Eric Larsen: President, Advisory Board (Raise the Line)

Hi, I'm Sh Ghani. Thanks for checking out the raise line interview series.

In which me and my cohost doctor Rishi Desai and registered nurse, Janna Amil, explore how to strengthen our healthcare system with some amazing leaders in medicine, technology, education and government.

And they have some great advice for people starting careers in healthcare as well. I hope you will watch these highlights and then go listen to the full podcast interview wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Desi today on ra the line, I'm happy to be joined by Erik Larson, president of the advisory board. Eric is a leading expert on health care, market forces and industry transformation and he served as a strategic advisor to CEO S leading the top 100 largest healthcare systems nationally.

I I'm curious about your personal story. So how did you get started in healthcare and kind of walking this very interesting path, you know, like so many fun uh retrospectives on a career mine got started by pure happenstance.

So um I won't go into too, too much detail, but uh I went to Georgetown here in Washington and I was super active in our debating society and, and would love public speaking, et cetera.

And I went to work overseas in Tokyo, uh studied and worked in Tokyo. And, and then I got this call out of the blue from one of my old debating friends who said, hey, there's this super dynamic, you know, high vitality company in Washington called the advisory board company.

And they're looking for speakers. So people who will come and give presentations to boards and executive teams and, and, and it's about healthcare, economics and strategy and clinical advancements, all of which I knew R zero about.

So there's a deep irony but uh I came and, and uh I II call it an interview but it was more an audition and, and got it, got hired by my who uh a gentleman by Ford, by the name of Ford Coles, uh who subsequently became my best friend and best man at my wedding.

But he said, look, I'm gonna hire you. You look a little young.

I was 22 and I went through this like six months like immersion in advisory board research and understand the economics of the industry and all the parts of the ecosystem and then was launched and, and then for the next few years, gave presentations to boards and um executive teams and, and public presentation groups.

And, and that's how I got started reaching, how would someone just entering the clinical space or even nonclinical space, maybe the business world or what have you get their hands on something so beastly as the healthcare system, I guess I would encourage a, a young person aspiring, um I would counsel him or her to, to take as broad a lens as they can initially and try and expose themselves to all of these different elements of it.

Um you know, join a digital health, digital native VC backed healthcare company and then spend some time if you can, you know, serving on the provider side.

I guess I'd close by just saying, you know, one of the most profound bits of counsel I ever got was from this pastor learning has to be greater than or equal to the rate of change.

And so, you know, I always think the way you confront uncertainty is by just immersion into study to really understand it and to suspend judgment and disbelief and that how I would have counseled my own 22 year old self.

You know, it's what Jeff Bezos said. It's always day one.

I think that's a really important shuttle diplomacy role to be played. Thanks for watching this preview of Raised line to hear the full interview, check out all of our podcasts and subscribe to the series.

Please go to osmosis.org/raised Line podcast or listen wherever you get your podcasts.