Tipping Point People in My Career: 2021 Thanks

I’ve never done this before, but for some reason feel prompted to do it this year… that is, reflect on my professional path and express thanks for those people who played singular, tipping point contributions to the betterment of my career and thus my life. I’m sure I overlooked folks, so please forgive my memory.

·     My philosophy professor, Paul Pixler who taught me how to think.

·     My art professor, Stanton Englehart who gave me artistic solace after my father died, during a very difficult time in a young man's life.

·     My physical chemistry professor, Ron Estler for turning me onto lasers and proving that being smart, fun, nice and cool could all go together.

·     TSgt Rich Vicars, Air Force recruiter, whose chance encounter led me to join the Air Force Information Systems Engineering career field.

·     Colonel Bill Molyneaux, my first commanding officer who built my skills and confidence by throwing me into the fire of the toughest assignment in the 1st Aerospace Information Systems Wing when I was 23 years old.

·     Major Steve Warkasksi, my commanding officer on the Looking Glass for tolerating my court martial qualifying mischief, including the time I hacked the JCSAN from a pay phone.

·     Terri Parkinson, my first civilian boss at TRW after I left the Air Force. She gave me a chance for which I didn’t qualify.

·     Stan Smith, my software engineering mentor at TRW. In between teaching me, we laughed and played like we were still in junior high.

·     Rick Sorensen at TRW for being a brilliant ICBM engineer who always tolerated my questions.

·     Ron Gault, my second boss at TRW who became and is still the brother that I lost, and my most valued mentor. Our nuclear risk analysis work for NSA was genuine James Bond style stuff. We were like kids in a candy store.

·     Bill Bloss, my third boss at TRW, for trusting me, tolerating my naivety to the chain of command, and letting me pursue big, audacious, ideas.

·     Bob Burnett, Dan Goldin, Gordon Williams, and John Stenbit at TRW for their role models as visionary engineering executives who also knew how to develop and run a high-tech business.

·     Andy Grove at Intel for creating a culture of excellence and “chronic, constructive, dissatisfaction.” As a consultant, I designed and developed a proof of concept data warehouse for Intel's logistics and supply chain optimization. This was in 1995 before "data warehousing" was a formal body of knowledge. Andy Grove permeated Intel's culture of constant, agile improvement, and product excellence. Intel didn't celebrate their achievements for very long. They quickly moved along to the next summit.

·     Vicki Kershaw, Homer Warner, Al Pryor, Larry Grandia, Carvel Whiting, and Reed Gardner at Intermountain Healthcare; they mentored me and gave me a chance to jump from space and defense into healthcare.

·     Dan Lidgard at Intermountain for being the unsung hero in saving and building the first clinical data warehouse in healthcare.

·     Lena Monson, my assistant at Intermountain, who was the voice of counsel during challenges, and still inspires me to be the person she thinks I am.

·     Jim Schroeder, my dear deceased boss at Northwestern for generously paying me, treating me like a valued member of the executive team when that was uncommon treatment for healthcare CIOs; for the kindness of his soul; and his guidance to adjust my Colorado mountain boy style to fit in a high society, big city academic medical center.

·     David Gorstein, who helped me recruit an amazing array of talented great people to Northwstern. No way we achieve what we achieved without him. And, for introducing me to Lyle Berkowitz, who's become one of those rare best friends in work and life.

·     Yogesh Patel, my director of operations at Northwestern who worked his fingers to the bone to help me transform an outdated culture and technology environment.

·     Sarah Miller, my director of clinical applications at Northwestern who, under great controversy, assumed leadership for finishing, optimizing, and popularizing the deployment of the Epic EHR in 2006, after it had languished for several years.

·     Denis Protti at the University of Victoria British Columbia for always seeing more in me than I see in me.

·     Tim Zoph, co-CIO at Northwestern for welcoming me and collaborating in ways that are still unprecedented in academic medicine.

·     David Liebovitz at Northwestern for being such a great friend, brilliant mind, and partner as our Chief Medical Informatics Officer. He's the most under-recognized CMIO in healthcare.

·     Eric Just at Northwestern for leading the clinical research business of our data warehouse and analytics strategy. Addressing the needs of the researchers established our credibility on the campus and made us data heroes. The origins of the Health Catalyst concept can be traced directly back to Eric.

·     Mike Doyle at Northwestern for leading our analytics strategy for ambulatory care, who also cleaned up tens of thousands of HL7 error messages for clinical orders and results that had been ignored for years prior. It was a giant, lurking liability.

·     Ronnye Etcitty who recruited me to take the CIO position in the Cayman Islands National Health System. What are the odds of a Colorado boy who grew up with the Navajo Nation, connecting with a Navajo Native American, leading the HR function in the Cayman Islands health system?

·     Greg Hoeksema who was the tipping point that convinced me to take the CIO position in the Cayman Islands.

·     Lizzette Yearwood, my boss and CEO in the Cayman Islands, one of the most committed, best hearted leaders I’ve ever known.

·     Pete Spratt, Peter Shand, Clyde Rodney, and Vane Vasiliev in the Cayman Islands for helping me recover from a computer virus that took down the entire healthcare system… on my first day of work as CIO.

·     Lisbeth Fabiny and Talbott Young of Cerner, for working with me to recover the relationship and optimize the Cerner implementation in the Cayman Islands.

·     Daphne Kaiser for recruiting me to the Advisory Board. That job gave me the financial and remote work toehold so that I could return to my hometown and spend quality time with my mom in the last three years of her life.

·     Tim Murphy at Alberta Innovates for being such a genuine person and capable intellect, and for allowing me to support him in fascinating projects.

·     Bryan Hinton, Sean Stohl, Eric Just, Dorian DiNardo, Darian Allen and their teams for working themselves to exhaustion while taking Health Catalyst from slideware to software in 3.5 years.

·     David Dame at Sorenson Capital who might have been the only person in the world, literally, who could understand and empathize with the totality of my situation, culturally and technically. If ever there were a case for perfectly timed divine intervention, he was that for me.

·     Michael Weintraub and Ernie Ludy at Ardan Equity for their values, advice and wisdom.

·     Andy Kanter at IMO, for his many years friendship, and for inviting me to join IMO’s next chapter.

·     Ann Barnes of IMO and Anne Milgram at the DEA for being inspiring leaders who balance a soft heart that’s also capable of laying down a sharp edge when it’s needed.

This was a fun exercise. I’ll never be able to live up to the blessings I have in life… to the goodness that others have bestowed upon me. I'll keep striving.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and many blessings in the New Year, everyone.

Dale