Ep 51: Giving Healthcare a Lift

with Megan Callahan

October 20, 2021

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Megan Callahan
Former Vice President of Health, Lyft

Megan Callahan joined Lyft in 2018 to lead its growing healthcare business. Prior to her time at Lyft, she served as Chief Strategy Officer and member of the executive leadership team at Change Healthcare, a market leader in healthcare technology and services. She was one of the primary architects of the merger that created Change Healthcare, crafted during her tenure as senior vice president of corporate strategy and business development for McKesson Technology Solutions. During her 13 year tenure at McKesson Technology Solutions, Megan oversaw strategy, corporate and business development for the $3B HCIT segment, spanning revenue cycle management, clinical decision support, payment accuracy, clinical data/analytics, imaging and pharmacy solutions.

Megan also served on the board of directors for the Commonwell Health Alliance, a non profit dedicated to defining the future of nationwide interoperability, to help ensure providers and individuals have access to health information when they need it. She is an advisor to FORESIGHT, an initiative of the Rippel Foundation and created in partnership with Blue Shield of California Foundation, which is a multi-year effort focused on designing a future for health. She volunteers with the San Francisco Homeless Prenatal Program and is President of the Foundation supporting her local public school. She has an MPH from UCLA.

 

About 35% of Medicare Advantage plans cover transportation, and I think we're going to see that increase more and more as people recognize the importance of social determinants of health in our healthcare ecosystem.

Transcript

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Sanjula Jain  0:03  

Women make up 70% of the healthcare workforce but only 20% of its leadership. On Her Story, we’ll explore the careers of bold and influential women from Silicon Valley to Capitol Hill and learn how they’ve overcome the odds. I’m your host, Sanjula Jain and this is Her Story, a program where we explore what’s beyond the glass ceiling.

 

It’s my pleasure to welcome Megan Callahan, the Former Vice President of Health at Lyft. Megan, thanks so much for joining us today.

 

Megan Callahan  0:34  

Thank you so much for having me.

 

Sanjula Jain  0:36  

You have been at the forefront of a variety of different roles in healthcare services and technology, really all the works. What do you think about your foray into healthcare leadership? Do you consider it to be more accidental or intentional?

 

Megan Callahan  0:52  

I’ve gravitated to leadership roles all my life, starting way back in student government, so I think it’s been fairly natural for me. I’m not sure if that makes me accidental or intentional. Accidental, I guess, given that I was born this way, but I certainly put myself in the reading for various leadership roles throughout my career.

 

Sanjula Jain  1:10  

Good. Let’s go back to the origin story. What was life growing up and how did that shape your ambitions as young Megan?

 

Megan Callahan  1:18  

I came from a family of clinicians. So my mother got her physical therapy degree in the late 1950s. So she tells the story that she had to argue with my grandparents and fight to get that degree because they thought the only acceptable degrees for women were a teacher, a nurse or a wife, and they didn’t know what this physical therapy thing was. So she really had to fight for her career path, and she probably had an outsized influence in my family. One of my earliest memories is after four children, her going back to work, and having our dining room table just covered in books and papers. She was studying for her California state boards. My father worked at Kaiser Permanente. I’ve got siblings who are nurses and pharmacists. So they’re all 812 years older than I am. So they really also had a big influence on my career progression. I will say, I don’t think my parents were particularly good about exposing me to other careers outside of healthcare. I will try and change that with my own children. Having said that, I was always a science kid. So I never really considered anything else. But when I did start my career and went into the healthcare business, my entire family thought I had gone over to the dark side.

 

Sanjula Jain  2:31  

I can somewhat relate to that. So it sounds like you really grew up in a healthcare world, then you decided to go get a graduate degree. How did you decide that the healthcare business really was your calling?

