Tech-Powered Women's Health w/ Pallavi Chandak

Join Lisa Nichols as she interviews Pallavi Chandak, CIO at Axia Women's Health, about leveraging technology to improve women's healthcare. Pallavi shares her journey from electrical engineering in India to becoming a healthcare technology executive, emphasizing the importance of data-driven decision-making and innovative AI solutions. Discover how Axia Women's Health is using technology to provide comprehensive and convenient care for women at every stage of life and how AI can give healthcare professionals more time for patient care. Her personal motto, "Be first, best, or different," underscores her commitment to innovation and excellence in transforming healthcare.

Guest Links:

• Pallavi’s LinkedIn
• Axia Women’s Health

Credits: 
Host: Lisa Nichols
Executive Producer: Jenny Heal
Marketing Support: Landon Burke and Joe Szynkowski
Podcast Engineer: Portside Media

Transcript

Lisa Nichols  00:02
Chromosomes, little strands of nucleic acids and proteins are the fundamental genetic instructions that tell us who we are. At birth, most people are born with 46 chromosomes, but each year in the United States, about 6000 people are born with an extra chromosome, making them a person with Down syndrome. If you've ever encountered someone with Down syndrome, you know that they are some of the kindest, most joyful people you will ever meet. They truly have something extra. 

My name is Lisa Nichols, and for 30 years, I have been both the CEO of Technology Partners and the mother to Ally. Ally has something extra in every sense of the word. I have been blessed to be by her side as she impacts everyone she meets. Through these two important roles as CEO and mother to Ally, I have witnessed countless life lessons that have fundamentally changed the way I look at the world. While you may not have an extra chromosome, every leader has something extra that defines who you are. 

Join me as I explore the something extra in leaders from all walks of life and discover how that difference in each of them has made a difference in their companies, their families, their communities and in themselves. If you like this episode today, please go to Apple Podcast or wherever you listen and leave us a five-star rating. 

I'm excited to have Pallavi Chandak on the show today. Pallavi is the CIO at Axia women's health. So, well, welcome to the Something Extra Podcast, Pallavi. I'm so excited that you were able to join us today for this episode. I know you and I, we were laughing and saying, we've been trying to make this happen for a while now, almost a year.

Pallavi Chandak  01:43
That's right, that's right. I'm so glad that we're doing this now. 

Lisa Nichols  01:49
Absolutely. It's going to be worth the wait, because I know you're going to have so much wisdom to share with our listeners. Well, we have a lot to talk about. I have pages and pages and pages of notes, but before we dig into what you're doing today. I would love for you to take us back to growing up, because I know you grew up in Pune, so tell us about growing up.

Pallavi Chandak  02:07
So, Pune, it still feels like home to me. I visit all the time. But Pune is the heart of education in India. So, so many, so many students migrate to Pune. It's one of the most beautiful metropolitan yet cultural cities. So, I did my engineering in Pune, and I was like, I think only 5% of the class was female. So, it was whether it was the choice of pursuing electrical engineering in Pune, or whether it was the job that I had right out of engineering to be the first woman engineer at Siemens in India. So, it was in Bombay, or they call it Mumbai now, and that too, I was the first woman engineer to work on the shop floor like with the machinists, with the technicians. I worked as their quality engineer.

Lisa Nichols  03:16
Well, so I was going to ask you, you know, really sharing that career journey of how you went from electrical engineering to a healthcare technologist executive. But what really inspired you to go the technology route, Pallavi, and was there someone that spoke into you? Did you come from any kind of healthcare background, from your family back home? Or, you know, why did you choose that route?

Pallavi Chandak  03:45
I am born into a family of accountants, and I'm married into a family of engineers. I met my husband when I was in engineering, so we're all engineers in the family, including my sons. But it's so I think it wasn't much. I didn't have I wasn't surrounded by healthcare or doctors, but I did have the drive to make it better. Healthcare in India when I was growing up was different than the healthcare that I came into when I moved to St. Louis. And when I started learning about how the insurance industry works. How big of a role that they have to play in healthcare. And then, of course, how technology can be a differentiator in healthcare. Right now, everything is, the patient, is your consumer, and they want to treat healthcare as they would treat shopping on Amazon, right? And so, this has to be extremely easy patient centric as well. So, it's, it's always technology for me is always about making a difference and solving problems. And I happen to be, I did not seek to go to Mercy, but at that time, Mercy was looking for a lead analyst at that time, and that's how I got exposed. It was my first exposure to healthcare technology, and that is when I decided, and a big credit to Mercy, that is when I decided that healthcare is where I want to be. It was, I think Mercy is a part of me because of how wonderful the work environment was, the ministry, the mission. I'm not Catholic, but the values there absolutely resonated with mine. 

