Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw

Advancing women to healthcare leadership– and keeping them there. Women comprise 70% of the healthcare workforce. They hold just 20% of the C-suite. Each week, host Laurie McGraw bridges that gap through conversations with the women rewriting healthcare’s leadership playbook.

Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw is a business podcast hosted by Laurie McGraw, with 259 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Laurie McGraw hosts Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw, a business show with 259 episodes published.

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  Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw

  50% Of Patients Have Uncontrolled Blood Pressure! Dr. Eve Cunningham

  Aug 20, 202634 min

  Dr. Eve Cunningham never planned to leave the delivery room. She was a practicing OBGYN — delivering babies, doing surgery, building her family — until a conversation with a Microsoft exec pulled her into virtual care leadership right as Covid forced Providence Health to move its entire clinical operation online in a single week. That crash course became a career. Today Dr. Cunningham is Chief Medical Officer at Cadence, an AI-powered technology and care delivery company that just raised $100M and now works with 25+ health systems and over 120,000 patients. In this Inspiring Women conversation, host Laurie McGraw sits down with her to unpack how Cadence goes beyond passive monitoring — actually titrating medications, ordering labs, and triaging patients remotely on a health system's behalf. They cover why roughly half of hypertension patients are poorly controlled, why a single office blood pressure reading is often misleading ("white coat hypertension"), and how trend-based data lets clinicians safely up- and down-titrate medications for frail, older patients. Dr. Cunningham also explains why simplicity — no apps, no passwords, no Bluetooth pairing — is the reason over 70% of Cadence's senior patients self-activate their devices without ever calling for help. IN THIS EPISODE: - Why 50% of hypertension patients are not in good control - How Cadence intervenes on hypertension, diabetes, and heart failure remotely - The "white coat hypertension" problem and why trends beat single readings - Why 70%+ of patients self-activate devices with zero tech support - How Covid forced Providence Health to go virtual in a week - Building and selling a clinical decision support tool, Med Pearl - Why remote monitoring lets PCPs manage ~100 more patients per panel - Advice for clinicians moving into health tech leadership ABOUT THE HOST: Laurie McGraw is EVP at Transcarent and the host of Inspiring Women, a series spotlighting the founders, executives, and physicians reshaping health care. Full episode on Inspiring Women. Link in comments. #InspiringWomen #DigitalHealth #AIinHealthcare #RemotePatientMonitoring #WomenInLeadership #HealthTech #Cadence

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  Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw

  She Left GOOGLE X to Fix a Crisis 20 Million Teens Face | Obi Felten, Flourish Labs

  Aug 11, 202625 min

  She led moonshot projects at Google X. Then she walked away to take on one of America's hardest problems: a youth mental health crisis where roughly 20 million teens and young adults need care — and only half get it. In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw talks with Obi Felten, founder and CEO of Flourish Labs, about a different model for closing that gap: training young adults with lived experience to become accredited, professional peer supporters — and scaling it with telehealth and AI through Peers.net. In this conversation: - Why Obi left Google X moonshots for mental health - The care gap: ~20M young people in need, only half reached - Peer support as a way to expand the mental health workforce — not just add clinicians - Winning Medicaid contracts to reach underserved youth - Peer support in high-risk moments, like post-ER care for suicidal teens - What it takes to scale a mission to a million supporters About the guest — Obi Felten: Founder and CEO of Flourish Labs, scaling professional peer support via Peers.net. Previously led technology moonshot projects at Google X and was Director of Consumer Marketing for Google across EMEA. BA in Philosophy and Psychology from Oxford; based in California. → obifelten.com · flourishlabs.com · peers.net About the host — Laurie McGraw: Laurie is a 30-year health technology executive and creator/host of Inspiring Women. She's Executive Vice President at Transcarent, and previously served as President and Chief Client Officer of Allscripts and SVP at the American Medical Association. A Brown University cognitive science graduate, board director, speaker and advocate for health equity and women's leadership, she started Inspiring Women to close a stubborn gap: women make up 70% of healthcare's workforce but hold only about 20% of C-suite roles. — Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw advances women to healthcare leadership — and keeps them there. New episodes every Tuesday. #InspiringWomen #MentalHealth #HealthcareLeadership #WomenInHealthcare #PeerSupport #DigitalHealth #GoogleX

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  Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw

  Every CEO is one of four types under pressure. Most don't know theirs | Caroline Stokes

