Jennifer is a seasoned healthcare leader with expertise in leading start-up and high growth organizations, with a proven track record of executing on go-to-market and growth strategies in the employer, payor and provider channels.
Jennifer currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Pacify Health, a leader in tech-enabled Maternity Management Solutions. Previously, Jennifer served as General Manager and Chief Commercial Officer for Vera Whole Health, an advanced primary care organization and at Optum as Senior Vice President, Commercial Growth. Jennifer serves as a board member for Zero Health, a leader in employer direct contracting and as the Board Chair for the Minnesota Milk Bank for Babies.
Jennifer holds an MBA from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and an MS in Kinesiology from the University of North Dakota.
Josh Dougherty:
Welcome to A Brave New Podcast. This is a show about branding and marketing in the healthcare space. But more than that, it's an exploration of what it takes to create brands that will be remembered and how marketing can be a catalyst for those brands' success. I'm Josh Dougherty, your host. Let's dive in.
Welcome back to A Brave New Podcast. Today, I'm going to have a conversation with Jennifer Sargent. Jennifer is the CEO at Pacify, and I've known her for a number of years since she was at Vera Whole Health. One of the things that's always impressed me about her is her strategic thinking and her ability to translate strategic thinking into practical organizational change. I think that what's exciting about this conversation is we are going to unpack the process and the thought process that she went through as she and her team pivoted and expanded Pacify's services and the work that they were doing over the last few years since she's joined the organization.
We're going to talk about how the brand has evolved, how the service has evolved, and how human-centered care still remains at the center of what she's doing despite the growth and technology. And they're certainly a tech-enabled service that they provide, but they really emphasize that human approach to care. This is going to be a great conversation to unpack—the process that someone goes through as they think about expanding and changing their services and the implications that that has throughout everything that they're doing. So without further ado, let's bring Jennifer into the conversation.
Well, hi, Jennifer. Welcome to the show.
Jennifer Sargent:
Hi, thank you for having me.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. Well, I'd love to have us start out just by having you share a little bit about your story to people who don't know you. Can you tell me and our audience a little bit about your career path and where it's taken you so far?
Jennifer Sargent:
I originally got into healthcare because I've always just had a passion for living a healthy life myself. And so as I was figuring out what I wanted to do as I grow up, and still am figuring that out, I wanted to be in healthcare because I have a passion for helping people live healthier lives. So that took me on this path of being in healthcare on the services side of things.
I think probably midway through my career was when technology really became the big thing. That was when wellness platforms became a thing and everything that we were selling was a technology platform. Through that experience and with that organization, I really realized one of my core values in healthcare being that you can't replace a person with technology. Technology is there to enhance the care, but for most pieces of healthcare, you still need a person, whether that's a doctor or a coach or somebody helping you with that care. That brought me to Vera Whole Health, which is where we met.
Josh Dougherty:
Right.
Jennifer Sargent:
And there in the advanced primary care space, and really again, liked that concept of you have a doctor and a care team and then figuring out how you use technology to enhance that. And then COVID hit during that journey, which taught us all a lot about how do we use technology. And I think in that experience we over swung too much on, well, now everything can be done virtually. And now we've balanced that out, but through that experience, again, I continued to really think about how do technology and care come together.
And then I got the opportunity to join Pacify and was just really excited about the mission of Pacify, which is really to ensure all new and expectant parents have a more equitable and positive birth experience. And I really appreciated how they were thinking about technology really enhancing the care that was being delivered by, at the time, mostly lactation consultants and just feel passionate about the space. I will often say that I became a parent older in life at 40. I had my first baby, and I thought I'd done a lot of hard things, but becoming a parent for the first time was the most rewarding but also the hardest journey. And I recognize that I came to that experience with a lot of privileges and resources and education and other things that not every new parent has. And so really was just called by all of that together to join the organization and help them continue to deliver great care.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for giving a bit of an intro too. I think that I'm really intrigued by what you brought up about how we over swung during COVID. Now, it feels like everything is digital first and then people second in some ways. I think good organizations aren't doing that, but I wonder if you could expand before we jump into talking about Pacify. How do you think the best organizations are thinking about it now? Because, obviously, digital is this amazing tool to be able to leverage, but what were maybe some of the positive lessons that we learned in that over swing about how to put providers still central in the care that's being given to people?