Lisa Nichols  05:39
Very mission driven, very mission ministry driven.

Pallavi Chandak  05:44
Vey service oriented. They were founded by sisters, right? So, Sisters of Mercy that founded the company, strong women that led, trailblazers that left a legacy, and being part of that was very meaningful to me. I, so I think not only did healthcare in trying to solve healthcare problems through technology, so that spoke to me, but a big part of why I stayed was Mercy, for sure. I got so many opportunities, starting as a lead analyst, so many opportunities for me to learn different leadership skills. And I've always been about opening myself to different experiences. So, I embraced every challenge, I tried to give my best to every role that I could do, and I learned how to lead with like empathy and grace. That's what Mercy does, right? 

Pallavi Chandak  06:40
So, I think Mercy was a huge, huge exposure, a very critical exposure to healthcare technology for me. And I was there during COVID, to MyMercy, all of the patient facing presence Mercy has I've had a little role in each of those, and I've learned a lot. I've learned to be if not the first, then the best, right, in everything that I do. But then from there, the journey continued on, how to embrace and take on more and more growth opportunities. And that's how I got to Axia, which is where I am today. I'm a CIO of this, this women's health company. It feels like a culmination, like of every role, every stop, every entrepreneurial journey, like everything that I've had so far, it feels like a culmination of all of that. So, Axia provides women's health care, but in a continuum. But we are also trying to have comprehensive care for women, and again, try to do it in a very digital, consumer friendly way, and so that we can come to one place and get all of the women's health needs met. And I have the responsibility, again, this is, this feels like everything has like come to this. Everything from the past has come to this, because I have responsibility of laptops and servers all the way to AI and data and patient portals and things and cyber security and things like that.

Lisa Nichols  08:31
Right. I love so much of what you've said, Pallavi. Because I just, I think everything that we do in life, we glean things from that, right? And so, what you didn't say is, before you went to Axia, you were the CIO for, for the care delivery division of Evernorth. So, you know, still technology, but I know that you did a lot with the patient experience, the customer experience there, and then you've carried that into what you're doing for Axia. So, let me ask you this, you know, what excites you the most right now about working in women's health. I mean, what do you and even I would love to hear if you think that there are some technologies, emerging technologies, that are really going to improve outcomes in that for women?

Pallavi Chandak  09:26
I think you and I, being women patients, we know that we have to go to multiple places to get different parts of our care, right? And I think what Axia does beautifully is follow your journey right from when a woman 12 years old, all the way to menopause care, and fertility, urogynecology, when you're having a baby, maternal fetal medicine. So, all of these different aspects of women's health, we are combining it under one umbrella, and also providing nutrition, also providing mental wellness, behavioral health and so on. So, that's what excites me, because I've learned a lot from my time at Mercy. I've learned a lot, especially at Evernorth. How do you lead at scale, and how are things done at scale?

Pallavi Chandak  10:24
I learned so much all of these talks, but to be able to bring that all together into a specialized service, like specialized area, like women's health, that's actually what's exciting to me in this role. We have to pilot some cool technology. And how do we do that with providers, with doctors that are extremely busy, extremely service oriented, but don't have the time, right? And how do we make their life more efficient at the same time, how do we take care of our patients? I think no matter where I have been in healthcare, the opportunities are very similar. At Mercy, also, patient experience was what the focus. At Evernorth, also, it was the same. How do we do self-service proactively? How do we do it in a consumer-friendly way. How can we meet our patients where they are? And that journey continues at Axia as well. But to answer your question, it's certainly the women's health part that resonates with me, that the tagline we have is women deserve more. So, it's very fitting, I think. I love that too. 
Lisa Nichols  11:41
I love that, and you're so right, because then that's different, right? To have a place where, like you said, it follows the continuum of the women. So, that's a differentiator. That's a different trainer for Axia.

