Chris Pace, Vice President of Healthcare Industry at SearchStax, recently opened up about leaving Banner Health after years on the provider side to take on a vendor role. His perspective on burnout, career change, and rediscovering purpose is gold.

Key Takeaways

Pace’s reflections were so valuable we decided to break our own rule and share five takeaways instead of the usual three.

Provider marketing can be exhausting, but burnout doesn’t have to be the end of the story. Pace admitted, “Man, I was burned out,” after years at Banner and Dignity Health, but he reframed the leap into vendor life as a way to stay empathetic and still help patients. Becoming “that empathetic person on the inside of a tech company” gave him a new path to support peers while still improving access to care.

When the opportunity to join a vendor arose, Pace leaned on his network. He reached out to peers like Scott Schuster and Jared Johnson who had already made the jump, and asked them a lot of questions about their experience. He asked as many questions from as many people as he could.

Those questions helped him see a consistent theme that would have taken him longer to realize on his own: As a marketer with years of provider-side experience, “you can do more, you can give more from the provider perspective and use the credibility that you’ve earned over the years.”

Losing a title or a big-name employer doesn’t mean losing your worth. Chris reminded himself (and now the rest of us) that your identity is tied to your personality, your unique skills and your character, not job labels.

“Are you you? Or are you the product you represent? What we carry forward is our uniqueness, our capabilities, and our persona. No one can take that away.”

In true 2025 fashion, Pace used AI to aid in his decision-making.

“It is 2025. So what did I do first? I went to ChatGPT and I laid out the opportunities that I had…in some instances, yes, there was a bit of a SWOT, pro-con analysis that was done to evaluate them.”

The answers from ChatGPT and the act of putting his thoughts into the prompts helped Pace arrive at his final decision.

Difficult moments often reveal the strength of the people around you. When his time at Banner ended, Pace was stunned by the response of his network: “I think my LinkedIn post of me announcing my departure for Banner will always be the most engaged post I’ve ever had…thousands of reactions and comments. It was overwhelming and emotional, and that to me got me through it.”

Pace’s recent experience shows that careers in healthcare marketing rarely follow a straight line. Titles shift and organizations change, but the ability to ask questions, articulate value (even if it’s your own), and building community are skills that carry forward.

In a market where so many are navigating layoffs and pivots, it helps to remember that when the old anchors slip, it isn’t always a loss. Sometimes it gives you the freedom to sail in new directions.

Learn more about SearchStax at https://www.searchstax.com/