that X amount of dollars back? And it's hard to necessarily quantify that. But, you know, as administrators, I'm sure we can all look at and kind of put things into perspective on a graph, something that we can say, okay, this is my return on investment. And we, you know, we put it somewhere so people can see it as a data point. And sometimes that's really important. So that's, you know, a big thing, I think. It's well, you know, allowing women to attend conferences. And of course, when they're seeing the growth, them seeing the growth in your work ethics, seeing the growth in the way that you approach things, and also, once again, just advocating for other women. Mentorships have been a, I will say, a big change for me. I have a great mentor. Everyone probably knows her, Ms. Anne-Margaret McCraw. But just being, providing those mentors as well, and once again, allowing and providing access to conferences like this one. And of course, AAOE and others as well. I wanna echo the mentorship. Who's mentor, who would consider themselves a mentor in this room? I think it's so important to show people coming kind of in the next wave, if you will, how to be successful, how to stay grounded, how to stay humble, how to, you know, work hard, but still enjoy your life. And really change, in whatever way we can, how we deliver the healthcare that we've been asked to deliver. So reflecting on your personal journey, so reflecting on your personal journey, what moments or decisions were pivotal in shaping your approach to diversity and inclusion? Either I get put in uncomfortable situations or I put myself in an uncomfortable situation. I was sharing earlier with my friend in Texas that one of my very first jobs, I got there and none of my patients spoke English, and I walked into the first staff meeting and no one was speaking English either. Oh, okay, that high school Spanish is really not serving me right now. I took a job and that was the reality of the job, right? And so I figured it out. I lived in Japan for three years. I had been denied services for the first time in my life because of the fact that I was not Japanese. I was like, oh, wow, this is a new experience for me. And so I think, you know, being a person, and I recently did a values inventory, highly recommend that, by the way. One of my values is adaptability, right, and openness is another one. So there's two of my values. I think constantly being conversations that may not be super straightforward and easy. I'm definitely a type of person that I do change in the settings that I'm in. Sometimes I'm very outgoing. I can be very loud, too loud, I say too much, and then I can be very quiet and reserved. And I think part of my career transition is really kind of figuring out, you know, when to be what person. And I have struggled with knowing when there was, the person before me was a male, and how learning from other people, how certain things were different when he was the administrator. But then when I come along and I want everyone to like me, I want, you know, to be successful, so I don't want to rock the boat. And, you know, we're hiring our first surgeon, and I'm not included in anything. I didn't get invited to the, you know, the dinner for the interview with the hospital CEOs and our consultants and our surgeons. So I went back and I just asked some questions, and I said, well, was Michael included in those? Well, yeah. Okay. So, and I just, and I let it go. And then when, you know, two years passed, we hired another one, I thought about it. Okay, I'm gonna have to rock the boat. Raise my hand and step forward and say, I want to be included in this. I need to be part of this. If I'm gonna be onboarding the surgeon, if I'm gonna be the one that's helping them in the office, you know, in an administrative capacity, I should also know what this candidate is like. Well, you know, what's their personality? What is their family like? We, you know, we need to be more inclusive in this, because if they're supposed to work with me and I'm not a part of any of that, then how does that work? Because it's already putting me at a disservice. It's putting me at a disadvantage, saying I am not on the same level as anybody else. And that was very hard. That was, and I find I still have to ask. I still have to challenge those norms of being included. And it's scary. Sometimes you don't want to be, you know, you just want to kind of, you know, settle in and not be noticeable. But that's not how it works as we become powerful leaders. The people that succeed are the ones that challenge the norms. The ones that say, okay, maybe I'm not qualified, but I'm still gonna apply for it anyway. And men do that all the time, whereas a woman's gonna sit back and get more education and say, well, let me one more year, then I'll be ready. So maybe, it wasn't this one, but maybe the next one, then they'll finally realize that I am worthy and then I'll get there. And I had to show them that I was worthy. And I think that was the biggest thing is, you know, stepping outside of your comfort zone. I would say for me, it would be being comfortable being uncomfortable. So I've been in many rooms to where I felt, and this is a non-judgment, you know, I would say room. Safe zone. Safe is, safe zone, no judgment. And so I can say that I've been in certain rooms or had pulled my chair up to certain tables to where I was the only black. And of course, that made me feel uncomfortable. But once again, I was there for a reason. And a constant reminder of me being comfortable being uncomfortable is my daughter. So my daughter, I'm not only being uncomfortable, being comfortable being uncomfortable for myself, but as you know, spoke on yesterday, for my daughter as well to come up. That she may be placed in those type of situations and those predicaments, but be comfortable being uncomfortable. There, and as a short story that I'm a, once again, an empathizer. So there was a candidate that came for, to interview for our patient service position. And as soon as the candidate came in and the HR had introduced her, the first thing that she did was she thanked me. And