Inside CVC: Janet Foutty on Women’s Health, Influence Without a Title, and Closing the Healthspan Gap

What happens when you leave a world class platform like Deloitte without a plan, and then choose to spend your next chapter on a problem hiding in plain sight?

In this episode of Inside CVC, we sit down with Janet Foutty, former CEO of Deloitte Consulting in the United States and Executive Board Chair of Deloitte US, now focused on driving impact across women’s health, tech for good, and long-term research ecosystems. Janet shares what stayed consistent through the transition. Service. Leading through influence. And the discipline of deciding what not to do when there are a thousand worthy directions.

The core conversation centers on the health of women and the “healthspan gap.” Women live longer than men, but spend significantly more years in poor health. Janet unpacks why. Research has historically treated women as “small men.” Women are underrepresented in clinical trials. And only a small share of research and investment dollars targets conditions that affect women differently or disproportionately.

We also get practical for corporate venture capital and board leaders. Janet outlines a simple starting point. Ask every health investment whether sex based differences are being measured. Push portfolio companies to include women appropriately in trials. And treat women’s health benefits as a strategic workforce issue, not a niche add on.

We close on leadership in uncertainty. Why boards are getting stuck. What it takes to move with imperfect information. And the mindset Janet uses on the down days. Play the long game. Show up well in the small moments. And remember that complex problems stay complex for a reason.

If you care about investment with real outcomes, and leadership that holds up when the title disappears, this one will land.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Steve 0:03

Welcome to Inside CVC, the podcast that brings together leaders in innovation and capital investment to explore the trends shaping the business of corporate venture capital. I'm your host, Steve Schmidt, and together with Philip Willigman, we're speaking to corporate investors, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem builders driving the future of innovation. Inside CVC is brought to you by UPath Advisors, helping corporations and startups unlock sustainable growth through strategic partnerships. To learn more, visit upath.com. That's the letter U, Path.com. And to catch up on all of our episodes, search InsideCVC on your favorite podcast platform or visit uPath.com forward slash podcast. Today's conversation is with Janet Fouty, former CEO of Deloitte Consulting in the United States and former executive board chair of Deloitte U.S. After leading one of the largest professional services organizations in the world, Janet stepped away without a plan and began redefining influence beyond title and platform. In this episode, we explore leadership through service, navigating uncertainty at the board level, and why the health of women represents both a systemic gap and a generational opportunity for investors. Here's our conversation with Janet Fouty. Janet, thank you for joining us on Inside CVC. It's good to connect again. How are you?

Janet 1:28

I am terrific. It is really fun to be reconnected with both of you for what I'm sure will be a lively conversation today.

Steve 1:35

Oh, it's going to be an amazing conversation, not only in terms of your career at Deloitte, we'll touch on that, but more importantly, what you're doing now. So why don't we hop in when you consider your time leading Deloitte and what you're doing now? What's shifted and how you think about leadership and impact?

Janet 1:57

Nice simple question to start with. So maybe just sort of quick backstory. I spent multiple decades at Deloitte, both as a consultant and having the privilege to lead a wide variety of businesses for Deloitte. So in that time, I always had sort of this mindset of service. And it might it might sound funny when you're talking about consulting, but at its core, consulting is all about doing everything you can to help your clients be as wildly successful as possible, where you don't have any direct authority, so to speak, over them. So that was the first big chunk of my career. The second chunk of my career was all about how do you lead in the largest partnership in the world and make sure that your partners and their teams have everything that they need in their toolkit to serve their clients as successfully as possible. So this idea of service has sort of translated through my work and decades at Deloitte. And it's also helping lead big change, whether in my clients or in my own organization, while not, well, within client service, for sure not having direct authority, but leading in a private partnership, as you can imagine, is the proverbial herding of cats. And all partners are, in some senses, created very equal. So those sort of two attributes of service and leading through influence absolutely impacted my time at Deloitte. As I've transitioned out of Deloitte about two years ago, and I'm working to have impact in very different ways in very different domains, I would say those two attributes have served me very well in terms of being in service to others and leading through influence. But it is very different to do that without sort of a platform and a title to go with it, despite the fact that, you know, those things weren't sort of front and center for me. But I found I've had to adjust, you know, how I shape conversations and how I show up with those two sort of threads being consistent to influence in a very different way.

