Wellness Reimagined: Mariza Hardin of Zócalo Health On 5 Things That Should Be Done To Improve and Reform The Health & Wellness Industry

An Interview With Maria Angelova

Incorporate culture into healthcare — For many cultures and communities, there are components of traditional healing that are essential to their health journey. For example, we know acupuncture and Tai Chi are thought of as more traditional practices that are now reimbursable in value-based care models. Recognizing that there are cultural components that we can incorporate into our healthcare delivery system is going to be very important for how people experience care that makes them feel heard and seen. We need to think about how we can merge the two to deliver culturally-competent care for communities.

In our world of constant change, and with life moving faster than ever, topics such as mental health, self-care, and prevention have become popular buzzwords. But there are misconceptions about the meaning of self-care and exercise. Many opt for quick solutions — surgery, pills — to dull the problem without adequately addressing the underlying cause. Meanwhile, many parts of the industry are unregulated and oversaturated. People with years of training are competing with people with weekend training. Many providers are overworked, overwhelmed, and underpaid. The general public is not educated about asking the right questions when selecting a wellness provider. In the face of all this, what can be done to correct the status quo? In this interview series, we are seeking to hear from a variety of leaders in the health and wellness industries who agree that the wellness Industry is in need of an overhaul and offer suggestions about what can be done moving forward. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Mariza Hardin.

A healthcare business leader with more than 15 years of policy experience, Mariza founded Zócalo Health in 2021 with a vision to enhance the primary care experience and overall health journey for Latino families. She currently serves as Head of Strategy and Operations for the company. Prior to leading Zócalo Health, Mariza was on the founding team for Amazon Care and AWS’s Health and Human Service Vertical where she led business development initiatives for Amazon customers.

Thank you so much for doing this interview. It is an honor. Our readers would love to learn more about you and your personal background. Can you please share your personal backstory? What has brought you to this point in your life?

I was born in Roswell, New Mexico, a very rural and isolated community in the Southwest. My earliest memories of childhood include accompanying my grandmother with her house cleaning job while my parents worked long hours at multiple jobs to achieve the “American Dream”. As children of first-generation Mexican Americans, work ethic was driven into my sister and I daily. You had to work hard, show up, and always look for opportunities to do more. My sister and I had no other option but to be exceptional students, get a part-time job, and go to college. Success was defined by our ability to move up a ladder that wasn’t even built yet.

It was up to me to build that ladder but admittedly, I made many mistakes along the way. I knew I wanted a career where I could help people be better versions of themselves. I worked in a primary care clinic doing everything from filing records to taking out the trash. From those experiences ,I saw first-hand the power of the physician-patient relationship. I saw moments when a patient would come in the door in their most vulnerable state asking for help and the physician provided healing and comfort. I wanted a job where I could heal people. That seemed very powerful to me. But being in a rural community with little exposure to the greater world, I was unsure how to navigate the path to becoming a physician. I thought I needed to take all the hardest classes, overloading my first year with science and math courses, and complete my undergraduate degree in record time to start medical school. I overloaded my first year of my undergraduate with science and math courses and struggled. I was lost in the classes of hundreds of people, overwhelmed with my course load and the job I took on to pay my way through college, and felt unsure I would be able to navigate a career in medicine.

I barely completed my first year of undergraduate school and for the first time in my life, I felt lost and unsure I would be able to navigate a career in medicine. In hindsight, my undergraduate experience set me up for the grit and determination that would get me through some of the toughest challenges life would throw my way.

I found my way into jobs and opportunities that gave me firsthand access to the patient’s journey in achieving health and wellness. I studied access issues. I worked with Medicaid programs. I was mentored by policy experts that ran Medicare programs, and eventually completed my Masters in Public Health Degree with a focus on health policy. I quickly learned the power and influence that state and federal policy had on a patient’s experience in getting access to healthcare and I wanted to be part of creating policy to make it easier. Make healthcare more accessible.

That same grit and determination landed me a job with the Obama Administration during his first term in the White House. In my first week of the job, I found myself quietly sitting as close to the edge of the room as possible in meetings held in the West Wing. I wasn’t actually sure what my job was the first few weeks, but I knew I needed to absorb everything around me. I was taking notes from meeting participants that I watched on CSPAN during my graduate degree studies. It was an out of body experience. I can still remember the moment my name was called out loud to own an action item. I wanted to cry in fear and excitement that someone in that room knew I existed.