it was a little, I was a little taken back by it. Like, what is the reason that you're thanking me for a job that I haven't even, we haven't talked about it yet. But she thanked me because, of course, her stepping into that room coming from, I believe, New York or New Jersey, and down to Columbia or the Charlotte area. I was the first black, I will say, manager or director that she had the opportunity of interviewing with. So that was just a reminder that, of course, what I'm doing is not just for me. Once again, those 10,000 are coming behind me. But just being comfortable being uncomfortable. I love that. I love that. Because how many of us, how many of us have been in that sort of situation where you, you know, you've got to step up. You've got to pull up the chair. And, and it's scary. It's really scary to do that. So following on the same vein, can you provide examples of personal strategies, some additional strategies that these ladies can take home with them as you employed, you know, to navigate these challenges? What other, what other kind of strategies have you used to really succeed in your career? For the longest, I would say, and it's hard to tell now, but I always tried to blend in by dimming my light. But I had to be reminded that, of course, I have to be willing to stand out. And I'm very tall. So that's very easy in certain rooms. But be willing to know not to dim my light. And advocating, speaking up for myself, which was the hardest thing for me. Even when it came time for promotions or when it came time for sitting down and negotiating, I would say, salaries. Or it was hard for me to speak up and advocate for myself. So I had to get out of that fear of rejection was the challenge for me. But knowing, of course, that I bring something and that it's okay to be different. And getting out of that fear that I am different. It's okay to be different and getting out of that fear that I am. Can you repeat the question? Sure. I got a little off track. Nope, you're fine. Provide examples of personal strategies you employed. So I think I've got kind of, not surprising, you heard me talk about qualitative and quantitative. I have really, on a personal note, had to do a lot of work and coaching. It's not like I just woke up one day and was good at this. And also, just how do I manage the day-to-day stress and have family and people I care about and maintain all that. So I think that's really important as you're ascending in your career. The other thing professionally, I would say, is I'm a person that's probably going to overlearn some things. So I've kind of done some extra training in things that I thought were not strengths for me. I've been willing to raise my hand and figure stuff out. I think a lot of times, like Alyssa said, men don't raise their hand all day long because they know they can figure it out or they can get some resources that they need. So you need to know that. You can raise your hand. You may not know all the answers. You may not meet all the criteria for the job. But if you can identify quickly what your resources are that you need, education that you need, support that you need, and I think, you know, lastly, picking the right, if you're a person that likes to have a partner in your life, pick the right one. I think that's really important to have your home team be super supportive. That's true. I picked a spouse that is definitely opposite of me. I'm very type A. I overanalyze everything. I'm anxious. And she's very calm. She's an emergency department physician. So she is very good in high stress. And she grounds me. And I think that's really important. So I do bounce things off of her. Now, we definitely fight a lot because she'll be like, just get over it. Why are you worrying about it? It doesn't matter. And I'm like, do you not understand? You don't understand anxiety. You can't just say, it doesn't matter. It matters to me. I'm emotional. She's rational. But some of those things, and kind of what we talked about yesterday, and Olivia definitely touched on it a little bit, is sometimes you do, when you're interacting with somebody, you do kind of have to, you get down to their level. And then you realize, that didn't make me feel good on the inside. I changed who I was because I reacted to what they were. And I am definitely, I'm a reactionist. I react. And if I feel someone else's anxiety, I get anxious. And so I think that's a lifelong thing that you have to learn, is you cannot change your fundamental beliefs and core values and just who you are because someone else is triggering you in a certain way. And so that's something that I really, one of the strategies I work on is being my authentic self all the time. Now, you do have to change your tone or what you're doing to get in that right level to be effective. But at the end of the day, I am still a reflection of who I am and I need to leave that room knowing that I didn't change the ultimate feeling of things. And then part of that is, I want to make sure when I leave something, I left it better than when it came in. And so, and that can be kind of hard because sometimes you know that you're doing something, you're grooming someone for someone else to succeed outside of your environment. And that's okay. That's okay. I don't want to be, I'm a nurse. Originally, I started as a nurse and we are young too. Why? Why? Why are we crabs in a bucket fighting and clawing and killing each other to get out when we can help each other get out of the bucket? And I think those are some things that I've really had to work on. And then a really easy thing is learning how to pronounce someone's name. That is like a really big thing for me. And I might ask them again, and then I'll write it phonetically. And I'll say, I apologize, but I think it's really important that I know your name. Because so many times we've had so many different cultures Americanize their name because their traditional name is too hard to say. But yet I heard this one post, if we can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, we can learn your name. So if you have a name that's hard to pronounce, it's okay for