Ep. 92: Competition Becomes Community

Dr. Sanjula Jain: [00:00:00] My name is Sanjula Jain. I’m the Chief Research Officer of Trillion Health and a member of the Her Story Advisory Council, and it’s my pleasure this morning to welcome Katie Drasser, CEO of rock health.org. Katie, thanks so much for being with us today.

Katie Drasser: Sanjula, I’m so happy to be here with you. What a treat.

Dr. Sanjula Jain: You have just a phenomenal background that I’m really interested to dig into. But before we start, for our audience members who are less familiar, can you tell us a little about kinda what Rock health.org is and your mission and you charter?.

Katie Drasser: Yeah, my current endeavor and feel very lucky to be a part of it. So, rock health.org we were set up to really equip innovators with resources, reach, and recognition. We think a lot every day about how. Money moves in this space and how design moves in this space. Then we ask ourselves who and what for, so who’s getting the money? Who’s deploying the money for what on design? Who’s designing? Who are we designing for and with, for what? And trying to figure out are we [00:01:00] actually doing as best as we possibly can in reaching folks and having an impact in bringing new and different leaders to the table. And then we have our convening power, which is sort of the flywheel of those other things and leaning into the power of community to make all kinds of change happen. Impossible. So I get to come across people like you every day, which is one of the biggest joys of the work. Yeah.

Dr. Sanjula Jain: Well, what our audience may not know is that, I don’t wanna say you’re relatively new, but you’re, how long has it been since you took over as CEO now?

Katie Drasser: I started in early 2021 as ceo together with a team of leaders who run other parts of rock health. We really built out a company that. Tackles the digital health space from many different angles with many different tools and bringing the all that we can to bear on this space. So we have a venture fund, we have an advisory group which does strategy consulting. We have our powerful research arm, which is. So well known, and I have so much respect for the work they do, and they really power [00:02:00] so much of our insights and wisdom in this space. So together we all row forward in the spirit of transforming transforming health for all. Yeah.

Dr. Sanjula Jain: Well, you continue to do an amazing job. I mean, rock Health has been a household name for a while and you’ve really come in to really help, you know, really make the, the.org foundation part really kind of. Stand on its own. I think what’s really interesting was, I’ve gotten to know you over the last year or so, is you have a fresh perspective on healthcare that sometimes in healthcare where you just kind of move organizational organization, but you have a very different perspective. Tell us a little bit about kind of your journey pre rock health and why you decided to kind of pivot more directly into healthcare.

Katie Drasser: Thanks for that. You know, I’ll start with, there’s sort of a couple ways to answer this, but I’m trained in public health. I went to public health school and that was a pretty deliberate choice. Grounded in a belief of two things. One is sort of the power of the collective and what. [00:03:00] You know what we can do together, which then translates to public health. You know, what does it mean for our community to be healthy? What does it mean for society to be healthy? And I think we often look at health sort of through an individual lens. And so that public health perspective for me felt something that was really important to understand and to get grounded in and trained in. The other piece is more about health, whether at the individual level or the community level, which is how might we understand a person, a community, a family, a system better by understanding health. So whether that’s. How people interact with each other, how they care for each other, how they access systems, how systems are designed to keep people healthy or not healthy. It’s a really powerful lens to understand all kinds of things, many of which have nothing to do with health or seemingly don’t. Right. I think over the last few years there’s been a huge shift. Not just in the health space, but at the society, at the, you know, the level of society and culturally in [00:04:00] understanding how health impacts all of us and each other. And my health impacts your health and your health impacts my other, and how might we be healthy together. So I think that training in public health and that perspective, in some experience I had both in the US here domestically and then also in a number of different countries, Romania, Ireland, Argentina. Malawi, et cetera. Understanding how other communities approached Approach Health. I think now that we are in this, not quite post pandemic, but having learned so much and experienced so much through the pandemic, there’s so much more consciousness about how intertwined health is in our lives, and that health is not just about being not sick. It’s about. Living, it’s about joy and thriving and how do we design systems that actually allow for that, and not just the absence of illness, which I think is sort of the status [00:05:00] quo, although I’m hopeful that it’s changing and there are so many points of light around that. But how do we design for that and how do we fund and fuel that and support folks who are aiming that way? How do we want that for each other?

Dr. Sanjula Jain: I think rooted in kind of that your view of the world and kind of in spirit. Health. You talked a little bit about kinda the power of the collective, and I know you do a lot of work and you have done even before rock health and really bringing leaders together around the table to you said, to make sure that we’re more inclusive, both from a gender perspective, racial perspective, education perspective. Tell us a little bit more about like when you think about yourself as a leader and your kind of foray into leadership, do you consider yourself to be an accidental or intentional leader?