Jennifer Sargent:
I think that you have to really think about this specific patient or member journey that you're trying to deliver in the model that you have and where is virtual appropriate. It's interesting because when I was in the primary care space and we were going through this COVID over swing and virtual, we were thinking, "Could you just do an all virtual primary care model or never get seen in-person?"
I think some organizations are trying that, but then I always go to at some point, even if you're a healthy person, somebody's got to check something or look at something. I think the best companies are really thinking about where does it fit in the journey specifically for the type of care that you're delivering, and virtual works really well in some instances not as well in others. And then how do you still try to develop a relationship between whomever the clinician is and the person is when you're using technology? I think more to come on where this all lands for sure, but it's definitely an interesting time.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. And I think people are asking good questions now because the virtual isn't all new so it's not like the shiny bright thing anymore, so we can ask the bigger questions. So I'd love to switch back to the Pacify conversation. I know you talked about at the time when you joined the organization was really largely focused on lactation and feeding, but there's a whole bunch of other things that go into mothers giving birth and having those first experiences and going through that process. So under you, the offerings and focus have shifted quite a bit of what you're providing. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about that journey and, first off, how has it shifted really for you? I know you're more in the doula space now and, then, what was the impetus for making that change?
Jennifer Sargent:
Pacify has been around for over 11 years and delivering really great care. And when they were founded, created this really innovative virtual model for lactation, which when you think about infant feeding, you need help when you need help, whether that's two o'clock in the morning and the baby's not doing the thing you want the baby to do, or it's one o'clock in the afternoon and you can go to a doctor's office. Pacify did a really amazing job before my time in growing that line of business and becoming a leader in that space. When I joined, I was primarily serving two types of customers, defined “customer” as the organization that's funding, so that would be Medicaid MCOs and public health.
As I joined late 2020s, or in 2023, a few things were happening. We did have a small virtual doula line of business, but it was not really designed to match a member one-to-one. It was built on top of this more on-demand lactation model that we had. I really quickly realized when I got into the organization, started talking with the team, and started thinking about where the industry was going, a couple of key things were happening. Doula was just becoming this huge focus, right? More states were requiring doula be a part of Medicaid reimbursement, wonderful research was coming out about the impacts that doulas can have. And as we looked at our, and our customers were asking for it, so that's another obvious big sign to move into a space. And as we started thinking about, okay, what makes sense for us as an organization, what fits our values, our brand promise, all those sorts of things. And there was the technology enabled as a value. We want to use technology to enhance, not to replace.
And then another value of ours was we wanted to not add additional fragmentation into the experience. And so we wanted to focus on solutions or services that typically aren't a part of your provider office, your OB GYN or advanced practitioner. And so as we were looking at all of these things, doula felt like a really great next step for us and really fit well within our member journey. Doulas can refer to lactation consultants. It's just very kind of symbiotic and was a really great opportunity for us to expand the care that we do and the outcomes that we can provide.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the data. You said there's great research that came out about the importance of doulas and providing that access to that type of care. Can you share a little bit about that data and what you found?