 

Megan Callahan  2:46  

As with most things, somewhat gut and happenstance. I went to UCLA and got my MPH, I was focused on epidemiology, actually, and went and did an internship the summer between my first and second years at the CDC in Atlanta, and I had this very exotic image of chasing Ebola through Africa, and that it was going to be this very interesting career. And although the CDC was wonderful, I realized that I was going to be sitting behind the desk a lot doing a lot of statistics and number crunching, and I came back and actually changed my emphasis I finished an epi but I added healthcare services healthcare business at the time, I just had a natural love for that professor and for those courses. When I left UCLA, I then did an administrative residency at the St. Joseph health system in Southern California, which was horrible pay horrible, but great learning, and I had a great mentor there in business development. And from there, I came to San Francisco and started working at Arthur Andersen healthcare strategy consulting and it was there that I really started gravitating to healthcare technology, which was of course very nascent comparison to what it was today but was trying to get away from working with physician groups or payers and, and more into healthcare technology. From there, I went to help out the payer here in California who Centene now owns but they had this very interesting idea. They were going to spin out this company and it was a collaboration against seven major insurers to really kind of collaborate on what we now call digital health. It was putting claims history online, providing clinical content for various diseases, and of course, it fabulously imploded because all of those health insurers had competing interests in needs. So and from there, I ended up making my way to McKesson.

 

Sanjula Jain  4:37  

There’s a lot to unpack in all of that. Maybe let’s start with McKesson. So you held a variety of different roles there is a lot of different focus areas. I know one of the things that happened while you were there was the transaction with MGM, which has now changed healthcare. Tell us a little bit about what it was like working through healthcare innovation at that point in time of the company’s journey and how that shaped your approach to Healthcare but also leadership.

 

Megan Callahan  5:09  

At McKesson, I worked there for quite a long time in corporate strategy and business development. So starting within our payer business unit, and then working my way up to the top role in corporate strategy and business development for all of McKesson, technology solutions. So probably important for your listeners to be grounded in that because in technology solutions was a $3 billion segment, which basically sold anything a payer, a provider, a health system, an imaging center, or a pharmacy needed to run its business, both software and services. And in corporate strategy and business development, the easiest way to think about it is we really looked ahead three to five years, what do we need to do to be successful? And then what do we either need to build buy or partner for in order to make sure that McKesson had that in its arsenal and could offer it to our customers. So that was kind of the backdrop for McKesson. When I did take that SVP job of corporate strategy and business development. I was trying to do a lot of acquisitions, I was being told no quite frequently. I came to understand and appreciate that McKesson had decided to double down in its core business which makes absolute sense, which was the pharma distribution business. And the technology solution segment had very high margins, great EBITDA and we were just gonna get milked, essentially, and I took that as McKesson is no longer the right owner for those assets. And they really needed investment. It was a really, really it was like the start of digital health essentially at that time. And we had an incumbent position with most of the payers in the country and hospitals having some or all of our products so so what I did is I went in with one gentleman on my team and worked up every single scenario with what we do with that portfolio of assets from selling it off to private equity to another Hail Mary acquisition. And what jumped off the page, of course, was the merger with MD. Both were very strong in the revenue cycle management space, there was a lot of overlap in terms of capability and customers. So I worked with my boss at the time, Bansi. Naji who’s now the president of good RX and body of work, and got behind it. And we flew together to meet with John Hammergren, who is the CEO and McKesson at the time, and, and really pitched to him this merger in this carve-out of this $3 billion segment from McKesson and creating this new company. Everybody told me John was going to say no, and he said yes, so I spent the next 15 months getting that transaction done, of course, with a whole host of people working a lot with Blackstone who owns MD on working with Goldman Sachs, who was our bankers and learning a ton. I’d done acquisitions in the past, but nothing that complicated and led to the integration of McKesson, technology solutions with what was nd on, they take the name of change healthcare at the time. And through that process, became a member of the executive leadership team of change healthcare, which again with another $3 billion healthcare technology sector, sorry, $3 billion healthcare technology and services company and was a member of the executive leadership team, where we decided everything from what should our mission, vision and values be in the new company? And of course, I was responsible for strategy and the go-forward path for the business.

 

Sanjula Jain  8:30  

Wow. I want to unpack a couple of things from that first. You’ve mentioned this concept of people that said no, that that wasn’t gonna happen with the transaction. How did you push through that? How did you stick to your guns, “I’m still gonna pursue this so we’re going to raise it as an issue.” What was that process like?