Katie Drasser: I think for me, I don’t see it as a binary. I see it. My leadership is grounded in my purpose and my purpose has been my North star, and my purpose has been what guides me, and that has been very intentional and that I have fed and nurtured [00:06:00] and wrestled with, right? . And in that sense, I’m a very intentional leader. As long as I’m grounded in that. And I have found that being grounded in my purpose, being grounded in my beliefs and my sort of orientation towards impact and justice, has not led me astray. And has been, you know, one of the great joys of my life is, are the teams that I’ve been a part of building and have led. And I’m only as wonderful as my teams, and I’ve had the best teams ever, and I’ve learned so much from them and their diversity of perspectives and experience and backgrounds. I think of the few teams I’ve had the privilege of leading, I, it’s a leading a team of leaders actually. And then figuring out what we do together, right? And how we lead together and where one of us steps up, steps back, and how we support each other.

Dr. Sanjula Jain: Think what’s as I think a lot about your story, it’s very interesting. So you’re working with a lot of entrepreneurs and founders and kind of encouraging this next generation of innovation. , [00:07:00] but, so in many ways your role is very entrepreneurial, right? You’re creating a lot of network, you’re building kind of an organization within an organization, but you’re also, in some ways you’ve inherited kind of an established organization that was primarily led. Tell us a little bit about, you know, you know, coming in as CEO where you kind of had these. Big shoes to fill, right? There was some established things, but then there’s also a lot of new things that you were asked to do. Like how, what was your state of mind around that? How did you approach it? How did you prepare before you started?

Katie Drasser: That’s a great question. It’s such a fun challenge to be faced with cuz it’s all the right problems to be navigating, right? So in many ways I think of us as a startup, right upon. Even before I officially started, we started developing what is the strategy for rock health.org, and that was like there’s a bunch of white space there to play with. What is it that we are uniquely suited to do in this once in a century moment? What could we do, right? So in that sense it’s like [00:08:00] the world is our oyster. Let’s go start something. But I had the benefit of standing on the shoulders of some of the greatest minds in this space, some of the best spirits, and this energetic folks who have really paved a path for me to be walking down. And so part of the, part of what, of the work is figuring out what do we pull forward? What do we push forward, right? What how do we take the responsibility of our reputation and grow? How do we take the responsibility of our resources and community and invite others in and acknowledge our history and that sort of continual dance. And I, you know, part of how we navigated that was actually by not just like staring at each other, but you know, our strategy was informed by over a hundred leaders that we interviewed in this space to figure out. If we are an ecosystem player, if we are an ecosystem convener, then we better serve the ecosystem. Then we better be lockstep with our network and our future [00:09:00] network, right? What we imagine our future network to look like. And so it was informed by that. And so actually there are so many folks like yourself who look, probably see a reflection of what you wanted in our strategy because we tried our best to listen. And then be really clear about what we are and what we aren’t doing. And so for me, I mean, we have this decade long track record. Which is, most startups don’t have that benefit, right? A decade long track record to build off of, which includes, I say track record. Surely there are milestones on the thing, but the most powerful part of that track record is our community. So I come across people every day who say, oh, I’m a part of rock health. I’ve never met them, whoever it is. And it’s just, we’ve collected folks over time and we’ve leaned on each other over time. And so I step into that, you know, sort of honoring that and then growing it and building it and strengthening it towards purpose.

Dr. Sanjula Jain: Well, you were, you did a really great job. I remember in your, was it the first 90 days in which you started, I mean, you truly went on a listening tour and you were talking. Kind of stakeholders [00:10:00] that were kind of core to the community, but then also those who were more peripheral, or those who had never really heard about rock health. And so I think that was really a true testament to your leadership. I’m curious, as you kind of take a step back and reflect, you know, a little bit more than a year and a half into the role, what new things have you learned about yourself going through this journey?

