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We have a special treat for you just in time for a long weekend!

Dr. Tyrone Spears, Chief of the Workers' Compensation Division for the City of Los Angeles, is one of the best and brightest in the business. Yvonne and Rafael recently caught up with him for a lively, thought-provoking episode!

If you know Tyrone, you know he is a servant leader who continually does good things for others. Find out what he studied in school, what career path he considered, and how he found himself in the workers' compensation industry, an industry he has come to love.

Conversations with Tyrone are always fascinating. He is the real deal. So, grab your headphones and settle in for a cozy conversation with Tyrone about leadership, mentorship, diversity, equity, inclusion, doing good for others, and being a good human. We also talked about politics, our 2024 bonus topic, since we talked to him the Monday after Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the presidential race.

Some things we mentioned during the episode include:

Dr. Tyrone Spears - books on Amazon.com
-Autism Who? his latest book
-The Compassionate Leader
-Land The Job

Hazel's Hands - https://www.hazelshands.com/
Tyrone started this charity in his grandmother's name. Hazel's Hands provides resources, services, and leadership to meet the emerging needs of at-risk youth and their families in our communities.  

¡Muchas Gracias! Thank you for listening. We would appreciate you sharing our podcast with your friends on social media. Find Yvonne and Rafael on Linked In or follow us on Twitter @deconstructcomp 

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Join Yvonne and Rafael as they chat with one of their hometown "sheroes" Brenda Cogdell, Director - Risk and Safety Division, Hillsborough County. 

Brenda shares her enthusiasm for her role at Hillsborough County and for the risk and insurance industry where she has dedicated her career to shaping a culture of caring for the employees she serves. 

Together we explore her journey from graduating from Tampa's University of South Florida (Go Bulls!) to entering the risk management industry, serving as the risk manager at the City of Manassas, Virginia, then coming back to Hillsborough County where she began. 

We talk about the culture Brenda is helping to build at Hillsborough County called "Workplace Possibilities!"

Learn how Brenda's father's career as a longshoreman shaped her and how it sticks with her still today. She believes team members who get hurt or ill at work ought to be reminded they are still part of a team, or a work family. 

Brenda Cogdell is the real deal! She happily shares her expertise and encourages young professionals to take advantage of all resources and mentors along their career journey. 

Some of the organizations we discuss in the episode include: 

Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) 
https://www.rims.org/

Public Risk Management Association (PRIMA)
https://primacentral.org/

Thank you for all you do Brenda! We LOVE you! 

¡Muchas Gracias! Thank you for listening. We would appreciate you sharing our podcast with your friends on social media. Find Yvonne and Rafael on Linked In or follow us on Twitter @deconstructcomp 

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Les Shute is the Chief Innovation Officer at Infinity Nurse Case Management. Join us in this episode as we learn more about Les, including what Les studied in school and what he aspired to do in his career.

After graduating college as a Marketing Major and with a Minor in Computer Science, Les was recruited into the insurance industry and started as a workers' compensation adjuster!

In this episode, we learn that Les grew up with a strong influence in computer programming. He has immersed himself in learning all about artificial intelligence and

Les chats with us about OOM, "orders of magnitude," Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), neuro-symbolic AI, and other "mind-bending" scenarios and applications of artificial intelligence. We also discuss how AI may impact carbon-based life forms over the next 5-10 years.

Get ready for a fascinating conversation about AI, a recurring topic we have discussed several times this year. As we always say, we love all our guests, but this episode is super fun and thought-provoking. 

Learn more about Infinity Nurse Case Management here.

Interested in learning more about how artificial intelligence has progressed since the 1940s? Check out this timeline courtesy of Veerloop.io.

¡Muchas Gracias! Thank you for listening. We would appreciate you sharing our podcast with your friends on social media. Find Yvonne and Rafael on Linked In or follow us on Twitter @deconstructcomp 

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Here is a bonus episode where your co-hosts Yvonne Guibert and Rafael Gonzalez pause to reflect on Season 4 so far. 

Can you belief half the year is already gone? 

Neither can we. Join us for a quick recap of what we've done so far on our podcast. We talk about the guests we've had and those who are joining us soon. 

¡Muchas Gracias! Thank you for listening. We would appreciate you sharing our podcast with your friends on social media. Find Yvonne and Rafael on Linked In or follow us on Twitter @deconstructcomp 

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In this episode, Yvonne and Rafael talk to Nikki Jackson, aka Nerdy Nikki. Why Nerdy Nikki? Because she loves talking about risk management and anything related to Property Casualty Insurance industry and she constantly pushes herself to learn more! She also loves to share her knowledge with others. We are lucky to know her!