someone to learn to say your name correctly. And I think that's really important. Oh, I love that. I love that. I'm sorry. You're fine. I also want to include just being open to constructive criticism is one of those things and making sure that you're checking your surroundings. What does your circle look like? Do you have a circle of friends, or I would say those that you're connected with that are going to agree with everything that you say? Now find someone that really challenges you that's going to correct you when you're wrong. But just being open to constructive criticism as well. Yeah. Agreed. Go ahead. I don't know if we're wrapping up, but I don't want to forget. But we're good. By all means. I'm just gonna pass this bag. If you feel called to one of the stickers in the bag. It's been sitting in my hand for like 40 minutes. So I'm going to have to get it. But I was happy to give Rochelle first dibs this morning on the empowered women empower women sticker. You are. You're very special. So what advice would you give to young women entering the fields of orthopedics, whether it's physician or entry-level? What advice would you give? This is an interesting field. I've worked in it myself for 18 plus years. And as a woman, it can be very challenging. And I've been in many different areas within the organization. So what advice can you bring to those that you would want to speak over them and speak into them? Network. Find your network. Talk to them. Ask questions. Whether it's in a room like this full of people. Whether you can find another organization that is local to you so you can talk. Whether it's an online platform like collaborate. Just don't be afraid to ask the questions. If you need help, just talk about it. You know, we all have a situation where we're pondering and we say, you know, am I being emotional on this? Should I worry about this? How do I best do this? And maybe you don't have a supportive significant other or a friend group that understands your professional world that, you know, maybe you can't apply it to. But we are all here for each other. We are all here for each other. So reach out to one of us. Get a phone number. Get an email address. You know, find each other on LinkedIn. We, you know, you can do this. But we can do it as a team. You're not alone. I would say being once again, being willing to speak up. Being willing to speak up. There was a quote, of course, that I came across today from Ms. Maggie Smith who is an amazing actor. And the quote is speak your mind even when your voice shakes. Speak your mind even when your voice shakes. So being willing to speak up. And as Alyssa said, networking is very powerful. I would not be sitting up here if it wasn't for networking and connecting once again with some strong, supportive women. So speak up even if your voice shakes. I love that. Thank you. I think for me, I think I would say raise your hand. Do the work. Do the work on yourself. Get coaching. But also just show your value. I think if you're consistent, you show up the same way, you know, and you just show what you're doing to help whatever job it is you have. I think that's you've got to be patient. I think, you know, I've been doing this a long time now. I think things don't always come as straightforward into your career as you expect them to. I would have never told you 25 years ago that I would be the CEO of an orthopedic practice. I probably would have told you like I was gonna be like a yoga teacher or something. I don't know. I don't think I would have called that. I don't think I would have called that 25 years ago. But I think, you know, the more you invest in yourself through networking, through professional development, through mentorship. And honestly, I have a little secret. They just come in at 10 in the morning when they have stuff going on. They don't ask permission to do so, right? Like, own what you do, understand that you're important. I started doing that kind of early in my administrative career like, wait, how did they get away with that? Oh, I can do that too, actually. I don't need to ask permission to be here, to be contributing, and so I think that's super important. I just want to, if you don't mind, who here is this their first AOE event? Oh, wow. That is amazing. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. I want to say we see you. We value you. Please don't be afraid to come up to us. Rochelle was one of the first people that spoke out to me. I hope to see you in Atlanta for our conference, but one of my very first conferences, Rochelle gave an Ignite session, and it was spoken word, and I remember that. It was five minutes, and it changed my life. It was amazing, and again, five minutes really can, and I was like, she is someone I want to know. I want to be sitting with her one day. I want to be like her, and she has been one of my mentors, but she doesn't even know it, and that's okay to have a mentor from afar too, so please, again, reach out to us. We are here to support you. Well, thank you, Alyssa, and the thing, I feel the same way about her. I think it was the first membership council panel, and when I tell you, it was the way that she spoke, like she spoke with clarity and confidence. Like you were my mentor, so that, look at that, look at that connection, but it was something about her, and what I loved the fact of that she was willing to, I would have never known that you were married to a woman, and it doesn't matter whether you're, it doesn't matter your sexual preference or your religious belief, but it's just the person that she is, like she is definitely a badass, and I just love that about her, and I have, of course, gained more confidence just by hearing you speak, even in that brief moment, so I thank you. I love you too, Erica. All right. We're new friends, we're new friends. Awesome. All right, we actually have a little bit of time. You guys have any questions? You have a great opportunity to pick their brains and challenge them a little bit since I gave them their questions ahead of time, and they had some time to prepare. All right, come on. We've got questions out there. I