I continued to build my ladder through my work with the federal government and later transitioning to the commercial sector where I would continue to help private companies and startups navigate the changing regulatory environment to redesign the healthcare experience for the most vulnerable. I moved around the country meeting and working with some of the smartest and most dedicated people in healthcare. I moved from the edge of the room to having a seat at the table, discussing some of the most important innovations in the history of healthcare delivery.

My career journey from a small medical record room to a corporate board room found me on a phone call with a recruiter from Amazon. They were looking to interview people in healthcare with expertise in business development, specifically policy. My head went buzzing about what this could mean for me and the healthcare industry. I completed several interviews and was flown out to Seattle to nervously complete 8 hours of in-person interviews, each one of them leaving me more unsure of exactly what was happening and why they were even talking to me. Within 48 hours of my in-person trip to Seattle, I had an offer letter land in my inbox that will forever be imprinted in my memory as one of the biggest rungs of my career ladder. I was being offered a job at one of the biggest, most competitive tech companies in the world to be on the founding time of a confidential project that would later launch as Amazon Care.

My time at Amazon can quickly be summed up as the greatest opportunity for a non-tech person to be at the front seat of building and scaling a tech focused business in health care. The people I had the opportunity to work with were the brightest and most mission driven people I will ever work with. Not only did I always have a seat at the table, but I was often at the head of the table.

My experience at Amazon helped prepare me and grow my network to take the next biggest step in my ladder to becoming a co-founder of my own company, Zócalo Health. Meeting my co-founder, Erik Cardenas, and getting the support of the mentors and customers from my time at Amazon gave me the confidence needed to make the leap into the world of entrepreneurship where I now needed to create a table where everyone could sit.

What is your “why” behind the work that you do? What fuels you?

The common thread throughout my career is bringing healthcare solutions to underserved communities and ensuring that people can access the healthcare they need, regardless of their age, immigration status, income, and/or any other barrier that may exist. What fuels me is the continued desire to be at the table when key decisions around health care delivery are made. It’s 2022 and yet I still find that I am often the only female in the room when talking to decision and policy makers. As we think about how to eliminate health inequities at every level of care delivery we must think about the leadership and decision makers that are designing the exact system we want to improve. If the leadership doesn’t reflect the diverse patient population then you miss an opportunity to truly design a patient centered experience. Females, the moms, the sisters, the Tîas, are making the healthcare decisions for our families, and they need to be leading the next generation of health care delivery.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting new projects you are working on now?

For the first time in my career, I can say that my personal and professional projects are very much aligned. Zócalo Health is a company that is fueled by personal experience, but it is also a service that I want myself and my family to use. I am building something every day that my mom will use! Who gets to say that? I have spent my entire career building solutions for other populations, and this is the first time that my family and I get to use the same health care service. That means a lot to me. As a mom to a toddler during a pandemic, I personally feel like I need a whole care team to support my anxiety and questions that pop up every time there is a runny nose in my house. And that is Zócalo Health! From the marketing to the branding, to the customer experience we are designing, it is all fueled from lived experience.

I am so proud of the progress we have accomplished to-date at Zócalo Health. In less than a year we launched a virtual care delivery service across California and now Texas. We are delivering care to patients that have struggled to connect to the primary care systems due to the pandemic and other systematic issues that make health care hard to access. Each patient that joins Zócalo Health gets access to a whole care team that is focused on building a relationship based on trust. We have many new projects planned for how our care team can meet the diverse needs of our members to truly provide a holistic experience when using Zócalo Health. I am most excited about how we bring to life a key tenant of our experience “healthcare should be self-care”. In designing our membership experience we want our patients to leverage their care team for everyday health concerns and not wait until they are sick to use our system. We believe prevention paired with a continued relationship with a care team will result in better health outcomes. Lots of exciting things to come as Zócalo Health expands their care team and services!

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. 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?

