This feature is in our weekly Monday Morning Report newsletter, which showcases our highest-level members. Leaders You Should Know highlights community leaders who are making a notable impact in the Nashville region.
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Tell us about yourself?
Everything for me starts with family, teamwork and service to others.
• Family is first – I’ve been married to my wife Linda for 31 years, and we have three kids. Linda taught math at the college level most of our marriage, and has a Ph.D., in math education. Our son Andrew and his wife live in Austin, TX, our daughter Hannah and her husband live in the Middle East, and our youngest daughter, Emma, graduated from UT Knoxville with an ROTC commission into the US Army. She is currently serving on active duty. Emma also ran track at UTK.
• Teamwork, trust, mission-focus and building high esprit de corps – the values I learned in the military, define my leadership style. These are the pervasive themes my Philips team hears from me all the time.
• My family and I have had the opportunity to serve in some of the poorest communities you can imagine through church and non-profit work over the years – and yet it is humbling for me to see the hope, humanity, and dignity of these beautiful people. That is also a reason I feel so fulfilled in my work at Philips. It’s so rewarding to serve our company purpose of improving lives. It’s not a job, it’s a privilege, and one that I am thankful I get to be part of.
My wife and I attend The Gospel Church in Green Hills, and that is big part of how we spend our time now that our children have moved on. I also love riding my motorcycle on the backroads of Tennessee. I’ve enjoyed bird watching for years, and my newest hobby is fishing. I never really learned to fish growing up as a city kid, it’s actually quite technical and a great way to change pace.
Tell us about your business/industry?
Philips has been innovating to improve people’s health and well-being for more than 130 years. Today, 70,000 employees operate in 170 countries globally; with 17,000 located in North America. We bring world-class innovation to life, sustainably, and with industry-leading design. Our legacy includes innovations and impact on many industries – bringing light into our homes, sound and vision into our living rooms, and personal and professional care into home and hospital.
Today, our vision is delivering better care for more people, and we’re calling for systemic change. We need to make things simpler and easier for patients and healthcare professionals. We want to give care providers more time to focus on their patients, while making it easier for more people to take care of their health and well-being; doing so closer to home than ever before. We are committed to doing this responsibly and sustainably, with patient safety and quality at the heart of everything we do.
Our mission is to improve 2.5 billion lives per year by 2030, including access to care for 400 million in underserved communities. Our work matters more today than ever because healthcare is in crisis. Health systems are unable to consistently deliver accessible, high-quality care. Rising costs are stretching budgets to the limit and there are not enough doctors and nurses to address the growing demand for care. They’re overloaded, overworked and overwhelmed, working in a system that is complex, siloed and disconnected. Add an increasingly aging population needing more care, and you can see the crisis.
We are tackling this crisis, leveraging digital capabilities and AI through purpose-driven innovation: using patient-centric design to deliver solutions that improve doctor and nurse productivity, and streamline workflow for faster diagnosis. AI is embedded in just about all of our solutions, ensuring our technology complements the work of care providers, making their lives easier, and allowing them to deliver better care for more people.
As a veteran, I’m especially proud of the ways we’re able to meet the needs of so many brave veterans and their families. With an aging veteran population, and the strain it puts on the Veterans Health Administration, the Veterans Administration (VA) became our largest client in North America. We help the VA serve its mission is to provide exceptional healthcare to all veterans and their families, using our innovation to improve health outcomes. This includes: faster and more accessible diagnostic scans, remote patient monitoring solutions that allow aging veterans to stay home, and tele-health solutions to ensure they have access to specialists all over the country, regardless of where they live. We are even working with Senator Marsha Blackburn’s office for improved maternal health tech solutions that increase veteran access to peri-natal care – both nationally, and for our veteran families here in Tennessee.
While much of our business is providing health technology to hospitals, we also have a personal health division with leading brands like Sonicare toothbrushes, Avent mother and child care, and Norelco grooming products, to name a few.
What should we know about you?
Like so many of us, I am purpose-driven. Being part of something bigger than myself by serving our Philips purpose to improve 2.5 billion lives per year in this decade is powerful. Knowing that in my role I get to help improve hundreds of millions of lives here in North America directly by what I do, helps me bring everything I have to the table when I show up, every day, ready to serve that purpose.
How did you get to your current position?
My need for purpose in what I do is why I joined the military, attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, became an Airborne Ranger and served in the U.S. Army for nearly a decade as an Infantryman. After that, I held leadership roles at leading technology companies. I enjoyed building great teams, yet I lacked the purpose I knew in the Army. Looking to balance career and personal purpose, I wrote this down: “I will never again work for a company that does not have a mission and purpose that aligns to my personal values.” I found that culture at Philips, and those same words continue to guide me as the leader of our North America team – 17,000-strong and unified on our purpose.
What value do you see in Chamber involvement?
Our Chamber relationship serves our mutual commitment to impact and improve lives in Nashville. It helps us stay connected to what matters most – the community, our Philips employees and the businesses who contribute to our diverse and vibrant hometown. As a healthcare hub for decades, some of the biggest healthcare providers are headquartered here, and Philips works closely with them to leverage technology to improve access and quality of care in Tennessee. I love working with the Chamber to connect us as a community of like-minded leaders. And with the growing talent pool here, we want to be a destination for people who want to join us in our mission to improve access to care.
