Innovators Unite: ET&I Conference Highlights Part 2

We are still live at the Emerging Tech and Innovation Conference, talking with amazing folks, like, Elizabeth McNamara, Health IT Innovation Officer at Next Phase Solutions Services, Virginia Huth a 30-year civil servant who is now CEO of Vanalytix, and Basil White, Senior Informaticist. Discussions revolve around the importance of innovation in public health, the application of AI in healthcare, and efforts to streamline federal policies and grant opportunities. The episode also explores career journeys and personal experiences, culminating in practical advice for those transitioning between public service and private sectors.

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Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound

(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)

Chapters

• 1:33 Live from ET and I: Interview with Elizabeth McNamara
• 7:11 Interview with Basil White: Federal Innovation Council
• 13:24 Virginia's Journey in Public Service

Transcript

Yohanna: [00:00:00] Thank you for joining us at the Emerging Tech and Innovation Conference. If you're passionate about technology and eager to explore more incredible events, make sure to visit act iac.org/upcoming-events. Keep your curiosity sparked and your calendar's marked. Until next time. Stay inspired and connected.
Elizabeth: Okay. You welcome. How are you? 
Yohanna: This is Joan Abaya with the Buzz. I am here live at ET and I. It is a lively crowd and I have been able to get somebody in the hot seat. This is Elizabeth. Elizabeth McNamara. Please introduce yourself. Let us know who you are, where you're from, and what brings you to the conference today.
Yohanna: Hi everybody. 
Elizabeth: I am Lizabeth Gregara. I'm, um, I am currently the Health IT Innovation Officer at Next Base [00:01:00] Solutions Services, which is a, uh, small woman of Vista, Columbia, Maryland. Um, I've been in healthcare IT for 20, 10 years, since standing when I was 10. Um, and, um. I've been both a Fed and a contractor.
Elizabeth: I've done both sides several different times. Um, my Fed experience is, uh, five three years of NIH as a fed, five years as a contractor. And my most recent was I did eight years in MDA. Uh, three years as a contract and five years at a plan. 
Yohanna: Thank you so much. And what brings you to the conference today? Why are you here?
Yohanna: What, what is it about Act, IAC and the ET and I that like inspired you to, uh, take part in participate? Sure. So I had 
Elizabeth: never heard of you guys until I moved over, uh, to the contract you side again this time, and I attended your ELC in October. And I was very impressed by the number of heads. And then, and just the discussion points, um, I am the health IT innovation officer at Next phase.
Elizabeth: [00:02:00] So in, in anything innovation is really interests me. My, my mission is to bring all of this wonderful innovation to public health. That's, that's my, my number one thing. I don't, I'm not trying to be like. You know, miss Goody, but I, I find that once since I've left the government, that's what I've, um, kind of missed the most.
Elizabeth: But I know I could do the same thing on the, on the other side. It's just really public health. 
Yohanna: So fun fact, I was actually able to interview Lisa Wolf and Warren Miller and I think a lot of the work that you guys are doing is really, really interesting and they do such an amazing job of explaining it to like me, who.
Yohanna: I don't have a lot of coding. I'm, I'm not like, you know, I, my background is in journalism and writing and so they do an amazing job of just like saying like, this is our problem and this is how we solve it. Right. Yes. So that's amazing. Thank you so much. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't fully read all of everything that was on your name tag.
Yohanna: My bad. So this is your first time here at ET and I, right? Yes. So far so good. What is something that you'd like to take away [00:03:00] from your experience today? Um, 
Elizabeth: so, um, I, I've really. I know that you guys are struggling just like all the other industries on getting Feds to speak. So I'm really, it's been really interesting hearing a lot of the, um, um, former feds, former federal, uh, service folks and what they have to say on how they could do the, how you can do better transition from being in the petal service as a government employee versus, uh, as a contractor.
Elizabeth: So I think that's what's the most beneficial community here. 
Yohanna: It sounds as if you like our community. It sounds like you, uh, like the way that act, I act you and you're very popular. I'm sorry, listener, but she's been waving at folks. There's somebody that said like, oh, you're such and such a parent. Like, right, you're, I know you're, I know you're child.
Yohanna: So, um, so it looks as if you, you fit right in, right? You are a part of this community and you want to be more engaged, and we are here for that. That's exactly [00:04:00] what we're all about. Thank you so much. Yeah. What's something else that you, that's been on your mind If, if you don't mind, pivot or like the book that we are all reading from Gary Shapiro, pivot or Die.
