“It’s not our job to always agree with clients.”
Specialist Ty shares lessons learned in the team room... and the middle of a river
Knee deep in the chilly waters of the Chattahoochee River, fly fishing rod in hand, Atlanta-based healthcare Specialist Ty hasn’t caught a trout yet today (although he’s spotted several stunning birds).
He doesn’t seem too bothered, though. It’s still early in the season for trout; besides, that’s not really the point of his wading into the river. “It’s a reset,” he explains. “Getting out in nature clears my head. Standing in a river is a grounding experience for me.”
Ty’s been fishing since he was a kid, growing up near a small lake in Michigan. “I’ve always had a love of fish and water,” he says. He tries to fly fish wherever he goes, incorporating it his travels across the western U.S., Alaska, and Ireland.
Indeed, it’s been a constant hobby throughout a career marked by a few turns that led him to serve clients as part of our Firm’s Social Healthcare and Public Entities (SHaPE) practice.
After undergrad, Ty joined the Peace Corps to serve in Rwanda for two years, supporting health initiatives for HIV-positive families. He also received USAID funding to develop climate-resistant kitchen-gardens in homes and schools, making nutritionally dense produce more readily available. Ty returned to the U.S. and earned a Master’s degree in epidemiology while working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop international vaccination strategies and then supporting the U.S. federal government’s COVID-19 response.
Now, he brings his experience to our Firm’s public and private healthcare clients, who often want specialized answers to questions about the future of the industry and how it will be shaped by economic patterns, disease trends, and technological developments.
“Across these conversations is an acknowledgement that today, health and well-being is more than just measuring blood pressure and doling out medications,” Ty says. “It’s about intertwined factors that link physical, social, emotional, financial, and spiritual health.”
Ultimately, Ty believes the questions of our clients are not unlike those he asked while in the Peace Corps. He says, “It boils down to, what challenges does a community have, what are their resources and abilities, and how can we solve these challenges most effectively to protect and improve long-term population health and an organization’s performance?”
In one engagement, Ty helped to develop a dashboard to monitor health conditions across all nursing homes within a state. This study ultimately helped identify and prioritize facilities that would require state intervention and empowered consumers to make informed choices when selecting a facility for their loved ones.
“Nursing home residents often don’t feel that they have a voice,” he says. “It’s on the rest of us to illuminate the conditions in facilities and empower family members when they’re picking homes, which, for some, could be a life-or-death decision.”
Developing the dashboard meant not just understanding the data, but also taking
into consideration the human impact of the work and the hopes and frustrations of
numerous—and, at times, competing—stakeholders.
Bringing together data and human need to create meaningful solutions is something
Ty leans on across his engagements, and the concept even follows him to the river
sometimes.
“Out here, you diagnose the problem by looking at your surroundings and thinking about which fish you’re trying to catch,” he says. “You tailor your flies—or adapt your solutions— to address the situation’s needs. Then, you carefully place the fly near the fish, which mirrors how to effectively deliver a message to a client.”
Ty continues, “Finally—like the resistance you may feel on the line when you have a fish—client conversations will not always be easy. It’s not our job to always agree with our clients; it’s our job to push them into the direction that’s best for their organization. But if you pull too hard, just like a fish on a line lost to aggressive tugging, all the great work that you’ve done and the impact you could have created will be for naught.”
Back at the river, Ty calls it for the day, no fish in hand. But even had he caught one, he would have released it back into river. It was the reset he came for, and the renewed calm and perspective he leaves with.