Steve 4:08

I will say, hearing you describe that and being part of the organization under your leadership, I carry a lot of what you what you led with with me, even today. And I will say, you know, no longer being with the organization, purpose feels a little bit different. Um and so I'm curious, does when you think about purpose, does that feel a little bit different from you from the leadership perspective of leading an organization with the size and scale of Deloitte and sort of when you can design your own agenda?

Janet 4:39

It it does. And there's things that are much more powerful when I'm on my own. Um and there's and there's places where there are where there are gaps. So within the platform of a large of a large organization, mine happened to be a professional services organization, um, and mostly a consulting organization, um, purpose very much sat in the center, but it always had to be grounded in what is the what is the role of our business in the business community and society. So every decision that was made had to sit within that context. And so we're able to do a tremendous amount of good on a wide variety of agendas, but always coming back to making sure that we're within our lane of what's important to our business. And that's the business of being um being an audit firm and respect and um support of the capital markets and the capital markets dependency in the consulting business. It's all about helping provide the best ability for your clients to be successful, and that's across a wide variety of clients in the public and private sector. And I worked across both. And and then doing what's best for your people. And it was a large workforce, as you as you hinted at, and how do you make sure that your people are able to be their best selves, to use that maybe slightly, a slightly commonplace phrase. Um, working in the broader, in the broader context of both the business community and society without that, um, does two things. One is it allows me to focus on a broader set of issues that are that don't have to tie back to sort of a fundamental purpose of an organization. Um yet that also means that you don't have those guardrails of what matters to the organization. So I'm a pretty disciplined and organized person, but it is required that much more discipline to say, okay, here are the swim lanes that I choose to swim in. There's a thousand things to work on and lots of really important topics that can make the world better. But it is all about sort of putting that own discipline um in place versus having the organizational discipline that sits naturally when you sit in andor lead a big company.

Philipp 7:05

Janet, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show. Uh thank you for joining us. Um, I think we probably know each other more than a decade now. And uh I remember uh when we were working around the future of mobility, your leadership you gave and how much purpose you gave to the work, and also making sure that we really think about everybody who is impacted. Um and I was really thrilled um to read to uh and hear from you that you're leaving Deloitte and you're focusing your career on a very, very important topic uh connected to purpose and the role of you know woman, woman health. Um, and uh similar to me, leaving corporate, focusing on the topic of inclusion uh and disability, um, it's obviously you know very, very different in a way how you are generating you know influence and what influence means. So we'd love to hear from you, not having this big machine of Deloitte behind you, um, how do you actually have influence, right? And how do you what what did you maybe have to unlearn from making influence?

Janet 8:09

I left Deloitte two years ago. I did not leave with a plan. Um, and that would be I am not understating how much that is true. I ran through the tape at Deloitte, doing as much as I could to help my clients and my partners, um, and figuring I'd spent my whole career with sort of one thing coming after another without having to really be, frankly, super thoughtful and disciplined about it. So I found myself having finished at Deloitte saying, Oh, I actually I actually need to be sort of thoughtful and curated about where I want to spend my time because there are, as I said earlier, so many opportunities for things to engage in. Well, it took me probably a year or so to even come to an area of focus. And I've got a couple of them, but women's health being sort of at the top of the conversation and where I was spending the bulk of my time. What I've found is um, first of all, my historical business card gives me a great door opener, right? I I had the privilege to lead in this incredible firm and to sit as the chair of that firm. And so that business card does give me um openings that I am incredibly grateful to have. So I can get meetings um with people that I'm interested in spending time with without um uh with, and I don't mean to say act egotistical about it, but without too much lift. The question is then, what do I do once I'm in those conversations? And a couple of things that are very different. Um, one is I was very used to being on the receiving side of people wanting to get to know me and my organization. And my question always was, what can I do to help? Of course, now I have to have a good answer to that question. Um, if I'm meeting with someone and we don't automatically have something we're working on together, is being super clear about what I need in the conversation. If someone is being generous enough to offer their time and and their political cap, whatever it is that they're willing to offer is being really clear about what my asks are. So I've had to spend a lot more time thinking about what do I want out of each of these conversations. What I've found is no surprise and incredibly consistent that the way to sort of capture people's imagination is not through your business card or or even your opening salvo, but it's what are you willing to roll up your sleeves and do um in terms of the work. And so that would be a that would be a truth that transcends um my entire adult life. Um, and I've had to do that with a lot of humility because I'm in spaces where I'm not always the expert. I don't have sort of all the depth and team behind me. So it what I found is it is about rolling up your sleeves and being willing to help. Can you review this white paper we're gonna put out and you know, and provide editorial perspective? Um, can you help facilitate this conversation that is um that that we're gonna have on this topic? It it is doing all that in a way that, with low ego and an openness to learn, that I found has created the ability to be um in the circles that I want to be in, which are influencing and shaping the topic of how do we invest in and focus on the health of women.

