Season 1 Ep. 1: How Blockchain Technology is Transforming Healthcare with Emily Bailey

0:11

Welcome to the ladies who lead the podcast. I'm your host, SK Vaughn. This is a community of women supporting women. Each week we'll hear from ordinary ladies doing extraordinary things that will cover topics like diversity and inclusion, gender, pay gap, and respect in the workplace. We want to celebrate with you and hear stories of success and hard lessons learned. Whether you're a lady you these in the boardroom or a lady who leads in your community, this is a place for you. So buckle up girlfriend. Let's do this.

0:52

Emily Bailey works as the Product Director for Blockchain Technology at Change Healthcare, a leading data analytics company in healthcare based in Nashville, Tennessee. she directs the company's adoption strategy for decentralized technology. its application to healthcare claims in payments, consumer engagement, and clinical data. Emily has been investing in Bitcoin since 2013 and began her career in cryptocurrency at BitPay. In Atlanta as a marketing director. She has developed subject matter expertise in marketing, business development, and product development for blockchain technology across a variety of industries and international markets. She graduated from the University of Alabama in 2012, and currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and toddler. Welcome, Emily. I'm excited to be here. I'm really excited you're doing this podcast and being able to share

1:45

my crazy journey. So, thanks for inviting me. Of course, yes, I'm so excited that you're here. I always do this with the podcast, I think it's a fun way to kind of begin and just kind of get the ball rolling here. I like to start off with how are you surviving this week? And how are you thriving this week, because hashtag thriving Thursday, is something that we really believe in here, at least to the podcast? I'll just go first, as you're starting to kind of think through that. This week. For myself, I'm surviving. In the last couple of months, I'm trying to fill two positions. I'm doing a digital marketing position, as well as a project manager position for my marketing team. So currently, I'm wearing many, many hats, right? And so just trying to cover my bases with three different positions has been really interesting the last couple of months, and just giving me really creative opportunities to learn and grow and stretch myself.

 How am I thriving this week? Well, I think it's the little random acts of kindness that we can do. For other people, I'd had a really interesting week where it just felt like nothing was really going right. Unfortunately, some deadlines weren't getting met. And so, it's a little bit frustrating. And true SK fashion, I decided to get in my happy place, right, which is anthropology. I walked in for lunch and just looked around and just absorbed all the beautiful colors and curated space. And I came back to my surprise, one of my team members went out of their way and had picked flowers from her front yard, and put them in a vase, and it was just so beautiful and thoughtful. And it completely changed my entire perspective the rest of that day and on through the week. And so I think it just goes to show like just little random acts of kindness that we can do for others just really makes that difference. So that's how I'm currently surviving and thriving this week. What about you, Emily?

3:30

Yeah, I can definitely relate to the sense of peace of wandering through anthropology and getting your visual aesthetics. And

3:41

I would say, you know, I'm surviving this week for my company, the end of the fiscal year is actually in March. So all of the Year-End financial planning that a lot of people do in December is we do in March. So we've been doing a lot of our kind of closing the books and then looking at the budget for the next fiscal year. The last couple of weeks have been

4:09

pretty intensive as you know, navigate the new year. And, and so, for me, just kind of trying to stay on top of that I'm not really a spreadsheet person and so I've had to kind of get out of my comfort zone and talk to a lot of people and ask for help to make sure that my ducks in a row and then how am I thriving Well, um, I guess during this period of time, you know, it's kind of a there's a little bit of a waiting period too, while you're kind of waiting on finance and accounting to get back to get back in touch with you on certain things. In the meantime, while we're waiting for those types of conversations, I and you know, spring cleaning, taking my mudroom apart

5:00

Have my Christmas tree away this weekend.

5:03

Love it. And my house in order for the spring, so nothing like the last minute to take your Christmas tree down. But we felt like the changing of the seasons was a good enough time to bring that in.

5:17

I love that. It's so funny. I still have Santa’s legs dangling in my fireplace, unfortunately. So, I hear you.

