Cheryl Martin (Host): Welcome to the Healthcare Executive Podcast, providing you with insightful commentary and developments in the world of healthcare leadership. To learn more, visit ACHE.org. I'm Cheryl Martin, your host for this episode, and I'm delighted to welcome Antwan Williams, he's the Chief Operating Officer of Orlando Health South Seminole Hospital, and Alex Maiersperger, the Global Head of Product Marketing for Health Care at SAS. You can hear Antwan, Alex, and their co-presenter Kashi Colvard at ACHE's 2025 Congress on Healthcare Leadership. It takes place March 24th through 27th in Houston.

Our topic this episode, Mid Career Mastery, Finding Joy and Impact. Welcome, gentlemen. I love this topic. So let's get started. First, how did you become interested in health care management?

Antwan, let's start with you.

Antwan Williams: Yes, I always like to say that I failed into healthcare management. I started off as an aspiring civil engineer. I had dreams of building roadways and I met an individual and that individual's name was Calculus 3. He quickly escorted me to the College of Business. I learned about healthcare administration. I was fortunate enough to meet an amazing mentor and that's where the journey started. Got my Master's at UCF after leaving Florida State and kept the good times rolling.

Alex Maiersperger: I never met Calculus 3. My, friend was Calculus 1. I was searching for something purpose driven after serving a volunteer religious mission. So I was on college campus and saw an ad for free pizza from a healthcare association on campus. And the budget decision of do I do dinner or do I do free pizza got me hooked on the healthcare realm.

I also got free books from my sister who had studied public health before me. And so the rest, as they say, is history.

Host: So Alex that's a great story. Talk about your career paths and goals.

Alex Maiersperger: Yeah, I've always looked at my career path as, how can I serve more people? And so I started as a hospital administrator, which was essentially serving acute care patients in one area, one region. Then I went into health plan leadership and it was a state, local health plan. And so about a million members, I then moved down to a bigger health plan. So statewide 4 million plus members. Then to a technology company, US focused and now have global responsibilities. We have 1700 customers across 60 plus countries. And so I'll continue to use that framework. And I joke that I may have a few more stops on my career bingo card. I've got hospital health plan, early stage technology company in the telehealth space, a global software organization.

I'm missing sort of that pharma side and maybe venture capital.

Host: Very uh, interesting path there. So, Antwan, what about yours?

Antwan Williams: I always say that I am a, at least for now, hopefully this airs soon, I'm a young dinosaur. And by that, I mean, I'm surrounded by unique individuals such as Alex all day. And I have the great fortune of sticking it out on the hospital operations side. So I've been since fellowship, working for both the combination of large and small hospitals.

Today I have the great fortune of serving as the Chief Operating Officer within the great Orlando health organization and have just found joy in being close to the work, being able to continue to see how we take care of patients, strategically grow and to be able to see that impact firsthand.

So hospital operations have grabbed me and held onto me and hasn't let go. And I surround myself around folks like Alex and folks from the Advancement League to keep me hip, cool and innovative.

Host: Well, both of you are clearly qualified to talk about this topic of mid career mastery, finding joy and impact. So, why do you refer to the mid career stage as the messy middle?

Alex Maiersperger: Oh, because it is. Early in a career, it's so easy to look at a talented colleague and think they're going to be the CEO one day, and they're going to make big waves in the industry. And we all get into sort of that comparison game. With the benefit of a little time, you start to get just a few years down the road in your career,

and you realize how much life throws changes in those plans and in people's potential. We um, very sadly, just as the years go on, we've lost friends to disease, to addiction, derailment of any sort of purpose. So we've also seen friends prioritize taking care of their family or taking a step back from their job duties. Moving for whatever reason, moving even overseas to pursue roles completely outside of healthcare, completely outside of sort of what's expected of them or what we expect of them. So there's so many often competing priorities that just don't get talked about enough and don't get sort of the priority in conversation that I think they deserve.

So that messy middle, it's really magnified in those mid stages of am I spending enough time with my family, am I on the right path, do I even enjoy this, is this where I want to live, am I spending time with people that I want to be learning from, do I need to be a caregiver at a certain point in time, and on and on.

So, messy indeed, of just the difficulties of going through a career and navigating life um, that gets thrown at you increasingly in the, that middle stage and just finding your path. And so that's why we talk about finding that joy, is we've also seen friends start off with a whole lot of joy and a whole lot of passion; only to lose some of that spark, but then they feel like, well, I have six or seven or eight years behind me that I've put my heart and soul into this and I really need to make it work because this is the path I chose and I'm, I can't turn or pivot now. And so we want to be sort of cheerleaders for that success.

You can pivot and you can start over. And in many ways you don't have to start over. It's about leveraging the experiences that you have from your past and putting it into something different that might bring you more joy at a different time and phase in life. And so a very, very messy middle, but there's a lot of joy, both in the journey and in the exposure that you can get to other people that can help you get to the other side of whatever you may be experiencing now.