Katie Drasser: Oh gosh. Sanjula, how much time do you have? I’m always learning new things about myself, about my leadership, about what works, what doesn’t I think what, you know, a lot of what I’ve learned are reminders of past lessons, right? Like I mentioned before, the power of a team. One of my first steps besides building this strategy is building a team. And we’re so much stronger for the team we’ve built across all of rock health. It’s one of my most proud things, right? It’s very internal. It’s very operational. One could argue, but it’s actually the fuel for all the good stuff. So I am reminded of that. I’ve learned that lesson [00:11:00] over and over again. I have one of the best teams in the whole world, so, but about myself, you know, I think a question I ask myself every day, and this relates to the team and I learned something new every day, is what am I not good at and what are other people really well suited to do? And how do I get outta the way and block and tackle so they can go do that? Well, I think there’s this sense that you have to solve all, and we have this sing, you know, I was at the Aspen Institute for 10 years prior to this and that put me in the path of some of the world’s best leaders. That’s the best part of the job, right? I got to, I had a front row seat to, I mean, a range of leadership leaders, you know, well, leaders you’ve never heard of. And I think there’s, we have this very narrow definition of leadership and then we all try to fit into that narrow definition and we miss so much when we do that. And so I think for me, part of that trap is thinking you can actually do it all and solve it all. [00:12:00] I’m under no illusion. You can ask my team, I’m under no illusion that is the case. But the trick is figuring out, okay, where am I in the way? Where are others well suited? And then on the flip side, where am I uniquely suited to add value in this moment? Where do I need to step up? Where do I need to play a role that I’m better at than the rest of the team? Right? And so really being clear with our. With myself and then with our team and with each other on, on what that looks like. And then out given our role in the world, out in the community, right? So with our network where we well suited, where ’em I well suited, where do we lean on another organization or another leader to and we’ll draft them, we’ll be right behind them, supporting them. That for me is like a constant lesson and thing I pay attention to. And you know, I will say as a non-profit, we have the fortune of. Competition is fun. I don’t think of it. We’re in such a competitive space, this digital health space, I don’t have to think about that as much. What I have to think about is who’s gonna have the most impact when, how, [00:13:00] where, and how do we support each other to do that? And so that is so refreshing and that forces this question every day.

Dr. Sanjula Jain: You know, something that I have been learning indirectly through you is kind of some of the differences in leading a non-profit versus a for-profit organization. And I’m curious if you have discerned a couple of key differentiators that you think. You know, leaders need to keep in mind on the non-profit side that are maybe different or advice you would have to individuals who are seeking to, to pursue a leadership role in a non-profit environment.

Katie Drasser: There’s sort of two things. One is a nonprofit is just a legal structure. And one of my hopes as leaders is that we get more expansive in what that means so that we can describe these things with richer language than just our legal structure. So for me, it’s really leading with purpose and there are tons of for-profits that do that. There are tons of nonprofits that don’t do that . And so when I think about [00:14:00] purpose and impact, that’s where sort of being more expansive about competition. Competition becomes community. Right. Impact becomes your North star and surely you need revenue to get there, right? We all kind of, we all need that. Everybody needs net income, revenue, however you wanna call it. And I think for us it’s then making sure that revenue matches purpose, matches impact, and actually is right size for our team, for our capacity. Not too little, not too much. I think getting that right and sometimes that’s a bit counter. You know, being in this VC space of, you know, massive ambition, unicorn status, we don’t necessarily need to be gigantic. Actually think that could be a disservice to the field. What is the right size for the impact we wanna have, and being really clear about that. And I think that then translates to all purpose oriented organizations, but also more specifically to, not to nonprofit.

Dr. Sanjula Jain: I think that’s very well said and really aligns with what you said earlier about just kind of knowing [00:15:00] strengths and goals and purpose, right? Like you don’t have to just kind of follow the bandwagon and you know, more is not necessarily better or, yeah. How you think about growth is very unique. So zooming out then, from kind of the work you’re doing currently as you really think about your leadership journey and your career, I know you have many more chapters to write, but you know, being a female leader is also pr, you know, leadership is hard on its own, but being a female on top of that, you know, it presents some unique challenges. If you, I’m sure you have many stories, but are there any, you know, moments in time that come to mind where you felt like you were particularly challenged because of your gender?

Katie Drasser: I’m sure there are more than I am even aware of. Right? What are all the things that happen when you’re not in the room, et cetera? I know for a fact. So here are a couple facts. I know. I’ve been paid massively less than male counterparts. That has a huge impact on my life now that I’m a parent. Income is not just about it’s not to go meet this frivolous life, especially to equip yourself in all kinds, [00:16:00] support yourself in all kinds of ways, right? And so without the right support as a parent, it actually has career limiting impacts. So when I think about that over time, I mean, that’s a huge one. I think there’s also, and I’ve heard many of your guests say this before, and I’m sure we all know this, of having to prove yourself twice, you know, having to pay more attention to your appearance. The inbound of, you know, , the freedom people feel to comment on all kinds of things related to your leadership and appearance and age, and. Is remarkable. I will say, I think there’s a flip side to it, which is I’ve I am in community with a lot of female or folks who identify as women leaders. And to me, I, there’s such an expansiveness I find in that community that far that buoys me far more than kind of. Tacking or being dragged down by the status quo or by, you [00:17:00] know, responding to some of the gendered stereotypes. Those gendered stereotypes are so real. But I have been fortunate to counter them with a set of folks that, oh, just really give me so much strength and conviction.