When I first started Zócalo Health, my son was just turning two and we were in the peak of the pandemic. No one was leaving their homes quite yet and life felt pretty isolated. I was determined to put all my focus and energy into starting a new company during a 9–5 schedule and then being the best, organized mom to my growing toddler in the evening and early morning hours. What I laugh about now is how optimistic I was about keeping a consistent schedule and the idea of seamlessly juggling the life of an entrepreneur and mom. The reality was the exact opposite. Our weeks were interrupted by every virus and germ possible when my son started daycare, other unplanned health events and many other annoying life events that never allowed for the uninterrupted work/life balance I envisioned. I had to quickly learn there would be no such thing as a consistent and regular schedule in the life of a mom/entrepreneur and I would have to go with the flow with whatever life was going to throw my way if I wanted to keep some sanity. This was a big adjustment for me who thrives in organized and predictable environments, but I grew so much and have developed a level of resilience I didn’t know was possible. Of course, I also learned that I can’t do this on my own and I rely heavily on my family to make my career ambitions possible. Power and solidarity to all the moms making it work during these times.

OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. From where you stand, why are you passionate about the topic of Reimagining The Health and Wellness industries? Can you explain what you mean with a story or an example?

As a founder of a healthcare company, my passion has always been to advocate for healthcare solutions that make healthcare more accessible and improve the patient experience. We built Zócalo Health based on our experience seeing our families and friends struggle to navigate a health system that didn’t speak their language and didn’t show them respect in the exam room. This experience has not only remained for Latinos but has gotten worse during the pandemic.

Erik and I connected on our shared values and visions, both dreaming of bringing culture and connection to the healthcare experience. We both had experiences being the first in our families to build careers in healthcare; we had to take our experience and network to build something better for our own families and Latino families across the U.S. We knew we had to be the solution and we have spent our entire lives and careers preparing for this opportunity.

All of us have a new perspective about wellness as we manage COVID in our daily lives. Everyone is more acutely aware of illness, their risk factors and symptoms and the emotions that come along with illness. The wellness industry is often perceived as equal to healthcare, but in reality, habits like getting enough sleep, drinking water and exercising are also part of our larger health journey. Wellness is a larger state of physical, spiritual and emotional being with health being a baseline. I think we really need to reassess what wellness means as a community and start thinking about yearly physicals, vaccinations, preventive services, and mental health care as self-care. Importantly, we need to ensure that all communities have access to these holistic health and wellness services as part of their healthcare journey.

When I talk about Reimagining the Wellness industry, I am talking about reimagining it from the perspective of the providers as well as from the perspective of the recipients and patients. Can you share a few reasons why the status quo is not working for both providers and patients?

In our current one-size-fits-all healthcare system, patients must take a number of steps to get the care they need. In addition to finding a provider, they often must navigate their way to specialists and treatments all within a complicated environment that wasn’t built for most people in America. What we’re trying to reimagine with Zócalo Health, by focusing on the Latino community, is to understand their needs and unique healthcare journeys and remove barriers to access and offer care that was built around their culture and experiences. Our goal is to drive meaningful engagement and inspire trust and relationship-building between patients and providers, which is often missed in the current medical environment.

For providers, the last few years have been a trying time. With burnout and so many providers leaving the medical field, the problem with overburdened providers and overall staffing shortages will likely get worse. Providers decided to get into healthcare to help people. What our current healthcare system is promoting is volume over patient outcomes, which can lead to less impactful patient interactions, plus providers feeling overwhelmed with their daily appointments and additional work. While there has been a push for value-based care, the pandemic was really a tipping point that showed the flaws in our existing system. We have yet to see real solutions being implemented on the provider side.

Why do you think there is a good opportunity now to improve and reform the health and wellness industry?

I think this is a critical time for the healthcare industry to make much needed reforms given everything that we have learned over the two plus years of the pandemic. The pandemic really brought to light how we need to be prepared for public health threats, both urgently and for more long-term threats like chronic diseases. One of the first things we realized is public health departments had been woefully underfunded for years, which made the response to an imminent health threat extremely challenging. Another thing we learned was the importance of consistent and clear messaging in public health communications. With all of the research coming out of the pandemic, we have a ton of data about what we could have improved, and many lessons learned from patient and provider experiences. Now is the time to leverage that information to create a better healthcare and public health infrastructure so that we can set ourselves up for better outcomes in the future.

At the height of the pandemic, preventive healthcare like primary care was halted for the most part. A big lesson from the pandemic is how many people weren’t connected to a primary care provider. We know that access to primary care is necessary to keep patients and providers connected and is a vital first line of defense for ensuring chronic diseases are managed and treated. Ensuring that communities have access to (and are using) these services is an important part of managing their care during a health emergency.