Philipp 11:47

You you mentioned showing up. So, what feels fundamentally different um today around you know being leaders showing up specifically in this field, you're focused on now?

Janet 11:58

I think it is showing up with curiosity. I think it is showing up, knowing that there's an incredibly broad set of stakeholders who don't always have fully aligned interests to a level that um that is very different. I mean, Deloitte is an incredible place with an incredible platform, but there are, um as you both well know from the work you're doing today, there's a much broader set of stakeholders and constituents who are interested in the agenda. Everything from primary researchers to families whose loved ones are suffering with the disease, um, to venture capitalists who want to do good in the world but have very clear economic returns. Like those are three very different interest sets. Everyone has maybe the same macro goal, but very different ways they get from here to there and very different ways that they they measure success. And so for me, the humility to understand each of those points of view and be able to bring those sort of threads through in the conversation and the work has been a real evolution for me over the last couple of years.

Philipp 13:19

So, and if you think about boards, right, and executives and the experience you just you you're making in the last two years without uh Deloitte, where do you feel like they're still stuck in the old patterns um to kind of like create long-term value creation?

Janet 13:34

I think we're in such an interesting moment of so much change. And that is, I mean, that's so pedantic. I sort of even cringe to say it. But if you think about um the socio, the political, the economic, the technological change that's happening, we're at a time of incredible acceleration, but also incredible that also has created a lot of anxiety, it might be too strong a word, but but I'll I'll use that, I'll use that word is anxiety about two things. One is what does this all mean for me? And how do I make decisions with deeply imperfect information? Um, and and maybe I know I thought the pandemic had set a high watermark for imperfect information and leading with imperfect information. And I feel like I honed my skills of how do you communicate what you know, what you don't know, and what the uncertainties are in this moment. What I feel now is that boards and management teams have an extraordinarily difficult task of navigating their organizations forward in a time when the level of uncertainty about all those variables is sky high. And, you know, and every executive team member, board member always has two agendas, right? They have what's the best for my organization, and that's both in the short run and the long run, and what's best for me. And the intersection of those three things right now, I feel is at a record high. And what that does, of course, naturally, is it just becomes harder to make decisions and you can get stuck.

Steve 15:29

Let's turn a little bit to what you're doing now, and certainly the theme of uncertainty is probably prevalent and timely. Um you've made women's healthcare a focus. Philip mentioned it earlier. So, what's opened your eyes to the size and urgency of the health span gap?