5:26

We just, but you know we can really extend to the joy for a few more months. Right? It's been that kind of year. So, I think we all deserve that.

5:35

Exactly. So, let's go back to the beginning. Right. So really tell us your story from you know, beginning from graduation to within the tech industry? How did you get to where you are today?

5:48

Oh, yeah, well, it's, it was crazy. I guess from my perspective, this was kind of crazy. I. So my major was in international relations. And I always thought that I would go into something policy-related, maybe I would work for the State Department, or, or even go into politics.

6:09

My goal with that was that I really wanted to, I really wanted to focus my time on things that have a human impact, and could really help the world transition from an analog society

6:25

to a more interconnected society that can leverage all the technology that has been brought forward, I suppose, I wasn't really thinking about tech as a career focus for me just more the human impact of having access to information and being able to participate in a global online marketplace, for example.

6:48

So when I graduated,, I didn't really know what I was going to do, I decided I had a professor there kind of wisely, he recommended that I not pursue a career in policy and politics, he basically told me my senior year, you know, on that type of track, it would take a really long time to get to where you needed to go to make an impact. And that I would be better off pursuing a career in tech, or finance. And

7:18

I was so deflated by that because I didn't have an educational background in tech or finance. I was like, okay, well, I guess I'll just figure this out. And then around that time, my, my boyfriend at the time, who is now my husband, he was getting into bitcoin, he has a background in finance, and he just sort of found Bitcoin online, this was around 2012. And he was just researching it, then. And then he got really into it and was talking to me about it all the time. And, and I went with him to a conference in 2013. And he had asked me to go with him because there were no other women there, these conferences where people were talking about Bitcoin, and I went with him to Atlanta, just to kind of see what it was all about. And, and I had a bit of an epiphany, I guess, I realized that as a technology, there's a lot of promise that Bitcoin has a lot of empowerment that it can bring people who don't participate in the financial markets today, the underbanked population, I saw it as a way to kind of

8:38

a sense of freedom online. And I was really inspired by that. And, and that was a really early time for the Bitcoin industry that it was still a very small industry. And maybe I was in the right place at the right time. But I invested a little bit of my savings into bitcoin and, and use my earnings from that to, to kind of navigate my way through the industry have traveled to conferences all over the world, and eventually found myself

9:11

you know, introduced to the people at BitPay. And I and I, you know, convinced them to hire me, so I got my first job in the Bitcoin industry. Around that time, I kind of had to hustle my way into to the industry, especially back then, you know, nobody was hiring marketing directors, it was all software developers and designers and technical folks, but I, I kind of made a case for myself and, and that's how I got started on that journey. I love that that's really, really cool. So, you throw out the word Bitcoin a lot, and we hear that often, especially in the last year, usually in association with cryptocurrency to tell us for our listeners who may or may not know like, what is Bitcoin?

10:00

Bitcoin is it digital currency, it is a type of internet application, you can think of an email type of application that runs on the internet. Bitcoin is not controlled by a single company. It's something that 1000s of computers all over the world can just download and start running on their devices. And as a result of its

10:29

its ability to sort of spread that way. It's used as an online currency. So, you have people that use Bitcoin to pay for goods and services, you have people who use Bitcoin to transfer money internationally, a lot of people are investing in Bitcoin and just holding it like a savings account, that's like what I do. And it really is like a financial asset, that is a product of the internet. So um, you know, unlike dollars and Euros, which are typically issued by banks, and or, you know, backed by governments and issued by central banks, Bitcoin is,

11:13

is a product of computing and, and different computers that are performing a program a programmatic function to produce Bitcoin? So, it's a bit more egalitarian and who can produce it, and who can use it. And

11:31

because it isn't owned by any single organization, it's very resilient to attack. It's been around for over 10 years, well, about 10 years, over 10 years. And it has been a, you know, pretty resilient to hacking and other types of

