From Surgeon to CEO, Mission-Driven Leadership in Healthcare (ft. Marlon Levy MD)

- Welcome to Digital Voices. We're healthcare and life science leaders explore the real work behind transformation. This podcast is about people, leadership, and the conversations that move healthcare forward.

Now you're host, Ed Marks. - Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. Thank you so much for listening and following us, we just hit our 1.6 million download. And it's because of great guests,

like Dr. Marlin BV, Arlin, welcome to Digital Voices. - Thank you, Ed. It's absolutely thrilled to be here with you. - No, it's a fellow text in.

We'll get into your story a little bit. But you're the CEO of BCU Health System. And that is just amazing. I mean, we're gonna talk about BCU. I've had an opportunity to visit it.

It's so impressed and so amazed, so I'm really looking forward to getting into this.

“And I think that's the first time we met in person,”

even though we both have a Texas roots is when I was on the campus and with your board, your retreat and with your leadership team. So that was the first time.

But Marlin, the most important question

that we have in this entire together are what songs are on your playlist? What kind of music do you like to listen to? - Oh, so that's the one question that's gonna cause me the greatest anxiety

and I'll tell you why. And that's because people are immediately gonna tune out and go this dude is just too square. He's just not hip. So I kind of knew this question would be coming

'cause I did a little homework on your podcast. So let me just lay it out there that sadly, I'm probably as square as I seem to be. These days, I would say the last few weeks to months, I've kind of been tripping down memory lane

and going back to songs that I listened to and more artists I listened to and heavy rotation. Maybe I don't know, 15 to even 20 years ago. So who would that be? Well, for example, Casey Chambers,

L'I love it, John Pryne, John Osborn, people like that, songs that tell the story and that feel like they have a real human connection. - Yeah, no, I love it. Well, look at me, I'm wearing a Fleetwood Max shirt.

- So there you go, yeah. - So that's not on my playlist, no offense, but it is what it is. - But it goes back and harkens back at a different date. What about life, message and mantra?

But there are sort of words that you live by or quotes that sort of guide you. - I don't know if I can pull a specific quote. I'd say more a frame of mind of what I would be guided by and that is a sense of optimism.

I tend to be a guy that focuses on what's coming next, what does a future hold, how can we shape it? I think I heard maybe somebody from Stanford say

“the best way to predict a future is to invent it.”

I wouldn't say that's my mantra, but I do get accused.

I think very fairly to have my brain always two

or three years in the future and not enough in the past and maybe people are telling me I need to sort lessons a little bit better, but I would say a real sense of optimism and of what's possible, of entrepreneurial ship. That's what mentality.

- No, I love that. - So let's talk a little bit about you. We're gonna get it into VCU in a minute. But who are you? What is your story?

We know a little bit already, you have some text and roots, but tell us about your life growing up. - Yeah, so I guess I should start at the beginning, but I'll start at not so much at the beginning, but how I've landed here,

so a career transplant surgeon, abdominal transplants, right, liver kidney pancreas, multi-organ transplant now, more than 30 years into it. I sometimes think of myself as an accidental CEO

because that never was on the map.

And we can talk a little bit about the professional journey. But the roots go way back.

“I would say that career in medicine was probably”

from the age of 15 onwards, was where I wanted to be, not necessarily in surgery, that came a little bit later, but the idea of being, you know, helping profession and in medicine was definitely part of that,

but a long career as a transplant surgeon, taking care of individual patients, but also leading and organizing teams and developing projects. That all led me to being recruited to VCU

now 10 years ago to lead their transplant team, which was an incredible honor, and I thought that was really the top of the mountain, and it is for a transplant surgeon to be able to lead an academic medical center,

particularly a transplant program like VCU that has such a rich history, 62 year history at the time. And then I ended up going to business school, thinking I needed to shore up the business of running a transplant team,

and one thing led to another, and so I landed in this office now three years ago. - Wow, was there a pivotal moment in life whether it was, you know, as a 15 year old or later in your career,

that fundamentally changed your trajectory? - Yeah, I think there was. I would point to two. One is at H10, my family immigrated,

and so as a 10 year old, I was parachuted into Texas of all places, knowing not a word of English, and not having to reinvent myself,

“'cause I may every 10 year old reinvent themselves, right?”

