The Backstory

By Jarrard Inc.News Business News

The Backstory episodes

November 04Backstory Sessions 2026: Teresa Sparks
What does a CFO understand only after joining
the board?
Teresa Sparks spent decades as a healthcare finance leader, serving as CFO of Symbion, Surgery Partners, Brookdale Senior Living and Envision Healthcare. Today, as an independent board director, she has the distance to help executive teams recognize patterns they may miss while running the business day to day.
In this episode of Backstory Sessions, Teresa joins Jarrard President and Founding Partner Anne Hancock Toomey for a candid conversation recorded live at Healthcare Sessions 2026 in Nashville, sponsored
by the Nashville Health Care Council.
Key topics:
Why companies should prepare for maximum optionality ahead of an IPO or sale

The risk of betting on outpatient surgery before payers and hospitals were ready

What separates people who reach the C-suite from equally talented peers
Teresa closes with advice to her younger self: “Listen and retain.” Plus, why
she’s the one on the ground checking the roots in her family farm’s blackberry rows.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
14 min
October 28 Backstory Sessions 2026: Vijay Patel
A strong return is only half the job.
For CVS Health Ventures Managing Partner and Co-founder Vijay
Patel, the other half is strategic: Back companies that can improve the
consumer experience, support clinicians and take on affordability.
Vijay joined Jarrard President and Founding Partner Anne Hancock Toomey for Backstory Sessions, Jarrard’s limited short-form podcast series recorded live at the Nashville Health Care Council’s Healthcare Sessions 2026 conference.
He shared how a career that began in private equity led to digital health partnerships, strategy and business development at CVS Health – and eventually to his pitch for the venture arm the company didn’t have. Five
years after raising its first $100 million, CVS Health Ventures has grown to 40 portfolio companies.
His take on AI is equally grounded: Put it to work on the administrative burden so clinicians can spend more time with patients. Don’t ask it to replace the relationship at the heart of care.
Vijay’s advice to his younger self is worth carrying forward: Careers are long. Be generous. Build real relationships. Earn trust over time.
Watch the full episode now, then subscribe to our YouTube
channel to follow the series.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
14 min
October 21 Backstory Sessions 2026: J.R. Greene
Live from Healthcare Sessions 2026 in Nashville, host Anne Hancock Toomey talks with J.R. Green, founder and board chair of Psychiatric Medical Care (PMC), the nation’s largest behavioral healthcare management company with 400+ hospital locations across 35 states.
Greene traces his path from consumer brand leadership at Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, and Revlon into healthcare, guided by his psychiatrist father.
He talks about the challenging conversation with his father that led to switching from consumer goods to healthcare and founding PMC - turning around a small company that was under significant pressure and growing it from six employees in two locations to thousands.
Of course, there's plenty of conversation about leadership lessons learned along the way...but also about Greene's one-of-a-kind background as the Big Orange Tux Guy (IYKYK) and a children's book author.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
13 min
October 14 Backstory Sessions 2026: Jenn Adams
Live from Healthcare Sessions 2026 in Nashville, Anne Hancock Toomey interviews Jenn Adams, CEO of August Bioservices, about her 30+ year career in sterile injectable manufacturing and the path that led her from Baxter into entrepreneurship. Adams explains how a long-standing investor partnership helped launch August Bioservices in 2020 with a mission to bridge the gap between demand for critical sterile injectable medicines and manufacturing capacity. She describes rebuilding and expanding the Nashville site, recruiting top-tier technical talent during the pandemic, and qualifying high-speed equipment for prefilled syringes and vials. All of this operation work, she is quick to point out, is driven by people far more than assets - and she closes with the reminder to “not be afraid” and to pursue meaningful work. Also, the first Backstory F1 pit crew reference.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
13 min
October 07 Backstory Sessions 2026: David Dill
This is Backstory Sessions — a new short-form series recorded live at
Healthcare Sessions 2026 in Nashville, and also on YouTube.
Host Anne Hancock Toomey sits down with David Dill, chairman and CEO of Lifepoint Health, to discuss his path from growing up with a basketball-coach father and teacher mother to earning an accounting degree at Murray State and moving to Nashville in 1991. Dill explains how work at Deloitte and a dialysis startup pulled him into healthcare in 1996, leading to nearly two decades at Lifepoint and eight years as CEO. He reflects on how the CEO role demands stewardship of culture and values across 55,000 team members in 34 states, including intentional communication - for example, revamping internal comms through daily videos during COVID.
Dill shares why “always do the right thing, even when no one is watching” guides difficult decisions, outlines strategic bets on diversification and asset-based operating structure, and offers advice on passion, mentorship, coachability, and learning through failure.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
13 min
September 23BONUS 211. From Plowing Snow to Leading Healthcare Transformation, with Warner Thomas
It's a bonus!
In this special edition episode , Anne Hancock Toomey interviews Warner Thomas, president and CEO of Sutter Health.
They start with a note about the first podcast Anne ever hosted - a 2020 conversation with Thomas that reminds us all of how much has changed even as the principles of authentic leadership haven't.
From there, Thomas traces his path from a disciplined, outdoorsy childhood in Vermont to pumping gas, plowing snow, and later studying accounting and computer information systems. Like many guests, Thomas hadn't planned on a healthcare career. He instead started with an eye towards investment banking, training at Ernst & Young before making the leap and heading to. Southern New Hampshire Medical Center. There, an early mentor shaped his leadership perspective and professional experience.
Later on, Thomas spent 24 years at Ochsner Health, rising to CEO leading major growth and innovation and learning to center strategy on patients and purpose through initiatives like “Power of One,” while prioritizing people during Katrina and COVID. Joining Sutter four years ago, he became the system's first outsider CEO in 40 years. He began his tenure with a deep and thoughtful talent assessment, then built a rapid growth strategy including ambulatory expansion. Throughout it all, Thomas has emphasized communication, trust and the key leadership traits of being humble, hungry, smart and curious.
2:18 Life in California