know we do. Don't be shy. All right. So, I've been in orthopedics for 18 years and got sucked in, now I can't get out, but it's all good. My question is, I worked for a practice for a very long time where we did use the disc and we implemented a way to use that disc for growth and professional development. The practice I'm in now uses predictive index, they typically only use it upon hiring, which I'd find to be interesting, trying to get them to do it a little bit more. I started doing it during performance reviews to get them to recognize, to go back and look at themselves differently. So my question for the panel is, do you do group professional development? Is it you ask the staff to do their own professional development by videos? Do you find one is better than the other? Have you had success in one over the other? Is that an annual thing or is it something that's ongoing? I would say for myself, of course, being a mentor and having those group sessions allows the opportunity of once again feeding off of each other. Everybody has their challenges, everybody has things that they're facing, and of course, allowing to have those group sessions allows everyone to kind of pull something from someone else that they may be experiencing in that moment. So I would say mentoring is big for us. I think it's also practice size specific. You need to gauge what the best needs for your size. Being a small practice with under 15 employees, we're more individual based when we do things. But not doing it in a silo and sharing the knowledge that we did. And sometimes it's just we use Teams and I post things on Teams and I allow people to post back and we have memes and different fun things. And then we'll bring it to a potluck and then we talk about it and use it and kind of reinforce those things that we learned as a group after that. So it really all depends on what do you think is going to be the best learning environment for those individuals. And sometimes people, they tend to do it in a group even when it is individual. They're sitting next to each other, so they're talking to each other and they're, hey, did you see this? And wow, I don't understand that. And it just happens organically and fostering that as well. So we're actually in the midst of kind of looking at what our opportunities are for improving coaching and management development, things like that. I do agree with you that if you use a tool upon hiring and then it never shows up again, you find it when you're moving out of your office, it's probably not a useful tool. So I think, you know, historically at our practice we've worked with a coach and used a tool called Emergenetics, and it gives you some work behavior, how you show up, and also kind of where your thinking preferences are. And so that's been helpful for us to kind of get to know each other and how to approach other people with information. But again, it's only as good as the follow through. We've been doing quarterly management workshops. There's one coming up that hopefully I actually need to go to. It's about time management, because I'm constantly underestimating the amount of time it takes to do things. I'm, like, worse than a surgeon, like, oh, I can go to do all this today, and, you know. So I think, you know, it all goes back to what Olivia talked about yesterday, though, like, what are your values of your organization? So if you have a value set that you can agree upon in your management team, that really helps, even when you've got all these diverse ways of thinking. Out of curiosity, do you guys use 360 evaluations for your leaders? We have used that intermittently. I would say it's probably something that has an opportunity. Does anyone else use 360s? For those who are using that, what kind of value do you see in that, or have you? I think the 360s are something you have to introduce to everyone because it first starts with a climate of trust. Is the other person going to see my review? If I write this will they really see it or what I put on here is can I be honest? We don't do it for every part of our department but it was one that's it's heavily pushed among our nursing and then we've moved it into all parts of our clinical. So telling everyone that they need to be honest I mean if not if we come through mid-year don't come complaining about someone else if you know this is a problem and you didn't bring it up in the past. It's also a time that we should be reviewing them as a whole and it's just like all annual reviews we're not focusing on one thing how have they performed throughout the whole year. But I think that 360s are helpful and we involve providers, we involve peers, we involve other leaders and that's for our managers and I think it gives you a well-rounded view and it also is something for you to look at how am I going to improve this next year. Maybe I think I have some great connections but what I'm hearing from the providers is that's not what I'm you know not what they're seeing from their perspective. So you got to warm everyone up to it. It's a trust item as well. I used them and then I ditched them. But I do, for my leadership team, if they're interested in using, like I say, hey, if you want feedback from somebody about something, go ahead and ask them to, we have a really easy form, kind of the circle fives kind of thing. So, my leadership team said, they keep asking me, well, do you want me to do this? I said, only if you want the feedback, but I think what we found is that, literally, what the surgeons would do is they would bitch and complain about somebody all year, and then on those evaluations, they would circle all fives. And I'm like, how is this possible? And they'd circle all fives, and then the very next meeting, they'd be like, well, that person's not meeting expectation. And I'm like, but your evaluation said that they are. So, it just ended up being kind of worthless for me, so I ditched them. And then if people want to use it, then I encourage them, like, hey, if you want feedback from the physicians, from the other team members, feel free to use this form to request it, but you have to lead it. I just