My first time at Cass Tech.
Welcome.
Thank you, It's beautiful.
The home of the Cass Technicians.
Yes, this is a fabulous well, I'm excited
to have our chat here at Cass Tech.
Yes. Yeah. I love to be in this high school setting.
I know. It is so right. It gives you energy.
Denise Brooks-Williams, thank you so much for sitting down and joining us today.
It's such a privilege to be here.
Tell me about your connection to Cass Tech.
Well, I had the privilege of going to Cass Tech for high school,
and when I thought about, like a fun place
to go and reflect on what Detroit means to me, Cass, is all those things.
It's a place where kids come from all over the city because it's a magnet school.
So I lived on the east side of Detroit.
Cass is downtown Detroit.
So for me, just the venture every day was like a huge experience.
So, you know, it just reminds me of all the fun things of my childhood
in terms of matriculating through high school, meeting really cool people,
having experiences that I had never had before.
And I actually spend a fair amount of time back
supporting the school now so that special places would be Cass.
You know, from the time you were at Cass
until the moment that we're sitting here now.
I know there's a lot that's happened.
Can you kind of walk us through your trajectory?
Tell us how you got here to your role at Henry Ford Health.
At Cass, we had on site admissions for college.
And so one of the places
that I chose to apply for on the spot was the University of Michigan.
Life changing in that, you know, it's the place that I ultimately decided to go.
It's where I really discovered public health
and professions in health care that were not clinical.
It's where I met my husband of 28 years.
Both of my daughters are alumni of the university,
so lots of connections, all of which started at Cass, right.
Just this magical time in the gym where they said, Oh, you can go and apply
if you have certain test scores and certain grades.
I ended up doing an internship called the Summer Enrichment Program
through the School of Public Health, which was targeting African-American
students to have an interest in health care administration.
So even really early on, this idea of how little representation there was of black
health care leaders, not to mention even female leaders at that particular
time was a driver for me in kind of pursuing my degree.
And so for ten years, I really didn't work in hospitals.
I worked in outpatient settings.
I recruited physicians, started practices,
built facilities all pretty much in the city of Detroit
or its greater suburban area, but did that for about ten years.
And then after that, I moved back into hospital operations.
Did that for about ten years and then moved into leading my first hospital.
And that was in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Okay, So went there, was there for about five years.
And then I came to Henry Ford
and I've
been in Henry Ford for the last nine years.
When I came it was to lead Wyandotte.
So I was the CEO of Wyandotte Hospital and most recently
moved into market operations.
So first I had the North Market, which was McComb and Oakland County,
and now I have all of our markets.
This is my Cass Tech.
This is where you went to school.
This is where I went to school.
So if you could imagine, you know, being a cool 14 year old,
but not being afraid of those seven flights of steps.
And no elevators?
No, there were elevators, but they were not for general use.
Okay, you needed to have an elevator pass.
There's a whole story behind that.
How you may or may not acquire those and you could certainly take them.
But I mean, they were slammed for.
So it's much faster if you wanted to be on time to just take the stairs.
I'm sure there are so many lessons
you've learned along the way in your journey,
but can you tell us some of the ones that really stuck with you?
I would say lessons that stick with me are kind of the simple things, right?
So always treating everyone with kindness.
And I think in my role it has really paid great dividends
because I see people with great potential
and they may not always see that themselves. Right?
So one of my lessons has been just kind of appreciate
relationships and connecting with people.
I also would say having mentors
is both a lesson and a gift that I try to give.
I don't know at all.
And so partnering with others has been incredibly impactful.
Yeah.
So you're mentoring people at Henry Ford Health
and then also in the community, it sounds like. Absolutely.
And as they mature, it also reminds me how long I've been doing it.
I mean, going to school here, you probably were like acutely aware of
just all the incredible alumni that you guys had here.
You know what?
I would say yes and no, because, you know, when you're a younger person,
you may or may not fully appreciate.
Now, Diana Ross was like, yeah, that was given. Yeah.
But you did know that you were some place that was highly coveted and regarded
because you kind of like I said, you had to compete to get into the school
and you knew once you got here the caliber of people
that you were going to classes with, Right?
It was like, well, this is like no simple task..
How do you see the future of health
care from your unique perspective and experience?
I think that health care, as we know, post-pandemic, right?
I think we're all reassessing how fast will get to whatever the destination is.
But I'm hopeful that the future of health care is going to include better outcomes
for all, right.
A lot of the work that we do at Henry Ford
Health is around understanding why are there disparities in the care?
You know, that people receive and why are outcomes
are not a little bit more universal?
I think the setting for care is going to continue to change.
We'll see less being done in hospital settings,
more being done perhaps in our homes where we have virtual care.
We also have the opportunity to actually literally have hospital care at home.
We'll see more being done in our outpatient environments,
both surgical procedures just as well as visits.
But I think we'll see the cost and how we pay for care continuing to evolve.
Right.
Hopefully, the costs going down, perhaps because of those setting changes,
but then also the contributions that each individual household is making towards
health care might need to be normalized, I think, a little bit in the future.
What are you most proud of at Henry Ford Health?
I would say I am most proud of our commitment to the city of Detroit
and I think all things we do are great and amazing.
But having watched health care in this region over many, many years, Right.
We are the academic health center that's there and continuing to invest.
Just opening our new cancer center, the amazing work that's underway now
to look at how we can reinvigorate the campus for Henry Ford Hospital
and just our continued commitment throughout the region.
So proud of all the small things we do.
But I really think the big bet that we've placed on the city of Detroit
in saying that it's a place to be and that our great legacy will continue to
thrive in.
So or in the library somewhere,
keeping it quiet in here as the librarians
like us to do, right.
But, you know, you know,
there's a bunch of high school students like right below us learning and engage.
And it kind of hammers home again how important it is
to invest in our youth, especially as an organization like Henry Ford Health.
Some of the students have had opportunities
to be in research programs that we have at the health system, of course,
But this is another way to partner with people that have an interest in
and are from the community and value what it means to be serving in southeast
Michigan. Absolutely.
This is a different kind of library than I have.
This is way cooler with a way better view.
I will say that it is a bit fancier than the one that I dwelled in as well.
This is a Women in Leadership series, right?
And we are surrounded by so many strong women of all ages.
If there was any bit of advice
you could give to women who are just looking to better themselves
and better their careers and their lives, what would that be?
I would definitely say one piece of advice would be trust your instinct.
I think that sometimes as a female leader, we are balancing a lot
and you can kind of get over consumed with what you're not doing
or what you don't know or where you aren't.
And just sometimes trusting your gut
in terms of your judgment is probably going to be the best judgment.
Utilizing mentors, right, of course, to help you when you are unsure.
But I do think it is just kind of trust yourself.
There can sometimes be a doubt as a female leader that people could,
I think, be advantage by with not allowing that to creep in.
Denise Brooks Williams, is that a true pleasure?
Thank you so much for sitting down and talking with us.
Absolutely. My pleasure. It was fun. Thank you.