CNY EXECUTIVE Q&A: A chat with Loretto’s Kimberly Townsend

Editor’s Note: CNY Executive Q&A is a feature appearing periodically in The Central New York Business Journal, authored by guest writer Jeff Knauss, who is co-founder of his own digital-marketing firm. In each edition, Knauss chats with a different executive at a Central New York business or nonprofit, with the interview transcript appearing in a conversational Q&A format.

In this issue, I speak with Kimberly Townsend, CEO of Loretto, a nonprofit network of elder-care providers. It serves nearly 10,000 individuals annually in Central New York. Loretto employs 2,500 people and says it is the sixth largest employer in Central New York. It is the fourth largest health-care provider in the region.

KNAUSS: Tell me about your background, where you grew up, where you attended school, and how did you get to where you are today?

TOWNSEND: I grew up in New Hampshire. I was the caboose of my family. I have two siblings that are in their 70s. Essentially an only child, I initially went to Boston University School of Public Communication for two years and dropped out of school, got married, and started a family. For a period of 13 or 14 years, I stayed home, raised my kids — homeschooled my children for nine years.

When I saw that I was going to be a single parent, I went back to school. I started at Onondaga Community College and transferred to Syracuse University’s University College, [and] got half a semester worth of credits for my two years’ worth of school. In a period of 6 ½ years, I was able to get my bachelor’s degree, my MBA, and my law degree, and was hired by Welch Allyn at the end of my first year of law school. 

I spent 14 years there, which was great. I was associate general counsel, senior director of government affairs. I got to work all over the world and was able to work with fascinating people. But when the opportunity at Loretto opened to be a leader here, that was always my goal. So, I came to Loretto about five years ago.

KNAUSS: Tell me how you got connected to Loretto when you were working at Welch Allyn?

TOWNSEND: At one point, there was a 40 under 40 conference that was held in town and my oldest daughter and I were the poster children for it because I was literally like 39 and she was 20. We both went to the conference, but part of that conference was trying to connect young professionals with not-for-profit board positions.

Loretto was one of the organizations. It was looking for a board member. I connected with Loretto and was recruited onto the parent company board. I spent 14 years on the parent company board and served as the chair of the parent company board for about 2 ½ years before I was asked to become CEO here.

KNAUSS: What made you decide to go back to school and what was it like to go from being a stay-at-home mom back into the workforce again?

TOWNSEND: Well, I really didn’t have a choice because I knew that I was going to need to be able to support my children. As difficult as it was starting back in school, and being in school with 19 and 20-year-olds while I was in my early 30s, that was just what I had to do. I picked a practical field, which was accounting. I’m a CPA, but quickly, I saw that the really interesting work was being done by lawyers — so my goal was to be a tax lawyer.

I started law school but then drifted into corporate law instead and the rest was history. I always believed that people can do whatever they need to do in order to take care of their children. As I speak to our employees here, I’m constantly amazed and inspired by what people do to better their children’s lives and that was what it was for me.

KNAUSS: What was it about Loretto that made you decide to take the leap? 

TOWNSEND: Well, I was always really passionate about the mission of Loretto both from the perspective of people who they care for in the community and the role it serves in the community, but also just the fact that it’s really an anchor employer for so many people from the city of Syracuse. We know the city has challenges, and it’s something that Loretto was proud of — being an anchor employer.

From my perspective, personally, I’m always most fulfilled when I’m able to make a difference in people’s lives and even more so if it’s in a direct way. When you’re a CEO, you get to make a direct difference in people’s lives. That was what was appealing to me about Loretto even though I have to say I really enjoyed my time at Welch Allyn and wasn’t really looking to leave there. It was just a unique opportunity at the right time.

KNAUSS: How many people does Loretto currently employ?

TOWNSEND: Loretto has 2,500 employees. We say that roughly 1,800 of our employees are frontline caregivers and so that might be people in food service and dining, CNAs, home health aides, housekeeping. And 65 percent of our frontline caregivers are single women of color, head of household, and coming from the City of Syracuse.

KNAUSS: How do you find the best talent? What characteristics do you try to look for when you’re recruiting new talent for Loretto?

TOWNSEND: Well, I think we always look for people who are passionate, particularly about care giving. I would say everyone who works here is dedicated to the mission to deliver exceptional care to people. That’s first and foremost. You really can’t train mission and passion. It has to be there. Then I think we look for people who are creative and don’t mind challenges because health care is a challenging place to be. It’s challenging emotionally and it’s challenging intellectually. It’s so dynamic.

KNAUSS: What’s your philosophy on building a culture for your organization? What do you do as a CEO to help implement that culture?

TOWNSEND: I think we’ve really shifted the culture here at Loretto in the five years that I’ve been here, but it all starts with some foundational work that we describe as dialogue. My personal opinion is that health care is a point-of-service business. The care you receive is only as good as the person standing in front of you and if they feel valued, respected, and effective, you’re going to get great care and if they don’t, you won’t receive good care.

When I came in, one of the first things that we did was we engaged in a process of dialogue. Across Loretto, we would bring groups of employees together to discuss the hard things, the difficult things to discuss, things like what does it feel like to work at Loretto? What does Loretto value? If you could change one thing about Loretto, what would it be and how would that feel?

I think by engaging our employees in that dialogue, they really saw that we were committed to listening to them. We were committed to acting on the things that they brought forward and it just really changed the culture to one where people understood that they were able to make a meaningful difference. I think that’s what everybody wants to do particularly in caregiving professions. Everybody wants to make a difference.

