As many of you know, I started an amazing new job just a couple weeks before my diagnosis of breast cancer. I was honored to be given the role to integrate API Healthcare, a workforce management software business, into GE Healthcare. This job was a dream come true, and likely the hardest job I would ever love. My diagnosis with breast cancer was confirmed two days before we closed the acquisition with API Healthcare. The timing could not have been more challenging nor stressful. None the less, I had an amazing group of colleagues and a clinical team around me to help me through this challenge. Women I barely knew, or had just met, reached out to share their personal stories about their own battles with breast cancer. My new colleagues at both GE and API helped me balance the incredible challenges that we faced in the early days of an acquisiition.
One of the most important roles of the integration is the formal Integration Kick-Off, when we bring leaders and functional counterparts together from both the GE and API Healthcare sides of the business to discuss the plans for the integration. Given my chemo schedule, we delayed this two day meeting until this week … knowing I'd feel my best as I was ending the three week period after my first chemo treatment and preparing to get my next one. So… we scheduled the two days for Tuesday & Wednesday, just in time for my second treatment on Thursday.
Months of planning and balancing my personal challenges with those at work, all came together on Tuesday when we brought together 60 representatives to formally kick-off the integration discussions, 30 from GE and 30 from API Healthcare. It was an incredible couple of days! My favorite part of an integration is when we come together and work on plans with the acquired company's voice … as they are the experts of their business. The past two days were amazing! Long days and a tremendous amount of information to cover … we made great strides as a cohesive team about how to best approach bringing the amazing company of API Healthcare into the GE Healthcare family. I love my job!
One of the most important roles of the integration is the formal Integration Kick-Off, when we bring leaders and functional counterparts together from both the GE and API Healthcare sides of the business to discuss the plans for the integration. Given my chemo schedule, we delayed this two day meeting until this week … knowing I'd feel my best as I was ending the three week period after my first chemo treatment and preparing to get my next one. So… we scheduled the two days for Tuesday & Wednesday, just in time for my second treatment on Thursday.
Months of planning and balancing my personal challenges with those at work, all came together on Tuesday when we brought together 60 representatives to formally kick-off the integration discussions, 30 from GE and 30 from API Healthcare. It was an incredible couple of days! My favorite part of an integration is when we come together and work on plans with the acquired company's voice … as they are the experts of their business. The past two days were amazing! Long days and a tremendous amount of information to cover … we made great strides as a cohesive team about how to best approach bringing the amazing company of API Healthcare into the GE Healthcare family. I love my job!