Jennifer Sargent:
Sure. The data has been documented nationally, and now we're seeing this in our own data as we've now had more time under our belts in delivering this care—is that doulas can help reduce things like C-section rates and preterm birth rates and low birth weights. They don't direct the care. They're not clinicians, but by having a doula as a part of the experience, there is documented outcomes that they can help improve those things, which is extremely important and obviously very valuable to our customers. Just as important, members who have a doula report a better birth experience. They report feeling more heard as a part of their birth experience. And so when we looked at not just, you can in healthcare very easily go down this ROI and clinical outcome, which is very important, but we also saw this opportunity to really provide a great experience and that's very important to us as well.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I think it's almost, I mean, we think about great outcomes, but I think great outcomes do come through that experience because a lot of time there is an intimate relationship between the mental health and the whole person experience going through something and whatever is happening so this makes 1000% sense. What about, did you feel like there was a little bravery involved in this switch or did it feel natural? It sounds like this was a little bit of a natural outgrowth for you, like people were asking for it. It's very related. Was it hard to make that shift? And I know you're probably providing some of the traditional services that you've already provided anyway, so it's not like you totally moved away, but was there bravery involved or did it feel like a natural pivot?
Jennifer Sargent:
I think that even if it feels like a natural pivot, there's always bravery involved in these big decisions. I mean, it was a calculated bravery, but there was still bravery.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jennifer Sargent:
We had to really decide, are we going to fundamentally change our business? We had to do a tech replatform. We had never built a claim before. We had to build revenue cycle management. There were some fundamental changes in how we were going to do business day to day, our revenue model and we have people that have been the heart and soul of Pacify for a long time. We did have to have a moment and say, "Yes, it feels natural, but are we going to do this? This is a big thing." Right?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jennifer Sargent:
And so certainly it was involved. I heard someone recently on a podcast talk about, people often throw around courage and bravery as just, "I'm going to do this thing, and I have no idea what's going to happen."
And really it's like courage and bravery is, "Well, I know the risks. I've weighed all the things, and I'm still willing to do the thing."
Josh Dougherty:
1000%.
Jennifer Sargent:
And I think that was the spot that we were at.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I think that's why I very intentionally use the word bravery, and I like how you brought in courage because it's not just ignorance and moving forward on a gut feel, right?
Jennifer Sargent:
Right.
Josh Dougherty:
It's doing all the hard work to understand what you're doing and then saying, "Yeah, this is going to be challenging, but I think we can get it done." What have been some of the surprising outcomes from this shift? You've obviously made that transition. I know we've talked about challenges of presenting the brand as online doing all this work, but what have been some good outcomes from shifting your model?
Jennifer Sargent:
I mean, we've had the opportunity to grow the business significantly. At the time that we did the shift, we weren't delivering any in-person care to tie this back to virtual versus in-person. And now, we have a hybrid model where we're doing prenatal and postpartum, mostly virtual. We do some in-person that typically is at member choice, but then delivering the in-person labor and birth support. And so when we started this journey a couple years ago, we were doing zero of that. We are now doing that in 13 states. And so it's been a really fun journey for us to be able to expand the organization and start serving new populations and really thinking about how we can grow the company and drive outcomes. I think some of the surprising things, there are always surprising things that come out of these big changes. I went into this thinking everybody's talking about doula. I had a doula when I did my births. If we build it, they're just going to come in swarms to get this service.
Josh Dougherty:
Of course, it's the ideal business, right?
Jennifer Sargent:
Right. What we found out, though, was that there's still a fair amount of education for our members that we had to do as to, even though it might be free to them, why they should engage with a doula. What is a doula? What do they get out of it? And we did a lot of learning around how do we message the solution in a way that gets people excited about wanting to engage in it, and I think that was a surprising learning for me. Probably could ask my team members and they wouldn't have been surprised by that, but I was.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I mean, how is that balance? I think there's always many companies who have that challenge of education versus selling your services and you're like, "We need to accelerate to selling, but we need to get people excited." And I know you're playing that game if you're working with health plans and other public health employers, et cetera, you have to get members engaged. I mean, obviously you said your team can probably dig into this further, but what were some of the triggers that would move people beyond knowing about this to taking action? Have you had some discussions about that internally?