  Aug 4, 202630 min

  Caroline Stokes tells CEOs something most of them don't want to hear: the AI question everyone is asking is the wrong one. She is the founder of FORWARD, a human capital solutions firm for pioneers, and the author of AfterShock to 2030: A CEO's Guide to Reinvention in the Age of AI, Climate, and Societal Collapse. Named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2026, she was shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Leadership Award for a book she deliberately published digital-only to keep its carbon footprint near zero. Her route here was unusual. Raised between the UK and Singapore before the age of ten, she went from PR at Virgin to the early PlayStation team, then to executive search, then to coaching, and then back to school three separate times during and after the pandemic to study ESG at MIT, AI business strategy, and the new space economy. She is neurodivergent, and she credits that with how she reads systems and spots what a room is missing. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT CAROLINE COVERS IN THIS EPISODE 1. THE FOUR SHOCKS ALREADY HERE Economic instability, climate disruption, AI acceleration and societal fragmentation are not separate agenda items. They are one interconnected system, and leaders who treat them separately are already behind. 2. WHY AI IS THE WRONG FIRST QUESTION Yes, learn it, the way you had to learn email in 1994. But the question a board should actually be asking is how long the organisation can sustain itself at all. 3. THE CEOs WHO ARE QUITTING INSTEAD OF ADAPTING Many are cashing in their chips rather than building the polymathic organisations this moment demands. Caroline explains who she will and will not work with. 4. THE 100-DAY REINVENTION Built after she watched leaders at a top-three technology company shrug off a mandate from their new CEO with "it'll take two years." Her warning to them: you will be laying people off before that. 5. FIGHT, FLIGHT, FREEZE, FAWN The four avatars every leader defaults to under conflict. Not knowing yours is how you quietly sabotage your own strategy. 6. CLIMATE AS AN OPERATING CONSTRAINT Not an ESG line item. If your people are breathing smoke and getting migraines, the work does not happen. Maslow, applied to the modern workforce. 7. THINK LIKE A SCIENTIST OR AN ARTIST Michelangelo started with a block of marble and no finished image. Everyone has to start somewhere in a reality with no playbook. 8. HER ADVICE TO WOMEN LEADING RIGHT NOW Follow the curiosity that keeps stalking you. Ask what your seven-year-old self would want from you, and then go learn something new. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT CAROLINE STOKES Founder of FORWARD and a global leadership strategist for the Fifth Industrial Revolution. A Sony alum who worked on the PlayStation launch and a PCC-level, EQ 2.0-certified coach, she moved from executive headhunting into leadership reinvention. She is the author of AfterShock to 2030 (2025) and Elephants Before Unicorns (Entrepreneur Press, 2019), and a co-author of the HBR Guide to Navigating the Toxic Workplace (2024). Her 2019 TEDx talk predicted the convergence of AI, climate and societal disruption now shaping boardrooms. Website: theforward.co Book: AfterShock to 2030, on Kindle, Audible, Spotify and Apple Books ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT LAURIE McGRAW Laurie McGraw is the host of Inspiring Women and Executive Vice President at Transcarent. A health technology executive with three decades of experience, she has led product and commercial organisations, served on public and private company boards, and advises early-stage ventures. She started Inspiring Women around a gap she kept running into: women make up roughly 70 percent of the healthcare workforce but hold about 20 percent of the C-suite seats. Each episode is a direct conversation with a woman who has built something, aimed at the practical questions that rarely get asked in public. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ INSPIRING WOMEN WITH LAURIE McGRAW Website: inspiringwomen.show Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. #Leadership #CEO #AI #Climate #WomenInLeadership #Thinkers50

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  Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw

  The Executive On Learning To Ask For It, After A 30-Year Career! - Lori Prestesater

