“Your prior experience has led you to this role, so trust your judgment. Also, have the courage to execute what you believe in and what is right even if it is hard.” –Jen Herdler, CFO, Impact Health
When it came time for Jen Herdler to get back into the workforce, she signed up for a refresher course in financial modeling through a weeklong classroom experience in lower Manhattan.
There she would become reacquainted with an old friend: Excel. However, her fellow classmates were another matter.
Read More“I’ll never forget that first day when I walked into the classroom and discovered that everyone was at least 20 years younger than me—I felt so uncomfortable and out of my element,” recalls Herdler, a seasoned finance leader who had put her career on hold roughly a decade earlier to raise a family.
Herdler says that her weeklong immersion among 20-somethings grew only more unsettling when the class was asked to individually tackle different modeling tasks, an exercise designed to stress-test the spreadsheet’s latest functionalities.
Says Herdler: “Their speed always surpassed mine.”
However, the discussions that routinely followed the Excel exercises began to expose something different to Herdler.
“I realized that the communication skills that leaders need to explain their ideas were as critical as they ever had been,” comments Herdler, who notes that the discussions also made her realize how her past experiences in both business and life had enhanced her judgment and enabled an enviable advantage in making business decisions.
Looking back at her classroom experience, Herdler says that her biggest takeaway perhaps had little to do with business modeling.
“The technology is always changing,” she observes, “but business and leadership fundamentals do not.” –Jack Sweeney
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CFOTL: Tells us about Impact Health … what does this company do, and what are its offerings today?
Herdler: Impact Health is a healthcare company that currently provides turnkey COVID-19 testing and vaccine solutions for businesses, private organizations, and government organizations as well. Some of our clients require nurses or technicians on site, and some of our clients require full turnkey solutions, which is providing the COVID-19 test and all of the infrastructure that goes along with setting up a site for them. Our business, obviously, demands clinical excellence and great integrity. We must follow standards from HIPAA and the CDC, as well as state guidelines. This type of reporting is a highly regulated industry, so it’s really critical that we have really good data systems to support this.
Read MoreI would say that we pride ourselves on a rapid response. This is really what sets us apart from our competitors. We pride ourselves on how quickly we can turn around our customer requests. I like to think of Impact Health as a 20-year-old start-up. Prior to COVID, we had been a small biometric testing company for 20 years, and then we made a strategic pivot when COVID-19 came. We have experienced explosive growth. When I say “explosive,” I mean incredible growth from 2019 to 2020 and again in 2021. Our revenue in 2020 was 10 times that of 2019, the majority of it coming in the last half of the year. Before COVID, we had only 300 nurses and technicians across the country. Now we’re looking at over 20,000 nurses and technicians in our network, although our active nurses number maybe lower within that due to low industry utilization rates. This dramatic growth has required a whole new IT infrastructure to enable us to be able to scale to grow and all new systems and processes companywide.
jb
Impact Health | www.impacthealth.com | King of Prussia, PA