We get to know more about Nikki during our chat and we talk about how to attract and retrain new talent AND Artificial Intelligence, one of our favorite topics! 

FACT CHECK CORRECTION: Yvonne mentioned Caryn Siebert and what she says about how much we spend on insurance. Note it is an average of 20% of our salary, not 30% as Yvonne said in the episode. Here is a link to Caryn's episode: https://deconstructingcomp.buzzsprout.com/1771455/9574613-caryn-s-adventures-in-insurance-and-workers-comp

Check out Nikki's new website Elevate the Narrative and connect with her on ANY social media platform. She is literally on them all, including TikTok!!

Elevate the Narrative:
https://elevatethenarrative.com/

¡Muchas Gracias! Thank you for listening. We would appreciate you sharing our podcast with your friends on social media. Find Yvonne and Rafael on Linked In or follow us on Twitter @deconstructcomp 

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Let’s get to know Jeff Gurtcheff, Chief Claims Officer at Corvel. He joins us from just outside Atlanta, GA in Alpharetta, and he is a former neighbor to Rafael! Wow!

In this episode, Jeff shares his educational background, a little about what it was like to live next door to Ralph, his journey into the insurance and workers’ compensation industry, and how he has grown up through the insurance industry. 

We learn how at Corvel they are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to improve the claims management process and advancing the power of AI to make the job of adjusting claims something people can feel good about…helping people get better and get back to work!

Also, we learn about Corvel University where they are training the next generation of claims adjusters right out of high school. How awesome is that!

This episode is full of good information and we can’t wait for you to listen!

And another 1st:
Jeff is a former professional baseball player!!

Learn more about Corvel University here:
https://www.corvel.com/corvel-university/

https://riskandinsurance.com/tackling-the-adjuster-shortage-how-corvel-university-is-training-the-next-generation-of-claims-talent/

¡Muchas Gracias! Thank you for listening. We would appreciate you sharing our podcast with your friends on social media. Find Yvonne and Rafael on Linked In or follow us on Twitter @deconstructcomp 

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Another first for you! We are thrilled to introduce you to Chief David Picone, our first-ever fire chief on our podcast. He is the Fire Department Battalion Chief and Health and Safety Officer with the City of San Diego. 

June is PTSD Awareness Month, so we are happy to share our recent interview with Chief Picone.
 
In this episode, Chief Picone shares his educational background, his desire to be a rock star, his journey as a career firefighter, and how he has grown to be a steward for cultural change with the City of San Diego Fire Department. The success of San Diego's program has attracted attention from fire departments across the nation and even the Tokyo Fire Department, the largest urban fire department in the world, and Chief Picone has been an integral part of the program since 2017. 

Chief's call to action is for cities and fire departments everywhere to adopt similar changes that have been made in San Diego so that first responders get the care they need when they need it. Key elements to the City of San Diego's success include: 

• commit to building a culture of caring (it takes work!)
• demonstrate to first responders that you care about them and value their efforts
• encourage claims professionals to spend time with first responders to better understand the demands of their jobs
• accelerate access to care
• provide access to skilled and experienced medical professionals who are equipped to handle the needs of first responders, specifically when they come forward with symptoms of PTSD

A few points mentioned during this episode with Chief David Picone:

• Firefighters and police officers are more likely to die by suicide than in the line of duty
• First responders may experience 200+ traumatic events in their career vs. an average of 5 traumatic events in the average civilian's lifetime
• 1 out of 3 first responders develop PTSD

City of San Diego Fire-Rescue Health and Safety Office
https://www.sandiego.gov/fire/services/health-safety-office

Drexel University's Fire Service Organizational Culture of Safety (FOCUS) program for fire departments. Learn more here: 
https://drexel.edu/dornsife/research/centers-programs-projects/FIRST/our-projects/FOCUS/

Institutes of Health is the company offering the "Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP)" 
https://institutesofhealth.org/

¡Muchas Gracias! Thank you for listening. We would appreciate you sharing our podcast with your friends on social media. Find Yvonne and Rafael on Linked In or follow us on Twitter @deconstructcomp 

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Are you ready to get to know Dionne Lacey-Artis, Chief Business Officer and Customer Centric Leader at Optum Workers' Comp and Auto No-Fault? 

Even if you DO know her, we think you will learn some things you DON'T know, when you listen to this podcast episode.