How is your company recruiting and retaining talent?
Imagine going to work every day knowing that what you do matters to real people around the world. We like to say our purpose is personal, and serving that purpose of improving billions of lives is the best recruitment and retention tool Philips could ever have. We attract talent and we retain it because working here is more than a job, it’s something we GET to do.
We have a multi-faceted recruiting approach across the state I’m really excited about:
• We’re an active participant in Tennessee State University’s supply chain management governance board, and I personally sit on the Global Supply Chain Forum advisory board at the Haslam School of Business at the University of Tennessee. These schools give us access to the best students in some of the best supply chain programs in the country.
• We are present on campus at many of the great colleges and universities in Middle Tennessee. We leverage our Nashville campus as a feeder for talent that can develop here, then work anywhere in the world for Philips, opening doors for students from the University of Tennessee, Tennessee State University, Middle Tennessee State, Lipscomb College and others.
• Veterans are an important source of talent for us at Philips, and we have an active presences on post at the Fort Campbell transition center. We also actively recruit across the country through Veteran-focused recruiting firms to ease the burden of military transitions. It’s one small way we get to honor our veterans, and I’m very thankful so many companies here in Nashville are doing the same.
We retain talent because we’re building the future of healthcare – and our employees believe in that mission and in each other. People stay at Philips because 1) their daily tasks contribute to technologies that help improve billions of lives every year, even their own, and 2) they love WHO they get to do this job with.
Our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) foster an inclusive workplace, while also helping us consider new solutions to problems that our customers face too – from color and gender to neurodiversity and care-giving. ERGs help us use our differences to our advantage, while also proving a safe space for people who share a common characteristic or allies to make meaningful connections, promote a sense of belonging and encourage dialogue.
In addition to being drawn to Philips as a company that values diversity of experience, background and thought, our potential candidates are interested in our commitment to doing business responsibly and sustainably. We take the link between human and environmental health very seriously and we’re focused on delivering quality care to those who need it when they need it, while reducing environmental impact. Our commitment to improving people’s health and well-being includes 300 million people in underserved communities by 2025, rising to 400 million by 2030. We’re proud to recruit people who are motivated by our responsibility to deliver that social impact.
What local non-profit has a mission that resonates with you?
Our Philips Nashville team also enjoys giving back and serving our community. For example, our close partnership with Operation Standdown Tennessee is one way we support Nashville and further align to our mission of serving our veterans in a variety of ways. We sponsor monthly service projects in our community at the Nashville Rescue Mission and Second Harvest Food Bank, to name a few.
I have a special affinity for Operation Stand Down Tennessee. This organization serves Middle Tennessee and their whole focus is toward helping equipping and empowering veterans and families thrive. The heart and soul of the organization is truly dedicated to improving the lives of veterans in high impact ways. I first met CEO Brigadier General Eden Murrie a few years ago, and it’s incredible to see the people she’s brought on since, as well as the expanded services they offer to veterans and families. They embody a “lead through service” mindset in everything they do.
What is the future of AI and new digital technologies in your industry?
We have a huge opportunity to change healthcare for the better with AI, by relieving the pressure on the system. Every day we hear from clinicians, nurses and patients that the system is not working as it’s supposed to. Demand is surging due to aging populations and the rise of chronic diseases, while hospital staffs suffer from shortages and burnout, and patients are experiencing longer wait times than ever.
AI can help us give time back to staff and patients. We’re simplifying workflows, shortening procedure times, and improving efficiency by helping clinicians use data to make faster, more informed decisions.
For example, data is often spread across many different devices, monitors, and systems, and it can be easy to overlook clinically meaningful insights. To help with this fragmentation of data, we created an ecosystem using AI that pulls the information into actionable insights to help clinicians understand what to do next. Using “smart rules,” we can quickly analyze multiple data points and explore how they are related to each other. This puts clinicians in control, with insights to make faster, better decisions.
We are also using AI to help clinicians quickly understand what signals need attention. An estimated 80% to 95% of alarms coming from monitors and devices in hospital wards are clinically irrelevant, causing unnecessary stress on the staff and patients. Traditional alerts are triggered by single parameters. With AI, we can identify patterns that help to predict and prevent deteriorations and open the door to increasingly personalized recommendations.
Another AI-enabled solution we’re working on is to help solve the problem of access to care. Half the world’s population, around 4.5 billion people, doesn’t have access to basic health services. And this is not just about developing countries or about communities in remote areas. Using AI algorithms, we’re working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to offer more mothers access to obstetric ultrasound scans. Typically, it takes six to eight months to learn how to perform a scan. With the algorithm we are developing on the hand-held Lumify ultrasound device, we can shorten that to one hour of training, and be able to conduct it on a tablet or iPad. Think of how saving that much time can improve maternal care to women living in remote and underserved areas who otherwise would not have access to it. We are solving a very real problem with AI-enabled capability that is highly relevant to women right here in Middle Tennessee.
What do you like to do in your spare time outside of work? Where will we find you on the weekends?
A great Saturday for me and my wife (especially in the fall) includes early coffee on the porch to catch up on the week, then an invigorating hike at Percy Warner Park, followed by a mid-day leisurely motorcycle ride down the Natchez Trace Parkway. On the way back, stopping at Fox & Locke for a bite and some good music. Once we’ve rested up, head home and root our Vols on to victory!