 

Megan Callahan  8:50  

I obviously had enough pause. First of all, I knew our analysis was good, if not great. I attribute that to the team that we were that I was working with. And I had heard enough things from other parts of McKesson to know this had been discussed, at least at some point before. And it was just so obvious to me that McKesson needed to focus on its core business. And that these wonderful assets and great products deserved another life if you will. So it was probably just fortitude and a belief. And obviously, great data led me to keep moving on. Of course, I’d say my boss at the time, my manager was incredibly supportive, and really kicked the tires with me on the analysis that we did and, and gave little tips and tricks in terms of when you pitch it. Think of these things. Think of what they would think of what John might be thinking that’s going on in this part of the business that might make him either receptive or not receptive to what you’re saying in terms of how I framed it.

 

Sanjula Jain  9:55  

That’s music to my ears as a researcher thinking about data-informed decisions. So I guess A lot of that must have spoken for itself. I’m curious, maybe check me on this. But my perception is that a company like McKesson is, you know, was larger, more established, maybe more corporate, and I’ll put that in air quotes versus this new entity was to your point that it was early days of digital health and new growth stage company. What was that shift? Like as you thought about your leadership approach and having to come in and try out a new strategy and think differently, bring on a team?

 

Megan Callahan  10:27  

It was really an organization in flux. McKesson was very much McKesson very much had a very specific culture. It was a large organization, not high growth, height, height, high EBITDA, at least in my portion of the business. And MDR actually, previously had been around for quite some time. But MDR had brought in a new leader, Neil decrescendo, who’s currently the CEO of change. And he was really trying to, and he was changing things and evolving the culture of MDR. And really trying to modernize the approach that they took. The one thing about these revenue cycle management companies is they have so much data because if you think about it, the majority of the country’s administrative transactions are flowing through their pipes. And Neil knew that. And he was really trying to modernize that business in terms of how they could take what companies that had been around for 20, 30 years and pivot them to this new digital health area? So for me, it was really about getting on board with Neil and getting excited about what he was trying to create and trying to bridge the gap culturally, between your brain’s 10,000 employees from McKesson, and however many were from changing healthcare. And they were different. We had a different perspective in terms of culture and philosophy and leadership style, and how can you bring those two things together in a positive way, it didn’t always work. I think that’s really hard in mergers. Because some people feel like they really liked whatever the predecessor company was, and they liked the philosophy, they liked the culture, they liked the leaders. So it was really a front-row seat to how to navigate a lot of great change, while still providing value to your customers when nothing stops, right? Your product roadmap doesn’t stop, your customer requests don’t stop, your deliverables don’t stop, but you’re going through a period of great change internally.

 

Sanjula Jain  12:31  

Absolutely. I would be remiss as a data one not to ask this, but you’ve mentioned it a couple of times now. And from my perspective, healthcare as an industry is evolved from becoming more data-savvy, as we have more data available to us. What do you think about the next generation, next decade of healthcare in terms of the “data-driven” health economy? Do you think that’s going to require a different set of leadership skills as an ecosystem?

 

Megan Callahan  13:01  

The amount of change since is in high tech and meaningful use has just been crazy. I mean, that was effectively artificial government intervention that accelerated the market for EMRs and digitized data. But that was really the foundation for digital health. I’m really excited by what I see happening now. And what I think will be a period of great change over the next 10 years, if I think about leadership, companies competencies that are required for that. It certainly requires a certain knowledge of technology, at least fundamentals, coupled with I think, knowledge of healthcare regulations, and the intricacies of US healthcare. Now, those things can obviously be learned. And we’ve seen, I think, great results from people from outside of the healthcare industry coming into the healthcare industry and asking the right questions around why we do things in a certain way. And I think for those of us that have been in the healthcare industry for a certain amount of time, I think it’s incumbent upon us to really listen to those people to not necessarily say get out of here. You haven’t been in the trenches with us for however long because, by the pairing of outside and thinking plus some kind of subject matter expertise, knowledge, the best leaders will find a way to harness those two things, and really turn it into great solutions.