11:52

systems that could, that could take down a central money supply. It's really cool. You are the product director for blockchain technology at Change Healthcare, blockchain technology in that role. How are you leveraging it? What makes Bitcoin work? It's like an accounting system. For the internet. Bitcoin is not just a digital currency, it's a whole system of how the tokens are generated by these computers, and how they are tracked as they're transferred from computer to

12:25

either a person to person, organization, or organization all over the world. So, in order to keep track of all of the Bitcoin, in the money supply, there is a blockchain-distributed ledger. It's a type of ledger, that all of the transactions that make up the Bitcoin network is comprised of and so whenever, whenever a person sends Bitcoin, that transaction is recorded to this ledger. And the ledger is duplicated and synchronized across 1000s of computers. So blockchain technology, the idea of using this accounting infrastructure, to apply it to other use cases, cropped up in 2015. And so, with the development and launch of Ethereum, so Ethereum is kind of is another program like Bitcoin, but Ethereum didn't want to just focus on being a financial accounting system.

13:33

Ethereum is more like a global computer is how they describe it. And so, it's for, for computing logic. And so, the idea is that you can use this blockchain to account for any type of good that can be represented digitally or any type of process that can be represented digitally. And you could use that to orchestrate workflows or automation between machines, similar to how Bitcoin can be transferred between multiple people. So, in healthcare we have

14:11

we have a lot of different assets that can be represented on a blockchain and we have a lot of centralization of how information is processed and how value is transferred. In fact, healthcare as most people have experienced can still be pretty much a paper-based process, you can send a fax machine to file an insurance claim, you receive an explanation of benefits in the mail. Every time you visit a doctor or a service is charged against your insurance policy. So, healthcare has some antiquated forms of communication and information processing that could potentially benefit from having an accounting system that spans the entire industry.

15:00

Rather than having an accounting system that's contained within all of these different companies, so some of the value propositions that get thrown around are like tearing down data silos, like the idea that all of these different healthcare companies have information within their walls. Their ability to communicate with other healthcare companies is limited by the languages that they speak and the fact that the systems are not interoperable. The idea that each of these systems could run a blockchain ledger, and be able to have the same record of information, and they could synchronize transactions between these organizations, that has a lot of promise in healthcare. So change healthcare, or the company I work for is a network infrastructure company. We provide network services to health insurance claims processing, healthcare payments, and electronic health records. That, you know, doctors are using to keep track of your clinical data. And we transact with 1000s of doctors, 1000s of insurance companies, it's a large company that does quite a bit of volume for the healthcare industry. And so because we're already in the business of providing network infrastructure, we see blockchain technology as another type of network that we could integrate with our systems to provide more streamlined information exchange across the industry, reduce the cost of exchanging information, and, and create a more modern internet for the healthcare system. It's a big, big problem to solve. And it's challenging, like some of the biggest challenges that we have to think about are,

16:54

are the fact that there is an individual physician's office in a small town in Kansas? And you know, they've been doing things a certain way, maybe even for decades, and trying to get that last mile of adoption, where the greatest impact can be made, is really difficult. So, if even if a company a large company implements some big network change, trying to actually see the adoption happen across the entire landscape, and making sure that it's providing value to even, you know, the smallest contributor at the edge of the network is, is, is a big problem to overcome.

17:35

Wow, tell me about your personal challenges with making this happen, because you're really one of the few people pioneering this in the healthcare industry. Right. Yeah, it's been a,

17:46

it's been an adventure. You know, personally, when I first got into it, I, what I, you know, I was more of an I have been more of a subject matter expert in blockchain technology, and how these networks work in the context of Bitcoin and Ethereum. And this style of application, design, and network design, I didn't really have a lot of domain knowledge, we call it and the healthcare industry like I didn't really, I didn't really know how the healthcare systems worked. And I wasn't really intimately familiar with the kinds of problems that they have. Going from working in the blockchain industry to working in the healthcare industry, I had to

18:39

had to learn a lot and, and there is so much to learn, I'm still definitely still a student in understanding healthcare information systems. And,

18:51

and it's necessary to really get that deep in order to design a system that's useful and functional. And so some of the challenges are me wanting to see results really fast and want to build

19:07

proofs of concepts and products that can go into the market as quickly as possible. And we can grow from there and realizing that it takes a lot of time to do the necessary research to design the right product. And I'm, I struggle with impatience on a lot of these things.