Pallavi Chandak  11:56
And I also it's, it's the first, this is a, this is a private equity health company, which and with that comes a special focus on being lean. And I love that, because everyone's following the same mission. I work with the smartest, the most resilient group of executives. We're all the same mission, right? Women deserve more, and we have to continue to innovate in this very competitive space.

Lisa Nichols  12:28
Sure, it totally makes sense. Well, you've already mentioned AI and data analytics, but what role do you believe Pallavi, that data analytics plays, and you know, in this women's health outcomes? It's huge, I know.

Pallavi Chandak  12:45
100% very huge. It's huge. I think data driven decision making, data driven outcomes will drive where we are headed. That is how we make a lot of the decisions today on where to invest, what technologies to invest, what predictions to look at. Because if, if we don't have early indicators of risk or early indicators, we can go take care of that patient proactively. So, data and analytics, if we know that this is a demographic of patients that are not at Axia and should be at Axia, the data and the analytics will tell us that this is the demographics to address, right? So, it's all about, it's all about the data. It starts with data and it ends with data.

Lisa Nichols  13:40
Right. Well, you know now, are there some innovations or some project initiatives that you're working on right now that are just very innovative and exciting? I certainly don't want you to, I'm not asking you to share anything that's proprietary, or anything that you know is a competitive advantage, necessarily. But are there some things that you're excited about?

Pallavi Chandak  14:02
I'm going to use the same buzz word everyone's using, it is AI. We are piloting some ambient listening, where as a, when a doctor is seeing a patient, as you know, when we go into the doctor's office, so many times they have to face the computer and chart and write their notes into the EMR. That is the need and it's just gotten more and more complicated and more and more time consuming for the doctors, whereas what AI does in today's world is listen to the conversation. So, you hear different word, different phrases, you hear ambient listening, or you hear AI scribe, similar technologies with listening to the conversation. And it's smart enough to know that I'm not, not to translate conversations about vacations or moms or kids or the non-medical. It's smart enough to weed out the personal stuff, the non-essential stuff, and only chart what is medically relevant for that patient chart. But it's not making the final decision. The final decision still stays with the providers or with the physicians, so they hit, they still review the chart and say, Okay, this looks good, but it saves them so much time from charting. 

Pallavi Chandak  15:32
More importantly, they can now look and stay connected and stay engaged with the patient, than facing the computer and making notes is part of the and they spend two, three hours a day, sometimes doing this. So, it's that's something I'm very excited about. We're also very excited about, like, AI agents are everywhere. Are going to be everywhere. AI assistants, AI agents. So, looking at how AI can answer some of the phone calls that could relieve a human being from taking and instead have them take care of patients, right? Because they can. How do I get an address to your clinic, or what time is my appointment, or do you have my labs in? Or anything like that. The simple questions. AI can answer that because it's smart enough to build in the right algorithms and learn what your style is, what your patient style is, and also bring in personalization into it. And so, we're just seeing the beginning. What I particularly, I'm very excited, because I think that we can physicians are doctors who came into this profession because they had a passion to save lives. They can go back to patient care completely and wholeheartedly, if through this right? And that's what's exciting to me. 

Lisa Nichols  17:00
I love that. Well, there's so much about what you just said, I love. And one of the things that I heard, Pallavi, is that it's not going to you still need the provider to make the final decisions. You know, you still need that human interaction. And we hear that all the time, right? Oh, AI is going to replace humans. No. But what I've said, and what I've come to believe, is what AI is going to do is give us back our one of our finite things, and that's time. Maybe time and maybe energy, which is finite as well.

Pallavi Chandak  17:38
It's going to be all those administrative records. Assistant type work, the jobs, and it's going to free us, free up our head spaces in every profession to do the right things.

Lisa Nichols  17:53
Right. I don't believe there's a profession that it won't touch. I think you're right. We're just kind of at the tip of the iceberg right now. Well, I've got a lot more questions, Pallavi, but we do need to take a quick break, and then we'll come right back onto the Something Extra Podcast.

