Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw

Hosted by Laurie McGraw

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Jun 2026

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Advancing women to healthcare leadership–and keeping them there. Women comprise 70% of the healthcare workforce. They hold just 20% of the C-suite. Each week, host Laurie McGraw bridges that gap through conversations with the women rewriting healthcare’s leadership playbook.

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June 16, 202629 min

A 6-Month Wait For A Specialist Is The New Normal": The CEO Fixing The Physician Shortage | Michellene Davis

Michellene Davis began her career as a trial litigator and public defender in Newark, where she kept arguing the same point to juries: if her client had had access to healthcare, none of them would be in that courtroom. That insight has shaped a career spanning law, government, and now national health equity. In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Michellene Davis, Esq., President and CEO of National Medical Fellowships (NMF). Founded in 1946, NMF is one of America's oldest diversity organizations and works to close the physician shortage by building a more representative healthcare workforce. ABOUT MICHELLENE DAVIS Michellene describes her career as "chutes and ladders," but the through line is consistent: integrity, systems thinking, and a refusal to set policy through a privileged lens. Her path includes: - Trial litigator and public defender in Newark, New Jersey - Senior policy advisor in the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services - Youngest CEO of the New Jersey State Lottery, a $2.4 billion entity and one of the state's largest revenue producers - First African American and only the second woman to serve as New Jersey State Treasurer, overseeing a multi-billion dollar budget and pension portfolio - First African American to serve as Chief Policy Counsel to the Governor - Co-author of "Changing Missions, Changing Lives" (ForbesBooks, 2020) WHAT NMF DOES Over its history, NMF has awarded more than $50 million to over 35,000 alumni, training not only physicians but physician leaders who reflect the communities they serve. Michellene explains why this is a problem that touches everyone, not just under-resourced communities: a six-month wait to see a specialist is becoming the norm, with roughly one physician for every 1,000 people in LA County and one for every 3,000 in parts of Mississippi and Georgia. She also unpacks the "curb cut effect" and the research showing that diverse clinical teams produce better outcomes for every patient. A PERSONAL CONVERSATION ON CAREGIVING The conversation then turns personal. Michellene opens up about caring for her mother through advanced Alzheimer's for the past 13 years, the disproportionate caregiving burden carried by women leaders, and the friends she has lost to that invisible weight. She closes with the question she believes every high-achieving woman should sit with: when you are lowered into the ground, what do you want to have truly done? A wide-ranging conversation on systems change, health equity, leadership, and legacy. IN THIS EPISODE - The patient the system failed - Why "universal healthcare" kept appearing in her courtroom arguments - The accidental path into government leadership - Becoming the youngest CEO of the NJ State Lottery - First African American and second woman NJ State Treasurer - Holding the purse vs. deciding where to place the coins - Inside NMF and the fight against the physician shortage - The curb cut effect and why representation improves outcomes - 13 years of caregiving and what it taught her about leadership - The caregiving burden on women, and the friends she lost - Her advice on legacy for mid-career women leaders Hosted by Laurie McGraw, where she has the best world women leaders every week and shares their stories and insights!