Yohanna: We're gonna currently pivot a little bit, not dying, but we'll pivot if you like. What are some things that you're interested in, in the text space or, um, maybe what's happening in the future or what you think might be happening in the future. Is there something that you'd like to speak to that 
Elizabeth: Um, sure.
Elizabeth: I'm really interested in. Uh, you know, I, I do think. Like the patient portal is one of the first things that really connected healthcare with the patients. Um, I think that ai, um, can, can magnify that. By a lot. Um, you know, just even like, should I go to the doctor? Should I go to urgent care? Things like, simple part may seem simple, but really instead of having to call a nurse and get a something back to really get some of those answers online.
Elizabeth: So I'm really looking into that type of thing. Um, I would definitely, I approached you 'cause I really wanna get more involved and, um, [00:05:00] and just writing the message and really just helping with, uh, serving the mission. 
Yohanna: Okay. Good. Yeah. Well, I mean, I like my MyChart. MyChart has been a game changer, um, and, and the people, and it feels as if it's does a really good job.
Yohanna: I have a question and I, you know, there's a nurse or a nurse's, um, a doctor that's on the other end that like you're talking about that kind of technology or MyChart and stuff like that. Okay, cool. All right, great. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. To our listeners, where can they connect with you online? Maybe like 
Elizabeth: I'm on LinkedIn.
Elizabeth: I'm Elizabeth McNamara. Um, and if you look under our next phase, um, I'm on their webpage. All right, great. Thank you so much.[00:06:00] 
Yohanna: I am here at ET and I, folks, it's been busy, busy morning so far. We've had a lot of wonderful interviews. Currently, I'm here with Faisal White. He's a senior informaticist at act, iac, federal Innovation Council, Faisal, how are you? Why are you here? 
Basil: Thank you Anna. Wait. Growth and I love Shape of the act.
Basil: Act, federal Innovation Council. And we are keeping up, uh, a joint initiative between the Federal Innovation Council and the Institute for Innovation on a new indexing system that identifies policies, plans, programs, performance measures, as well as executive orders and laws to determine how they transact value across each other.
Basil: So that the members of Act Diagon organizations can understand how their play brand or their solution [00:07:00] delivers value across this entire network of federal governance. 
Yohanna: Alright, so my mind is a little bit blown because I'm not super techie, but this sounds like a really big deal. It sounds like something that more folks should really understand.
Yohanna: Give me an example of maybe that in, in my personal life, that maybe I would be able to see like this big initiative. Play out. Sure. 
Basil: Uh, so say that you, um, are an officer in the charitable organization and who would like to give grants and you look at, say it's a grant to feed children. So you look at the Department of Agricul for services and you look for the grant opportunities.
Basil: Right. And that brought an opportunity, will say, we're gonna offer Picon this opportunity to do things to, to global war treaty as well. So you make your best guess. As to how your idea can match with, get the goals and the terms of that grant opportunity. [00:08:00] It's just that's the way we do things. Now, in the future, what we want to do is help the HHS or agriculture, whatever, whatever h you just say that is, identify all the performance measures, goals, priorities, laws, regs, executive orders.
Basil: That their program delivers on and just give those to you. So instead of saying, instead of you trying to play the GA game of telephone, well, why do they want this? We give that to you in the beginning. Here are the performance measure, here are the prayer, that sort of thing, which gives you two kinds of empowerment.
Basil: One, you can speak to all those things, and two, before you submit your pitch, you can do some micro adjustments so that you're delivering as much value as possible. So that we kind of read in the middle to, so that you get what you want and you know Uncle Sam gets what he 
Yohanna: Thank you. Thank you for recognizing it.
Yohanna: Thank you for seeing it. And thank you for like. [00:09:00] I don't know. It's, it's a problem. And you, and you're passionate about fixing it, you know? So thank you for your passion to fix the problem, because I think a lot of PE people see it and they're like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna go in, I don't wanna do it.
Yohanna: And it sounds so efficient too, right? Like the efficiency of something like that is really, is what's really blowing my mind, where it's like a lot of the guesswork is out. So I get to, I get to. Fix a problem much, much quicker. Like quickly I get to fix this issue quickly. Right. Oh, that's amazing. So I wanna know what your background is.
Yohanna: How did you get into this? Um, how, how did you fall into this big project? 