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Lisa Nichols  18:41
So, welcome back everyone to the Something Extra Podcast. So, Pallavi, we've been talking about technology, we've been talking about healthcare, we've been talking about better outcomes for women, just some amazing things, but I really want to talk about more, like leadership now. And you've already given me a lot of background on kind of what has brought you to where you are today. I mean, you are, you've been a multi time CIO now, but what do you believe are some of those leadership philosophies that have really helped you be successful? Because you're very successful.

Pallavi Chandak  19:17
I'm still learning, still trying, but thank you for that. So, my principles, I think they're leadership principles, but they're also life principles. I mentioned one which was to be first, best, or different. It's not my, I learned it from a leader that I came across as soon as I moved to St. Louis. I admire him, even today. I follow him. And he said this, and it stuck with me because it resonated with my own journey and then, and also the fact that every time in your leadership journey, there's always going to be a first. You're always, with me, I've always been either the first woman or the first engineer or the first Indian executive, or the first, the first, the first, right? And so, how do I bring my best into every first? How do I continue to yes, I'm different. So, I know that it's going to it's going to come with a lot of courage I have to show. But I also have to bring everyone along on that journey with me and continue to be the best in every role that I have been. 

Pallavi Chandak  20:35
So, that's one of my principles, to be first, best or different, right? Even at Siemens, when I was a hardcore electrical engineering, engineer, on the on the factory floor, they had not worked with a woman before, a woman engineer before. So, not only was I their boss, but I also was a gender they didn't know. They only seen they didn't know how to work with a woman. I remember that even the dress code was all male centric, and they had to revise the dress code when I started there. So, again, so many firsts. But then there were, it wasn't easy. It was bumpy. But then once we were able to build trust with each other, then I learned so much from them, because the folks that actually work with the machines are the ones that truly teach you so much. They know, they know the process, they know the shop floors, they know the machines. So, I'm still in touch with so many of my colleagues, and I learned so much. But it was a, it was a hard start in the beginning. 

Pallavi Chandak  21:50
Again, like my Bollywood journey, I was a first, first to be starting a dance company. This first to, I was on Fox one time when, again, like when Slumdog Millionaire became a big success, they wanted to show that as well. And so, it was the first time that a Bollywood dancer had been on local TV here. So, I had to then think about, how do I translate Bollywood to St. Louis and to St. Louis audience. So, but, but it was, I worked hard. We became the best school that we had in town. We became a big company, and so on. So, I think be first, best, or different, and then another philosophy principle is, reward is the journey. For me, it's never been about the destination. Never been about the finish line, if you would. But it's always been the thrill of being part of the race, every connection, every friendship, every experience has been a gift. So, no matter what role I have been in, I want to savor every, every moment of the role, give my best and not really think about what I'm what's the end game here, and, you know, just focus on the journey and that's the true reward. So, to me, I think those are some of the principles I live by. There are a few others, but those might be the like, the common theme of my leadership journey.

Lisa Nichols  23:45
That's really beautiful and beautiful advice if we're not enjoying the journey. I mean the journey is the longest piece and even, and I go as far as to say the successes in the journey and the non-successes.  So, well, you had already kind of mentioned that someone had said that to you best, first, or different I, and I was going to talk to you about mentors. I mean, how important have mentors been to you, and then how important is it for you, Pallavi, as a woman to be mentoring other women or men too. But is there a mentor that you want to talk about? 

Pallavi Chandak  24:32
I have quite a few. I think I'm surrounded by incredible role models, some that you know, some I think what's common in all my role models. And I think I resonate with that, is they are all trailblazers, and they're all change makers that have carved their own path. So, some are close to home in my backyard, and some are probably folks that I watched. They're very famous, and I watched them from far and follow them and learn from them. So, those famous women leaders for me are Indra Nooyi, who is the ex-CEO of Pepsi, Leena Nair, who is like the Global CEO of Chanel, very, I aspire to follow their path, but they both come from humble beginnings in India. They're both immigrants. They both reached some major peaks and very challenging global businesses, and they both have paved the path for so many women, showing us that different is beautiful. Different is you as you have the if you have the passion, you have the commitment, each of us can make a difference. So, in terms of famous, of mentors, those are who I follow. 