But definitely, being parachuted into the United States was one has to think of as a pivotal moment in anyone's life, for given the enormous opportunities and the fantastic things that can and do happen in this country. And the other moment I would point to

was being accepted for a medical school, getting that lighter that says you're in, which for almost everybody who receives such a lighter, that charts a course now, that course has many different avenues, right?

It's a very broad field medicine, but definitely I think it's, again, a defining moment in anyone's life who receives and finally receives that acceptance notice. - I didn't know that about you,

and I had the same journey as a 10 year old, but I came from Germany. - Oh, okay. - Right it. - And we get along.

France and Germany get along these days. How cool is that? - Yeah, Germany's still a little bit better in soccer, but you know, it's all good. - Well, it is what it is, I hear you.

“I think the French wine is better than you, German wine.”

- Yes, yeah, I know that about that. - No, that's fascinating. We'll have the next time we're together, we'll talk more about that, it's super fascinating. So I'm also fascinated by transplant,

and obviously a very small percentage or our listeners would be able to relate to being a transplant surgeon. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Like, I know we can't get into any super specifics,

but tell us about like, what that's like, especially like a multi-organ transplant,

but first of all, it's an incredible career

to be able to, from one human to another, to be able to step into another human's life, and in a matter of seemingly a matter of a few hours, which is a transplant episode, literally save someone's life

or significantly extend or prolong life, it's an incredible privilege. And a lot of doctors and nurses, a lot of healthcare professionals, of course, can say that, but that to me really helps

to define transplantation. And the idea of fundamentally that often, it's a field that gets to turn, not necessarily turn tragedy into triumph, but get to triumph despite a tragedy.

So folks who pass away, who donate their organs, but that's still the predominant transplant world wide, certainly in the United States, organs from people who have passed on, and to be able to give new life, extend life,

“despite the fact that one life is ended,”

is incredibly fantastic. Again, I use the words "gift" and privilege, 'cause that's what it is to me. Early in my career, I was doing a, I think it may have been a media,

and you may have been television at the time. I don't think podcasts existed, and I described the whole episode as miraculous, and I still feel that way.

It's just incredible to think that one can do that.

And of course, for an obsessive, compulsive professional, who is a perfectionist and detail-oriented, a transplants, particularly liver transplants, which has been a lot of my career, are technically very demanding,

they're physically demanding, they're long operations, they demand incredible precision and judgment. And so all of those things, of course, are very gratifying to people like me with big egos, you know?

- Yeah, that's amazing. I'm so thankful for clinicians like yourself who dedicate their life to that work. And yeah, do that. It'd be fun to talk about the tech changes as well.

Like you said, especially in a VCU, where I think he said, was 67 years history, or 60 plus years. - Yeah, at least. I mean, first transplanted here,

a disintroduction in 1957, before I was,

why I was even born, so yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, so grateful for that, for that capability. Let's talk about VCU, can you share a little bit about the heart of VCU? - Absolutely, VCU is an amazing place. So it's an academic health system anchored by

an academic medical center, a very large set of hospitals on the downtown campus in Richmond, you know, mid-sized city. I think the population of Richmond area is about 1.2, 1.3 million, so definitely not a metropolis

the way that we have in other parts of the country, but still a vibrant, urban environment. I'm often asked, hey, Libby, what are you guys? Are you an academic medical center where there's a bunch of research and discovery

or are you a safety net hospital? People try to pin me down into an either or, right? And I give them the Bo Jackson answer, or maybe the deon Sanders answer, which is where both. And we are both.

So largest safety net hospital in Virginia, 50,000 hospital discharges, 1.3 million outpatient visits a year, our territory spans 300 square miles, 15,000 team members, just an incredible enterprise. I would say the defining characteristic of this institution,

The people here really are so focused and so intent on giving back and on doing their best on helping others in time of need. And like in so many hospitals, when people are in the hospital,

they're at a very vulnerable point in their life and having some of the worst days of their life. And to be part of the team that helps them through that, very often quite successfully is amazing. - Yeah.

- No, that's really great. And I did take an opportunity to walk through some of the hospitals and the children's hospital. And I have a sense from everyone that I just walk through, you know, like a lobby or what have you.

And sure, you can just tell by the interactions, by the way, people held themselves that they were really proud of what they were doing and a very mission focused. So let's talk and pivot a little bit around technology.