3:53 Vermont Roots

6:13 First Jobs

10:24 Mentors and Leadership Style

14:29 Learning Mindset and Strategy

17:19 Ochsner Growth Lessons

21:20 Purpose and Culture

25:22 Joining Sutter

31:56 Leadership Traits

34:15 Lightning Round

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
40 min
June 24 210. From Local Newspaper Delivery to National Philanthropy Leader, with Cynthia Brandt, PhD
In the final episode of Season 2, Anne Hancock Toomey
interviews Cynthia Brandt, PhD. Brandt is CEO of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health and a deeply respected leader in the world of philanthropy. Brandt reflects on growing up in the Midwest in a minister’s family, early lessons in authenticity from a difficult camping experience and the teacher who led the excursion, and how receiving scholarships didn’t just make higher education for her but also sparked her belief that philanthropy can change lives. Before joining the foundation that helps power Stanford Children’s Health, Brandt built her career through a series of impressive roles. After work in banking and nonprofit roles, she pursued sociology in graduate school, worked
at Stanford, moved to a profoundly meaningful role at Mills College, and later led a record-breaking Smithsonian campaign that exceeded its $1.5B goal by educating the public through grassroots storytelling. She discusses her CEO learning curve through the pandemic, a stewardship mistake that reshaped her approach, leadership traits like culture, humility, and clarity, and her focus on joy and purpose at work.
1:40 Midwest Roots
4:22 A Lesson from Camping
06:44 Scholarships Changed Everything
10:52 Finding Sociology
12:18 Stanford And Mills
16:57 The Smithsonian and Storytelling At Scale
22:38 From the Smithsonian To Children’s Health
26:10 First Time CEO Lessons…and Mistakes
31:46 Traits Of Great Leaders
34:52 Lightning Round

