Dave Anderson, PhD, has helped to shape the work of The Carol Emmott Foundation from its inception. He has played significant roles as a liaison with BDC Advisors, an early sponsor of the Fellowship, the first metrics analyst for the Collaborative, and Founding Treasurer of the CEF Board.
In this conversation, he reflects on his relationship with Carol Emmott, the early decisions that helped the Foundation grow, and the personal experiences that shaped his commitment to advancing women in healthcare leadership.
Read the interview, below, edited for length and clarity.
Interviewer: The Carol Emmott Foundation (CEF) – Doug Riddle, Curriculum Director
Interviewee: Dave Anderson, PhD, Founding Treasurer of The Carol Emmott Foundation; Senior Advisor (retired), BDC Advisors, LLC
CEF: How did you become involved in The Carol Emmott Foundation and how did you know Carol?
Dave Anderson: I met Carol in 2000 or so. My first scheduled discussion with her was in 2003, probably a discussion about search. I worked with her on searches that she was conducting, where we were also consulting. There was an opportunity to make sure that we were on the same page in terms of the kind of leadership needs the client had. Later, we actually hired Carol to search for consultants for us.
Carol was a search person who listened. And she was very thoughtful with very creative ideas about the kinds of talent that would fit a particular organization. Now, that’s the job of any executive search consultant, but she was a lot better at it in the academic setting than anyone else I met.
I had a lot of respect for her, so we got involved after that with the CEO Innovators Round Table. That was a big project which lasted about a decade. It was her brainstorm to bring it together around the time Obama was elected. We knew Obamacare reform was going to change healthcare. We thought it was important to get together people who were on the cutting edge of that thinking just to understand each other and at least try to influence the legislation. Over the years it turned into more of a technology provider round table rather than a political governmental round table. That was all Carol’s idea, and we ran with it.
BDC Advisors helped sponsor it along with Russell Reynolds, and it was pretty successful for a decade. That’s how I got to know Carol and work with her a lot during those years.
When she passed away, I knew enough about what her interests were and what she wanted to do to get involved in what was then just the Carol Emmott Fellowship Program and was invited to join the board. After that, BDC Advisors decided to support CEF as well.
CEF: Were you managing director of BDC at that time?
Dave Anderson: I was managing director, yes, but not president. Rick Wesslund was always the president. I was a direct report to Rick and had the title managing director.
CEF: You’ve stayed involved and played multiple roles with Carol Emmott, particularly with developing the Foundation. What inspires you about this work?
Dave Anderson: The goal of the organization to advance women in healthcare leadership positions was always my concern. When I was at my previous consulting firm, APM, we had a wake-up call. We recognized that the firm was basically being managed by a bunch of guys in Manhattan who were not as sensitive to their impact on women consultants as they might have been. We had some internal facilitation to correct some of those things. I prefer to think I wasn’t one of the big offenders, but I certainly wasn’t helping very much in terms of my leadership style. That was a personal wake-up call for me. I had always had a belief that we needed more women in leadership positions in healthcare because the whole workforce is mostly women. At the time, there were even more women than now. It just didn’t make sense to have only men running this work.
Actually, it took me back to my mother’s experience. During the war, she was working for NBC in Hollywood. When the blue and the red NBC monopoly was split up by the Justice Department, ABC was created out of NBC. She was essentially director of programming for ABC. As soon as the men came home, she was out of a job: the men came home, the women left the jobs, left the workforce, they went back and had families, and the men carried on. I always regretted that my mother wasn’t still working her career, because I thought that she was frustrated as a housewife. She did a lot of volunteering, the junior league and hospital pink lady too. But she probably should have had a line job. So it’s always been a priority of mine. When I heard what Carol wanted to do, I was very supportive from the beginning.
CEF: You’ve played such significant roles with The Carol Emmott Foundation. What are your thoughts looking back over the 10 years’ growth of the Foundation?