19:26

But it's also I think, another thing that's been kind of a challenge for me is, I was really young, when I got started in this working on a technology that nobody understands is it's an interesting position to be put in when you're sitting across a boardroom of a bunch of guys in suits, who've been doing this for 20 years. You know, the kind of conversation that we have is

19:55

it can get really tense because I see

20:00

See things the way I see them because I'm a product of my environment and experience. And they see things the way they see things because they're a product of their environment and experience. The conversations have evolved in the, you know, seven years that I've been doing this, eight years that I've been doing this.

20:20

But early on, it was really hard to get people to see past my youth and my passion and see the merit and the truth is the technology that I was there to talk about, I think, you know, if people could take one look at me and say, Oh, this is just some, you know, upstart technology, it's got a lot of young guns behind it. We don't know how seriously we need to be taking this. But over the years, I'm just being consistent continuing to show up letting the market prove me, right, where I couldn't prove myself, right.

20:57

I think that that's, that's really helped with how the conversations go. Now, I think I've definitely earned my stripes amongst some of these people. Yeah, that's a really powerful message that I hope our audience kind of hears and resonates with, because I feel like no matter what industry you go into, or what job you have, coming in young and very passionate can sometimes pose a lot of interesting opportunities, and some really fun conversations along the way. I appreciate you sharing your truth with that. So, you are a mom. How do you find a balance between work and family?

21:34

I get asked this question a lot. And I think it is something that all women struggle with. And it's not something, it's something that's always changing. You know, as soon as you find a balance, your child grows and learns something new. And now, you know, you're in new territory again, and you're having to rebalance. I think of work-life balance, as something that I'm constantly working on, as I evolve as our family grows as our daughter grows. So initially, it was really hard for me though, because I was the kind of person who was, I don't want to say I was like a workaholic. But I was very career-driven. And prior to having a daughter and, and being, you know, married and having a family to be thinking about, I was just very career-oriented, I would, you know, get up at six in the morning, and I'd be on my email before I even got out of bed.

22:35

I would work way late, I would go to happy hours with my coworkers. And I was living, I was really living a very blurred line between personal life and professional life. And I was very invested in my career and in my self-image as a professional individual. And when I had a baby, this was also like, right around the time that I that we were getting married. We got married, we had a baby, we bought a house, there were a lot of changes that took place in a really short amount of time, and adjusting to that was a challenge for me. And so I had to think about its kind of like working out, where you can't just think about your end goal, or you will be miserable during the daily work that's required to get to your end goal. Instead of trying to think about like, who I would rather be in, and then and then wanting to,

23:36

like, pursue that idea, I focused on the things that that person would be doing and then trying to do as many of those things as I could every day. So, I identified, you know, three things that I think the ideal working mom would have going on, she would be

23:57

working out and would have a healthy social life. And she in my case would be also working on creative projects that are fulfilling to her creative sense because I'm a creative person, and I'm working on creative projects that make me feel good. So, um, so you know, I can, I don't have time every day to work a full-time job, be super plugged in with my daughter, and attentive to my family and be social and work out and be creative. But I can try to do two of those things every day, or at least one of those things every day. And so, focusing on you know, whether I make it to a class for yoga, or if I call my friends and I catch up with them. Or if I spend some time like journaling or painting or working on something digital. If I could just focus on those little tasks every day. It would help me reclaim a sense of myself. While

25:00

Also, you know, not getting caught up in the sort of banalities of, of domestic life. And so that was something that really helped me stay afloat. And then it became a really good basis for trying to organize my routine.