 

Sanjula Jain  14:22  

Well said. Speaking of outside healthcare, afterward, you went on to Lyft. Lyft started as a non-healthcare company and you were the first VP of healthcare going on. What prompted that decision to make that shift?

 

Megan Callahan  14:40  

By the time I think I stayed at change for roughly a year and a half after the merger and I had just been in that portfolio to assets for quite some time when I joined McKesson, I really joined because they had what we would now call population health software and services that I was really interested in. So utilization management, case management, disease management clinical guidelines, that was why I started getting into healthcare technology in terms of how you could use those within a clinical workflow setting either at a payer or provider. And one day, I just woke up at change, and so much of it was revenue cycle management, and it was kinda like, How the hell did I get to be Chief Strategy Officer of a revenue cycle management company. And I’m glad I know that, and I’m glad I know those products. But I’d been in that portfolio for a very long time, I mean, that that was probably upwards of 12 years, by the time I gave my notice change and, and one of the things I was really looking for ways to kind of get back to why not healthcare in the first place, and I want to get closer to to the patient, right, which is sometimes hard when you’re dealing with a lot of administrative type of solutions. So I did not anticipate that getting closer to the patient was going to be the consumer base rideshare company. But that there you have it, what they were doing really resonated with me, I don’t think there’s any more basic form of healthcare access and making sure that people can get to it. And typically those people are underprivileged people of color or people with disabilities, people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. So what they were doing really resonated with me.

 

Sanjula Jain  16:16  

I’m trying to take us back to those early days. So from my reflection outside in, right, I mean, we couldn’t have a fathom as a society that we would be getting in strangers’ cars to take us around the right level, let alone to a doctor’s appointment. When you came on, how did you think about this idea of basically, it’s fair to say, like creating a company within a company and really taking this consumer tech brand, into a very highly regulated sub-industry? What was that like?

 

Megan Callahan  16:48  

I should say that they had a healthcare business before I joined, just to be clear. So they entered the space in 2016, under the leadership of David Bagga, who’s now the CEO at a company called even in Dire Winwick, who is now the CEO at Modern Health. And they had done a fantastic job of taking the Lyft network, essentially creating a business-to-business platform, and then leveraging that within the existing nonemergency medical transportation space. So there was a very, you know, robust foundation for me to build off of, but what they wanted was really a healthcare subject matter expert to come in, be the GM of the business, lead the business, and really have a holistic view on based on their foundation where we could further take Lyft in healthcare over the next three years and build out the team to do that. You mentioned the policy and the regulation angle of this. One of my favorite stories of when I started: the biggest market for non-emergency medical transportation is Medicaid, so Medicaid has offered transportation benefits since the program’s inception in the mid-60s. Therefore every state you’ve seen one Medicaid program, you have seen exactly one Medicaid program, every state had different rules and regulations around the vehicles and the drivers and, and very specific things. I remember going in to talk to a Medicaid director early on, to talk about what we were doing and why basically they should have Lyft or a rideshare company as an enrolled provider, essentially. I remember him saying to me, “Well, right now drivers—non-Lyft drivers, obviously—right down the odometer reading when they pick up the patient. They write down the odometer reading when they leave. How are we going to get that from you?” It was one of these wow moments, an aha-moment in terms of what people were used to not being used to very tech-forward companies coming in, to modernize what I think is overall not a great experience for patients. So those pieces were interesting because it was how we could make the best of this b2c company and really leverage it within this b2b vertical. There’s a lot of benefits. Amazing technology. Lyft does a fantastic job with marketing. They had a stellar policy team because they had to go around the state by state, and just get the rideshare just the normal rideshare portion, right policymakers to adopt that each state. So it was unusual for me because having come from a career in health care, everybody knows your jargon. Everybody knows the market. I really had to take a step back when it came to Lyft because you spent a lot of time educating on just fundamental market dynamics, how the dollar flows, different incentive structures, right that a payer would have that’s different than what a health system would have. And then making cases on why healthcare Why should you invest here instead of bikes or scooters or autonomous vehicles or anything else and there’s a fair amount of making some noise and banging my fist on the table. So they pay attention. But John and Logan were great. Lyft is a very mission-driven company and they really saw how the healthcare vertical laddered up into their larger company mission. And we’re always very supportive.