June 9, 202632 min

Women get Less Than 2% Of Funding, but This is the HACK! - Dr. Amber Hill

Dr. Amber Michelle Hill spent 14 years inside medical research — as a neuroscientist, in the lab, on the preclinical side, and patient-facing — before she discovered the real reason 90% of clinical trials fail. And it has almost nothing to do with the science. In this Inspiring Women conversation, host Laurie McGraw sits down with the founder and CEO of Research Grid (R.grid), the London-based, VC-backed company she built to take the administrative burden out of clinical trials, speed them up, and make them more diverse and representative of the people the medicines are meant to serve. Research Grid didn't start as Research Grid. It grew out of Movement for Hope, a nonprofit Amber founded during her academic years that brought researchers, artists, and patient advocates together to raise awareness for neurological conditions. When COVID shut the events down and investors passed on the idea, she repurposed the technology — and the hard-won community relationships behind it — into two AI products: Inclusive, which automates everything that happens before a trial starts and expands access to underrepresented patients, and Trial Engine, which automates the back office of the trial itself. Today that network spans 99,000+ communities, 400 million members across 157 countries, and 2,000 health indications — all built by hand, over years, with no bought data, while the company stayed stealth for four years before launching in 2023. Amber breaks down why a single medicine takes 10 to 14 years to go from bench to bedside, why $400 million per trial is burned on admin alone, and how women were once excluded from drug testing entirely. Then she gets brutally honest about raising money as a woman of color in a world where less than 2% of funding reaches female founders — including the investor-scoring matrix she built to decide who's even worth her time. And through all of it, she stays an artist: every painting in her home, including the giant acrylic pour behind her, is her own. WHAT WE COVER: - The art-and-science mind behind the company — and why painting quiets her thinking - 14 years as an end-to-end researcher, and how Movement for Hope became Research Grid - Why 90% of clinical trials fail — and why it's an admin problem, not a science one - The hidden cost of research: $400M per trial and 28,000 hours per person on admin - Why 84% of trials still don't reach the people who need them in time - How women were excluded from drug trials, and the fight to diversify research - Building a 400-million-member network the hard way, with no bought data - How AI took a six-month site feasibility process down to minutes - The truth about raising capital when you're "different from the person across the table" - How she scores and filters investors instead of chasing them - Repositioning to seed and landing in the top 1% of seed-stage companies globally - Her golden rule for founders: never assume common sense GUEST: Dr. Amber Michelle Hill, Founder & CEO, Research Grid (R.grid) HOST: Laurie McGraw ABOUT INSPIRING WOMEN: Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw features candid conversations with the women leaders, founders, and changemakers reshaping their industries. 🔔 Subscribe for more Inspiring Women conversations. 💬 What hit hardest for you? Tell us in the comments. #InspiringWomen #FemaleFounders #ClinicalTrials #AIinHealthcare #WomenInTech #StartupFunding #DrAmberHill #ResearchGrid

June 2, 202628 min

The Hidden Disease 40% Of Americans Are Living - Alexandra Drane

What if the biggest health crisis in America is one almost no one is being treated for? In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Alexandra Drane, co-founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS, recorded at the WBL conference. Alexandra has spent her career proving a simple, radical idea: when life goes wrong, health goes wrong. After gathering more than one billion data points at her former company, Eliza Corporation, she identified what she calls the unmentionables: caregiver stress, financial stress, relationship stress, and workplace stress. Her conclusion was that these are among the biggest diseases in the United States, and that at the center of all of them sits the unpaid caregiver. Today, more than 40 percent of adults are unpaid caregivers, and between 40 and 50 percent of them are men. Drawing on both the data and her own experience caring for her sister-in-law, who died of glioblastoma at 32, Alexandra makes the case for why caregiving must be recognized, measured, and celebrated. IN THIS EPISODE: - How unpaid caregiving is really defined, and the many roles people never recognize as caregiving, from installing grab bars to handling finances and navigating benefits - Why 40 to 50 percent of caregivers are men, and why so many never see themselves in the role - How gathering over a billion data points at Eliza Corporation led her to the unmentionables - Why she insists on broadening the definition of health to include life - The personal loss that shaped her mission, and the founding of Engage with Grace - Why she uses the word intensity instead of burden, and what that reframe makes possible - The Caregiver Intensity Index, and what it means to be in the clear, yellow, or red - Why being in the red means a 90 percent risk of a mental health impact, a 50 percent drop in productivity, and four times the cost - How the share of caregivers in the red tripled from 8 percent before COVID and never came back down - The sandwich generation, the panini, and the club sandwich, and why double-duty caregivers face double the intensity - Overtreatment, the rising cost of care, and what it really means for the great wealth transfer - The growing gap between how many people will need care and how few are available to give it - The Care Badge, built in partnership with Joint Commission, and why a career break was never a gap, it was a job - The skills caregivers build, and why they are exactly the people employers should be hiring - Grief, the rogue waves that keep coming, and the phrase that drives her: memento mori Alexandra Drane is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS, a women-owned public benefit corporation supporting unpaid caregivers across all 50 states. She previously co-founded Eliza Corporation and Engage with Grace, among other companies. Inspiring Women is a weekly podcast about advancing women to healthcare leadership and keeping them there. Women make up 70 percent of the healthcare workforce but hold just 20 percent of the C-suite. Each week, Laurie bridges that gap through conversations with the women rewriting healthcare's leadership playbook. Subscribe for new episodes, and share this one with a caregiver in your life. #InspiringWomen #Caregiving #UnpaidCaregivers #ARCHANGELS #WomenInLeadership #Healthcare #CaregiverSupport #AlexandraDrane

