#233 - Winning Healthcare - Workforce Leaders Embrace Smart AI

Advocate Health's Nakesha Lopez on Work Forward: AI Transformation for 175,000 Teammates Featuring Nakesha Lopez , Chief People and Culture Officer, Advocate Health Recorded in her office at The Pearl, Advocate Health's innovation quarter in Charlotte. Nakesha Lopez runs people and culture for 175,000 teammates across six states at the third largest not-for-profit health system in the country. She got there by way of Trinidad, Brooklyn, a pre-med track she abandoned, and ten years in investment banking that included the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. 🧭 HR Strategy Is Business Strategy or It Is Nothing A people and culture strategy separate from the organizational strategy signals a traditional HR model and a culture treated as second fiddle. Nakesha's standard: we are business leaders, and our financial acumen matches the CFO's. Key Takeaway: the job is interpretation, translating operational, clinical, and finance language into something teammates can act on. 🧪 The Mistake That Still Triggers Her Her first time as a CHRO, she rolled out something good without connecting operational leaders to the execution. It went sideways fast. She points to Chasing Failure by Ryan Leak: high performers chase success, but failure is where the learning compounds. Action: co-create before you roll out, every time. 🤖 People-Led, AI-Enabled Advocate calls it workforce transformation, not AI transformation, and that word choice is deliberate. Nakesha co-sponsors the work with the chief AI officer. This year's focus is AI literacy, helping teammates assess their own AI maturity and build from there. She runs personal AI agents that scan her inbox every morning and prep her for the day, because leaders cannot ask for curiosity they do not model. 🔀 Work Forward Cross-functional teams of leaders and frontline teammates identify workflows worth redesigning, enabled by AI. The discipline is planning what replaces the work that goes away. HR Risk: optimizing inside functional silos misses the teammate journey end to end, where the real gains sit. Embrace the future together, and unlearn a few things on the way. Enjoying the show? Subscribe to The ASHHRA Podcast on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode Enjoying the show? Subscribe to The ASHHRA Podcast on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. This episode is brought to you by AP3 — the ASHHRA Preferred Partner Program. Healthcare HR leaders are navigating rising costs, workforce shortages, and an overwhelming vendor landscape. AP3 cuts through the noise. Managed in collaboration with Lockton and backed by ASHHRA, AP3 is a governed ecosystem of vetted, healthcare-aligned solution providers across talent acquisition, benefits administration, workforce compliance, financial wellness, and employee engagement. Every partner is rigorously vetted. Every relationship is governed. Every solution is built for healthcare. No directories. No bidding wars. Just trusted partners proven to perform. Visit AP3.info to learn more and get connected with a partner. Support the show