 

Sanjula Jain  20:15  

That’s fascinating. You and the team have just done a phenomenal job a little bit to the earlier point around the kind of outside players of healthcare. I think we have a lot of inside health care folks to learn from them. Your B to C comment is interesting. Are there unique tidbits that you learned from just like the broader Lyft consumer business that you think more broadly, those of us in healthcare should we be thinking about as we think about our strategies and our approach to health tech and health services?

 

Megan Callahan  20:41  

Lyft in healthcare is a classic study and product-market fit. One of the reasons that Lyft got into healthcare is because they were noticing that rides were occurring in Manhattan, but they were being called from Salt Lake City. And it tripped their fraud analytics. And they started digging into saying, why are all these riots happening in Manhattan, but they’re all being called from this exact same location in Utah. And there are organizations that manage transportation programs on behalf of payers, and there was one of these entities, they couldn’t get their normal transportation providers to pick up these riders for whatever reason. And they had a bunch of burner phones. And they were caught calling Lyft on their consumer accounts, to get them to come to confidence. So I mean, I just use that as an anecdote for how strong the product-market fit was for an on-demand network in a world where you typically had to call in three days in advance for your appointment. And obviously, a lift can get to someone, typically in five to seven minutes. As I look at healthcare, and there are so many digital health companies, startups right now, product-market fit is obviously number one. Right now, I think you’re seeing a lot of clustering and digital health around certain areas. And there’s going to be some kind of reckoning, some kind of consolidation at some point in the next couple of years. But Lich was also going around AI and not a very sexy part of healthcare. I mean, so I think finding the broken bits of healthcare and innovating on them, even if they aren’t sexy, continues to be important, because that’s, that’s a lot. That’s a lot of what healthcare is, and a lot of what needs to be improved.

 

Sanjula Jain  22:28  

Your point is the back to the basics, that nugget you shared about how Medicaid has been covering this benefit for years. I don’t think many people even recognize how far back that goes.

 

Megan Callahan  22:38  

Yeah, and Medicare Advantage now increasingly, about 35% of plans nationally, also cover transportation. And I think we’re gonna see that increase more and more as people recognize the importance of social determinants of health and in our healthcare ecosystem.

 

Sanjula Jain  22:55  

Absolutely. You were in the midst of entering the next chapter of your career, I should say, and I will be stepping back from Lyft for some of your adventures that we’ll have to have you on for part two to tell us more about in a couple of months. Tell us about the decision, what prompted the decision to leave and find the next thing?

 

Megan Callahan  23:16  

I feel very confident in the team that I’ve built at Lyft. They’re a fantastic team. I’m very confident in the strategy that we’ve developed over the next three to five years. And I think that they’re well-positioned to execute against that strategy. And as I look at what’s going on in healthcare now, and the amount of investment and people are doing things now that we tried to do 10 years ago that we couldn’t do, either, because the technology wasn’t there, the business model wasn’t there, incentives weren’t aligned. I want to be a part of fixing as many parts of healthcare as I can. And that was really the crux of the decision was I want to go on and go to the next thing so that hopefully when I look back someday at my career, I can say, I had a small hand in these various areas, and I left things a little better than when I found him.

 

Sanjula Jain  24:13  

Absolutely. I’m a big proponent of intersectional leadership. And I think a really unique part about your story is that you’re really tackling it from a variety of different vantage points. And so I think that that’s really fascinating to track. I think transitions are a good moment of reflection. And so if I can have you take a step back and think about how you’ve made these different career decisions through different organizations, different titles, roles, cultures, how have you thought about the different skills and capabilities that you personally needed to either develop or embrace at those different inflection points?