Host: Antwan, what have you learned being in this stage?

Antwan Williams: I'll add one of my colleagues, ironically enough, he just said it today and maybe I'll get a gold star for giving him this quote. He said that his aspiration, he wasn't kidding, was to stay in the middle of the pack. Not doing so bad to where, you know, you get called to the carpet for things and not doing so well where you get that call as well.

And what was articulating was that he likes to kind of stay hidden. And to Alex's point, what we found time and time again, is that folks in this middle of the career, not with that excitement of just graduating and having that grand ambition or being senior enough to where you're just sought after, tend to get left behind and tend to be lost.

So, what we've tried to do was take our experiences and to Alex's point, be a cheerleader. You know, I think it's synonymous to that of a midlife crisis. It's almost this stage in your career where ambition meets reality. And that reality usually comes with several pressures. Am I achieving enough? Should I have a different title? Should I be making more money? Am I satisfied? And you have all these questions swirling. And in many cases, you don't know where to get perspective. So we see folks that either get none and just hang out in that messy middle or they get too much perspective. So what we're really trying to do is to one, first say it's okay to continue to be patient because time moves fast and our goal is to be a supportive force as folks move out of that messy middle into a stage of happiness in their career.

Host: Now, when you say mid career stage, what is the point that's considered mid career, after you have been in your field for X number of years? Is that how you determine that?

Antwan Williams: Yeah, it's usually between that 7 and 10 year mark where you're starting to deem yourself as a content expert, maybe you've bounced around a few roles, but you're no longer a new student. You're no longer a graduate student. Maybe you've done a training program or you've been working for a job for several amount of years but haven't quite reached that senior level title or C suite title.

We've also argued that titles don't mean anything as well. It's because you still can't really fight the perception that comes with being a younger leader sometimes. So I think it's all those factors. We sway away from titles, but I think it's that 10 year mark where you're, far out of grad school, but still have so much runway to go.

Host: Now, you are both co-presenting on this topic at the Congress on Healthcare Leadership. Give us a quick sneak peek into this program.

Alex Maiersperger: Yeah, everything we've ever done has been based on a model of learn, share, and do. And so, this session's gonna be no different. So we promise that the people sitting in the very far back of the room aren't gonna be allowed to or able to sit there for too long. So we're going to force people to mix up seats and mingle a little bit, get to know the people around them.

We try to keep it moving and keep it engaged. There'll be no death by PowerPoint. Ultimately though, we want people to leave with trusted friends and supporters and people around them that they can call when they're at career crossroads or for help on a specific project or when they're having a tough day and they need someone to give outside opinion.

So we're going to share some stories, both the successful kind and the failure kind of our first 10 years across different parts of the healthcare ecosystem, in multiple states, in countries, roles, responsibilities, all in support of the early and mid careerists and executives alike to find their paths and make a meaningful mark on a healthcare world that desperately needs them at their best.

Host: Anything you wanted to add to that, Antwan?

Antwan Williams: Yeah, we have an hour of time during that session. What we've learned is that in most cases, most of the magic, most of the true impact is in the audience. So our goal is to, of course, live under the spotlight for that hour. But our goal is to produce a session that really encourages folks to do what we call is lateral networking.

And that is to really lean on the folks that are in the audience, not leave that room without several contacts and several connections because the content that we share will truly be interactive, engaging, and fun, but we believe that the power is truly in the people and the people will be in the audience that day, so look out to see how we figure out how to make that happen in Houston.

Host: Now, you're both a part of the Advancement League and Young Health Leaders Summit. Describe the League's mission as well as that of the Young Health Leaders Summit and how the ideas come to fruition.

Alex Maiersperger: Yeah, the Advancement League started while we were both administrative fellows at Geisinger. And so administrative fellowship is a leadership development program. We were both reporting to regional hospital CEOs. And what we realized was there was a real need to bring people together in sort of non formal settings.

 We would have conversations around the lunch table, with our small cohort of friends and fellows. And some of us were starting to express, I'm not sure I signed up for this, or I didn't know it was going to be like this, or, Hey, I'm really stuck on this project and I'm assigned to it for the whole next year. And I don't think I'm going to be successful at it. And maybe it's a personality trait, or maybe it's something I didn't know and I'm not going to be able to grow into. And so some of those fears that we expressed just very locally, we realized, Hey, we've got some friends at other systems that we were interviewing with to other fellowship programs or we know of some friends that landed in different spots. I wonder if they're feeling these same feelings. I wonder if they're having these same conversations. And so we started hosting road trips, which was just essentially invites on the, to strangers on the internet. Now, Hey, we're going to be having some healthcare conversations because we're driving down to Philadelphia to visit a friend.

