The Backstory

Every company has a board of directors. Eric Evans says every leader needs one, too. In this episode of Backstory Sessions, Eric, CEO of Surgery Partners, joins Jarrard President and Founding Partner Anne Hancock Toomey for a candid conversation recorded live at the Nashville Health Care Council’s Healthcare Sessions 2026. He spent 14 years at Tenet Healthcare, rising from business development dir...

What does a CFO understand only after joining the board? Teresa Sparks spent decades as a healthcare finance leader, serving as CFO of Symbion, Surgery Partners, Brookdale Senior Living and Envision Healthcare. Today, as an independent board director, she has the distance to help executive teams recognize patterns they may miss while running the business day to day.  In this episode of Backst...

A strong return is only half the job. For CVS Health Ventures Managing Partner and Co-founder Vijay Patel, the other half is strategic: Back companies that can improve the consumer experience, support clinicians and take on affordability. Vijay joined Jarrard President and Founding Partner Anne Hancock Toomey for Backstory Sessions, Jarrard’s limited short-form podcast series recorded live at the...

Live from Healthcare Sessions 2026 in Nashville, host Anne Hancock Toomey talks with J.R. Green, founder and board chair of Psychiatric Medical Care (PMC), the nation’s largest behavioral healthcare management company with 400+ hospital locations across 35 states. Greene traces his path from consumer brand leadership at Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, and Revlon into healthcare, guided by his psychia...

Live from Healthcare Sessions 2026 in Nashville, Anne Hancock Toomey interviews Jenn Adams, CEO of August Bioservices, about her 30+ year career in sterile injectable manufacturing and the path that led her from Baxter into entrepreneurship. Adams explains how a long-standing investor partnership helped launch August Bioservices in 2020 with a mission to bridge the gap between demand for critical...

This is Backstory Sessions — a new short-form series recorded live at Healthcare Sessions 2026 in Nashville, and also on YouTube. Host Anne Hancock Toomey sits down with David Dill, chairman and CEO of Lifepoint Health, to discuss his path from growing up with a basketball-coach father and teacher mother to earning an accounting degree at Murray State and moving to Nashville in 1991. Dill explains...

It's a bonus! In this special edition episode , Anne Hancock Toomey interviews Warner Thomas, president and CEO of Sutter Health. They start with a note about the first podcast Anne ever hosted - a 2020 conversation with Thomas that reminds us all of how much has changed even as the principles of authentic leadership haven't. From there, Thomas traces his path from a disciplined, outdoorsy childho...

In the final episode of Season 2, Anne Hancock Toomey interviews Cynthia Brandt, PhD. Brandt is CEO of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health and a deeply respected leader in the world of philanthropy. Brandt reflects on growing up in the Midwest in a minister’s family, early lessons in authenticity from a difficult camping experience and the teacher who led the excursion, and how rec...

Dr. Patrick Frias is a truly unique leader with a truly unique story. Today, he is wrapping up his tenure as Co-President and Chief Executive Officer of Rady Children’s Health before heading back to his old stomping grounds in Georgia to lead Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. In episode 209 of the Backstory, Anne Hancock Toomey interviews Dr. Frias about how he became who he is today and the way h...

Marty Bonick is about as well-known a name as you’ll find when it comes to the National – and Nashville – healthcare scene. Bonick is President and CEO of Ardent Health, which operates 30 hospitals and more than 280 care sites across mid-sized urban markets nationwide, while employing over 24,000 team members. In this conversation, Bonick and Anne Hancock Toomey talk about his time growing up on C...

In Season 2, Episode 7, Anne Hancock Toomey sits down with Lisa Shannon, CEO of Allina Health, to discuss her impressive trajectory from a rural community in Ohio to leading a health system with 12 hospitals and dozens of clinics across Minnesota and Wisconsin. Shannon began her career as a hospital-based dietician, growing and evolving to become a highly respected executive and leader. That succe...

Rob Allen is CEO of Intermountain Health, one of the nation's largest and most innovative health systems. In this episode, host Anne Hancock Toomey talks with allen Allen about his journey from growing up on a dairy farm in Wyoming to becoming a healthcare CEO at the age of 28. And if you're thinking you've heard the farm-to-CEO story before, you'd be right. Several of Anne's Backstory guests come...