May 26, 202627 min

The Microsoft Health & Life Sciences COO: The AI Quietly Rewiring Healthcare

Mary Varghese Presti didn't plan to end up running healthcare AI for one of the most powerful technology companies on earth. She came to the United States at four years old, the daughter of an Indian nurse recruited by Penn Medicine during India's brain drain era. Growing up in Philadelphia in the shadow of one of the world's top nursing schools, she watched her mother and many of the women in her Indian community use the nursing profession as a vehicle for immigration, education, and female empowerment in a generation where very few professional doors were open to them. She began her career as a pediatric nurse at Johns Hopkins. On the floors, she saw everything in a single shift: early cases of congenital HIV, double lung transplants in young children, East Baltimore asthmatic exacerbations. And she kept asking the same question over and over again: why is healthcare organized this way? That single question became a career. From bedside nursing she moved into consulting, working on harmonizing clinical quality measures across NCQA, NQF, AMA and CMS, foundational work that paved the way for value-based care. She helped shape the policy framework that led to meaningful use and the electronic health record adoption wave. She joined Pfizer at the exact moment Lipitor was losing patent protection, watching 10 billion dollars in revenue evaporate in a single year while the entire pharma commercial model was rewritten around her. Today she is the Corporate Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft's Health & Life Sciences organization, leading at what she calls one of the few generational shifts in technology in her lifetime. In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Mary to talk about the arc from bedside nursing to Microsoft, from the Manila folder era of medicine to a Stanford pilot where AI agents now compress cancer treatment decisions from weeks and months down to days. They go deep on the AI that hundreds of thousands of physicians are already using today, why nurses describing themselves as "data entry analysts" broke something in her, and what it actually means to build technology that fades into the background instead of getting between a patient and the person caring for them. They discuss: - Growing up as the daughter of an immigrant nurse, and what nursing did for female empowerment in her mother's generation in India - Why she began her career at Johns Hopkins and the moment as a 24-year-old floor nurse that turned her into a systems thinker - The four-act arc of her career across nursing, policy, pharma and technology, and why every zig and zag felt rational at the time - Inside Pfizer during the Lipitor patent cliff, when one drug lost 10 billion dollars in revenue in a single year - Why healthcare still tolerates a digital experience nobody would accept from Uber, Venmo, or online banking - Dragon Copilot for physicians, and how it removes the keyboard from between doctor and patient - Dragon Copilot for nurses, and why nursing workflows demand a fundamentally different technology design - The physical, emotional and cognitive burden that AI is finally lifting off frontline clinicians - The Stanford multi-agent tumor board experiment compressing cancer treatment decisions from weeks to days - Why she refuses to be put in a box as clinician, operator, strategist or policy person, and what a lattice career actually looks like - What she means when she says she expects to remain intrepid for the next five years If you care about the future of healthcare, the real impact of AI on frontline workers, or what a non-linear career built across nursing, policy, pharma and tech actually looks like, this one is for you.