25:19

Wow, I love that. And I feel like that. So, I feel like I, you touched on, like everything that I was thinking, and I'm not a mom. But being that kind of workaholic, at least I can say that for myself at times, right? I can admit that kind of just being career-focused at times, it's really hard to find intentional time, for even sometimes the people that you love the most, and I think that's so important, and so needed to have some intentional time that's carved out to really celebrate yourself and those around you, the big wins the little wins, you know, how do you take time to celebrate wins for yourself, you know, I think that it's, it really is important to celebrate yourself when you can, for you know, I think for me, this is something that I have to really work hard to carve out, I almost have to give myself permission to,

26:12

to, you know, treat myself or, or do something like purely self-interested. And so, what I realize is that there, you know, it's not like my husband or my daughter, or even my job is saying that I can't do these things they will all want me to, it's really telling myself, like, you can take the time to do this. And you should, because you deserve it. And so, you know, everybody's motivated a little bit differently, I tend to be socially and financially motivated. So, if I'm spending money on something, I will show up, because I don't want to waste my money. If I am doing something that involves other people, I'll show up because I don't want to lose face. And so

26:57

recently, I started,

27:00

I started working like, at a private gym with a personal trainer. And

27:06

it was something that I really wanted to do because I want to feel confident and strong. And with this pandemic, it's been like a year since I was really in a gym and or going to yoga classes regularly. But, um, but I wanted to be doing that, you know, right now, and specifically, you know, this summer, I want to feel really strong and confident in myself. And so, so I signed up for this like program, and I paid for it upfront. And so now it's like, I'm going to these classes because I'm gonna get my money's worth of this. And also, you know, when I'm on the other side of this program, I'm going to be proud that I did it. And, and then the rest of it is just adjusting my schedule so that I can make time to do that without taking away from other things. But I found that it was easier for me to make the commitment that I thought and hidden just through there, like working through the awkwardness of

28:09

adding something new to your routine, but that's how I work. Yes, and I think we take time to celebrate yourself and, you know, show a little love to yourself, you care for others so much more and better, right? Like, I feel like it kind of has a trickle-down effect when you take time to breathe and to do the things that you need to do to set yourself up like, it definitely has like a trickle-down effect, I think so that's really cool that you're taking time to do that for you, especially in a challenging year that we've had so good for you, I love that

28:39

it can be really hard to celebrate yourself or nurture yourself, but it's necessary because we all need to feel nurtured and taken care of. And when you're the mom or when you're the working mom or you're just the hard-working girl, you know girl boss, whatever.

28:57

You spend so much time you know in a position of nurturing others we're working hard for your work and if you don't take time to show yourself that level of

29:12

or it can be it can create tensions, insecurities, a feeling of not being appreciated. And I think it's really important to appreciate yourself first and kind of set the bar there for making sure that your basic needs are met, emotionally, mentally, and then from there. It takes the pressure off of everything else in life to be fully linked to you. That was something that was such a hard lesson for me. You know, becoming a mom is I realized that I was always seeking for my career to be the primary source of fulfillment and confidence that I was getting. You know, I was so competitive and I was working so hard.

30:01

And I wanted to feel empowered by this, but I always felt, you know, like, no matter how hard I work, it's, you know, I could have done something better, I started having really perfectionist, you know, expectations around myself. And when I became a mom, I realized that there are lots of different avenues for contentment and confidence, and self-fulfillment in our lives. And, and it doesn't have to all come from one place, it doesn't have to come from just hard work. So it was nice to be able to slow down a little bit. And, and compartmentalize and think about the different things that we spend our time on and what they're doing for us. So yeah, it's been a process for me to even learn to take time for myself, but, but it's something that I do now, because it doesn't just benefit me, but everyone else around me. Looking back, if you didn't know that, I placed it in a time capsule, what would you have told your younger self? Yeah, you know, I would have definitely told my younger self to buy more Bitcoin, and not sell it all. So, to give me some financial advice that I needed, now that I have the future perspective to guide me, my advice to my younger self would have been to really,