Can you please share your “5 Things That Should Be Done To Improve and Reform The Health & Wellness Industry”? Please share an example or story for each if you can.

1. Redefine wellness — As I mentioned before, I think that we need to see health and wellness as less about the lack of illness, and rather a place of feeling that your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs are met. Once we redefine wellness, we can address the barriers to people getting to this place of harmony and better understand how we can provide care that touches on these aspects of the human condition. For example, I know my family members only see a doctor when they are sick or need treatment and rarely make time to see a doctor when they feel good and want to PREVENT illness from happening. I’d like to change that perspective by redefining what healthcare means and introduce easy ways to access a healthcare system that cares about your wellness and prevention just as much if not more than just treating your illness.
2. Incorporate culture into healthcare — For many cultures and communities, there are components of traditional healing that are essential to their health journey. For example, we know acupuncture and Tai Chi are thought of as more traditional practices that are now reimbursable in value-based care models. Recognizing that there are cultural components that we can incorporate into our healthcare delivery system is going to be very important for how people experience care that makes them feel heard and seen. We need to think about how we can merge the two to deliver culturally-competent care for communities.
3. Improve access to mental health care — The mental health care conversation has been top of mind for many as we saw the pandemic impact our support systems and daily routines. It’s more challenging than ever to find a mental health clinician given the demand, and for many, there are initial barriers to getting connected to these kinds of services. Mental health services should be seen as part of a patient’s primary care and with telehealth options to improve access and utilization. One story I heard from a provider that really brings this to life is when they had a patient scheduled for a follow up about their knee pain. When the provider was speaking with them about how they were doing, the conversation quickly turned to the stress and anxiety they were experiencing, which resulted in some tips from the provider on self-managing stress and anxiety and a referral to a mental health counselor in the community. Had the patient not been given the time to talk with their provider and the provider not taken the time to ask additional questions, the mental health concern may have never surfaced. We cannot continue to ignore mental health needs in primary care settings.
4. Building patient-centered health experiences — We live in an on-demand world where food, rideshares, clothes, medicines and so much more are just a tap away. Healthcare experiences should be just as seamless as other services and products that are easily available given how much more consequential health is to a person’s life. At our company, we’re always thinking of ways that we can bring a customer-obsessed mindset to healthcare. This not only means quick and convenient scheduling and follow ups with care teams, but also doing the work to understand an individual’s needs, collecting that right data to make personalized recommendations and then working with the larger ecosystem to help connect the dots.
5. Support providers in their work — A well-functioning health system requires not just enough providers, but providers who are appreciated for the work that they do. We’re already seeing declines in healthcare workers and young people are choosing different careers due to the negative experiences that have been exacerbated over these last few years. We work with providers from the communities that they serve, and we build our care teams around an essential role that doesn’t typically exist outside of community healthcare settings — the community health worker (CHW). Our CHWs are paired with patients to provide health service navigation and personal health coaching in addition to being the conduit to their personalized care team of Latino providers. Providers who work with us share that they feel connected to their work and are so excited to be able to form personalized care relationships with people with similar experiences and work with them toward their health goals.

From the recipient and patient side of the industry, can you please share a few ways that patients and recipients should reimagine what the wellness and healthcare industry should provide?

I believe that patients and healthcare consumers should expect more from the industry. They should push for the things they’re looking for in their healthcare experience, including improved access, cost transparency, continuity of care, connection and time with their providers and other important factors that build trust. The way we silo healthcare overcomplicates things for patients, and because our healthcare system is so convoluted, we sometimes see it as impossible to change or devoid of solutions that can make a real impact. To combat this, I think we can take lessons from consumer journeys outside of healthcare; apply those same principles about what people are asking for and what drives engagement; and create more seamless, patient-centric experiences.

This shift can start with rethinking how we experience healthcare. Healthcare is something that is a part of our day-to-day existence and should always be top of mind rather than only when we need it. We should see it as a service that we’re engaging with routinely, whether that’s scheduling our annual physical, researching new providers, or engaging in community resources focused on health, we can see the connection between these key behaviors and our overall wellness.

What do you think are the biggest roadblocks to reforming the industry? What can be done to address those hurdles?