Pallavi Chandak  25:48
But someone who has a very, very special place in my heart is my grandfather. And you know, back this is, I would say, I obviously he was, he's no longer with us, but back in the 1960s and since I have known him, he was a visionary. He was an entrepreneur, a pioneer. He had very limited resources, and this is in the 60s, again. He built factories to that, if that was the time where, during the industrial era, so he built steel factories in a very small town close to Pune. He provided employment to so many local, local folks. So, his legacy, obviously is still very strong, but something I personally admired along with all this is that he raised my mother to be an incredibly strong woman, and this is back again so long ago in rural India. So, just imagine the generational gap, the cultural gap, the norm there, they had never seen a woman go to college. But my grandfather challenged all of those norms at his time. She went to college and got a Bachelor of Arts degree. None of this was common, in women then. In fact, in some parts in rural India, you still don't see it. So, to do this in the 1960s along with being a trailblazer like he was, I still channel his spirit.

Lisa Nichols  27:33
That's, so beautiful. I love that. I love that your grandfather was willing to challenge the norm and make sure that your mom had an education and challenge her to be the best that she could be the best, the best, the first.

Pallavi Chandak  27:49
And we talked about it in the beginning, and I think it's all the parents will relate. But raising children in today's world is different, right? It forces us to learn and adapt constantly. Because when you and I were growing up, our learning was from like a subset of our parents or our teachers, but now they grow up with social media. They grow up, they're born into AI and social media. So, their learning is happening through so many dimensions with hundreds of influences out there. A very rapid speed. So, I feel like I have so much to learn from them, because they really, they really opened my mind so many times and staying current and how to adapt and constantly evolve. And I'm sure they enjoy teaching mom a thing or two, but they do add so much of without knowing the reverse mentoring part of this is they do add a lot to my life that I learned from them. 

Lisa Nichols  29:04
Absolutely! I think you know me well enough to know that I would say the same thing, I'm so glad that you talked about, I'm so glad you talked about your boys, because I do have a question about that, and I have a question about really growth, right? And how you grow. So, you just told me a lot of how you grow is through your through your boys. But you know, you say, one of the things that you say, Pallavi, is that you live by resilience. And I was going to ask you how you believe you've increased your resilience, but I think I know, and I don't if there's anything else you want to say about that. I mean, you started the first Bollywood dance studio. I mean, you got to get knocked down along the way, but its' resilience that keeps you going. So, I don't know if there's anything else that you want to say about that. I know that it's part of your something extra. So, we can dig into that kind of at the end, if you would like. But let me just ask you this. So, I mean, you're married, you have two sons, very demanding career. I don't, you know, people used to say, Oh, how do you do work, life balance? And I just kind of, I'm like, that's kind of tired. That's a tired phrase anymore. I'm just like, how do you maintain harmony?

Pallavi Chandak  30:30
Every day, I also don't like the word balance. Every day is a new day. Every day is a different challenge, some days, and it's all because my husband and I have to work in harmony. Now that the kids are not at home, it is the both of us. But even when the kids were at home every day in the morning was like, who's going to drop them? Who's going to do this? Who is going to who's traveling and who's going to lean and where? And it's not always the same person that's doing the same leaning in. Sometimes he cooks, sometimes I do groceries. Sometimes it's that's the way it has worked for us. So, I think you have to have that anchor and that support system at home. And I would, I'm sure he would say the same thing, but for me, that's been a huge thing, is to have us. And also, the children, when they were with us, to know that mom's working and mom has a tough job and a demanding job. And so, to be okay if I don't make it to every game or every ceremony, and I haven't, and they are absolutely okay with that. They grow up knowing that, that I'm always there for them, whether I whether I join them for certain ceremonies or not, I'm always going to be there for them when they need me. So that that for sure. 

Pallavi Chandak  31:55
And then the other thing I would say is, it takes time, but I have to take care of my whole self to be a good leader. And I think when someone asks me for, for advice, that's what I say. It's untraditional, non-traditional to say that, but it I think what, what we bring to work is our whole self, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, it’s our physical, mental, emotional self that comes to work with us. So, if any of those three legs of the stool are wobbly, our work is going to suffer. And so, when I think investing in in the well-being, emotional, physical, mental, is an investment in the career. So, take care of your nutrition. Take care of your therapy, whether it's through connections, through volunteer work, through spending time with friends and family, take care of your physical fitness. So, that's something I learned from my mother-in-law and my mom and we all like big emphasis on well-being, big emphasis on taking time for well-being, and I know that that has gone a long way for all of us to be productive and to be effective at everything we take on. So, that's something that's a big part of how I'm able to show up to work.

