The Missing Piece with April Reed

In this episode of The Missing Piece , April Reed sits down with Elana Silber, CEO of Sharsheret, The Jewish Breast Cancer & Ovarian Cancer Community. Elana shares her journey from joining Sharsheret as a volunteer more than two decades ago to leading a national organization supporting women, men, and families affected by breast and ovarian cancer. Get in touch with Sharsheret:  Toll-free: 866...

In this episode of The Missing Piece podcast, April welcomes Isaac Kastenbaum, Vice President of Consulting and Training at the Primary Care Development Corporation (PCDC).    Isaac shares his unique journey growing up with a community primary care provider, working with Partners in Health and New York Presbyterian, and his current mission to strengthen primary care organizations.   Tune in to exp...

Christin Pritchard, VP of Quality at Great River Health, built her career from bedside nursing through clinical informatics and operations, and now leads quality, safety, and patient experience for a health system serving 100,000 people.  In this conversation with April Reed, Christin shares how her grandmother's hospital stay first drew her to nursing, why reducing regulatory burden is the key to...

In this episode of The Missing Piece Podcast, Brett Bech joins host April Reed to share the remarkable journey that took him from an overlooked walk-on athlete to a successful career in professional football, coaching, and performance technology. Together, they discuss the power of perseverance, overcoming setbacks, developing a winning mindset, and why focusing on what you can control can change...

What if one conversation could change a life?  In this episode of The Missing Piece Podcast, host April Reed sits down with Jordan Burnham, Director of Training at Minding Your Mind, for an honest and inspiring conversation about mental health, resilience, and the life-changing impact of sharing our stories.  In this episode, you'll learn:  • Why stories are often more powerful than statistics.  •...

What makes learning truly meaningful?  In this episode of  The Missing Piece Podcast , April Reed sits down with Steve Counsell, Director of Learning & Development at Three Pillars Senior Living Communities, to explore what it takes to build learning experiences that inspire growth, strengthen culture, and create lasting impact.  From his unexpected journey into Learning & Development to h...

Most organizations invest in training—but very few ensure employees actually apply what they learn.  In this episode of  The Missing Piece Podcast , April Reed sits down with John Amato, Senior Training Consultant at Family Links, to discuss what separates meaningful training from check-the-box compliance.  Drawing from more than 30 years of experience in leadership development, education, and hum...

What does it take to turn adversity into leadership?  In this episode of The Missing Piece Podcast , April Reed sits down with Misty Mattingly, SVP and Chief Dental Hygiene Officer at Sage Dental, to discuss how resilience, innovation, and purpose have shaped her career.  Growing up in foster care taught Misty determination and grit—qualities that helped her become an executive leader driving inno...

What does it take to completely reinvent your career?  In this episode of The Missing Piece Podcast, April Reed sits down with Ryan Barras, a cybersecurity, technology, and operational resilience leader whose path to becoming a healthcare CISO was anything but conventional.  Before leading cybersecurity programs in complex healthcare environments, Ryan worked in economic development and diplomacy,...

In this episode of  The Missing Piece Podcast , April Reed sits down with Christine Wessel, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Crossover Health, to explore how legal teams can become powerful drivers of innovation in healthcare.  Christine shares her unconventional journey to becoming an attorney, the lessons she learned as Crossover Health's first in-house lawyer, and why she believes t...

In this episode of  The Missing Piece Podcast , Shawn Valenta shares his journey from respiratory therapist to healthcare innovator, telehealth leader, and digital transformation strategist.  Over nearly 25 years in healthcare, Shawn has helped build and scale telehealth programs, expand rural access to care, develop virtual emergency care services, and lead large-scale healthcare transformation i...

Amit Shah, President of Virta Health, joins TMP Podcast to challenge one of healthcare’s most accepted assumptions: that chronic metabolic disease is something patients simply have to manage for life.  Drawing on nearly a decade at Virta, Amit explains why the U.S. healthcare system is often built to manage sickness rather than improve long-term health — and how Virta is working to change that thr...

Jane Garcia spent 43 years transforming La Clinica de la Raza from a small grassroots clinic into one of the nation’s leading community health organizations — proving that healthcare is about far more than medicine. It’s about trust, access, and community.  In this episode, the longtime CEO shares how growing up without health insurance shaped her mission, why community health workers became criti...