KNAUSS: You’ve had a very successful career. What are some of the characteristics that you feel have led you to where you are today? 

TOWNSEND: I would say that I’ve had some strong mentors and sponsors and I’ve always been receptive to what people have shared with me — the good, bad, and the ugly; but I think by nature, I’m self-reflective. I think I’m self-aware and I think I’m good at self-managing, and really, those are kind of the three areas that help people become effective leaders.

If you’re missing any of those pieces, your leadership isn’t going to be as successful as you want it to be. I think it’s really important to know what you’re good at and what you’re not good at, and to be open and responsive to criticism — both criticism that’s delivered well and criticism that’s not delivered well. I just try to be open and I trust people inherently. I try to empower the people around me because I trust them.

KNAUSS: How do you think your employees would respond if I asked them, “What kind of leader is Kim?”

TOWNSEND: I think people would respond that I’m inclusive, that I ask good questions, but in a non-confrontational way. I’m curious and I’m supportive. I’m not a person who tries to blame shift. I accept responsibility because I feel strongly that as the leader of the organization, I’m ultimately responsible for what happens here. When we’ve had things that didn’t go as planned, I’m the person who is willing to take responsibility, but likewise when things go well, I’m happy to give credit to the team.

KNAUSS: What do you think is one of the largest challenges that Loretto faces in the coming year?

TOWNSEND: Talent. I mean, we’re in a, what, four percent unemployment rate environment, highly competitive in health care. There’s a clinical shortage in general across the country and so when I lay awake at night, it’s over talent related issues — recruiting the right people, retaining the right people, developing people that are already here to be the leaders of tomorrow because I won’t be here forever.

KNAUSS: What are you doing to offset that challenge? 

TOWNSEND: At Loretto, we work hard to support our employees and we have a number of programs that are unique that we do in order to support our employees. For example, we have a car-buying program with two federal credit-union partners for individuals who maybe don’t have any credit or maybe have bad credit. We help them repair that credit, backstopping their loans so they can get a car.

We have a free diaper program so we give out 12,000 diapers a month to employees, about half of those are grandparents raising their grandchildren for various reasons. We offer free urgent care on site. Our employees have great health benefits, but sometimes, people are taking public transportation, can’t get to the doctors, or can’t afford the co-pay.

We also have an emergency fund, our WeCare fund, which the balance of the WeCare fund is always zero because there are so many challenges that some of our employees face — evictions, health issues, even burying children who have been killed. We’re looking at other programs, so we have a food pantry in our Auburn location and we’re looking to maybe partner with the Food Bank here to offer that to our employees.

We’re looking potentially to expand our partnership on car buying to home buying and we’re part of a community conversation both in Onondaga and Cayuga County around the fact that Central New York is a daycare desert, so 75 percent of people with children 0-3 cannot find quality, affordable daycare.

We believe that we, as an employer, can take a huge stake in that so we’re part of those conversations, really trying to solve the daycare crisis from 0-3 until universal pre-K. Part of the reason why children are coming to kindergarten and only a third of them are ready is because they’ve lost the first three years. That’s important.

At Loretto, we take a multigenerational perspective, so by helping our employees, we’re changing the trajectory for their families into the future.

KNAUSS: What do you feel is the biggest opportunity for Loretto in the next year? 

TOWNSEND: I think we have several advantages. I think that our three new projects are spot on in meeting community needs. We’re building a dedicated memory care facility at the Nottingham, state-of-the-art design, with everything we know in terms of evidence-based practices and caring for people who are living with Alzheimer’s.

We are also expanding our PACE Program. We know in the future, people want to stay home. They don’t want to be in institutional settings and the PACE Program is like skilled nursing without walls, so it allows us to maintain people in their homes. We have our restorative care unit that we opened here in collaboration with our hospital partners, which is popular.

It allows us to reduce the length of stay in the hospital by shifting people here safely. Unlike other parts of the country, Syracuse hospitals are full most of the time, so reducing that length of stay allows them to take care of more people. I think we’ve done a number of things. I think from employee initiatives, we’re going to continue to explore offering new services such as home buying, child care, and free legal services.

I think we’re good at listening to what the community needs, listening to what our hospital partners need, and then listening to what our employees need. As large as we are, we’re nimble in meeting those needs. That’s why we’re here.

KNAUSS: What do you do to unwind? 

TOWNSEND: I work out every day and that’s at minimum six days, usually seven days a week. I work out really hard because it’s a good stress reliever, right? I also try to be thoughtful and meditative. I think it’s important to be reflective every day in terms of the things that are going well and the things that aren’t going well. I really enjoy doing things with my family. We have a large family. I have three grandchildren and one on the way. There is never a lack of things going on. Big families are fun. They are crazy, but they are fun.

KNAUSS: You recently wrote a book, tell me about that experience.

TOWNSEND: I did. I got my doctorate about 1 ½ years ago and took some of the principles from it and our leadership philosophy here at Loretto. It’s called “Lifecircle Leadership: How Exceptional People Make Every Day Extraordinary.” That came out in November 2018. People have just been so generous about buying the book and positively reviewing the book. The proceeds for the book go into our “WeCare” emergency fund. It’s all for a good cause.         ν

About the article author: Jeff Knauss is co-founder of the digital marketing agency, Digital Hyve, and has always had a passion for learning about successful executives and their stories. For more on Knauss, check out www.digitalhyve.com.