In my opinion, the biggest roadblocks to healthcare reform are accessibility and affordability. At a macro level, problems with the U.S. healthcare system are well documented — unsustainable costs, poor outcomes, dissatisfied patients. However, these factors are disproportionately worse for underserved populations like Latinos.

Underserved populations associate healthcare utilization with high costs and confusing billing, which can lead to putting off healthcare needs out of the frustration of navigating the system on their own. And this can lead to poor health outcomes over time. To address these hurdles, it is important to offer tailored healthcare experiences that eliminate healthcare disparities and offer convenient, transparent and culturally-aligned care.

I learned so much during my time at Amazon about how central the customer experience is to the success of a product. Our lives are very on demand in that the things we need or want are often just a point and click away. Unfortunately, we haven’t applied some of those lessons and capabilities to healthcare. I think a good place to start is the customer-centric experience. Finding out what people really need and want in their healthcare is critical to building a rewarding and enduring experience. Can we decouple primary care (prevention, wellness visits, regular screenings, etc) from the costly specialty care experience? Will this make it easier and more acceptable for patients to prioritize their preventive care? The more we tailor healthcare services to the needs of groups, the more we can engage them actively in their healthcare because it feels personalized.

I’m very passionate about the topic of proactive versus reactive self-care and healthcare. What do you think can be done to shift the industries towards a proactive healthcare approach? How can we shift the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike?

I’m also a big proponent of a proactive approach to healthcare. I think one big step we can take is reframing the way we interact with the healthcare system. As we work to tackle accessibility, we need to think about how we engage with preventive care. We want to see our providers when we’re feeling good, not just at times of illness. These touchpoints are so valuable to building a relationship with our providers and larger care teams. Virtual and in-person visits should be used as an opportunity to ask questions and share concerns about your health so that you and your provider are building a long-term plan.

We can work towards this by changing the way we speak about health and how we engage with our providers. Working with patients and providers to reframe these visits as a type of collaborative working session, versus a quick appointment where an ailment leads to a resolution, can shift our mindset about the way we use healthcare resources. From there, we can open other areas of communication like we do in our service model. With Zócalo Health, members have 24/7 access to their CHW and can text them in the middle of the night with questions and then expect a response in the morning. That’s the kind of on-demand service that builds trust and reinforces proactive care.

Thank you for all that great insight! Let’s start wrapping up. Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much?

There is no shortage of quotes from aspiring leaders that cross my desk but the one that is top of mind right now comes from Ms. Serena Williams. She had just announced her retirement from professional tennis during her last US Open tournament. She defeated №2 Anett Kontaveit of Estonia when after her win she was asked by a reporter if she was surprised by her performance. She responded, with a chuckle, “I’m just Serena”. And the crowd roared.

I’ll admit I have watched that media clip dozens of times at this point and each time I still feel chills and tears well up. At first I wasn’t sure why I was so emotional at such a simple statement but the more I listened to it the more aware I became of a couple things. First, why do we still ask accomplished women if they are surprised at their success? No, of course Serena Williams is not surprised at her performance. She put in the work. We all put in the work. The work that often goes unseen and uncelebrated. There were thousands of hours of tears and barriers that she overcame to get to that moment.

And secondly, yes, she is “..just Serena”. As female leaders there are so many archetypes that exist and the pressure to fit into any of them can be intense and intimidating. To be a leader you are often told you must be; ambitious, an extrovert, aggressive, relentless, etc. the list goes on.

But isn’t it enough to just be you?

When I listen to Serena say “I’m just Serena”, I feel a sense of relief that is enough to just be you.

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

Aside from my obsession with watching Serena Williams clips, I also admire Latina leaders that are using their platform to mobilize the Latino community. One Latina that I admire is America Ferrera. From representing Latinas in the media to raising the voices of Latino communities in entertainment and politics, she has done such an incredible job of advocating for Latinos to vote for the things that matter to them and their communities. Watching her mobilize our community around shared values is truly inspiring. And she does all that while raising toddlers! America, let’s do lunch soon to talk about how to combine forces to strengthen the voice and visibility of Latino communities!

I appreciate your time and valuable contribution. One last question, how can people reach or follow you?

You can follow me on social media — LinkedIn and Twitter and follow our company here to learn more about our work.

Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success.

About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.