Ideagen Radio
Ideagen Radio
From ER to Corporate: Dr. Charles Williams' Health Leadership Journey
Big news! The inaugural episode of the HOSA Podcast – The Future of Health is here! Hosted by George Sifakis, CEO of Ideagen Global and Director of the HOSA Washington Office, this podcast dives into the future of healthcare and leadership in the industry.
In this first episode, we’re joined by Dr. Charles Williams, Chief Medical Officer of Global Medical Services at Lockheed Martin Corporation, for an insightful discussion on innovation, medical leadership, and the evolving healthcare landscape.
Tune in now and be part of the conversation!
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Welcome to the HOSA Future Health Professionals Future of Health Podcast. This is the inaugural podcast and I could not be more honored and privileged to have with us today Dr Charles Williams from Lockheed Martin. Dr Williams, welcome, Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. You know, Dr Williams, it's an amazing moment. You're the very first guest, the very first guest ever, on this brand new Future of Health podcast for HOSA Future Health Professionals and I'd love to launch right in. But before I do that, I want to ask you about your graphic, because I think you're going to set the bar so high with the plane behind you. I'll ask you what is that exactly?
Speaker 2:Well, thanks, george, for the question. I'm quite proud of that. That is the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, so it comes in three different versions. This version happens to be the one going to the Australian government, so it's a fantastic platform that helps us give air dominance, global air dominance, and is an important component of our global security strategy Incredible.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for that and thank you for being the very first, the very first guest on the Future of Health podcast presented by HOSA Future Health Professionals. I'd like to launch right in now with asking you to describe for our audience your career path and how you became the chief medical officer at Lockheed Martin.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks for the question, George, and really no pressure right on being the first but one. It's a pleasure to be here, not only on the podcast but in this role of chief medical officer. I'll admit my path has been a bit tortuous. But in this role of chief medical officer, I'll admit my path has been a bit tortuous. I am an emergency medicine physician by training and experience.
Speaker 2:I did 17 years of emergency medicine, but my path in corporate medicine actually started while I was an emergency medicine resident and my second year of my emergency medicine residency in Oklahoma City I became the medical director for the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office.
Speaker 2:That allowed me to provide medical support for the sheriff deputies that were in the field and really helped show me how a health care provider could working not only delivering direct patient care but working on the policy and procedures for the health and well-being of an employee population make a larger impact in an organization and on someone more than just an individual.
Speaker 2:Fortunately, at the time that didn't really much pay the bills, so I went into emergency medicine.
Speaker 2:It did continue, and so I was a full-time emergency medicine physician and then transitioned to be the medical director for multiple law enforcement agencies while I was doing emergency medicine and after about 17 years of emergency medicine, I realized that my passion for working with large groups, with employees, and affecting kind of healthcare policy was much more impactful for me, and I had the opportunity in 2010 to actually work for this company, lockheed Martin, as the medical director of one of the business areas actually the aeronautics business area that makes this fine jet right here.
Speaker 2:I did that for five years but then recognized that in order for me to grow, I'd have to change the organization and move into more conventional healthcare. So I did a year at oil and gas, I did a year as a medical director for a large health system in Texas and then was recruited to be the medical director for onsite medical services at a pharmaceutical company. And from that, after a little over 10 years of experience in corporate medicine, I was invited to come back and serve as the chief medical officer for Lockheed Martin Corporation. Officer for Lockheed Martin Corporation.
Speaker 1:And at this point in 2025 now hard to believe- I have the pleasure of being here now three years as a Chief Medical Officer and, as you alluded, you know, it's incredible to hear your trajectory and such a varied career path and nonlinear I guess you'd say A nonlinear career path Just simply incredible. And so your career does span from emergency medicine all the way to special operations and now includes corporate health at Lockheed Martin. How did your experience in emergency and crisis management shape your approach to corporate medicine?
Speaker 2:management shape your approach to corporate medicine Well.
Speaker 2:You know, I think all of the cumulative experiences that have been incredibly helpful, as you indicated.
Speaker 2:You know my um, the, you know my career with law enforcement.
Speaker 2:As I was doing emergency medicine really gravitated to the special operations divisions of the law enforcement agency, so I became certified in all things special weapons and tactics, executive and dignitary protection and all the crisis management initiatives, and then ran the scope as a public health authority in a community of over 300,000 people in Texas and so forth, and so really what that did was that allowed me one to understand that flexibility was the key in crisis situations.