Lisa Nichols  33:22
The way that you show up, right? No, I was going to ask you that I know that's one of your core values, is to prioritize your own well-being. But here's the thing, if you're not healthy yourself, somebody once said to me, the people in your life that are entrusted to you, whether that's your children, your family, your employees, whatever the case may be, they deserve the best version of you. And if you are not taking care of you, you're actually robbing them the best version of yourself, right? So, it's really, it's not selfish. It's paramount. So, I love it. 

Pallavi Chandak  34:06
A happy mom is a good mom. I always say that a happy leader is a good leader.

Lisa Nichols  34:11
Right. I always tell my husband a happy wife is a good life.

Pallavi Chandak  34:16
There you go. And that too.

Lisa Nichols  34:17
Don't forget it. Happy wife is a good life.

Pallavi Chandak  34:21
You also talked about resilience, and I'm so glad that you caught on that, because it seems like again, every stop of my journey has been about that. And it's, it's also, it's because I am seeking out the change. I'm seeking the opportunities, I think, in terms of also mentoring right when I'm asked for what can we do better? I am, I'm asking everyone to embrace change, to be brave and to lean in, instead of waiting for the training to come to me, or the, you know, the opportunity to come to me, or to for HR, to build a career path for me. Instead, just like lean in, what are you doing to for the change to come to you? Don't wait, like I've signed up for so many classes. At Mercy, I know Mercy was great to me, but I always like raise my hand for the COVID app that we needed to do, or the contact center dashboards that we needed to build. Anything that the company needed that aligned with their strategy when they were headed, raise your hand, sign up and get seen. Don't wait for someone to come to you and say, What can I do for you? 

Lisa Nichols  35:46
That's excellent advice.

Pallavi Chandak  35:49
We shy away from things that make us uncomfortable, but that has been that definitely moving from Mercy to Evernorth was a big change for me. Never worked for a public company before. It was daunting, for sure, but Evernorth has some great resources, great processes in place for onboarding colleagues like me. And so, it was a great platform for me to learn again, like I said, how things are done at scale, but also Axia to I was so nervous about taking on this role. That was that there are things of this role that I've never done before, but it's I, you have to embrace that, growth opportunity and learn. 

Lisa Nichols  36:41
It's not easy. Wow, there's so much good stuff packed in there. So, when I think about with every episode, I ask, what's the something extra ever leader needs? And Pallavi, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm just something in myself with you, it's definitely resilience. It's being willing to do the hard work. It's embracing the change. Having the courage to, to lean into change. You've leaned into change in everywhere you've been right? And it's all for growth, and I'm sure you know, to bring your best self. I mean, there's so much in there. I just I have loved this conversation with you. I'm so glad you were worth the wait. You know, we've been trying for a year, but you know, I worked the way. So, thank you so much for joining me today. I know that your journey and your lessons and your wisdom is going to really help our, our listeners, and I'm just grateful for you. 

Pallavi Chandak  37:44
Oh, thank you. I am so grateful that we finally did this. I've watched you in terms of your community engagement, in terms of how you've shaped tech partners. How you support Ally, like I said in her dance and so many other things. I'm in awe of you. So, I'm so glad that we got to spend some time together. I want more of this, if we can do this outside this podcast.

Lisa Nichols  38:10
Yes, absolutely, me, too, me too. So, we will make it happen. Well, have a great rest of the day. And again, thank you so much for joining me.

Pallavi Chandak  38:18
Thank you so much. Bye. 

Announcer  38:22
Thank you for listening to today's show, something extra with Lisa Nichols as a Technology Partners Production Copyright Technology Partners Inc. 2019. For show notes or to reach Lisa, visit tpi.co/podcast. Don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen.


*Please note, the preceding transcription has been automatically generated and should be used for informational purposes only.