Connect

Over the next several months, Connect will bring you a firsthand account of the UVA Health Leadership Institute (HLI) experience through the eyes of our colleague Frannie Barnes, Communications Manager, UVA Community Health, and a member of the second cohort of HLI. Read her first installment below and if you have any questions that you’d like to ask Frannie about her HLI experience, send them our way at uvaconnect@virginia.edu.

The UVA Health Leadership Institute’s second cohort began March 27, 2024, marking the beginning of a transformative journey for another group of 33 team members including myself. Hailing from various disciplines, roles, backgrounds, and with a range of tenures at UVA Health, we all share a common aspiration: to advance our personal and professional growth through focused leadership development.

Collaborate and Complement

Before the program officially began, we were tasked with a few, short, pre-work assignments including taking the DiSC (dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness) assessment, creating a profile slide to break the ice, and reading about leadership and the academic health center funding model. For me, delving into the intricacies of the academic health center funding model — particularly the benefit of expanding to community hospitals — was both enlightening and pertinent to my role in UVA Community Health. Revisiting the DiSC provided fresh insights into how diverse leadership styles can effectively collaborate and complement each other.

The strategic foundation of the program became evident as we explored the genesis of the UVA Health 10-year strategic plan. As the manager of communications at UVA Community Health, I frequently reference this blueprint in my work, but understanding its origins and the birth of the UVA Health Leadership Institute underscored the deliberate effort to foster leadership from within the organization. It’s not merely about being competitive as a best place to work, or attracting talent — it’s about nurturing a corps of leaders who embody UVA Health’s mission, vision, and ASPIRE values.

Where You Belong

Perhaps the most captivating aspect of the inaugural session was hearing firsthand accounts from UVA Health leaders about their career and leadership journeys. K. Craig Kent, MD, CEO, UVA Health, talked about the unpredictable nature of career trajectories. Winding up not where you thought you would, but where you belong. UVA Health University Medical Center Chief Operating Officer Min Lee, MBA, MHA’s emphasis on perseverance among setbacks left a lasting impression, reaffirming that leadership paths are seldom linear, and require resilience and determination. 

HLI works closely with UVA Darden School of Business to shape its curriculum and tap into its deep well of subject matter experts, and that partnership was evident on day one. Gabe Adams, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Business Administration, led us in a hands-on team building exercise that was creative, thought provoking, and fun. And we were given the roadmap for the remaining seven sessions, which will be broken into three areas of focus: leading self, leading teams, and leading health systems, culminating with the presentations of our individual capstone projects. One of the things I’m looking forward to the most is learning the opportunities for improvement my colleagues see across the health system and how they propose we tackle them. 

While it’s just begun, my journey in the UVA Health Leadership Institute has already been nothing short of transformative. It has:

• Equipped me with valuable insights about effective strategies to navigate diverse teams and different organizational levels with agility.
• Expanded my network by introducing me to colleagues throughout the system whom I might not have met otherwise.
• Reaffirmed my commitment to personal and professional growth.

As I continue this journey alongside fellow team members and mentors, I am confident the lessons will not only benefit me individually, but also contribute to the collective success of UVA Health as a leading academic health system and in our vision to be the best place to work.

About Frannie Barnes

A veteran communications professional who has worked in and around healthcare throughout her career. Frannie joined UVA Community Health as a communications manager in March 2023 and is based in Haymarket, Virginia. Prior to UVA Health, Frannie worked for a healthcare IT company, and she has supported large health systems in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts in internal and patient communications, public relations, and digital communications. She also ran a consulting business in which she managed projects for various industries, but always found healthcare to be the most rewarding.