  Jul 21, 202631 min

  LORI PRESTESATER SPENT HER CAREER BUILDING COMPANIES AND RUNNING P&LS. THEN SHE JOINED A 175-YEAR-OLD INSTITUTION AND ASKED WHAT IT COULD BECOME. Laurie McGraw sits down with Lori Prestesater, former Senior Vice President of Health Solutions at the American Medical Association, on the eight years she calls the pinnacle of her career, and the transition out of it. Most people would not describe the AMA as a high-growth opportunity. Lori came from payers, provider groups, and high-growth technology, and took on the work of turning a traditional publishing organization — one that put out books, codes, and data formats — into a data organization. She is candid that the hard part was never the technology. It was culture, change management, and leading by influence rather than authority, including with the physician volunteers who sit nowhere on an org chart. The conversation also goes where most leadership interviews do not: what happens when a woman who worked seven days a week and put herself last finally has to decide what she wants next. In this episode: - Why a high-growth executive chose a 175-year-old association, and what surprised her when she arrived - The CPT code set as the backbone of revenue cycle, and why it has to evolve as medicine does - CPT Intelligence — built on a private large language model, with content tagged using graph database technology — and how it supports autonomous coders, EHRs, payers, and prior authorization - Why the biggest challenge in any transformation is cultural, not technical - Building the data labs team with Sandeep Dhamale, and the platform he left behind - The credentialing product launched during her tenure: under two years in market, just under 150 customers, deployed across just under 700 locations, with customers reporting up to a 30% reduction in physician onboarding time - Six months to see a primary care physician in San Francisco, and why an incredibly cumbersome application process compounds the shortage for patients, health systems, and physicians alike - Taking the complex and making it simple — the skill she undervalued early in her career - Putting mission first when your instinct is growth: the art and science of medicine for the betterment of public health - Handing Health Solutions to Jeremy Knight, and why she believes he is better suited to the next chapter - Advising AMA CEO Dr. John Whyte on special projects during her transition - Moving back to Colorado after years of not living in the same state as her husband - Moving her mother, who just finished her term as board chair of a hospice organization at 88 - A new grandchild, a daughter navigating new motherhood, a newly married son - Where board work fits into what comes next, after years spent on the staff side of the table - Women Business Leaders, and the principle at its core: who mentors the mentors? - Why senior leadership gets lonely, and why you need people for the good times and the bad - The book Ask For It, and why she has given it to so many young women - Her closing advice: be confident, talk less and listen more, know your superpowers, backstop your weaknesses, and build a network that will advocate for you when you struggle to advocate for yourself Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw.

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  Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw

  From Wall Street To Hospital President Without An MBA: The Nurse Who Kept Saying Yes | Kelly Nierstedt

  Jul 14, 202632 min

  Kelly Nierstedt never planned to lead a hospital. She is a first-generation college graduate who worked on Wall Street out of high school, went to nursing school as a second career, and wanted nothing more than to be the best labor and delivery nurse she could be. Then the taps on the shoulder started. Take on this project. Take on this unit. Take on another. Today, Kelly is the president of Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center, one of the largest and most complex hospitals in Florida and home to the region's Level 1 Trauma Center — and senior vice president of the Orlando Region. She got there without an MBA, without a finance background, and without ever checking all the boxes first. In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw sits down with Kelly to trace the path from the bedside at Hackensack University Medical Center, to leading OSF Healthcare Children's Hospital of Illinois in Peoria — where she built a care-closer-to-home model so families no longer had to drive four hours to Chicago — to becoming the inaugural president of Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies, one of the busiest delivery hospitals in the nation. Then came the second yes: leading the adult flagship hospital, where the one thing they don't do is the one thing she was trained in. Laurie and Kelly met at the Women Business Leaders Conference, where Kelly spoke about complexity in healthcare today. Topics Covered: - From Wall Street in the late 80s to nursing school on loans — a second career with no roadmap - Why Kelly said yes to every tap on the shoulder, and the Plan B mindset that made her fearless - Why women wait to check every box before saying yes — and why she never did - The move from New Jersey to Peoria, Illinois, and convincing a resistant leadership team with data - Recruiting physicians to middle America — and why they stayed - Interviewing for the Winnie Palmer presidency while on vacation in Fort Lauderdale - Why she puts on scrubs in every role: answering phones, filling water jugs, showing the team she cares - Walking into a Level 1 Trauma Center as a mom-baby nurse — and why not knowing made her a better leader - Four years in, every member of her original team is still there or has been promoted - "The keeper of the culture": what a hospital president actually does - Why her team members — not patients — are the most important people in the building - Move fast, fail fast: why healthcare's caution can leave patients behind - Transforming a large, tactical board into a smaller, strategic, deliberately diverse one - The patient suicide that shook her — and the board meeting where she cried, said "I'm not doing well," and was met with open arms - Her advice to senior women executives: you're not perfect, no one expects you to be, and vulnerability will serve you Kelly's story is proof that the path to the top doesn't require a pedigree — it requires the courage to say yes before you feel ready, the humility to learn from the experts around you, and the heart to never lose sight of who you're serving. As she puts it: "We're not perfect. We're just people trying to do a good job every day. Be open about that, and you will be just fine." Inspiring Women is hosted by Laurie McGraw, Chief Commercial Officer at Transcarent, former SVP of the American Medical Association, former President of Allscripts, and a 30-year healthcare executive committed to advancing women into leadership. Full episode wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation.

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