How do you, as a CEO, view technology, like digital capabilities? - Yeah, it's a big board. That is seems like the question of the moment. Every meeting I go to, probably for the last 12 months,

but definitely over the last six months,

“the only thing, any healthcare executive or my peers”

are speaking about is AI, what to do with it, how to harness it, how to understand what they call the value proposition, right? 'Cause we are literally, we are bombarded by folks who are trying to tell us that their system,

their product, their whatever's gonna unlock incredible efficiencies and so forth. And it's not that they won't. It's just, we're still scratching our heads, trying to understand, what does that,

you know, in financial terms and in operational terms, what does that really mean?

Is it gonna help us solve some really critical labor issues

that we have with finding qualified staff to help us take care of the patients, or read our X-rays, or what have you. So just a real, I think, existential moment in healthcare about what is in the technology space

that will help us deliver the mission and take care of these patients that we're talking about. So a lot of unknown unknowns, as they say, and I think the jobs to try to navigate that as best we can. Healthcare is immensely technology dependent

as all industries are. We're also, I think in many ways, lagging other industries, retail, travel, banking, financial services, all of those things have deployed technology in ways that are much more sophisticated

than healthcare has. And so I think a lot of us are trying to understand, how do we get there faster? How do we get there better smarter? How do we not waste financial resources

that are so precious, 'cause we need them? Those are the conversations that we're having and the things that we think about. - Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

“And you have to take a very measured approach like you are.”

And you're fortunate, you have an amazing, I have to make a shout out to your tech leadership and LN, you know, she's like the, she just won this national award for best CIO and healthcare, and the other members,

you see my O and your analytics officer. They are great, great leaders. So you're very blessed in that way. - Yeah, I appreciate you're saying that. They're so emblematic of the people

that we have at VCU and, you know, most of them don't touch the patients, but boy,

they're absolutely essential to those of us

who do touch the patients, incredible. - So what advice, Maran, might you give to a tech leader? So a lot of our audience are come from sort of technical roles could be a CIO like LN or they may be a director, but the spires, you know, to not everyone,

but many people aspire to be in the C-Sweet. And what advice might you give to a tech leader that has sort of that aspiration to continue to grow in their career and how they should ideally interact with the CIO or other members of the C-Sweet?

- Yeah, well in healthcare in particular,

“I think what's essential is to understand the journey”

that the nurses and the doctors have gone through, but also go through, what's it like to be at the bedside, what's it like to be having very difficult conversations with patients who, you know, are so afraid of hearing parable news about them or about their loved ones,

who want to understand how to heal, how to get better. I think that one doesn't have to be a medical professional to run a complex healthcare organization, but if one is not, one definitely needs to understand what makes nurses and doctors and other healthcare

professionals tick and how do they see the world? You know, how do they prioritize the things that they should prioritize on?

I think that's essential.

It's also important, I think, to a healthy amount of humility, to really not only know what you don't know, but to confess what you don't know. And you were asking me a little earlier about are there some words that I live by?

is I don't know, I know what I don't know or I don't know when somebody asked me the answer.

“I think I don't think it's a CIO's job to know, actually.”

I think it's a CIO's job to know when they don't know. And to know who to turn to to get the answer that they need to get if that makes sense. - Yeah, absolutely. No, is it those fantastic insights?

And I know I can speak for the audience that they appreciate hearing that from a CIO, because yeah, a lot of times I think just we're sort of forced down this route of having to know everything or I think we have to know everything which is impossible.

And so that really frees I think people up quite a bit, thank you. So let's shift now more to leadership. We talked a lot about your journey, sort of growing up in your career and transplant. What are one or two key skills that you think

when you look back, have sort of enabled your leadership transformation as you went from, you know, surgeon to leading transplant teams to being a CIO? - Well, of course you'd have to ask other people what my skills are. I think we're often blind to our own skills.

What I wish people would say is a following. I wish people would say that this guy listens well in his more of a listener than he is a talker. That's probably a stretch 'cause I kind of be a little, I tend to be a little talkative.

But really I think that's a trait that would serve all leaders really well is to speak with our ears, if you will. And to be great listeners and to pay attention to what people are saying,

“to pay attention to what they're not saying, equally important.”

- Where do you go when you feel drained or maybe looking for creative inspiration? You know, we all deal with sort of burnout in our industry. How do you sort of refresh or replenish yourself?