had a question about education. How do you promote education to like your managers or leadership, or is it something that you would prefer for them to come to you about it? I think it's twofold. If people are afraid to ask, then bring it to them. I love, again, I'm going to plug AOE, we have a great learning center. We just revamped it. And there is an administrator 101 session on there that you can give, and it's very easy, and we're working on doing some more levels to that. There's one on RevCycle. We have different things. There's one for casting and splinting and customer service, and we have a compliance certification. So knowing what resources are out there that are at your fingertips, and then just letting people know. Sometimes they don't know that they can ask, so even just throwing it out there. If there's something that you see that you want to learn more about, let me know and I will see how I can get it to you. So just be there and share that, because if you don't look good, if you're the only one that can run the ship, I want, when I'm gone, that ship to still be smooth sailing. So I want everyone to have the same resources and tools that I have. So I've done all these courses, so I want my staff to be able to do it. So giving them out and maybe encouraging them to actually do them. We do promote education, I would say, or promote growth within our company for the managers, even for the leads. I can say all of my leads or supervisors may not be, the company may not sponsor or cover AAOE coverage, but for your regional, they are. Any webinars, any seminars locally or virtually, of course, I do encourage them to join those or attend those as well, because as she mentioned, you know, when you're out, the information should not only be received for you as a manager or a director, but you should be promoting growth. I don't know about anybody else, but I got my G baby, so I don't plan to be doing this forever. So I want to make sure, of course, that I'm promoting up. So when that time does come, the next person is ready and they're prepared and they have those tools, those necessary tools, I would say, to be successful. AAOE, any regional groups, vendor relationships have actually gotten us some education that's been interesting, like our DME vendor, like, oh, I don't know a lot about, I don't know as much about DME as I should, so let me go to this conference that they're sponsoring. As far as formal education, I think that is something that, you know, some of our staff comes to us and hasn't had as much formal education as they want. Something we've done, and, you know, we're not a mega practice, but we're a decent sized practice, 700 employees, is we've started some scholarship opportunities for staff. We don't have the budget of the, you know, go back to school and, you know, work for a period of time. So we've tried to kind of figure out some unique ways to offer that to people who want to further their formal education. I want to give a plug to executive education for those of you who, has anyone done any executive education, like through any business schools or graduate schools? Great bang for the buck. You get access to really amazing professors on specific topics, and you don't have to go back to school. So I know that we have a lot of newbies today. I will encourage you to look into the leadership academy if you haven't. That was a pivotal moment for me as a leader. The leadership academy, I connected with still some amazing people with networking, but I learned a lot about myself, not only professionally, but personally as well. And it did allow and help me to grow in those areas. So I will encourage you to look into applying for the next leadership academy. And for those of you who have not been to a national AAOE conference, I hope to see you in May there, but kind of what Erica was saying, if you come, talk to our business resource members, our vendors. They do provide some amazing opportunities. Some of them can send you to some of their conferences, very low cost or no cost at all, because they have that, because they want to build those relationships. Even for AAOE, our business resource members have an opportunity for you to come to conference by doing speed meetings, speed datings, where you get a highly subsidized rate and you meet with the vendors one-on-one. And that's how I was able to bring an additional staff member to conference for a small practice. And I think that's super important that we foster those relationships. We would not be here today without our business resource members. So again, that's why we keep on saying, make sure you talk to them, you know, when we go on these breaks, because they might be few, but they're mighty for today, conference. There are hundreds of them. And it's really important. And then, don't hate me, but I do want to also say, I want to thank our AAOE staff for working behind the scenes, because that's super important. So we have Kathy up front here. And then out at the table, we have Vicky and Addy, who, and they have a whole other team that's probably back in Indianapolis that are working and around, because they are the ones that are gathering these business resource members along with us and our members to be able to provide such education that can not only benefit us, but our staff as well. One more thing. I'm sorry. I love AAOE, right? So of course, get involved. So there's a lot of boards, a lot of opportunities, I would say, to get involved. And I've learned so much about not only AAOE, but I've learned more. I've been in orthopedics for 14 years. I believe that's what it is. But of course, in management, it's only been a few. And so of course, getting involved and learning from the best, being a part of those boards have really helped me as well. So definitely feel free to get involved. Awesome. Thank you so much. Ladies, thank you. Thank you for participating. Thank you for sharing. We're onto a break, right? Lunch is here. All right. And we will reconvene at...

women leaders

orthopedics

diversity

equity

inclusion

imposter syndrome

systemic barriers

mentorship

bias training

networking