May 20, 202627 min

The Lie That Held A Generation Of Women Back - Dr. Veronica Mallett

In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw speaks with Dr. Veronica Mallett, a physician, educator, and trailblazer with four decades of experience advancing health equity and workforce representation in American medicine. Dr. Mallett is Senior Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of the More in Common Alliance, a 10-year, $100 million partnership between Morehouse School of Medicine and CommonSpirit Health created to expand representation in medicine and close the physician shortage in underserved communities. Dr. Mallett shares the story behind her drive, growing up in Detroit as the daughter of two educators and civil rights leaders, who taught her that education was "the great leveler" and that having a principle means being prepared to stand alone. She talks about deciding at age 9 to become a doctor, navigating Barnard College and medical training as one of very few women of color in the room, and learning to turn individual setbacks into collective action. In this conversation, Dr. Mallett discusses: - Why the More in Common Alliance is doubling the class size at Morehouse School of Medicine and building regional medical campuses and graduate medical education sites in underserved areas - The work happening in communities like Bakersfield and Kern County, California — one of the most medically underserved regions in the state - Why she believes the promise that women "can have it all" was a myth, and what to build instead: a real support system and intentional choices - Her case for leaning into leadership roles — and how the autonomy that comes with them benefits your family, not just your career - Managing a blended family of six children, and what work-life balance actually means in practice - Overcoming imposter syndrome at every level, and the mantra her sister gave her: "Who I am is enough" Dr. Mallett previously served as Senior Vice President of Health Affairs and Dean of the School of Medicine at Meharry Medical College, and as President and CEO of Meharry Medical College Ventures. Earlier in her career she helped launch a new medical school at Texas Tech University in El Paso. She is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology and in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery, earned her medical degree at Michigan State University, and holds a master's in Medical Management from Carnegie Mellon University. Inspiring Women, hosted by Laurie McGraw, features candid conversations with women leaders about the choices, setbacks, and turning points behind their careers. Full conversation with Dr. Veronica Mallett on Inspiring Women.

May 12, 202634 min

Why Only 2% of VC Goes to Women!

Less than 2% of venture capital goes to female founders. When Laurie McGraw started Inspiring Women five years ago, the number was 2.4%. A few years later it had dropped to 1.8%. Absolute dollars going to women have grown, but the share of total capital has gone the other way, and the gap is now one of the largest unsolved problems in capital allocation. Laurie sits down with three women working to change that from inside the system. The guests: Ita Ekpoudom is a Partner at Gingerbread Capital, a family office fund started by a former co-chair of tech banking at Goldman Sachs who realized after retiring that she had never made a private investment in her entire career. Gingerbread now invests directly into female-founded and co-founded companies, and as an LP into majority women-led funds. Jenny Abramson is the Founder and Managing Partner of Rethink Impact, the largest fund in the country backing female CEOs across health, education, environment, and economic empowerment. Jenny was a tech CEO herself before founding Rethink in 2015. Her mother had run one of the earliest institutional funds backing women roughly twenty years before that, and the share of VC going to women was higher in her mother's era than in Jenny's. Erin Harkless Moore leads the investment platform at Pivotal Ventures, the organization founded by Melinda French Gates to advance women's power and influence. Pivotal pulls on three levers: philanthropy, policy and advocacy, and investing. Erin deploys capital both into next-generation fund managers as an LP and directly into early-stage companies across the care economy, women's health, and financial access. Topics covered: 01. The $648B care economy, larger than the pharmaceutical industry, and why Pivotal partnered with The Holding Company to size it 02. Maternal mental health, childcare infrastructure, elder care, and women's health as one connected market 03. The companies these funds are backing: Midi (the first unicorn in menopause), 7 Starling, Winnie, Wellthy, Bold, Spring Health, and Maven 04. How to spot category-creating founders before the rest of the market catches on 05. April Koh, Spring Health, and what it meant to see her on the cover of Time 06. Why "emerging manager" is the wrong label for funds like Rethink, Magnify Ventures, and Cherry Rock Capital 07. Stacy Brown-Philpot's path from early Google to Task Rabbit CEO to founding Cherry Rock Capital 08. The pattern-matching problem at the heart of venture capital 09. Why nine firms captured 50% of all venture capital raised last year 10. Gender-diverse teams, capital efficiency, and the data on returns 11. Who actually sits on investment committees at endowments, foundations, and pensions, and why many pension funds are already run by women 12. The great wealth transfer heading largely to women and what it means for financial services 13. Why most women change financial advisors after inheriting wealth 14. The Casa Dragones story, Berta Gonzalez, and the speed gap between male and female capital decisions 15. Donna Khan's research on prevention versus promotion questions and how investors interview female founders differently 16. The $5 to $6 trillion gender parity opportunity in entrepreneurship 17. Why women are twice as likely to invest in other women, and why that still is not enough 18. Practical advice for women ready to invest, lead, or fund the next wave Full episode on Inspiring Women. Subscribe for more conversations with the women shaping business, capital, and leadership. #InspiringWomen #VentureCapital #FemaleFounders #WomenInBusiness #Investing #CareEconomy #WealthTransfer