Janet 15:46

Yeah, so um, let me just give a little context. So, you know, I'm a technologist by background who really understands the professional services business. I had had a sort of a side hustle some work in and around women's health, very specifically working with a not-for-profit, an amazing not-for-profit called Bright Pink, focused on young women's breast and ovarian health and early prevention and detection. Incredible work. I would call, I was a very small cog in that wheel of an organization that was making a big difference in this space. So I had um some passion around this topic, but in a very, very narrow lens. As I started to explore whether this is a place where I wanted to spend time and where I could have impact, um, there were three or four things that I learned in my early exploration that I, you know, I'm almost embarrassed to say that I didn't know as someone who'd worked in women's health, uh, someone who thought of themselves as a very um inclusive leader, who's very focused on how do we help elevate women through all of my career. Here are the things I didn't know. Um, the first is that the term women's health, which I'm trying to reframe it as the health of women, which that's a work in progress, um uh which, you know, little words matter, um, really is defined in three big buckets. The first is those conditions that only happen to women. People tend to think of those as sexual and reproductive health. Um, sometimes, um, and I it's fun to have this conversation with two men, sometimes called bikini medicine. So you can sort of use your imagination. That is conditions that only impact women. It turns out that is a really small percentage of the conditions that have impact women. There are those conditions that disproportionately impact women. So think about autoimmune, Alzheimer's, non-smokers' lung cancer, depression and anxiety, all of those conditions, more than 70% of cases of those conditions happen in women. And then the third bucket, so you have things that only happen to women, things that happen disproportionately to women, and things that happen differently with women, which with heart disease being the most sort of well-known and well-understood example. So, first for me was just understanding the scope of the conversation, which is much broader than I frankly had understood. Then you flip to research and you you learn that only 2% of writ research dollars in all things health and medicine are focused on women. And then you learn that all investment dollars are anywhere from 2% to 8%, depending on which phase of the evolution, are focused on women's health. Um, when you look at all health dollars. So then you come to understand that all of our research has been done as if women are just small men. And so when you think about those things that either disproportionately or differently impact women, and you understand that women are underrepresented in clinical trials and RD, you start to say, oh, there's there's something amiss here. And then you get to the punchline at the end of the day, which is we know and it's sort of well understood that women live longer than men. It is in this country for sure and around the globe that women have a longer lifespan than men. But then you come to understand that women live more years in poor health than men. And the automatic thing people think was, well, of course, women live longer, you know, they're living from 85 to 90, and those years tend to be in poor health. And then you come to understand that actually women starting in their early 40s actually live way more years in poor health than men, almost 13 years more, um, 13 years of their of their sort of adult life in poor health compared to men. And so you sort of boil all that down and say that there is significant work to do to draw more money, attention, and focus to how do we close that delta of focus and attention on the health of women so that women live, you know, not just long lives, but healthy lives. And then the silver lining is if we focus on sex-based differences in research and clinical trials, um, that actually is good for men as well. Because when we understand sex-based differences at the cellular level, you know, I would love to see a place where, you know, men's longevity and health span increases and women's health span increases, and maybe longevity increases as well. So that is a little bit of a uh the walk around the block that I've been over the last 18 months and in understanding sort of what I had is a very specific and important topic in women's health, to being really passionate about how do we actually focus on the health of women as something that's critical to how we move forward as a society.

Steve 21:08

It's a topic that comes up a lot in our conversations, you know, this intersection of CVC investing and purpose. We've had some conversations around disability tech and sort of leading with human purpose and that result. Certainly you've touched upon it here. Uh given our audience, given some of the partners that you've even and worked with, when you think about CVCs, when you think about investing, you mentioned moving the needle. What are some ways where CVCs and the folks listening to our conversation can really make tangible changes?

Janet 21:44

So a couple of things. Um, so for those of you that are in um as investors in the health space, um, I would encourage you to think about sex based differences um in the discussions with the companies that you're investing in. They don't Have to be quote unquote women's health companies. If you just challenge the companies you're working to say, are you looking at sex as a variable? If you're running clinical trials, do you have men and women in your clinical trials? And I'm sure you know you all are in your conversations around disability. There's many lenses with which you can look at this conversation. I would encourage you, if you're investing in and around health whatsoever, to look at sex-based differences. A second thing that you can do is make sure that you're spending time with your HR and benefits organizations on how you think about those benefits that you're providing to your women employees. For those of you that are in this space as part of a much larger organization, there's really important conversations. So I'm actually just starting to spend meaningful time around in terms of what's the role of employers in it around the health of women. And I, you know, I will not, I will not take you um through sort of the long and drawn-out examples, but we we know today that reimbursement is different for many conditions for men and women, and less for women than for men, which creates all sorts of wacky incentives in our healthcare system. So engaging in conversation with your HR teams and your benefits teams in and around the benefits that you provide for men and women, and making sure that you have a very unique perspective for those things that impact women. You know, fertility and menopause are the topics that are probably the easiest to sort of most overtly address and are super important conversations. And then there's obviously much deeper conversations like the ones we've been having today. So those are two things that, you know, I think that sort of everyone in this space can easily begin to push the needle on to start to change this conversation. Because yes, there are there's sort of the big crunchy questions of how do we get more RD dollars, but there's also the questions around how do we make sure that we raise each of our awareness? Um, and you know, so many people I've talked to in the last sets of years, when I share with them, especially the difference in um in health span for men and women, people can say, oh yeah, men can say, oh yeah, I can think about, you know, my aunt who was suffering with autoimmune. I can think about my sister who is suffering with depression, you know, my child who is suffering with, you know, and so it is, I think it is how do we raise the collective awareness of the conversation? And thank you for letting me uh let letting me um so push a little bit on what each of us can do.