Speaker 2:The ability to kind of quickly evaluate a situation and develop a formative action plan and then be responsive to that as well as put contingency plans for things that might happen in the future, have been very helpful. Dealing with corporate medicine and dealing with bureaucracies that in some instances take a long time to make decisions, in other instances you have to be quite agile in, and so really the training that I've had, both in emergency medicine and serving law enforcement communities and communities in general, have been kind of perfectly aligned and helping prepare me for my role currently as the chief medical officer for lockheed and and so, as we look at this trajectory over 17 years in emergency medicine and public health consultancy, dr Williams, what drew you to the corporate world and what challenges did you face during this transition?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a great question and we don't have a long time to go into the challenges. But you know, I went into health care because I had this passion to help people right and to help others and I actually had a button somewhere that said I care, but I think I've lost it somewhere. And it was this desire to help others that really led me into medicine as a whole. In medical school I found that I was drawn to, you know, making rapid decisions. I was drawn to the excitement of the emergency department and throughout all of my rotations in medical school, I much more enjoyed the time I spent in the emergency department than I did in other areas in the hospital and the training. So I knew that medicine really was the direction that I wanted to take. I also knew that I enjoyed not only helping one person at a time, but I enjoyed helping multiple others, and so you know it was. And so what I found is I was delivering care in the emergency department. Whereas that was rewarding, I enjoyed the procedures and enjoyed the stories that not only had immediate impacts on people's health and well-being but also set up the structure for long-term and engaging conversations with individuals in maintaining their health. That that was much more rewarding, and so it was after.
Speaker 2:But, as I indicated before, I really didn't. It didn't pay the bills very much doing corporate medicine. And so, um, what I decided after, about 2016, when I was working full-time in the emergency department, I was consulting as a medical director for multiple law enforcement agencies that if there was a way that I could change and flip the script so that I could earn my living doing corporate medicine and then do emergency medicine part time, I would do that. And that's when, of a sudden, a friend recommended that I look at an opportunity that had come up in Lockheed Martin. So, within the span of a couple of months, I made the decision and made the transition into corporate medicine.
Speaker 2:Now, I did that without financially preparing myself for the change from primary care delivery and emergency medicine to corporate medicine, which is a much different pay scale, and so I actually had to work and moonlight in the emergency departments to continue to fund the lifestyle that I generated as a emergency medicine physician that was doing other things, and so it was really an interesting transition.
Speaker 2:And so the challenges, you know, one was the financial challenge that I hadn't appropriately prepared for, but the other thing that was fascinating was I had to learn the language and the culture of corporations, which is markedly different than what you use in the emergency department or on the hospital floor, and I found myself, after a significant time, as you know, the lead physician in the emergency department and, being a leader, being really backed down in a position where I had to learn the language, the flow, the culture and be much more understanding and accepting of the fact that I didn't know everything about the organization that I was in, and that was a pretty significant challenge in itself. You know, corporations in many instances, as I indicated before, will make committees by decision rather than you're the deciding physician standing at a patient's bedside, and so it took a while to acclimate to being one, not the sole decision maker in the room. Sole decision maker in the room, I think I've lost your audio there, and that is a challenge.
Speaker 1:As you're leading the way, you're also helping to drive impact, change and all the above right. So, again, it's not a straight line, even when you're leading, which I find to be fascinating, especially with respect to your career path. And so, dr Williams, as chief medical officer, you oversee employee health services across Lockheed Martin's global operations. What strategies do you employ to ensure that there is both consistency and quality in such a diverse and expansive organization?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a great question and I'll tell you, it's kind of one of the ongoing challenges of the role and, I think, one of the things that justifies the reason for a large organization. The corporations really should have a chief medical officer. Lockheed Martin has a tremendous culture behind it and the adage that we use has really evolved even as recently as this year, and the core principles that Lockheed follows is perform, transform and grow.
Speaker 2:And, george, as you indicated, we have just domestic in the United States over, you know two dozen on-site medical services that are in very diverse populations across our geography, in the United States and then internationally.
Speaker 2:We have employees and personnel in over 75 different countries all over the world, and that leads for some very dynamic types of environments in which our employees are looking for their medical needs to be met, either through the health plan or at our on-site medical facilities.
Speaker 2:And you know, our on-site medical facilities really are focused on the occupational health and well-being of our employee population, which, you know, depending on the geography, depending on the population and depending on the products and the services in which they work, can be very different.
Speaker 2:And so my organization and my role really is focused on ensuring that we do the best that we can to allow our opportunities, our employees, the opportunities for them to do exactly that perform, transform and then grow in the service that they provide. So what I ask of our medical providers is that we take that exact same adage and we look at how do we optimize the medical service and the care that we can provide, how do we transform and evolve those services to meet the needs of the population as they evolve, and then how do we grow? Or, I think more appropriately, how do we optimize the services that we provide and deliver services where they need to be delivered and maybe stop doing them where they no longer need to be delivered. So we really take the same adage that the company has and implement that across our medical organization and there is the example of leadership.