Jennifer Sargent:
Oh, we have, and we watch this really closely. We watch each step in the member journey really closely, and we went heavily in, and rightly so, into automated marketing journeys based on where people are in each stage. And I think we had a lot of learnings around where people were stalling out. We did A/B testing around messaging and starting to look at what point in their pregnancy would they say, "Oh, I just had my 20-week appointment. Oh my gosh, I really should get a doula now." And so we started to use that data and have some good learnings.
But I think the other thing that we did this year, which is interesting and going back to this automated technology versus person, is we started layering in outbound calls to members who were stuck in a spot in a journey and have seen incredible outcomes from that.
Josh Dougherty:
I love that.
Jennifer Sargent:
And people answering the phone, number one, which always surprises me and just the ability for somebody on the other end to say, "Hey, we saw you enrolled. You haven't scheduled your appointment with your doula. I can help you, but also, can I answer questions for you? Do you want to know what you're going to talk to your doula about in your first visit?"
And that person touch, not needed for everybody, but for those members that I would say if they're stuck are probably going, "I don't really know why I would have this appointment or what I'm going to get out of it." And adding that in-person touch has made a tremendous impact.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I think we're seeing that across the board that there's the digital fatigue of all the emails, all the things, even for stuff you've signed up for. Like you said, they're engaged, but having another human on the phone who is there not just to transact with them, but to actually listen is a big impact that we've seen across all, everyone I talk to on the podcast who's doing any kind of engagement work, they're like, "Yeah, phone works if it's not just a dial telemarketing call, but it's someone who is trained who's ready to listen."
Jennifer Sargent:
And I like to, which is part of the benefit of being with a smaller company, do the things. And so when we first started this, I got on the phone on a Saturday and started calling some members, and yeah, it was just this great ... They pick up the phone, I explain who I am, they’re very engaged, and I think just appreciated a person called me at this time in my life where I could really use support, but I'm not sure how to get it. And yeah, it drives good engagement and I think loyalty from those members.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, talking about loyalty, I'd love to dive a little bit in the brand because as we were prepping for this, we talked about how when you shift your services here and you are a smaller company, as you said, but someone who's relatively established as well in what you were doing previously, you have to really think about how do you position your brand correctly. I'm interested to hear first about your name, which is not as much related to what you're doing now, but kind of. As you were thinking about shifting your business and shifting your brand positioning, what factors made you decide to keep your name and to build upon it versus maybe look for something else?
Jennifer Sargent:
It was honestly a pretty short conversation. We did talk about it. I think there was an acknowledgement that the Pacify brand did fit more closely when the company was primarily focused on infant feeding, but we still do that. It's still a huge part of our business.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jennifer Sargent:
And I think as we talked about it, and I have had past experience with organizations who went through a rebrand, I think sometimes people can think, "Well, it's not that hard. You just pick a new name and then you change all of your assets." And it's much more complicated than that, right? I mean, you really have to be thoughtful about are people even going to start calling you that name? Does that name fit with your brand? It's a big effort. It's a big lift to do it thoughtfully and right. And when we just looked at the cost benefit analysis, if you will, it just wasn't worth it enough for us to undergo that with everything else that we had going on at the time.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally. I think it's wise because I always tell people when I'm advising them on naming that it's like one of the two things that has equity for you in the market. And again, it's like taking the branding beyond just, yeah, we just swap out the assets, but you're not thinking about all the relationships, and all the interpersonal connections that you have that you have to rebuild from scratch if you do name that or do change the name. So you have thought about positioning though, how do you think the brand positioning has changed? Because obviously, name stays the same, but you need people to think of you in a fresh, different way as you're making this pivot. So how did you think about adjusting the positioning and adjusting how you were differentiating yourself in the market?
Jennifer Sargent:
We really spent time, I think, looking at not just like what are the services that we provide, but what do we want that experience to be and then how do we make that consistent with brand even with a new product? We had some changes we needed to make because the original solution was much more on-demand and real time in how we described what we did and taglines and things like that. But at the end of the day, as we took a step back and said, "What are our core values as an organization and what do we want people to think about us and what we deliver?"