Basil: Sure. Uh, my background's in cogniti of science, so think deep property solving. How did you problem? I did some policy writing, drawing from it. Writing was a tech writer back in the day when we used to have user manuals. I worked on some interagency board between a couple of agencies, [00:10:00] uh, to solve some problems to figure out how they had to work together because there were some crises that drove them to innovate because the risk of innovation was d worked by the risk of staying the same.
Basil: So, so you know that, so there's a couple of reasons why we're doing this now. One is the evidence end, which mandates that we have to have some basis of evidence. For how we write policies, plans, programs, this sort and how we support the leadership's decisions on those things. The second is that to be able to see the big network star chart picture of how all of these programs and goals and rules deliver value to each other, how value flows through the big brain.
Basil: They used to be incredibly expensive and different. 
Elizabeth: Yeah, 
Basil: it's now free. I mean, you know, I would have to pay for an expert system and that sort of thing. I didn't, I didn't have to keep the money a piece to do that. But now the technology to do that is free and so it's kind of shame on us that we don't try to leverage that to show people the big star chart network picture of all of the [00:11:00] opportunities that their solution 
Yohanna: to.
Yohanna: This is a, this is a great conversation. I'm learning a lot. I hope you are too. Thank you for your time. 
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Yohanna: All right, we're still here at ET and I. It looks like another, um, program has let out. You have like a really full area here in front of, uh, I guess the lobby of the Hyatt Regency.
Yohanna: We are here for a couple of days. I've been speaking to a lot of amazing people, smart folks, passionate folks. One Dutch person is Virginia. How are you feeling? 
VIRGINIA: Feeling pretty good today. Thank you Han. 
Yohanna: What I'd like to do is maybe start back and maybe, uh, tell us a little bit about your 
VIRGINIA: background. So I've been in Washington DC area or the East Coast, I'd say over 30 years.
VIRGINIA: I, I grew up in California. Town called San Mateo, Southeast San Francisco, but ended up in the East coast. I decided to go to graduate school in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government. And yes, I, [00:13:00] I, I, I really wanted to pursue career, public service. Um, I sent a little crazy, but that's, that's why I came to Washington, DC
Yohanna: Can you give us a little bit about your journey? I know that you've been in government for almost 30 years. Mm-hmm. 
VIRGINIA: Yeah, that's right. I started in, uh, 1993. I actually had a, a short stint at the Library of Congress in the Congressional Research Service. I. I don't think that exists anymore. Uh, then I worked at the Office of Management and Budget, uh, for about six years.
VIRGINIA: Went into the private sector, uh, supporting federal clients for about five years, but really decided I, I wanted back into the federal side. I came back in. Around the standup of the Department of Homeland Security. It was there for a bit. Then I went to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and I admitted over to the General Services Administration.[00:14:00] 
VIRGINIA: And then just most recently, I finished up my career at the US Department of Housing and Urban. I've actually been a senior executive for 18 years in six different positions. 
Yohanna: So it sounds like you bounced around a bit from industry, government, industry, et cetera. Um, and in your journey, did any, did anything stick out to you?
Yohanna: Did any one or a particular thing, uh, inspire you in your journey?
VIRGINIA: Well, I knew, it seems like I moved around a lot, but. It was always about public service. When I went into the private sector, it was with IBM, uh, federal Services arm, and I was continuing to support federal clients. So it really has been a common thread. I guess I could say though, when I started my career at the Office of Management and Budget, it was really sort of a bird's eye view of what's happening in the federal environment, and I realized there that [00:15:00] there were so many different missions.
VIRGINIA: And it was exciting to see so many, so many different things that the government was responsible for and in doing to, you know, prove the, the world for, uh, citizens. And, but I also saw that the common thread were, was areas like concentration, human resources, technology, and so. The, the rest of my career has been around those, you know what, you might call them administrative services, but I always hear them as enablers to really drive, uh, mission success when you have those strong, very strong foundation and technology and human capital.
VIRGINIA: And in other areas of administration, especially in contracting and acquisition, you are really poised to deliver. So while I moved around different agencies, I pretty much supported those sort of enterprises. The internship. Mm-hmm. Well that's, that's really 
Yohanna: good to hear that you had a, a north. Star, you know, throughout your [00:16:00] career, are there any other north stars that you, um, particularly like gravitate towards?