Speaker 1:It takes leadership to help an organization really thrive, and so, in your role as physician, lead for the corporate crisis management team, dr Williams, what are the key elements of effective crisis response within a global corporation like Lockheed Martin?
Speaker 2:Well, that too is a great question, and I think every corporation, organization, healthcare provider, everyone knows that COVID-19 and recently that going through the pandemic brought kind of a new dimension of sustained operations during a crisis and really exemplified the importance of having a solid medical contingency plan. And so one of the elements in crisis management is having a strong medical contingency plan. And so Lockheed Martin, in order for us to continue our business operations, had to have a strong, firm foundation in how we are going to ensure that our employees were one safe to come to work and safe while at work, in order for them to continue to do the important work that they do in the field. And so, across all phases of the crisis, from the proactive planning, from the initial response, from even during the recovery phase, I've had a role guiding and leading our crisis management team.
Speaker 2:Or what are the medical implications of one, the illness? The illness impacts on our business operations, what are potential contingencies for? How do we help keep our employees healthy and safe? And then, as we're recovering, and as we recovered from the pandemic, what were the appropriate mechanisms that we could use in order to stand down some of the protective measures that we had to put in place during COVID-19. And that's just an example of how, regardless of what the crisis is, you need to have a firm and strong medical contingency plan associated with that in order to best maneuver your organization through it.
Speaker 1:And so, as we look at the innovation and specifically innovative approaches or technologies that you're implementing, how are you using these to enhance, for example, occupational health and employee well-being at Lockheed Martin?
Speaker 2:being at Lockheed Martin.
Speaker 2:Well, you know I'm happy to say that the vendor that we have contracted with that provides that and delivers the actual care and our onsite services is a bona fide health plan.
Speaker 2:So our onsite health centers in the United States are an active health plan under the full guidance of the law, and as a health plan and a health system they mimic a lot of the technologies that we see in the outside healthcare systems as well.
Speaker 2:Everything from telemedicine and beginning to look at how artificial intelligence plays into helping with documentation, diagnoses and management, as well as looking at artificial intelligence predictive capability in helping us one evaluate where occupational injuries or illnesses might occur and how we can best mitigate them before they ever occur, are some of the things that we bring to bear currently and are working on. You know, lockheed Martin is a leader in the defense industry in the application of artificial intelligence to help keep our geography safe and we, much as we do in our business principle, use the same thing in our care principles as well. So we're looking for all avenues of how can we most appropriately and most efficiently keep our employees safe and healthy while in the workplace and if any of that can be translated to a while they're at home. We'll do that as well.
Speaker 1:And so you've served and provided medical support in in Incredibly challenging environments across the world. This is an indelible part of your background, and so how has this and these varied experiences helped to influence your ability to address health and safety concerns, specifically for the employees working in remote and or high risk areas?
Speaker 2:working in remote and or high-risk areas. Well, obviously I'm a bit biased, but I think it's been tremendously helpful, right? I mean, in order to know best how to deal with the challenges of a geography, you need to understand that geography. And, george, as you indicated, I've had in the course of my career the opportunity not only be the medical director for multiple agencies but to deploy with, to work alongside with and to operate with a lot of the teams in a vast number of geographies, from the jungles of Columbia and the West Coast of Africa and Bosnia and all these different types of places. Having boots on the ground and beingnia and all these different types of places.
Speaker 2:Having boots on the ground and being those boots on the ground means that one I was also a potential consumer of the health care services that was there, so I always had to think about if I got sick or injured, who was going to take care of me or how was I going to take care of myself.
Speaker 2:Having that experience allows me to one in some of the geographies know exactly what, because I've been in those geographies as well but if not to anticipate and think and understand that I have to learn about. Where are our employees working, what are the work that they're doing and what are those inherent risks that they may be exposed to and doing? That allows me to most credibly think about okay, how can I build a medical contingency plan on, how do we take care of them, how do we ensure they're safe and, if something goes wrong, how can we do the best we can to minimize any illness or injury? So it's one of the things that I always think that in order to walk the walk, you need to be able to get your boots on the ground and go see, and that helps me understand how best we can apply the principles of healthcare provision to those populations.
Speaker 1:And so, as a member of the National Safety Council's Corporate Health Directors Network, what are the most significant trends and or challenges that you see in corporate health leadership today?