May 6, 202622 min

Stop Waiting To Be Invited Into The Boardroom - Meme Stokes Callnin

Meme Stokes Callnin had spent two decades inside global human capital consulting building talent strategies, advising on M&A integrations, and leading the Mountain States for Mercer across all things human capital. Then she went to a Harvard executive program on women in the boardroom. And everything shifted. She came back with a clear mission. 2024 was going to be her year. Then she hit the wall: her firm didn't allow paid board seats. Within months, the pieces fell into place. She raised her hand for a package, walked out, and entered what she calls her "rewirement." Today, Meme Stokes Callnin is an independent board director and growth strategist, sitting on the boards of Select Health, Wonderbound, and the American Heart Association's Colorado Go Red for Women campaign, which she chaired in 2024. She has helped raise over $1 million for the AHA, driven by a single realization at a breakfast back in 2018: women's heart attack symptoms are different from men's, and most women don't know it. In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Meme at the WBL Summit to trace the full arc, from corporate executive to professional board director, and unpack what it actually takes to land a seat in a room that doesn't post its openings. They discuss: The 2018 American Heart Association breakfast that pulled her in for good, and the survivor story that made her realize women's heart attack symptoms differ from men's, and that despite heart disease running in her family, she'd never been told Why women are dangerously underserved when it comes to CPR, and her blunt take: "I'd rather live than worry about a broken rib" The Harvard executive program that flipped the switch, and why "rewirement" is her word for what most people would call retirement Her honest read on the post-DEI slowdown in the boardroom, what's changed, what hasn't, and why advocacy for women still matters The "secret club" of board recruiting, why the big executive search firms won't place you on a public board until you've already got one, and what to do about it Her 5 Fs framework, Family, Financial, Fitness, Fun, Faith, and how she uses it to filter every meeting, every coffee, every yes Why she chose healthcare as her board focus, drawing on sandwich-generation experience and decades of consulting across the ecosystem Her core advice for women seeking their first board seat: be bold about what you know, make the direct ask, and raise your hand often Meme Stokes Callnin is proof that "rewirement" isn't slowing down. It's choosing, with intention, exactly what the next chapter looks like, and then asking for it out loud.

April 28, 202618 min

The $15M Program, The 13,000 Calls, And The One Patient Who Changed Everything: Dr. Sandy Chung On Fixing American Healthcare

