Female Founders: Rachel Marano of Pivot Point Consulting On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder

An Interview With Kristin Marquet

Challenge yourself — I am a seeker and have always gravitated to thinking that challenges me to be a better person and leader. I encourage my teams to do the same and to actively nurture professional and personal development.

As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rachel Marano.

Rachel Marano, Co-Founder of Pivot Point Consulting, is a seasoned entrepreneur and healthcare IT executive and brings nearly 20 years of hands on experience with healthcare organizations to her role as managing partner.

Rachel has worked in all aspects of healthcare IT. She has worked with a range of healthcare organizations, both in-house and as a consultant, leading complex EHR implementations at clients including Stanford Healthcare, Advocate and Lancaster General Health.

After a successful career as a certified Cerner and Epic implementation consultant, she founded Pivot Point Consulting in 2011 as a consultant-led company with a relentless pursuit of excellence and uncompromising quality. Rachel grew the company until its acquisition by Vaco in 2016 and oversaw the integration of Pivot Point Consulting, as well as the acquisition of Greythorn, into Vaco.

Rachel was on the Greater Chicago Chapter HIMSS board for eight years having held the positions of President, Communications Chair and Member at Large, as well as the role of Program Chair of the Indiana HIMSS board. She has her Bachelors in computer science from the University of Iowa.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

After graduating from the University of Iowa with a degree in Computer Science, I began my healthcare IT journey. I started at Cerner as an Analyst and then moved to Advocate Healthcare as a Team Lead. From there, I shifted into consulting, leading large complex EHR implementations. One of the highlights of my consulting career was leading an Epic implementation at Stanford Healthcare. I was also involved in HIMSS (Health Information Management System Society) and after years of being a member became the president of the Illinois Chapter. This experience taught me a lot and opened my network in the HIT community. My start in software development coupled with my experience on the hospital IT side, as well as years in consulting, laid the groundwork for me to launch a consultant-led firm that understands the complexity of this industry.

In 2011, I founded Pivot Point Consulting with a focus on EHR Implementation and HIT Advisory consulting. In 2016, we merged with Vaco, a global talent solutions provider. Today, I continue to lead the organization with over 500 employees and am proud to say that Pivot Point is a Best in KLAS organization and was awarded the Top Overall IT Services Firm award in 2020 as well as №6 in Modern Healthcare’s 2021 Best Places to Work award program.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed our industry and our company — creating unexpected challenges, as well as opportunities to approach healthcare differently.

At Pivot Point, we foster a culture of open innovation where we encourage creative, customer-centric thinking. We leveraged that important part of our culture to adapt and innovate during an unprecedented time.

Our company led the way with disciplined focus on our core operations and was one of the first in our industry to create rapid response solutions for healthcare organizations who were struggling in the early days of the pandemic.

COVID-19 drove widespread adoption of telehealth, which is now expected by patients as part of care delivery and reshaped the way healthcare organizations operate from a patient experience, clinical workflow and IT perspective.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

The funniest mistake I made in the early days of Pivot Point taught me a valuable life lesson about balancing my work and family life. At the time, I was nine months pregnant with my first child and scheduled for a C-section. Quite literally until the moment I was being wheeled into the OR, I was on the phone with our team running the day-to-day of the business.

This story highlights how much women often feel they need to juggle in terms of personal and professional responsibilities. I’m not proud of the fact that I was doing business while I was just about to give birth, but it taught me that I could have done a better job of relying on my team during that important life milestone. That experience truly changed me in many ways — not only the transformation of having my first child, but also a realization that I needed to balance intentional time with my family and my business.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Speaking of strong working women, my mother has been a huge influence in my life. She played so many roles for me — as a mother, an entrepreneur and was truly a ‘superwoman.’

She’s hairdresser, has run her own business for 40 years, raised me, volunteered as a Sunday school teacher and Girl Scout troop leader and did it all with no complaints. Even during COVID-19, when her business was forced to reinvent its services like so many others, she conducted virtual visits with customers and sold products for at-home use.

She is a creative force who turned what she loved into a successful business. As an entrepreneur, I know how special and difficult that is. She inspires my leadership style every day; I admire her ability to not say ‘no’ and always figure out solutions while cultivating a loyal staff and following.

According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?

After being a founder for the last decade, I still find that while men are “expected founders”, women are “unexpected founders”. This can hamper the confidence women need to run companies or consider founding a company. We need to change this perception and increase the visibility, networks and support of women founders. I encourage all leaders, both men and women, to build and nurture professional and personal networks as broadly as possible to shift perceptions.

Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?

At Pivot Point, we value emotional intelligence (EQ) — your ability to understand yourself and your team members to work effectively together. Interestingly, everyone is born with an intelligence quotient (IQ) that does not change over time, but you can improve your EQ.

EQ is critical to successful leadership — a Harvard Business Review study found that EQ accounts for nearly 90% of what separates high performers from peers with equal technical skills. Leaders need to understand EQ, put it in motion and create shared accountability. At Pivot Point, we’re focused on the importance of EQ and are investing in Emotional Intelligence training and coaching.

We also need to reframe networks and the conversations in them to be more diverse and inclusive. This is why I created Be HER(d), a LinkedIn livestream featuring changemaking women across industries who share their professional and personal leadership stories and lessons learned.

This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?

Studies show that women leaders are creative, decisive, outgoing and compassionate, all of which are critical traits for becoming a founder, but often just need to be reminded that they have the skills and have the support of other women and men too.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?

For me, the biggest myth is that you can’t be a successful founder as a mom. I have four kids and I’m running a high growth business. It is possible; you just have to make space for both (which isn’t easy and is something I’m still working on myself every day).

Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?

I don’t believe that everyone is built to be a founder and that we need both founders and team members to perform different roles. Much has been written about the traits of successful founders, but for me, it boils down to 2 things:

1. No is not an option. There is always a solution to any problem if you think long enough. This “never give up” mentality has propelled me to overcome challenges and think creatively when options seem limited or even non-existent.
2. You don’t have to have all the answers. Being a founder doesn’t mean that you need to be alone in your thinking or execution. Surround yourself with “rock stars” who aren’t afraid to challenge your thinking and who bring the skills you lack. A Kauffman Fellows survey found that the most effective founders understood their strengths and weaknesses, and utilize them to build a complementary team.

Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need to Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Hire leaders who are smarter than you — It’s been said that you’re the average of the five people you surround yourself with so it’s important to be intentional about your leaders.
2. Challenge yourself — I am a seeker and have always gravitated to thinking that challenges me to be a better person and leader. I encourage my teams to do the same and to actively nurture professional and personal development.
3. Be self-aware — Understanding and improving EQ is a powerful way to meaningfully transform yourself, your team and your company. It’s a journey and I’m still learning every day.
4. Be an open, but critical thinker — The best leaders question themselves and the assumptions they’ve made to make informed decisions. Active listening doesn’t come naturally to me, but I know it leads to better decisions so I’m doing the hard work to practice it with my teams.
5. Be adaptable — COVID-19 taught everyone from the frontlines to the C-suite that life can change suddenly and that being adaptable is critical to overcome challenges.

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

One of the ways we make the world a better place is through our Happyology program. We created it to provide meaningful, personalized moments for everyone we touch — from our employees and consultants to our clients and industry. We’ve paid hotel bills for employees with family members in the hospital, surprised our clients with unique and exciting team building events as well-deserved distractions from the long early days of the pandemic, donated to charities for consultants who lost pets and sent personalized gifts designed for the moment and the recipient.

We’ve seen the ripple effects of Happyology. Happy employees and consultants result in happy clients. And happy clients are able to provide a better patient experience and better care. I’m convinced that a meaningful experience can not only change the life of 1 person, but also make the world a better place.

Our relentless commitment to meaningful moments has resulted in a 97% retention rate and 100% of our clients would engage us again (according to KLAS).

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Throughout my career, I’ve mentored several women leaders and have found that one of my strongest skills is helping them think through how they will take their idea to market.

Today, it has never been easier to start a business, but it has also never been harder to scale a business. Marketing is critical to scaling a business, but founders may not be as close to it as they should be — particularly in services businesses. Marketing has always been foundational at Pivot Point and I am deeply involved and committed to using it as a way to reach our buyers when they need us, giving them value so they know what it’s like to work with us and telling our story.

I’d like to formalize the mentoring I’ve done informally over the years by establishing an incubator (with an emphasis on scaling businesses through marketing) for women and minority-owned business leaders to provide underrepresented communities with resources, networks and opportunities.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I’d like to have conversations with Chip Heath and Dan Heath, who wrote “The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact” to discuss ways that we can build meaningful moments into everything we do.

Their game changing book captures the essence of what I have and want to continue to cultivate at Pivot Point — those meaningful moments create impact and change lives.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.