31:28

I think it kind of goes back to what I was saying about fulfillment is, you know, don't look for your career to be the source of all fulfillment in your life. Otherwise, you're putting an unnecessary burden on yourself and on your job to make you the happiest that you can be. And to help you fulfill your truest potential. At the end of the day, you know, life can provide a lot of different things. And so, I think that I was so singularly focused when I was getting out of college that I just wanted to find the best job because that would provide me with the most opportunities to fulfill my potential. And, you know, I let a lot of personal relationships slip, and I lost, you know, I feel like there's time that I can't get back that if I had had a better presence of mind, I could have maybe spent that better with my family with my friends. But, um, but I also just wasted a lot of time pursuing, you know, competitiveness and meaning in work, that was good work to do. But I felt like other people that were around me, had a better sense of work-life balance like they,

32:43

they knew when to turn off and until, like, you know, be present in a moment. I just was

32:51

not quite thinking that way. So, I think my future my current self, looking back to my younger self, would be some advice that I would offer. That's great advice. Absolutely. Great advice. I'm still taking some of those notes right now. I'm like, Oh, I need to focus on that a little bit more.

So, it is now time. For “The leading Ladies We Love” rapid-fire game. Drumroll please. So, Emily, this is kind of a quick, like rapid-fire game. Like I mentioned, I'm going to list adjectives of like women that we love, who were like, leaving in their industries or at home or in their community. And I'm going to say a list of adjectives. And I would love for you to respond with a shout-out to one of your friends, family, hero, whoever it may be. Are you ready for this?

Yeah. All right, let's do it.

First word… Hero.

A hero would be my mom. Oh my gosh, especially since having a baby. She has just shown up every single time I've asked for help and

33:50

and she has always worked so hard to provide for us and to pursue her own self. She's definitely my hero.

Brilliant…

 Okay, brilliant.

34:01

Definitely. I think Matt one man is brilliant. She is a good friend of mine, who I used to work with and she now has her own podcast and LinkedIn learning

34:18

content and she focuses on the self-made millennial and advice for millennials who are navigating their career.

That's awesome, powerhouse…

34:30

Powerhouse. My friend Danny, she just had a baby. And she is

a powerhouse like she takes on so much with her work and right now being a mom, and just the intensity and focus that she pursues, like with his made her you know, unstoppable, inspiring.

Inspiring…

34:56

You know, I have always been really inspired by

35:00

JK Rowling, I just love her story of being a single mom struggling financially, and, and discovering this creative story inside of her, that became the Harry Potter series, you know, scrawling it on the back of a napkin, while writing on it.

35:21

And then the next thing you know, she's one of the richest women in the UK, I just, and she did this when she was in her like, the mid to late 30s. So, I just think that's such a great story of like inspiration, being able to find you at any moment in your life and just, you know, having the,

35:41

like commitment to stick with it and finish your story and really pursue your creative ends. I've always been very inspired by her story and her success.

Okay, the next word is leader…

36:01

The CEO of 23andme is a really cool leader. I mean, she's an entrepreneur, she started 23andme, when the whole idea of consumer genetics services was relatively new. And I have, I just heard her speak a few times at conferences and on podcasts. And I think that she has a really good knack for leadership and building a company culture that has produced a fantastic product. And I, like the decisions that she's made with 23andme, especially with regards to consumer privacy and protecting her, you know, her users and their best interest. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

Emily, before we go, please tell our listeners how they can find you. Yeah, so my social on Twitter handle is bitsmash, bat, smash. And I'm also on LinkedIn, under bitSmash. You can find me there. Also, Emily Bailey. Okay, great. Well, I appreciate your time. And it is always a joy to get to speak with you and hear your story.

Yeah, happy to help. I'm excited for you to get started. Thanks for inviting me.

37:25

Thank you for listening to another episode of the ladies who lead podcast Don't forget to rate and review us anywhere you can listen to our podcast and don't forget to check out our show notes to find out other ways to connect. Until next time. I'm SK Vaughn