Dr. Sandy Chung never planned to become a doctor. She grew up in a trailer park, on Medicaid, the daughter of Chinese immigrants who couldn't get professional jobs in the U.S. despite their advanced degrees. Her mom sold clothes in a factory. Her dad was a waiter before the family eventually opened a Chinese restaurant. And in the fourth grade, standing at a bus stop trying to figure out what to be when she grew up, the mother of one of her friends — who turned out to be an OR nurse — told her: "Sandy, you should become a doctor." That single sentence redirected her entire life. Today, Dr. Sandy Chung is the past President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the founder of the Virginia Mental Health Access Program (VMAP) — now a $15 million state-funded program that has handled over 13,000 consult calls — and the founder of Trusted Care Foundation, a nonprofit she built to match college students to careers across the healthcare ecosystem. In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Dr. Chung to talk about how a single tragic case in 2017 — a 14-year-old patient with bipolar disorder who couldn't access his psychiatrist in time, ran out of his medication, and ended up taking another person's life in a parking lot fight — became the inflection point for a program that now exists to make sure no family ever falls through that crack again. They discuss: Why 1 in 5 people have a diagnosable mental health condition — and why the national shortage of child psychiatrists will not be solved by training more child psychiatrists The patient case from 2017 that exposed every system failure in pediatric mental health, and how Dr. Chung turned grief into the model that became VMAP Why pediatricians were taught to refer mental health cases out — and why that model has completely broken down in an era of six-month wait lists How VMAP trains primary care clinicians, gives them a specialist consult line, and connects families to care navigators — and how it expanded to cover autism diagnosis and maternal mental health Why independent physician practices matter, why the financial pressure on them is unprecedented, and what we lose when every doctor becomes an employee How growing up working in her parents' Chinese restaurant taught Dr. Chung the business skills most physicians never learn Why she founded Trusted Care Foundation to expose college students to the full range of careers inside healthcare — beyond the five jobs most kids think exist Her three rules for the next generation of women leaders: always be curious, never say no, and always assume it will work Dr. Sandy Chung is proof that the largest systems in American healthcare can be reshaped by one physician who refuses to accept that this is just how things are.

April 21, 202628 min

The Game No One Teaches Women in Male-Dominated Industries | Julie Zuraw

Recorded live at the WBL Summit — part of the Inspiring Women WBL Series. A real estate executive in New York spent years as the only woman at the table in a male-dominated industry, learning the rules of a game no one had taught her. Her husband, watching her navigate corporate rooms full of men, kept asking pointed questions. Why did you say it that way? Don't you see how that lands? That was the moment Julie Zuraw started writing down what she was learning. Years later, Lead Like a Woman is a program she has delivered to female executives around the world, and Julie is now President & CEO of Invest Ahead, the national forum formerly known as the Thirty Percent Coalition, representing over 90 institutional investors, pension funds, asset managers, and private equity firms with more than $8 trillion in assets under management. But the path there was anything but linear. Julie started her career running the branding division at what is now Publicis, left with a few women to build a consulting practice, then went in-house with a real estate client and ran that company for ten years before running a second New York real estate firm as COO. Large, male-dominated, high-stakes. She figured the game out the hard way, and built the program she wished she'd had. Today Julie is leading the organization that pioneered the 30% goal for women on public company boards back in 2011, when only about 12% of US corporate board seats were held by women. The moral argument was obvious. The business case was obvious. But the progress was slow, and in the current climate some of it is actively being rolled back. In this episode of Inspiring Women, recorded at the WBL Summit, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Julie Zuraw, President & CEO of Invest Ahead, to talk about what it actually takes to move the needle on boardroom diversity, and what she tells executive women about building real power in rooms that weren't designed for them. They discuss: ▪ How Julie's years running male-dominated real estate companies in New York taught her there was a game being played, and why her husband's feedback became the founding insight for Lead Like a Woman ▪ Why the fundamental rule of finance — diversify or your risk goes up — has always been the business case for diverse boards, and why the opposition has always been social rather than economic ▪ How Invest Ahead's members engage with the companies they invest in as shareholders, why those conversations can take years to land, and why they still work ▪ The private equity program that pulls curated candidate profiles from pipeline organizations like LCDA, LEAP Pinnacle, ELC, and 50/50 Women on Boards, so deal teams have a broader bench before the next board seat opens ▪ Why "I can't find the talent" is a ridiculous argument, and what's actually happening when boards default to the same small network every time ▪ The California SB 826 story — seven years of fighting to pass it, Judicial Watch's lawsuit, the ruling still in the courts — and why hundreds of women got onto boards through Invest Ahead regardless of whether the law survives ▪ Why the advice to "just be more confident" is terrible advice, and where real personal power actually comes from ▪ The difference between female and male communication rituals, why the compliment game doesn't land in male-dominated hierarchies, and why that's not a reason to stop being who you are ▪ Julie's single piece of advice to the several hundred executive women in the room at WBL: you are the only one who decides you are worthy, and you are the only one who can decide you are not Julie Zuraw has spent her career inside rooms that weren't built for her, and she walked out of every one of them having figured out how they actually work. Now she is running the organization that gets other women into those rooms — and teaching them the game before they walk in. This episode is part of the Inspiring Women WBL Series, recorded on-site at the WBL Summit. WBL (Women Business Leaders of the US Health Care Industry Foundation) brings together senior women leaders across healthcare to connect, learn, and lead. Learn more about WBL at wbl.org. #InspiringWomen #WBL #WBLSummit #WomenInLeadership #BoardDiversity #InvestAhead #LeadLikeAWoman — Inspiring Women is hosted by Laurie McGraw. Subscribe for more conversations with the women shaping healthcare, finance, and business at the highest levels.