Dr. Laurel Soot spent 16 years as a general surgeon before becoming Chief Medical Officer at Providence Health Plan, and throughout that entire journey, one question kept following her: why are patients still arriving in crisis for conditions the healthcare system could have caught years earlier?  In this episode of  The Missing Piece , Dr. Soot shares the pivotal patient stories that changed the...

What can healthcare learn from aviation, AI, and even space travel?  In this fascinating conversation, Dr. Matthew Cooper — cardiac surgeon, aerospace medicine leader, former Fortune 100 Chief Medical Officer, and FAA Senior Aviation Medical Examiner — shares how decades of high-stakes decision-making shaped his perspective on leadership, patient safety, and the future of medicine.  From performin...

Andy Farella, SVP and CIO at the NBME and 2022 Philly CIO of the Year, has watched healthcare technology evolve from the first desktop PC to full-scale AI-driven medical assessments — and he's been building it the whole way.   In this conversation, Andy gets honest about what EMRs got wrong, why healthcare moves slower than it should, and why the defining challenge for every leader today is figuri...

What actually drives sustainable growth in a company—and why do so many get stuck?  In this episode of  The Missing Piece , April Reed sits down with Todd Treml, CEO of Touching Hearts at Home, to explore what 30+ years in franchising, leadership, and private equity have taught him about scaling businesses the right way.  From building franchise systems to leading a purpose-driven home care organi...

Erika Maritz spent 14 years as a radiation therapist watching cancer patients —and after seeing them sent home with feeding tubes, discharge instructions, and a roll of tape, she decided to start designing a better solution from home. Now founder of Maritz Medical Solutions, she's disrupting the feeding tube category with a support system designed around patient dignity, not clinical convenience....

What if AI could give clinicians their time back, and improve patient care at the same time? In this episode of  The Missing Piece Podcast , April Reed sits down with healthcare IT leader and AI strategist Robert Henehan to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the future of healthcare. From his early exposure to electronic medical records to leading AI innovation today, Robert shares r...

Nathan Franklin has an unconventional path: from rural Wisconsin farm kid to political staffer to energy executive—now VP of External Affairs & Sustainability at Emplify Health. In this episode, April Reed and Nathan explore how Emplify Health is reimagining what's possible in healthcare.  Topics covered on this episode:  How to crowdsource innovation from your workforce  Why AI is a multiplie...

Kevin Stansbury, CEO of Lincoln Community Hospital, shares what it really takes to lead a rural healthcare facility—and why it matters now more than ever.  After a personal tragedy reshaped his perspective, Kevin shifted his career toward mission-driven work, becoming a strong advocate for small hospitals serving isolated and underserved communities.  In this episode, he breaks down:  The real cha...

Most organizations don’t fail because of bad strategy.  They fail because they don’t know how to execute change.   In this episode of  The Missing Piece , April Reed sits down with Joseph Oddo — a technology executive who has spent over two decades leading transformation inside some of the most complex organizations in healthcare and enterprise.  But this conversation isn’t about titles or accolad...

What does it really take to lead IT teams in complex, mission-critical environments?  In this episode of  The Missing Piece , host April Reed sits down with IT leader Steve Howard to explore how technology leadership goes far beyond systems, networks, and infrastructure.  Steve shares his unconventional journey into IT, how his background in psychology shaped his leadership style, and why building...

In this episode of The Missing Piece Podcast, host April Reed sits down with Dr. David Feldman, Associate Director at the Paley Orthopedic & Spine Institute, to explore the world of rare and complex orthopedic conditions. Dr. Feldman shares his journey into medicine, his years in academic leadership at NYU Langone Medical Center, and the moment he realized something important was missing in th...

What is the biggest mistake home health and hospice agencies are making today? In this episode of The Missing Piece , April Reed sits down with Teresa Harbour, Chief Operating Officer at the Community Health Accreditation Partner (CHAP), to discuss the #1 deficiency impacting home health and hospice agencies today—and what it means for patient care nationwide. From her beginnings as a 21-year-old...