Tom Hale is the CEO of health tech company Oura. Producing one of the most prominent wearables out there (The Oura Ring), Oura is working to improve health and wellness through sustainable behavior change. In this episode, Hale and host Anne Hancock Toomey discuss his journey from working as a bike mechanic in Reno, Nevada, to a career spanning some of the most notable tech companies of the past 2...

Chris Spencer is a tech entrepreneur and founder of TeamQ, who today is using his decade playing in the NFL as a foundation for helping athletes across the country maximize their potential on the field and in life. In this episode, Spencer and Anne Hancock Toomey discuss his background growing up in Bentonia, Mississippi, transitioning from farm life to football. He wasn't just a football player,...

This week, Anne interviews Chris Bishop about his multifaceted career in healthcare and his transition to leading in the animal health sector as CEO of Veterinary Innovative Partners (VIP). Bishop shares his journey from growing up in Tennessee, working the seafood counter, playing college basketball, working in myriad roles within healthcare and navigating the complexities of corporate leadership...

From sleepaway camp to the Appalachian Trail, Jennifer Pharr Davis’s story is one of curiosity, courage and...camp. Her early desire to "keep up" rapidly transformed into a relentless drive to find her own limits, leading her to achievements few can even imagine. In this episode, Anne Hancock Toomey sits down with the former National Geographic Adventurer of the Year to talk about how lessons from...

In the first episode of Season Two, Anne Hancock Toomey sits down with Scott Becker. Becker’s name is synonymous with healthcare media and can’t miss industry conferences. The Becker’s brand is now an empire, covering every facet of the industry. And the energetic man behind the brand is a respected healthcare lawyer whose real purpose and passion is connecting people and ideas. Anne has known Sco...

 Ever wonder what makes great leaders tick? Well then welcome to season two of the Backstory, where each conversation is a case study in authentic leadership. Throughout her career in healthcare consulting, Anne Hancock Toomey has encountered some truly impressive leaders. Here, she sits down with them, digging into their journeys, who they are and how they lead. The backstory is about humanizing...

In the capstone episode of Season One, Anne Hancock Toomey interviews healthcare entrepreneur and...her dad! Kenny Hancock is CEO of Lync Health Partners. Hancock shares his journey from working his family's small-town hardware store in Kentucky to a successful career as a serial entrepreneur in healthcare. He talks about how early setbacks in a high-pressure sales role motivated him to keep pushi...

In this episode of The Backstory, host Anne Hancock Toomey interviews Dr. David Miller, President of University of Michigan Health and incoming Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs of University of Michigan and CEO of Michigan Medicine . Dr. Miller shares insights from his career as a urologic cancer surgeon and member of the leadership team at a large academic health system. He discusses...

In this episode of The Backstory, host Anne Hancock Toomey sits down with the Global Head of Healthcare for Blackstone, Ram Jagannath, to trace the path that led him from a childhood as a first-generation American to the upper echelons of finance and healthcare investing. Jagannath shares how his formative years shaped his perspective, weaving through early influences, first jobs, and pivotal expe...

In this episode of The Backstory, Anne Hancock Toomey sits down with Ric Ransom, CEO of University of Missouri Health Care, for a conversation that covers everything from comic books to crisis leadership. Ric’s journey started in Birmingham, Alabama, in a home filled with big personalities and even bigger aspirations. He carved out a career that spanned law and healthcare administration, helping g...

In this episode, Anne Hancock Toomey sits down with Wendy Horton, CEO of UVA Health University Medical Center, to delve into her impressive career in academic medicine. Horton, known for her problem-solving skills and steady hand in a crisis, shares her journey from growing up in a rough neighborhood in Southern California to her childhood picking kiwi on an uncle’s farm to her leadership roles at...

We're doing something a little different this week on The Backstory. We're two-thirds of the way through this series and has talked to 13 incredible leaders. So, we wanted to take a moment for host Anne Hancock Toomey to reflect on one of the questions that she asks each guest. That is, "What are the three characteristics of the most effective leaders?" Every one of the leaders interviewed has a u...

From rural Rhode Island to founding and leading one of the country’s top consultancies and one of healthcare’s most respected organizations, Ken Graboys’ story is anything but ordinary.   In this episode of The Backstory podcast, host Anne Hancock Toomey sits down with Graboys, CEO of Chartis (Jarrard Inc.’s parent company), to discuss moments that shaped his journey. From selling seeds door-to-do...