‘Walking away from an amazing tech career in Silicon Valley is a scary thing’

Engineering chief Michelle Concannon explains how a vocation crack helped her obtain her ft back in Eire and take on a new function with Signify Health.

Michelle Concannon is a tech and machine discovering skilled with a lot more than two decades of encounter across Eire, Europe, the US and Asia. After keeping senior positions at Optum, Cisco and Avaya, she went on to enjoy a world engineering and products purpose in Microsoft’s cloud and AI organisation.

Concannon lately returned to her native Galway, following just about a 10 years residing in Silicon Valley and Dublin, to acquire on a new position at Signify Wellness. She is now senior vice-president of engineering at the US overall health-tech corporation, which has established up a new base in Galway.

In this role, she will guide engineering groups in Ireland and the US that are acquiring tech-enabled healthcare providers. Signify Health’s platform works by using analytics and tech to produce benefit-centered payment programmes connecting patients and health care providers in the US.

‘As a technologist, it is a large privilege to be working with teams that make a actual variance to people’s lives’
^{– MICHELLE CONCANNON}

What are the biggest troubles struggling with your sector and how are you tackling them?

Fragmentation, complexity, value and access to the US healthcare system are a few of the bigger problems struggling with the sector, as properly as a general deficiency of executed standards. Our teams at Signify Well being are tackling these difficulties in a number of techniques for our community of burnt-out suppliers and typically-confused people by connecting disparate knowledge sets to create a longitudinal client view.

We leverage that knowledge to create and combine a portfolio of healthcare abilities to forecast and get ahead of disorders in advance of they are exacerbated, strengthening healthcare outcomes and decreasing the cost of the care.

We are building ordeals that empower providers and people to much better navigate the health care system and take care of their treatment, making it simple and intuitive to do the right issue and more challenging to do the improper point – anticipating the future best motion for a individual and guiding them to that action.

What are the key sector alternatives you are capitalising on?

Signify Health’s mission is to transform how care is compensated for and delivered so that men and women can love much more wholesome, joyful days at dwelling.

Our groups are uniquely positioned to leverage the property as a major place of care deploying scalable engineering-dependent abilities that assist serious-time management of good quality and price tag.

What set you on the street to the place you are now?

Skillfully, it was a dialogue with a mentor and sponsor nearly 10 a long time back about what I needed my extended-term job to glance like. I was lucky plenty of at that juncture to be encouraged to acquire a phase back again and contemplate what I relished, didn’t love or wanted to do far more of, and I went by an physical exercise of crafting down what my excellent function would glance like.

That mentor also gave me some terrific assistance about the worth of helping and supporting other people today via my individual occupation. I really feel really privileged that my new part at Signify Health incorporates all the features of what I transcribed during that workout and our mission could not be much more aligned with helping other individuals. As a technologist, it’s a enormous privilege to be operating with teams that make a true variance to people’s life.

Individually, the pandemic has provided us all massive perspective on what is crucial in daily life. Getting near to spouse and children and close friends is extra critical to me than at any time and relocating to Galway after 10 amazing several years of adventure could not occur at a more fantastic time.

What’s the biggest possibility you’ve at any time taken?

Picking out to leave a amazing job and group at Cisco right after nine a long time – and Silicon Valley far more broadly speaking – in 2016 to get a year out of my job and travel with my partner.

Picking to wander absent (nevertheless short term) from an amazing engineering job at an incredible company in an remarkable part of the earth is a frightening thing to do when you’ve determined with your expert self for so several a long time. I invested the 1st three months pondering if I’d ever get rehired, frantically investigating tech tendencies for worry of not being appropriate!

Turns out it was also one particular of the most personally and skillfully fulfilling decisions I have at any time made. It established me on my route back to Eire and new vocation possibilities with higher lifetime perspective, publicity to distinct cultures, adaptability and appetite for discovering, unlearning and relearning.

What a person work ability do you desire you experienced?

Only a person? Masterful storytelling.

How do you get the greatest out of your group?

By listening. Listening to what is likely on for them individually as well as professionally and remaining as supportive as probable.

Comprehending very long-time period job goals and providing coaching instantly and indirectly to support my teams transfer closer to those goals or make connections that may well accelerate them.

Adopting a people-very first solution, making and speaking our collective function and having fun has been the foundation for any crew successes to date.

Have you discovered a range dilemma in your sector?

Of course. Regardless of ongoing media focus and some authentic initiatives to increase the situation, there is a good deal of do the job continue to to do. For me, there is a significant distinction concerning using the services of diverse candidates and selling an environment of inclusivity in the office, so I individually compartmentalise the two.

I believe basically that training lies at the coronary heart of overcoming bias inherent in all hiring administrators so investment decision in meaningful coaching programmes is significant. Employing processes will need to have the suitable checks and balances in location to complement the education and businesses require to get additional included in community-based programmes that are in immediate guidance of pipelining numerous talent from non-regular backgrounds. Hybrid performing preparations and featuring more flexibility are also significant to attracting additional assorted expertise.

Fostering an inclusive environment wherever each and every employee feels like they actually belong and can clearly show up as by themselves is more onerous. This only occurs as a end result of investment being built in culture, allyship instruction, tools and methods all over conference etiquette as nicely as common sentiment surveys and so forth. It also depends on how a company’s management is modelling that inclusivity.

How organization success are accomplished is as vital as what is obtained and developing actual leadership accountability all-around that at each level in an organisation is significant.

What’s the greatest piece of career guidance you have ever acquired?

‘You’re not the to start with particular person to have seasoned this difficulty!’

Google, associate, collaborate, discuss up – do your analysis prior to setting about to solve a problem that someone else may possibly have currently solved and be eager to assistance you with. Build upon what already exists or make a aware option to transfer forward with an independent option possessing performed the price-gain assessment, but devote some time in the analysis – it usually pays off.

What guides have you go through that you would advocate?

• The Mind: The Tale of You by David Eagleman – a excellent reminder of why we really do not all see factors the exact same way!
• Dare to Guide (or nearly anything) by Brené Brown

What are the important applications and sources that get you as a result of the doing the job 7 days?

Respiration, new air and sleep! Yoga, meditation and receiving outside the house to exercising are my perform (and existence) ‘tools’ of decision to preserve me in harmony.

With hybrid performing arrangements, it’s additional important than at any time to take care of calendars in this sort of a way that there are typical breaks designed in and to design that for teams. To do if not inevitably final results in a absence of efficiency, nonetheless counter-intuitive.

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