Dionne is based in Atlanta, Georgia. 
'
Yvonne Guibert and Rafael Gonzalez enjoy deconstructing issues in workers' compensation, however, it seems our podcast platform has taken on a new role...deconstructing our guests, and discovering how they came to be in the workers' compensation industry. That suits us just fine, because getting to know people is essential in business, especially in our industry.

Talking to our guests is always a fascinating journey, and so is this episode with Dionne. She shares many interesting facts about herself, like that she wanted to compete in the Olympics on roller skates, wanted to be a judge, she was a Tomboy, loves riding motorcycles and wanted to be a knee dragger, and so much more!

Listen to this episode and we are sure you will learn some things about Dionne you didn't know before. Plus, we couldn't be happier to hear that Dionne and other leaders at Optum are serious about redefining and building a culture focused on customer experience. That means there is a huge focus on finding and developing good people who want to be part of that culture. 

Here are some reference links for some things discussed during our conversation:

What is knee dragging?
https://www.motodeal.com.ph/articles/motorcycle-features/what-dragging-knee-motorcycle

A song and video about Salvador de Bahia, Brazil called "Gente Bonita":
https://youtu.be/jW0-jYz1PxI?si=Q49X0gmQG9vPwEf4

Traveling to Salvador, Brazil:
https://www.livemoretravelmore.com/salvador-brazil/

Optum Workers' Comp and Auto No-Fault:
https://workcompauto.optum.com/

¡Muchas Gracias! Thank you for listening. We would appreciate you sharing our podcast with your friends on social media. Find Yvonne and Rafael on Linked In or follow us on Twitter @deconstructcomp 

Send us Fan Mail

Are you ready to meet Laura Michaels, MS, OT, PSHO, Occupational Health and Safety Manager for City of Palm Springs? 

Yvonne and Rafael recently met Laura at the PARMA 2024 conference in Indian Wells, CA, and boy do we LOVE her! Shout out to Jennifer Johnson for putting together a beautiful dinner at PARMA that brought us together. 

From the very first conversation, we knew we liked Laura. She possesses a very particular set of skills that combined make her one powerful risk and safety professional. She is getting it done with fantastic results in Palm Springs...Laura Michaels is walking the walk!

Tune in to hear Laura's unique perspective on the healthcare provider shortage, her educational background, her career as an occupational therapist, and how she shifted into a career in California workers' compensation and risk management. 

She talks about several things important for entities to champion to get these kinds of results they are seeing in Palm Springs. It centers around building a culture where employees feel supported. This includes: 

supportive reporting, supportive rehab, 90-day fast track process, nurse case management, getting to know your providers, knowing the kinds of providers you need for your worker population, building trust

Laura shares many pearls of wisdom in this episode: 

"I can't deny and I can't delay, but I can approve!" 

"Find ways to work within the workers' compensation system." 

Perhaps one of our favorite quotes from Laura, "Workers' compensation does not need to be a contentious situation...put yourself in the patient's shoes." 

#supportivereporting
#cultureofcaring
#fasttrack
#preauthorization
#outcomes
#validation
#curiosity
#litigation
#trust

¡Muchas Gracias! Thank you for listening. We would appreciate you sharing our podcast with your friends on social media. Find Yvonne and Rafael on Linked In or follow us on Twitter @deconstructcomp 

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In this episode, we get to know a real superhero in the workers' compensation industry, Josh Schuette, DPT, MBA, WRP, Director of National Workers' Compensation Sales and Account Management at Brooks Rehabilitation.

While there are so many amazing things to know about Josh Schuette, one interesting  thing is, he thinks Ryan Gosling is his spirit animal! And, just like the famous actor who played Ken in the blockbuster Barbie movie, Josh is also originally from Canada! He also shared that during the recording of this podcast episode, he was wearing his "I am Kenough" shirt.

Come along for another fantastic podcast episode with one of the best and brightest people in our industry. Not only does Josh share about his education and how he discovered the wonderful world of workers' compensation, we discuss the real issues facing everyone in the healthcare industry in regard to provider shortages.

Josh also shares about his struggle to prioritize self care, particularly when working so closely with injured worker patients, and the toll that it takes. He even shares some of the strategies and activities he is using to manage his self care. We thank Josh for his transparency and as he mentions during the episode, we hope that his talking about his self care helps others.

Thanks for all you do Josh! We love you!

Learn more about Brooks Rehabilitation:
https://brooksrehab.org/

Here is the charity Josh mentioned during his episode:
Ainsley's Angels of America - https://ainsleysangels.org/

¡Muchas Gracias! Thank you for listening. We would appreciate you sharing our podcast with your friends on social media. Find Yvonne and Rafael on Linked In or follow us on Twitter @deconstructcomp