Yohanna: Is there maybe a life lesson that, um, kind of sticks with you today? 
VIRGINIA: A life lesson? Um, I guess, I guess I'll even go back further. You know, when I was about 22, this is a little. Personal, but, uh, both of my parents died and in fact, grandmother died later that year. It was, it was a tough year. Uh, my brother and I became very close.
VIRGINIA: Um, I learned how to push through some really hard times, but I also learned how important it is to have compassion for other people because. Sometimes other people are going through things and you don't know, you really don't realize what's going on. And so I think for me, I learned early on the importance of holding myself to a really high standard, knowing that I, I could push [00:17:00] through, I could get things done because I, you know, I, I had, I had done it before, but at the same time being really open to supporting others on their journey and really was able to build with teams through the process.
VIRGINIA: Um. And I think that's been sort of really key to my values, to 
Yohanna: your life's lesson. For me, I think really touches on something that I've been working on personally trying to push through in tough times, you know? Um, and so I, I take inspiration from that. Thank you so much for sharing. Is there any other, like, uh, maybe someone who inspires you that you look towards?
Yohanna: That helps you kind of push through. 
VIRGINIA: Well, I think you know that. Alright, I'm gonna look it up here. Um, there's this quotation that I read many, many years ago, probably 30 years ago, and I had it taped over my computer for a long time, so I should have it memorized. I don't, but I just looked it up. [00:18:00] So it's, um, Winston Churchill had a famous quote and it's Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never.
VIRGINIA: And nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. And he delivered it. In 1941, and it was really a rallying cry for the British during World War ii. And you know, Winston Churchill was a very flawed person. There's a whole other, you know, conversation about that.
VIRGINIA: But I remember thinking about that and thinking, you know, you know, just to stay strong to persevere. And to always remember that your own honor and your integrity are something that should be compromised. Uh, you know, but, but that ultimately, um, you know, staying strong to your deals is always gonna be important.
VIRGINIA: And, and I think that's, I think it has served me well. I, I mean, I'm, I'm happy with who I am today, this matter. 
Yohanna: So I know that you're [00:19:00] transitioning now, um, from government into the private sector. If you could design maybe a support program for other long-term civil servants, um, making that leap into business, what would you include in that program?
VIRGINIA: Okay, that's a great question. Um. Uh, first off, I just wanna shout out to the many people who've already helped me, who gave me so many tips and good advice. I've been learning, learning, learning, and again, a lot of those folks who are in the Act, act community, and they're, it's been a fantastic support network.
VIRGINIA: But, uh, first off, I'd say, uh, I'd say there are three things. So one, you really need to figure out how to translate your federal skills into the private. Sector and they do translate. Uh, but sometimes it's not obvious. And, you know, having that good language translator helps. And also really being able to conceptualize, think about, you know, things you accomplished.
VIRGINIA: What, what really, you know, what, what enabled you. To, to achieve those successes and how could you apply those, uh, skills to, you know, [00:20:00] scenarios outside. And so, you know, thinking through that translation problem. I think also marketing and branding is really important as a federal civil servant. And I'll just say it.
VIRGINIA: Faceless bureaucrat. Um, you know, we are not really trained to market ourselves generally. It's, you know, to be invisible in the background. And so it's, uh, it's actually even hard for me to sit here by this microphone and talk about myself like this. But, um, figuring out a brand and market yourself, somebody's gonna coach me on LinkedIn.
VIRGINIA: I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna figure it out. And then finally, I mean, I think this goes without saying, but I gotta say it. You know, today anybody who's not using AI or technology is gonna get left behind. So figuring out how you can use these things to really accelerate whatever you're doing. Um, I would say more than ever, things are changing rapidly.
VIRGINIA: Time is of the answer. Time is valuable and there is so much to be done, uh, for our community, for our friends, for our country. [00:21:00] So, you know, you've just gotta get going. So you've gotta use everything you do, figuratives. And I just wanna thank you. It's just. 
Elizabeth: Thank you so much.
Yohanna: Thank you for joining us at the Emerging Tech and Innovation Conference. If you're passionate about technology and eager to explore more incredible events, make sure to visit act iac.org/upcoming-events. Keep your curiosity sparked and your calendars marked. Until next time, stay inspired and connected.