April 14, 202623 min

Curiosity Expert: What We Completely GET WRONG about Curiosity!

Dr. Debra Clary started her career at 4 AM, driving a Frito-Lay route truck in Detroit as a Teamster. Three decades later, she had held senior leadership roles across four Fortune 50 brands (Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola, Jack Daniel's, and Humana), spent nearly 17 years building Humana's Leadership Institute, performed a one-woman off-Broadway show, and written The Curiosity Curve, a research-backed leadership book published by Fast Company Press in October 2025. In this episode of Inspiring Women, she sits down with Laurie McGraw to unpack what tied all of it together: curiosity. It started with a single question. During a Humana board meeting, then-CEO Bruce Broussard leaned over and quietly asked her, "Do you think curiosity can be learned, or is it innate?" Debra promised she'd find out. What followed was a trip to Italy where she noticed Europeans had fundamentally different conversations than Americans, a Gallup engagement report showing the lowest numbers in the firm's history, and ultimately a multi-year research project (commissioned with researchers out of MIT) that produced something no one had measured before: a direct correlation between a leader's level of curiosity and the performance of their team. In this conversation, Debra explains: Why curiosity is a state and not a trait (which means it can be built) The four-factor framework behind The Curiosity Curve: exploration, inspirational creativity, focused engagement, and openness to new ideas The Coca-Cola moment that nearly cost her a job, until a former chief of staff told her, "Unless Tom asks for something three times, take no action" She also opens up about leaving Humana to write the book, getting talked into an off-Broadway debut by her mastermind group, and what she learned about borrowing other people's belief in you until you can own it yourself. The episode closes on what may be the most important leadership skill of the AI era. As Debra puts it, AI levels the playing field because anyone with a phone can now get the answer. The edge belongs to the leaders who ask the boldest questions: What are we not asking? What signals are we missing? And for women specifically, her research surfaced a striking finding. Men and women score equally on curiosity, but women don't show up as curious in the room. Her closing message is a challenge to change that. Topics Covered From a Frito-Lay route truck to the Humana boardroom, and why starting at the bottom built her credibility The boardroom moment with Bruce Broussard that sparked a multi-year research project on curiosity An Italian train ride, an American joke, and the conversational habit it exposed Why Gallup's worst-ever engagement report pointed to a missing ingredient in leadership Commissioning MIT researchers and the direct correlation they found between curiosity and team performance The four factors of The Curiosity Curve: exploration, inspirational creativity, focused engagement, and openness to new ideas A Coca-Cola chief of staff lesson on knowing how your boss processes information Building Humana's Leadership Institute through the company's shift from insurance company to health company Leaving Humana to write the book, and getting talked into A Curious Woman off-Broadway by her mastermind group Why AI raises the floor for everyone and makes question quality the real differentiator Her message to women: ask more questions in the room, and say your point of view out loud Closing Thought Debra's career arc, route driver to Fortune 50 executive to author to performer, is itself an argument for the thesis of her book. Curiosity is what makes the pivots possible. And in a moment when answers are cheap and questions are scarce, the leaders who keep asking what are we missing? will be the ones who actually move things forward.