Speaker 2:You know, I think that's a great question and that question kind of the answers kind of evolve over time. Right now, our organization is working with understanding the implications of the new administration and the executive orders that are coming through, and how do we ensure that one we are directly aligned with the executive orders that are coming out of our Oval Office and we're doing that in context with unders, with ensuring that we're taking care of our employees to the greatest extent possible. You know we have um the issues in. We have to understand that the health care of our employees is really like the health care is a cross-section of the health care the United States, and so helping our employees understand how to best access the care, how to be intelligent utilizers of the healthcare system despite not being their prime and not being their primary care provider, is is a tremendous role that we have in trying to help support our employees and our organizations.
Speaker 2:You know the National Safety Council is working on issues from, you know, drug overdose in the general population and in the workforce, in the workforce, to PFAS and microplastics and a number of different challenges that occupational health settings are facing, and being a part of that advisory council allows me one to give input and advisement from what we're seeing within our organization and then benchmarking and understanding from outside organizations what might also be a risk to our population as well. So you know, I guess I would summarize that by saying that you know, many of the challenges that we're looking at as part of the National Safety Council as challenges to our employees' safety and health are very much like the challenges that we're seeing across other corporations and the geography as a whole.
Speaker 1:And so, as we look at balance, how do you strike a balance between maintaining employee health and well-being while also managing the financial aspects of corporate health services at Lockheed Martin?
Speaker 2:George, you're hitting on all the challenges that we have, right, I mean as a fixed entity within our organization. We have, just as you indicate. We have a fixed budget. That we do.
Speaker 2:I think the great thing that I enjoy about Lockheed Martin they have an old adage that we never forget who we're working for, and that is we're working for ourselves and we're working for others.
Speaker 2:And there is a fundamental understanding within our senior leadership that a safe and healthy employee is also a productive employee as well, and one that you have less risk of attrition. So there is absolute value to ensuring that we have the safest and healthiest population that we are able to help facilitate. And so, you know, within that structure, we're given a budget annually. And then, you know, part of my role is ensuring that my operations, my contractors, my vendors that provide service operate within that budget, or we have significant justification for why we would need to deviate from that budget, but it's always a balancing act. Whereas we would love to be able to do anything and everything from a healthcare perspective for our population, it's just not financially or fiscally reasonable or really even responsible to do that, not only within our organization, but within any organization or for the general public, and so we are always balancing the business with the dynamics of managing an optimal healthcare organization for our employee population.
Speaker 1:And so, as we come to the end of this inaugural HOSA Future Health Professionals, future of Health podcast, I'd like to ask you a question on the future. And so, dr Williams, what do you envision as the future of corporate health services, particularly in aerospace and defense industries? And how is Lockheed Martin specifically preparing for these changes.
Speaker 2:I think the future is bright Again. I will admit, as the first guest, that I am biased, right and in my role. However, if you look at the challenges the healthcare industry is facing as a whole, not just within corporate medicine but as a whole access to care, the continued cost drivers of accessing care, finding providers to deliver that care and do that in a meaningful way, as well as the overarching health risks that we have to the population, having an embedded healthcare organization that is specifically looking at your employee population and how to optimize their health and well-being is becoming more and more of an important entity. Recent articles are talking about the evolving growth of my role in other organizations. The roles of chief medical officers for corporations and organizations that have realized the value of having an employed resource to give medical guidance, if not deliver care, is growing and expanding, and I don't anticipate that that will change In my organization since I've come back as the chief medical officer.
Speaker 2:We, even with the healthcare challenges and budget challenges that we've faced, my organization continues to grow.
Speaker 2:We continue to look at one where do we need to put onsite medical services to deliver care to our employee population and how do.
Speaker 2:We continue to expand our footprint to cover more of the geography outside the continental United States. That is a trend that is going to continue in growth and that is, and should be, really happening in every one of our industries. The aerospace defense industry in particular is one that is, shall we say, there is a continued and will be a continued need for the work that the aerospace industries do. Certainly, lockheed Martin is the number one defense contractor for the US government, if not for the world, and the need for us to put programs, policies and systems in place to help assure and to validate global security is a continued growing imperative. And, as we talked about earlier, if you're doing operations in an environment, a key component of that is you have to have a good, strong medical contingency plan. So as our organizations, our corporations, our enterprise grows, as the industries grow, then our ability to implement onsite medical services and deliver optimal care to our employee population becomes more and more important than ever in order for our employees to be able to perform, transform and grow.
Speaker 1:Dr Charles Williams. Chief Medical Officer. Lockheed Martin, thank you so very much for appearing as the very first guest on the inaugural POSA Future Health Professionals, future of Health podcast Extraordinary. We're deeply grateful and, most importantly, we are inspired, sir, by your leadership.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, george, and best of luck to you and every one of the participants that gets the opportunity to watch the podcast, and best of luck for future podcasts.
Speaker 1:Thank you, dr Williams, you've inspired us.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me, thank you.