Bhavna Mehta, Assistant Vice President - Data and Analytics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, speaks with Mike Kaiser, Data and Analytics Practice Lead at Centric Consulting, in a video interview about her background, creation of her current role, building and nurturing teams, and communicating complex data concepts and insights to non-technical stakeholders.
Mehta comes from a traditional IT background with a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering. Starting as an application developer, she has been with Cincinnati Children's Hospital for 25 years. It was in 2012 when she started working for the quality improvement department, she realized her interest in data.
She got the opportunity to develop the enterprise data governance program which she says, is one of her most successful initiatives. What started with four KPIs along with four data owners and four data stewards, has grown to forty data stewards and over forty data owners.
In 2020, Mehta got the chance to lead Cincinnati Children's “accountable care organization,” a value-based arrangement for Medicaid children. She led it from an infrastructure and a technology implementation perspective, as well as working with operational leadership to develop SOPs and processes to leverage the technology.
While long-term planning in 2021, the organization aimed to achieve key goals like being the best employer, curing mental health, and having the healthiest kids in the community. Mehta mentions that the senior leadership realized that investing in data was going to be a key foundational investment for achieving these goals which led to the creation of her current role as AVP of Data and Analytics.
She now heads data and analytics strategy which includes the data governance program, data literacy, data management, business intelligence, and AI and analytics.
Speaking about building and nurturing high-performing teams, Mehta says that such teams have certain attributes like a shared vision, aligned goals, open communication, and people feeling empowered and heard.
Adding on, she emphasizes communication because:
People need to understand the vision and be able to share feedback. The team should be encouraged to come up with ideas and try new things.
Understanding people's goals and connecting them with the organizational priorities that not only push forward organizational goals but also help them develop their careers.
When asked about the strategies to communicate complex data concepts and insights to non-technical stakeholders, Mehta says that stories with context do wonders. On a similar thread, she stresses the need to understand the different audiences and their needs within their roles and the organization.
CDO Magazine appreciates Bhavna Mehta for sharing her invaluable data insights with our global community.