 

Megan Callahan  24:46  

I’ve done that my entire career. My education was in biochemistry and epidemiology. I wasn’t exactly taking a ton of general management and technology and accounting classes. So I think that’s probably hopefully helpful for younger people. Who was coming out of college or grad school who were really interested in what they were studying, and then all of a sudden, right, it’s that career is not exactly what I wanted, or it wasn’t exactly what I anticipated. I, I think we can always pivot, you have to work hard and study, right. But you can always make a pivot. So in terms of skills along the way, I mean, I think probably one of those just probably softer skills is just understanding that you made your way might not be the right way. And being open to working with new perspectives, new ideas, I think that’s probably the most fundamental part of skill-building along the way, by stealing from the best and the brightest, try and try and make that try and make that a regular part of every aspect of my life. So I don’t know if I answered your question. But those are some of the ways that I think about it. I think it’s just a constant journey and trying to bring what you’ve done and what you’ve learned and carry that forward into your next experience.

 

Sanjula Jain  26:02  

That’s well said. Leadership is about learning every step of the way. And I think leadership is also about making tough decisions and trade-offs. And so I’m sure that you’ve had to make a couple of those through your journey, any that particularly come to mind.

 

Megan Callahan  26:17  

Your podcast is titled Her Story. There’s a couple of inflection points that yes, there are inherent trade-offs. The first was when I had my girls. There was a point where it did. What do you say, as a working mother? Or do you or do you stay in the home. That was probably a pretty big inflection point for me. I really agonized for many for a while about going halftime back to work. Every time I would go in to talk to my manager at the time, I would get some kind of version of a mild panic attack going in and having that conversation. I came to my husband at some point and I said, “I just can’t do it. I can’t stop working for whatever reason. I know who you married, I know who I’m married to, I knew what you were going to do all along.” That’s probably one inflection point for a lot of women is when you have a family how you navigate that. And just to take that one step further, I think that there’s always going to be periods in your life where your personal life throws a curveball. Where things don’t, don’t go as you had hoped, or as you had planned and, and I think how we react to those situations. And I don’t think there’s a right answer to this, by the way. But I think that that is pretty, pretty instructive. I was diagnosed with cancer when I was at McKesson and actually had to leave to go through chemo. And I’ll never forget when I was bald and sitting at my dining room table and my boss at the time, whose job I desperately wanted when he moved on, called to say that he had taken another job, and there was this open seat, and there was no way I could come back to work. I mean, I was very sick, and there’s no way I could come back to work. But they let me sit on it for a while. And they asked me if I was interested in the role. And they kept it open for me for several months, waiting for me to finish chemo and I actually came back with one or two more rounds of chemo left. And for me, that trade-off was more about getting back to what I viewed as normal life, which for me was a career and work and not being a sick person anymore. But but but being myself in some way. So the trade-off was I think that there was an opportunity there to probably have an easier path. And to just continue to stay out on leave that made the decision to get back in the game and occupy my mind was something else than my health, which was very helpful for me.

 

Sanjula Jain  28:51  

Wow. Thank you for sharing that. That’s so important for so many of us to hear and really take in and learn from that.

 

Megan Callahan  29:01  

It’s gonna be something for everybody. It might not be cancer, it might be the death of a loved one, it might be some issue and other issues in your family life and figuring out how work or your career fits into that. Is it helpful to you? Or is it a burden to you if it is an important conversation to have with yourself.

 

Sanjula Jain  29:22  

I want to go back to one of the earlier points and I think many of our listeners are in a similar boat of juggling being a parent and a demanding career. What advice would you have for other women who are just trying to make the best of both?

 

Megan Callahan  29:38  

I typically don’t answer that question. Just say no. I have actually refused on panels to answer that question. Just because a man would never be asked about it. But given obviously your audience and who you’re trying to reach, I will answer it. I think. I think I know Sheryl Sandberg has gone out of Vogue, but she was one 1,000% right about the most important career decision you will make is your spouse. If you choose to have a spouse, who your spouse is is incredibly important. I either lucked out or was unwittingly very strategic because my husband and I are true 50/50 partners. That has probably been the biggest boon. I’ve already talked about considering if you do have a family if you’re going to quit, I mean, I remember when I was a director at McKesson, and we’d go into higher-level meetings with various executives and I would just, I would count, I would count how many women were in the room, and then I would calculate the percentage of who are the decision-makers in the room and, and when obviously, as I was just seeing all of my peer group kind of just drop off and there weren’t that many of us left, right, as you start to get higher and higher. And I, I really would encourage people to just really think through that, because we need female voices in decision-making rooms. I mean, obviously, there’s all kinds of research about that. And, and I also think having, having had the benefit of some older siblings who are much older than I am, I think I had a little bit of a different perspective where I was seeing my, my sister’s with kids leaving high school, and in some instances didn’t necessarily have their own heir own world, their own source of fulfillment, whatever, whatever that could be. So that was instructive for me. So I would just say, take the long view on that when you make your decision.