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
40 min
May 06209. From Pumping Gas to CEO of Leading Children’s Hospitals, with Dr. Patrick Frias
Dr. Patrick Frias is a truly unique leader with a truly unique story. Today, he is wrapping up his tenure as Co-President and Chief Executive Officer of Rady Children’s Health before heading back to his old stomping grounds in Georgia to lead Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
In episode 209 of the Backstory, Anne Hancock Toomey interviews Dr. Frias about how he became who he is today and the way he thinks about leadership. co-CEO of Rady Children’s Health, noting that after their recording he was announced as the next leader of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
He was born in Chile, raised in Gainesville, Fla., and finished college in Nebraska as a theology major before heading off to medical school to become a pediatric cardiologist.
Along the way, he learned from – and was deeply supported by
– his family during some tough childhood years. He also learned how to treat people thanks to an early job pumping gas at a local Mobile station.
Today, he leads by focusing on mission and people first, and in this conversation he and Anne talk about:
How to stay grounded and steady through both
success and adversity

The importance of surrounding yourself with
talented people and empowering them to lead

Leading with humility, empathy and a clear sense of purpose, especially in a complex world like healthcare
Chapters:
1:57 Roots in Chile and Florida

3:42 Bullying and Empathy

4:29 First Jobs

6:27 Creighton, Theology and Pediatric
Cardiology

11:41 Atlanta Career and Leadership Rise

15:07 Healthcare Leadership Realities

17:26 Becoming Rady CEO

24:55 Merger Mission and Stakeholders

30:13 Leadership Traits and Growth Edge

32:07 Lightning Round

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
36 min
March 25208. From Serving Frozen Yogurt to National Health System CEO, with Marty Bonick
Marty Bonick is about as well-known a name as you’ll find when it comes to the National – and Nashville – healthcare scene. Bonick is President
and CEO of Ardent Health, which operates 30 hospitals and more than 280 care sites across mid-sized urban markets nationwide, while employing over 24,000 team members. In this conversation, Bonick and Anne Hancock Toomey talk about his time growing up on Chicago’s South Side with a construction-worker father and nurse mother, his shift from pre-med to healthcare administration, and learning the industry through an administrative fellowship at Hillcrest in Tulsa. He describes mentors who shaped his patient-first approach, early leadership lessons from serving frozen yogurt and prepping pizzas, and being thrust into a first CEO role at 32. He also recounts the moment when, watching the movie
Twister on VHS, he got a call asking if he’d be interested in moving to
Oklahoma. Yes, really.
2:13 From Chicago to Healthcare

4:40 Handy Skills and First Jobs

7:07 Mentors and Work Ethic

9:52 Hillcrest Fellowship to COO

13:04 Becoming CEO at 32

16:41 Three Leadership Rules

18:47 Starting Over in Louisville

22:25 Measuring What Matters

26:26 Taking The Career Fork

30:45 Fired

34:20 Traits of Great Leaders

36:41 Lightning Round

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
40 min
January 07207. From Clinical Dietician to CEO of Allina Health, with Lisa Shannon
In Season 2, Episode 7, Anne Hancock Toomey sits down with Lisa Shannon, CEO of Allina Health, to discuss her impressive trajectory from a rural community in Ohio to leading a health system with 12 hospitals and dozens of clinics across Minnesota and Wisconsin. Shannon began her career as a hospital-based dietician, growing and evolving to become a highly respected executive and leader. That success came from the early influence of her grandmother, along with, of course, mentors and leaders along the way. Shannon talks about a devastating medical error that affected her family early in her life. Indeed, one of Shannon’s priorities throughout her leadership career has been the pursuit of zero safety events, which includes creating a culture where anyone and everyone is empowered to speak up.
She also offers insights into balancing work and family and emphasizes the significance of listening to one's instincts in making career choices.
2:02 Early Life and Influences

4:42 First Jobs and Early Career

7:50 College and Career Path

15:36 Leadership Journey and Mentorship

16:58 Patient Safety and Cultural Change

21:38 Career Highlights and Challenges

30:59 Leadership Insights from the Role of CEO

35:04 Balancing Career and Family

39:43 Lightning Round and Closing Thoughts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
44 min