It was, we care about our members and we want to deliver a great experience and we're really there to listen and deliver value, then we could say, "How do we take those values into a new product and still make it consistent with how we talked about ourselves before?" That made it pretty straightforward for us to think about what our brand meant moving forward.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally. What do you think when you're describing the Pacify brand to someone, and maybe a sentence or two, you're at a dinner and talking to someone they haven't heard about you, how do you describe it? What's the elevator pitch or the positioning?
Jennifer Sargent:
I think, yeah, this is always a good question. So elevator pitch with positioning, I would describe what we do as we are a doula-led maternity management solution and we want to provide a more equitable and positive birth experience for all. I think if you start going down the tech enabled and what does this mean and people are, whatever, the technology again is there to enhance the care that we deliver, but I would say to describe our brand positioning is like we want to be there during sometimes the most exciting, scary, like all the adjectives, especially when you're going through-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, it's everything, right? If you've ever-
Jennifer Sargent:
It's everything. We are the person to be there alongside and try to help that be a really great experience for you. And a lot of people now know what a doula is. They know what a lactation consultant is and so I think they get it, but I think it's that caring and that being alongside them for the journey that really resonates.
Josh Dougherty:
Yep, that's great. It makes me think about the challenge of that caring human experience and then communicating this to, I think we had the same challenge when we were working with Vera, numerous complex audiences. You're talking to Medicaid, you're talking to employers, you're talking to mothers, or women that are going to be mothers upcoming very soon. How do you balance speaking to all those complex audiences while still getting the right emotional resonance across with the brand?
Jennifer Sargent:
It's something that we still think about because I'm not sure we've entirely figured it out because it is a complex problem. Whenever we think about decisions that we have to make as a business, which include our brand and how we're positioning ourselves, we always talk about who are our key stakeholders and the three main key stakeholders are the members themselves, the ones that are receiving the care, our doulas and lactation consultants, the ones that are delivering the care, our customers who are paying for our care, for the care, and then our corporate team members. And so we think about, all right, what's consistent across those populations that we can describe and use no matter who they are, and then where do the subgroups fall in?
And so subgroups, to use an example in our member population, is where it can start to get more complex because you mentioned we have Medicaid members that we're serving, we have public health members that we're serving, we have people that are paying out of pocket and they come from different backgrounds and have different needs and human experiences in their lives. And so I think it's, again, finding about what's the high-level brand messaging that could resonate across those different subgroups and then how do we think about refining the message within each of those subgroups? I think that's the easier part.
The harder part is how do we get the right person to go to the right place for the right messaging? And if you think about just your website as the first thing. The pacify.com that people would Google and go into, that's a page. And so we had to really be thoughtful about, okay, how do we describe what we do on this page so that it could resonate with everybody and then try to get them an easy path to something that is more specific to why they're coming to us for care. And I think that's something that we continue to learn and tweak and look at as we grow because it's not a simple answer.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. And it gets even more complex when you, and obviously the people you serve, you can all talk about there's this, it's a transformative moment you want to be there with them, but when you add in people who are paying for the care, they don't care as much about those things as other elements, right? And so it's how do you build consistency? I'm sure they care about that tangentially and then they, like if it's an employer, they want their employees to have a great birth experience, that sort of thing, but it's a different concern.
Jennifer Sargent:
Yeah, I would say all of our customers care about the experience.
Josh Dougherty:
Of course.
Jennifer Sargent:
However, there's customers that have to also justify the financial component of it too.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jennifer Sargent:
And so it's really like, how do we balance the messaging on those things based on who we're talking with?
