Ingram's November 2022

Ginger Williams , VP-Customer Service OPTUM Ginger Williams is in the business side of health-care today, but her start came with hands-on roles in patient care. For the vice president of customer service at Optum, that long transition was marked by family, faith, and a fierce determination to improve her lot in life. While majoring in nursing at Texas Woman’s University, she was living on campus with her young daughter, and to make ends meet; she became a nursing assistant in a mental-health center. It wasn’t long before she would pivot to psychology, earning a dual B.A./B.S. in that discipline. Pursuit of a master’s degree, now as a mother of two, “was to be the generational catalyst, break traditional stereotypes, and advance my career outlook in order to provide for my family,” she says. “The completion of my MBA allowed me to bring full circle my education and work experience into a deeper understanding of operations management with a keen focus on people and employee engagement.” Williams is the product of a prototypical All American upbringing: She grew up in Odessa, Texas, the epicenter of high school football in that state, the oldest of three children to a Vietnam veteran and a paralegal who set an example with her appetite for reading and learning. “Friday Night Lights, oil rigs, and lots of tumbleweeds,” Williams recalls. “I was taught by example to first have a foundation of faith to lean on in good and bad times, value your work, and support the community.” In both academics and athletics, she said, life through high school was set in an extended village of family and friends to cheer her on. On her road to health-care leadership, the milestones have been both professional and personal. “My inspiration to work in health care has been primarily motivated by experience in being in the roles of patient, parent, caregiver, and family navigating the journey of health and well-being,” Williams says:

“As a young mother on Medicaid, experiencing an emergency C-sec- tion and delivering a premature baby with an extended stay in the NICU. In the ER with a child, a simple diagnosis of strep throat progresses to renal failure, dialysis and potential trans- plant. As the child of

a veteran, understanding the physical and mental health challenges he ex perienced which changed the trajectory of our family. Assisting my mother in her life, navigating sarcoidosis and diabetes. Most recently, experiencing the loss of my brother at 41 years old due to a heart attack and supporting my husband with congestive heart failure. Being at the forefront of iden tifying disparities and inequities is important to change the narrative and ensure access to care and services.”

Krissy Young , Chief People Officer C2FO Young’s is a familiar story among WeKC selections this year: small-town upbringing (Hannibal, Mo.), parents with a small business of their own, constant examples of the value of hard work, humility, kindness and always—always—doing the right thing. “The intersection of a small community, strong role models in both my parents and high school coaches, as well as a college adviser who brought clarity to never letting fear of failure hold you back, are credited with much of my success today,” Young says. She spent more than 20 years with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, where she rose to become senior vice president of the division, leading the human resources, financial management, and strategy and risk departments. The Fed, of course, is a cornerstone of America’s legacy banking system; her achievements there caught the eye of

and the talent joining, or developing from within, to mission and values. For HR, this means un- derstanding the busi ness and the gaps rela- ted to human capital and building an experience that nurtures and im proves existing culture. The most important skill to accomplish this is listening. You must lis

C2FO, a disruptor in the fintech world, and she came on board there in 2021 as chief people officer. “Over the past 10 years, C2FO has built a platform that the world’s largest companies use to upload millions of approved-for payment invoices per day for their suppliers around the globe,” Young says. “Not only is C2FO a market differen tiator, but it also has a progressive and inclusive culture built on core values that align with who I am and how I work. We expect everyone to have a founder’s mentality.” Her duties play into the passions she discovered for HR while still with the Fed. Human resources, she says, “became my passion. It was the perfect application of my strengths, combined with my desire to bring a data-driven and business-oriented mindset to HR practices. Leaving the leadership team at the Fed was hard to do, but it was the opportunity to build in a fast-paced, growing, and mission-orientated environment that ultimately led me to C2FO.” The key to maintaining culture while building and flying the jet at the same time, she says, “is to align programs and systems

ten to the stakeholders and be willing to flex and adjust as you build.” Fintech, she says, is a game-changer for greater workforce inclusion on multiple levels. “The business model itself is a disruption to legacy systems that have tradition ally excluded participants,” Young says. “From a workforce standpoint, it is an opportunity for fintech to demonstrate how inclusion is solved from the inside out through the development, acceler ation, and promotion of underrepresen ted groups into critical roles.”

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I n g r a m ’ s

November 2022

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