Dr. Elizabeth Coté’s fast-paced career has taken her from the White House, to Presque Isle with the Aroostook Band of Micmacs, to post-war Iraq and post-earthquake Haiti. Today, she’s back home in Maine, in an innovative role that is just her speed.
Monday-
5:30 AM: My brother is a Marine who trained as a pilot. He taught me, “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” This could not be truer than it is for pre-schoolers. As a single mom of two four-year-old daughters I wake up early so that I have plenty of time to focus and accompany them through the methodical steps of our simple morning routine. Mornings that can get a little crazy at the drop of a hat, or Magnatile tower, as the case may be.
8 AM: I’ve completed my biggest feat of the day having transitioned the girls to their individual pre-kindergarten classrooms with lots of last hugs and kisses. I drive down Forest Avenue. It’s a straight shot from home in North Deering to pre-K to work in Monument Square. This is my time to switch gears from leading a dynamic little family to leading an exciting and growing health tech startup called MyHealthMath. MyHealthMath harnesses the power of big data and personal engagement to help individuals make wise health insurance choices that save them thousands of dollars. Sometimes, on my drive to work I fantasize about what the typical family we help would do with the average extra $1,037 they save based on our decision support. My favorite fantasy is buying a very high speed washer and dryer.
11 AM: Staff huddle. We have fun at work—there’s a pingpong table and a retro Pac-Man game, and we work in a gorgeous orange space in the middle of Portland. Although we rarely use the games, the operations team I lead gathers daily at 11 a.m. for huddle without fail. Huddle begins with two minutes of quiet meditation. We upped it from one minute because it’s that popular. It is the quietest two minutes of the day. Then we report out our progress working with employers, their employees, bringing new solutions to market and generally tearing it up disrupting the health care marketplace.
Tuesday-
2 PM: I meet with our CEO about new business opportunities. We travel to conferences centered around innovation in healthcare, health tech and human resource services. We collaborate with partners from small to large employers, insurers, brokers and banks. We are a neutral third party, and we take pride in data integrity and security. A lot of folks are interested in partnering with us because practically everyone benefits from increased health care efficiency.
8 PM: I look forward to regularly scheduled phone conferences with grad school friends from Harvard Medical and Government School or The White House Fellowship. We take our friendships seriously and consider ourselves the trustees of each other’s dreams. This is how we socialize now. And I have to be in bed by 9 p.m.!
Wednesday-
7 AM: I play with and talk to my daughters as they get dressed for school. We have a little jingle we sing, “Mommy can do… one thing… at a time.” This is more of a self-reminder than a bulletin to them about their expectations. It’s so important to stay in the moment.
4 PM: I check in with MyHealthMath’s call center, which has a team of highly trained interviews who call employees and help demystify the process of choosing a health care plan. These quality interactions gather highly individualized information that is then combined with thousands of data points found in the fine print of detailed health care plan benefit statements and cost sharing info from the employer. A thousand calculations later, clients receive their health insurance options from least costly to most costly given their health usage on a cute report formatted against a pink piggy bank watermark. Tada! This is a more evidence-based answer to the annual open-enrollment conundrum than the recommendation you get from a buddy at the water cooler when you ask “So, which plan did you choose, Nancy?”
Thursday-
9 AM: I’m heading to Boston for the day to meet with a large health insurance plan. They have partnered with MyHealthMath to pilot our program to their own employees during open enrollment. Today we’ll discuss how the data science behind MyHealthMath’s proprietary algorithm helps employees get the care they need and how it can help both their employees and the beneficiaries they cover across New England
Friday-
5 PM: I was selected into the fifth class of the Health Innovators Fellowship at the Aspen Institute, and I’m a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. It’s a powerful network of people who are committed to thinking creatively about solving the world’s most pressing challenges. I’ll then fly to Colorado for a retreat. Connecting with other entrepreneurial thinkers inspires and humbles me. My mom comes down from Bangor to be with the girls. They are sixth-generation Mainers and I couldn’t be happier than to raise them among family and friends in Maine.
THESE WEEKLY PROFILES ARE SPONSORED BY HUB INTERNATIONAL, an insurance brokerage providing an array of property, casualty, risk management, life and health, employee benefits, investment, and wealth management products and services across North America. hubinternational.com | 800-777-5244
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