If anybody wants to join us show up, and 40 or 50 people started showing up to these things. And so we started to say, we need to figure out a way to do this a little bit more coordinated. And we got to figure out how to pay for people's lunches and things uh, was part of the moral of the story.

And so the Advancement League was the sort of membership association that wrapped around that premier offering as the Young Health Leader Summit. And that we would definitely describe as a family reunion, as long as it's family that you like and enjoy to be around. Or a two day friends fest as we've gone through six years of them of a, really great committed group that has continued throughout those six years to really show up and support.

And like Antwan said, that's the point of the session at ACHE will be much like that family reunion friends fest as we're going to have people take out their cell phones and make sure they exchange numbers and that you're not just another, a couple emails or ads away from those people, but that you actually can call someone and say, Hey, here's what I'm going through. What do you got for me? How can you help? How can I help you? And so that's what it's really all about.

Host: Antwan, anything on that?

Antwan Williams: No, I would just say that the Young Care Leader Summit in particular is the landing spot, that provides solution and energy and a good time for all of the things that we started discussing today and the things that we'll further expand on in Houston.

Host: So, Antwan, who do you credit for your own professional growth?

Antwan Williams: Oh, it's so many people. Um, and I think that's been the consistent theme in every career journey from, me entering the College of Business, sitting across from the Dean and that individual giving me a chance to prove myself that semester to Leslie Sasher, who was the program director for a small university health center on the campus of Florida State to Dr. Ochen here at University of Central Florida that, text me back after 50 texts asking him what the update was on my status of application and so on and so forth. I think that what we've learned through our career and more so through the Advancement League is that, there's nothing like meaningful connections and amazing people. And we've been fortunate enough to curate an organization and, you know, an event that really highlights that.

Host: Alex, who would you credit for your professional growth?

Alex Maiersperger: I was sort of a late bloomer on the uh seriousness of education. And so, in high school, I failed a class that was, I think, pretty important and uh, pretty important in a graduating sense of the word. And my sister came back from college and I don't know if I should admit this. I think that, is there a statute of limitations on uh, my sister acted like my mom, and I think she forged my mom's signature had a call with our principal. And so I think I have to credit a ton of my professional growth and success to Julie, Julie Maiersperger, my sister, now Julie Thompson. But to Antwan's point of just so many and so fortunate, so parents, my wife, kids, people who inspire me.

Just been so fortunate from that first pizza night invitation for free dinner at a healthcare club on an undergraduate campus. So many people have taken me under their wing, allowed me to send them emails, ask for audacious ambitious asks, and sort of temper me when I need it.

But so many to credit professional growth. I think we all, I think the phrase of standing on the shoulders of giants is especially true in healthcare, where you have just so many incredibly committed, dedicated people that you can call literally at all hours of the night, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for their entire lives, that have just given their lives to the profession and given their lives to helping us advance.

Host: And, now you are doing the same thing with colleagues and paying it forward based on what the two of you have experienced and how it's made a difference in your lives. So here's a final question. How do you both like to spend your downtime when you have downtime?

Antwan Williams: That answer has changed quite a bit in the last year and a half. I am a new twin dad, so I haven't appreciated silence or sleep like I have over the last year and a half quite like the day um. Try to stay active, you know, done a couple triathlon sprints and, getting into swimming and biking and doing some other things and trying to pull Alex along with me, when I'm not with the wife and the kids.

Host: Okay, Alex.

Alex Maiersperger: Ask Antwan how many times he's pulled me along with him. to So, his success rate of getting me into a gym and especially on a bike or on a run is, low for how good he is at sales and convincing others to do things. But maybe 2025, it might be my year. I think maybe the Run Club Houston we're coming.

Similarly, I have three kids and I actually think I love, Antwans answer of it's a choice of how we spend downtime. I think you hear in some of the national and international, just some of the ways that we talk about kids in a lot of ways can sound like a burden. And I know there's differences across genders and the way that we parent or things but there's some nuance to it.

But both of us, I think I'll put these words in Antwan's mouth too, cause I know he feels similarly, but. We absolutely choose to spend time with our families and love them and are so excited to be dads. That's life's greatest joy. So when we talk about joys of careers and things, so much of why we do what we do is to set up a better health system for them and for the people that are here with us.

Cheryl Martin (Host): Antwan Williams and Alex Maiersperger, thanks so much for your time and great insights. You can hear Antwan, Alex and their co-presenter Kashe Colvard at ACHE's 2025 Congress on Healthcare Leadership. It takes place March 24th through the 27th in Houston. To learn more and to register, go to Visit ACHE.org/congress. Now, if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social media. And for other topics of interest to you, check out our full podcast library.

This is Healthcare Executive Podcast from American College of Healthcare Executives. Thanks for listening.