Philipp 24:37

Thank you, thank you, Janet, for sharing this. Another term we have heard on many of our podcasts in the past, and and and I'm sure you as well, is this term like tech for good. Right. And and um lots of people in the venture space, also in the corporate venture space, thinking about, you know, uh we can invest in into tech for good. But can you share a bit about, you know, what was the time when you realized that yes, tech for good can actually really fix systematic inequality, but it can also harden it, depending on who is, yeah, who is at the helm of it.

Janet 25:09

So I think this topic is sort of much better understood today than it was a decade ago. I am spending some of my time specifically in and around tech for good. And I'm personally trying to focus on a few things. One is in the venture capital space, solutions that are focused on everything from providing better equity, including some in the disability space, where you and I, Philip, share some common ground, but those that are really focusing on how do you provide different experiences for people that can help those that might not be as advantaged. So everything from how do you think about being a better caregiver to how do you um to how do you provide a very different kind of access to skills and capabilities that one might not necessarily have. I think all of that is super important. Um, however, I think if we can all collectively understand that, and this is gonna sound preachier than I mean it to sound, but the more diverse voices we have around the table when we're designing technology, um, I think the better the world will be. And by the way, I think that is true for just about any problem set. I think the more diverse voices we have around the table, the better answers we will get. But I think technology is such a tremendous force for good. Obviously, there are places where it has gone, uh, where it has gone astray. Um, I think in this moment, for us being intentional about what are the unintended consequences of this technology that we're delivering. And the best way to do that is to have sort of challengers around the table who don't sort of look, walk, and talk like us. So that's how I think about that topic. I'm lucky enough to be spending time, some time in a few different places on this, some in venture capital, as I mentioned, some in philanthropy, in and around job creation. Um, and how do we make sure that the next generation of jobs in and around technology are distributed more equally to those with different access to education? And then I have the privilege of still spending time in and around the federal government focused on primary research through our national lab system, um, which is uh very near and dear to my heart and just a very different lens on how we think about um emergent technology for making the world better. So that's a little bit of what I've been up to and how I think about that topic.

Steve 27:56

Janet, thanks so much. One more question to close us out. You said something earlier which shocked me, frankly. And that was when you walked away from Deloitte without a plan. I would have never thought of you not having a plan. And so that was that was amazingly uh uh insightful. So, you know, why don't we close with with again our our the folks that listen to this, they they go through tough times, they have the grit, lots of folks are entrepreneurs. There are certainly up days and there are down days. And I'm curious, what's been the hardest part of this new chapter from you on those down days? What's what's kept you going to help you feel that all of this is worth it?

Janet 28:39

So I love that framing. Um, I try to be really disciplined about reminding myself that this is a long game and that the way you show up in every interaction matters a lot. So those two things for me are consistent. Um, the second being something that I've sort of carried throughout my career, sort of how you do anything is how you do everything. And and showing up in the little moments with transparency, with humility, and being willing to help is frankly what gives me strength. And that I do have to continue to remind myself that I'm working in really complex topics um that don't have easy answers. And if they were easy, someone else would have figured them out. So it's really those two things that continue to give me strength and energy, and then of course, still creating time as I always have for um for family, for fitness, um, and for friends, which are three things that sort of keep me strong and centered and grounded, um, especially in those moments that that are less fun and or less clear.

Steve 29:50

That's our conversation with Janet Fouty. To learn more about her work and current initiatives, visit JanetFouty.com. And to catch up on nearly 40 episodes of InsideCVC, visit upeh.com forward slash podcast or search InsideCVC wherever you get your podcasts. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.