 

Sanjula Jain  31:31  

You have totally reframed my thinking on that question, thank you. I’m going to throw a little bit of a curveball then: if, hypothetically, we’d asked the same question to your husband, how does he juggle being a dad and having a career in your home? How do you think he would answer?

 

Megan Callahan  31:47  

I think he would answer the same way. I hope he has a very important career, so I think he would answer the same way. I hope I’m as helpful as I think I am.

 

Sanjula Jain  32:01  

I’m sure you are. You’re raising the broader issue, though. It’s something that I think women leaders in particular, probably face more acutely. But I think we’re also hitting a point where I know I have several male colleagues who are also thinking about that balance, too. So it’s good for all of us.

 

Megan Callahan  32:17  

It’s interesting now, specifically with paternity leave. Lyft thankfully has a very generous paternity leave policy, so it’s really refreshing to see where my husband took two weeks, they’re getting 18, 20 weeks, and how to spread that out over the course of the year between the mother and the father. It’s wonderful.

 

Sanjula Jain  32:41  

Thinking about that long view, is there something that you believed early on in your career that you no longer believe and that could be something that you came to yourself or was told to you?

 

Megan Callahan  32:53  

When I started my career, and this could just be a product of young adulthood, but I think I believe that there was a right way to do things, that there is a right way and a wrong way of doing things, as opposed to, hopefully, what’s a more mature view of that processes perspectives, that there can be multiple, right ways to get to the right answer. So outside of your personal integrity, there is only that’s the only thing that you really have to trade on. So you have to find the right way for personal integrity. But outside of that, that’s probably what has changed most over time.

 

Sanjula Jain  33:31  

Coming back full circle to where we started, what advice would you give to young Megan?

 

Megan Callahan  33:37  

I would probably tell young Megan to say all the things, to not be afraid, to be— I don’t wanna say outspoken, but to have a strong opinion. Of course, respectfully. There was a period of time in my career where I was kind of counseled by some people to be a little less opinionated, about certain things. And I twisted myself into a pretzel for at least a couple of years trying to figure out how to be less like myself or less or less opinionated, which, of course, did not work out very well. I think a lot of that was a product of the company I was with, and the people I was working with, and certainly a certain amount of gender norms at the time, but I think I would say be unafraid about that and be as bold as you need to be.

 

Sanjula Jain  34:21  

Love that. Megan, this has just been a phenomenal interview, and I have so many more questions, but we’ll have to save them for round two. Let’s maybe close with our audience favorite, that is, as you think about your leadership legacy. What would be the title of your autobiography?

 

Megan Callahan  34:39  

You told me you were going to ask me this and I said this was the hardest question. First, I’m not done, so probably something like Meghan Callahan So Far. I’ll go with that.

 

Sanjula Jain  34:53  

With that, then, we’re really excited to continue tracking your progress and seeing what’s in store for the next chapter where you have brought some Much to healthcare already and we’re excited for the next venture for you. Thanks for being with us.

 

Megan Callahan  35:04  

Thanks for the opportunity.

 

Sanjula Jain  35:07  

Her Story is a podcast produced by Think Medium. For more leadership stories from inspiring women across healthcare, tune in every Wednesday. Please subscribe to Her Story on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you’re listening right now. You can also view Her Story episodes and video and access exclusive content on our website at ThinkMedium.com. Be sure to rate and review Her Story so we can continue bringing you insights from influential women across the country. If you enjoyed this episode, we appreciate you spreading the word to your friends, family, colleagues, and mentors who might be interested. For questions and suggestions, please contact us at herstory@thinkmedium.com. Thanks for listening!

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