Josh Dougherty:
Absolutely. What do you think are the biggest learnings that you've had? You've been building this new, I don't know, we shouldn't say it's new. We should say an expanded set of services over the last couple of years. What are the things that you've learned from this process that you maybe would apply to the next evolution because nothing's ever stagnant, right? Things evolve constantly.
Jennifer Sargent:
I knew this coming into Pacify, but I think it just continues to get reinforced with me how important it is to balance the business side, the metrics, all the stuff you have to do as a business leader with the human and emotional side of a very human and emotional business—that we are in healthcare and how important it is to listen and get feedback and then have a process in which to do something with that feedback, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jennifer Sargent:
And how do you make decisions on the feedback? I took the opportunity as a part of my journey to become a doula myself, which is a unique opportunity in healthcare. It's not like at Vera I could say, "Oh, I'm going to go see what it's like to be a doctor."
And so I went through the training, and was able to support a couple of births, stayed up all night twice, which is not easy in my older age. And I think that gave me such a unique, very brief opportunity to experience what our doulas do and the hard and meaningful work that they do along with the experience and care that our members deliver. And I think it's just a reinforcement of how do you continually try to go back to being close to your important audiences, and as a CEO, as you're balancing all the things and you've got your board and you've got all the things, right, you have to be thoughtful about really setting aside time to do that and think about that because it's so critically important.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I love that because, ultimately, the value you provide is in that moment. So if you can stay close to that, you can translate it out across the board to what you're doing. Final question I had is this, I'd be remiss to not ask about this, but I know that you're really focused on this human-centric care, but at the same time, we're living in the midst of a new technology arms race with AI, and people are learning how to put AI into their products and sometimes I think doing it too quickly, sometimes doing it thoughtfully, but what's your take? How are you intentionally thinking about AI for your organization and building it into maybe your platforms and that sort of thing, but also making sure that you're maintaining the soul of what you're doing as you provide healthcare?
Jennifer Sargent:
I'll go back to an earlier comment I made about wanting to make sure technology doesn't replace the person part of the centered care. And so we've been very thoughtful and intentional about how we're using AI, and today, we're really using it in ways that we can make ourselves more efficient in operations on backend and coding and things like that so we can move more quickly to deliver better care so we can free up people's time to focus on delivering better care. We have not put AI in between ourselves and our members yet.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jennifer Sargent:
So if a member comes into our platform and messages with a doula or lactation consultant, they're messaging with a human. I think I continue to watch it and certainly want to learn how other companies are using it, but for now this feels right for us for the care that we're delivering in maternity, for all the reasons we talked about, of this being a very emotional time in someone's life, it just doesn't feel right to us to intersect that with a bunch of technology and AI. I think there's other areas and use cases where it makes a ton of sense, right? So I think business leaders just have to, again, be very thoughtful about what's my brand promise? What am I delivering? Where does it fit when making those decisions?
Josh Dougherty:
And it's another tool, it's a very powerful tool, but it's a tool to support what you're doing at your core from your products and services, yep. Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. I'd love to give you a chance to share with folks about how they can connect and follow along with your journey as if they've been inspired with what they've heard and what you're building. What's the best way for them to stay in touch?
Jennifer Sargent:
From a Pacify perspective, check us out on LinkedIn—our company page as well as my personal page. And I recently just launched a Substack that I am sharing my learnings as a first time CEO, which there's a lot of, and it's been really fun to reflect on those and share those out into the world. That's fairly new, so that's something as well.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. We can share both those in our show notes so that people can find them easily. And Jennifer, thanks so much for coming and sharing about your journey, about the Pacify brand, and about the important work you're doing.
Jennifer Sargent:
Great. Thanks, Josh.
Josh Dougherty:
Thanks for listening to this episode of A Brave New Podcast. Go to abravenew.com for more resources and advice on all things brand. If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love by subscribing, rating, and reviewing A Brave New Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. A Brave New Podcast is created by A Brave New, a branding agency in Seattle, Washington, that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. Our Producer is Rob Gregerson.