Dr. Sanjula Jain: Katie, this is, I have so many more questions for you, but I know we’re hitting up on time, so I’m gonna kind of distill it to handful of last final questions. So on your last point, I am actually really interested in, you know, you really have been someone who’s a champion of kind of the. Not just go for the flashy, you know, the loudest leader in the room, or you know, the most publicized organization, right? You really try to bring leaders and organizations from all over into your point. The ones that you maybe have not heard of before. How do you actually go about. Identifying and finding those leaders and getting connected to them and bringing them into these circles because so much of what you and I have moed over the early days of us getting to know each other was kind of these clicks and niches and [00:18:00] silos in healthcare, right? Like I’m in DC and there’s kinda a health policy circuit, and I kind of feel like, oh, I’m, I don’t know much about the digital health world on the West coast. And you know, how do you think about breaking some of those silos and bringing some of these new voices to the.

Katie Drasser: I think it starts with an orientation and then some practical points. So I’ll do the orientation first. And this actually could be advice to, you asked about advice to nonprofit leaders that you could draw a link to that too. So the orientation is, And this is, again, not new. Heather McGee and others talk about this a lot, but an abundance mindset. So seeing that the pie is bigger, seeing that by more and better connections, by bringing others in actually creates strength. That there are enough resources to go around that there, you know, just like really, and again, as a nonprofit leader, you have to, it is so folks, so quickly go to scarcity mindset. I’m culpable of that all the time, and [00:19:00] really I fight every day towards abundance. When you have that orientation, then thinking about. How do we expand our network? How do we find folks who are not networked in? How do you do that? To your question, there are so many tangible and tactical ways. One is how do you democratize your processes for connection, right? So we run a conference, the Rock Health Summit. It’s a gathering. How do we democratize how, what it looks like to get a free ticket if you can’t afford to come. When you think about your network, Who’s the last person you called outreach to, to connect with them? Especially if you have resources and perceived a real power. How do you do that? Have you done that lately? You know, and I think we can all be better at that. You hear someone at a conference or you. Here’s someone you know, you’re sparked, reach out to them, connect with them. How might your network, the nodes of your network, shift and change for doing that? Thinking about all kinds of processes, whether it’s [00:20:00] hiring fellowship nominations due diligence on investments, how do you make sure that folks who are networked didn’t know how to access and reach you and. And apply or be a part or have a fighting chance, really interrogating every process you have internally at an organization and then practically as a person being open to those cold connections. You just never know. And it might be, it goes nowhere. That’s okay. That happens. But it might be that. So much comes of that and actually brings someone into your network and you into their network and their, you know, so I think there are a lot of practical ways to do that, but interrogating every point of interaction at your organization or the way you move through the world and asking yourself how might I reach folks better and how my folks reach me I think is important.

Dr. Sanjula Jain: It’s really well said. I think the pandemic really also changed how we think a lot about that too. And so it’s really interesting to think about what all the unique ways where you can think about expanding those networks and be [00:21:00] more intentional about it. Okay, Katie, so final question. What advice would you give your younger self?

Katie Drasser: there’s so much advice I give my younger self, but one of them would just be to trust that it will all work out. I think especially as women I know for myself I worried a lot like, was this all gonna add up? Would it all add up to something that made a difference? Would it all make sense later on? And we have so much power in ourselves to make that true and to pave our paths and car our paths. So, Being a little less hard on myself, you know, and trusting that it would work out. I don’t know that it has worked out yet, but I see the path and I’m really proud of the path, you know, the journey.

Dr. Sanjula Jain: from outside looking in, you’ve just. In the stint of your career that I’ve gotten to know, I know that you’re doing incredible work and the industry is lucky to have you with all your leadership, and we’re excited to see what you continue to accomplish. So it’s, it really is a privilege to know you and really excited about all the things that are ahead for rock health.org [00:22:00] and your career. So thanks so much for being with us.

Katie Drasser: Thanks, Sanjula. I appreciate it.