- Yeah, another great question,

'cause I think that's so essential

and I've gotten older. I try to pay much more attention to personal health, to obviously nutrition, sleep, exercise, weight management, all of those things that we humans should be doing. But in my personality profile,

I thought I'd lean to extrovert, turns out I'd probably lean to introvert. And so when I need to refresh, I usually turn inward a little bit. I go walk the dog, I go exercise,

I try to unplug and not necessarily look outward, but more power down, if you will, and be more reflective. Sometimes when I have trouble sleeping, I don't, I don't fight it.

I just lay there and just let my brain go. I often turn out to solve a lot of problems that way. Actually, or at least, I think I do. I'm that person that tends a little bit more inward when you need to de-stress.

- Yeah. - Yeah, I like that. What is one thing that you learn the hard way? Oh, what I learn the hard way is that you've got to fail before you before you succeed.

And other people, what I consider being really great accomplish people, when St. Churchill, for example, has famously said that, if you don't have failure,

you'll never have success.

So that's probably the hardest lesson is when things don't work out to get past the emotional pain of that and understand, okay, what are the lessons for me here and how can I do it better? And sadly, that happens in medicine,

sometimes that the expense, if you will, of people's lives, and it happens to all surgeons, it's happened to me in my career. And you know, you want it to happen as least as possible, but when it happens, it's devastating.

And you've got to pick up the pieces and move on 'cause if you don't, then you can't help the next person comes along, right? - Yeah, yeah, that's tough. What's something that your parents made you do, Marlon,

as a kid that maybe you rolled your eyes a little bit, figuratively or otherwise, but then in hindsight, like today, you look back and you're like, "Man, I'm glad they sort of made you do that." - Yeah, I'll have to think about that a little bit.

- My parents definitely were my heroes. I know it sounds very cliche, but I think if you were to ask me who shaped my life, the way that they did, but definitely it was then not so much by beating me into it.

It's not at all, actually, because that never happened,

but by modeling it, by modeling a hard word, by modeling curiosity and interest, by modeling ethical behavior. I think that's probably the biggest lesson and the most impactful things that I could point to.

- Yeah, no, they sound like fabulous people. Like I said, someday it'll be fun to learn a little bit more about journey from France. So, Marlon, this has been amazing. Everything from, talk about songs on your playlist

and we covered some of the words that you would buy, including I think the one that you emphasized later in our conversation was, "Hey, I don't know." And it's okay to say that. Learn a little bit about you growing up as a mention

in your career and your development. And then we talked about leadership

“because some of the important things that I think”

the main thing that came out is really listening more than you talk. And then learn a lot about how you sort of decompress

What did we miss or anything you want to double down on? I'll give you the last word.

- Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for giving me the last word.

I'll double down on this. So, for those who either have an idea what it's like to be in the corner office or who aspire to get to the corner office, regardless of the industry, right, health care, or otherwise,

“I think I sometimes ask, "Hey, leavey, what's it like to be,”

"to reach the top of the pyramid?" And my answer is as follows. And this I do say pretty frequently. And that is, you're totally right that it's a pyramid. 100%, but I think the image is wrong.

It's not an upright pyramid. It's an inverted pyramid. And the CEO does sit at the tip of the pyramid, but the CEO sits at the very bottom of an inverted pyramid. And the CEO's job is to make sure that everybody in that pyramid

has everything that they need to be at their best.

“That's how I visualize the work that I do”

and the seat that I sit in currently.

- Dr. Levy, you're an amazing lead.

I knew that when we met. I just had this, I saw in your interactions first, you know, because I was observing. I saw how you interacted with your people, with your teams, and your servant leadership,

and your humility.

“And then when we interacted, I could tell,”

and it just comes out very naturally in our discussion. I'm so blessed to have this conversation with you and to share it with the world. 'Cause I know it'll be really helpful to people. And I'm just so glad there's clinician and leaders like yourself

that are doing great things in their communities and beyond. So thank you again for being my gift to all voices. - Well, it's my privilege at thanks for having me on. And thanks to letting me spread the word about

what amazing place we see you health is.

- Thank you for listening to digital voices. We hope today's conversation sparked ideas, reflection, and connection. Subscribe on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify podcast. So you don't miss an episode.