Dave Anderson: Well, first of all, the key decision we made early on was to adopt a sponsored model. Other fellowship programs went out and raised money from some people and put together programs. They didn’t grow fast, they weren’t big, and they struggled. We decided to adopt a sponsored fellow model [which] was a key step because it allowed us to hire the kind of talent we needed to. We weren’t able to pay Christine Malcolm, our first executive director, as she deserved, but at least a reasonable fraction of this [over time]. We were able to get a few very good people. Felisa Schneider, who started as operations director, was certainly part of that. She was young, energetic, open to learning, and very well organized. That first team that we put together, including you, Doug, was very good and created a great program that immediately resonated with the first class. Those were the important steps. And the success that we had with that first class was a sign that we were on the right track.
Prior to 2018, CEF operated as a program of the Public Health Institute which was run by Mary Pittman at the time. We depended on PHI for financial backing and support. By 2018, we believed that the Fellowship and Collaborative were viable financial entities, and Christine and a number of Board members thought we could take on more of those responsibilities. We formed a Governance Work Group to consider alternatives. The Board concluded that creating a new 501(c)(3) organization would be a [clean] option and one that was financially viable. A strategic plan was developed, Foley & Lardner was retained as General Counsel, and the Board approved the new Foundation in early 2019.
Both the Fellowship and the Collaborative have grown since CEF became an independent [organization]. The COVID pandemic forced many changes, especially for our 4th class of Fellows, but management responded creatively, resulting in no loss of sponsors, members, or momentum. Ironically, the pandemic produced a financial gain that improved CEF’s financial position. The Foundation operated profitably from incorporation through 2025, strengthening its balance sheet, and it is now in a much better position to absorb temporary shocks and continue fulfilling its mission. I think [having our own 501(c)(3)] has been positive and has really enabled us to grow new programs.
CEF: You have been strongly involved in the overarching development of the Fellowship and the Fellowship Network, and intimately involved in the work of the Collaborative. What is your response regarding our evidenced longitudinal research around individual development and the value of the Network as well as your work with McKinsey on Women in the Workplace for the Collaborative?
Dave Anderson: I was involved in building the Collaborative from its inception and helped Gayle Capozzalo, [the Collaborative’s executive director], facilitate the initial “Design Day” meeting in August 2018. The motivation for starting the Collaborative came from three sources: (1) recognition of the institutional obstacles facing women highlighted in the McKinsey / Lean In “Women in the Workplace” studies; (2) the experience of our early classes of Fellows who reported challenges they faced when they returned to their organizations; and (3) our belief that healthcare organizations could learn from each other in a collaborative setting.
From the beginning, I took on the role of “metrics guru” and, with the help of McKinsey’s survey data, tracked Collaborative Member gender and ethnic representation annually. Overall, Collaborative Members outperformed McKinsey’s sample of healthcare companies on representation of women in senior management positions, and Member performance improved gradually over five years.
Rick Wesslund and I were also directly involved in helping launch the Fellowship Network [along with Anne McCune who stepped in as CEO at that time]. In December, 2019, we facilitated an organizational and team-building session in Miami with the Network Leadership Team that defined the Network’s vision, values, and goals, clarified its relationship with[in] CEF, and created a committee structure to execute this strategy. As the Network has grown, with BDC Advisors’ help, it has become an important and valued resource for the growing number of Fellows [who complete the Fellowship program].
CEF: Can you talk a little more about the relationship between BDC and the Carol Emmott community? Obviously, your role and your commitment to advancing women was a key part of that.
Dave Anderson: Absolutely. Rick Wesslund was really the first proponent of that. He dove into the commitment to help support the Fellowship. He was the one who essentially told me that I could get involved with him and spend time doing it. He funded part of my time during that first couple of years, which was pretty important. He was really a big advocate of the program from the very beginning.
CEF: So, you’re saying that in addition to the direct financial support for the Fellowship, he also incorporated some of this in your package?
Dave Anderson: Yes. He gave me relief time when I wasn’t expected to be selling or billing to spend time on it, and he paid for my travel and related expenses. So, yes, there was significant support beyond the direct financial support that BDC gave.
CEF: How did you get involved in the health sector?
Dave Anderson: I was teaching at MIT, and I decided that after a three-year appointment as assistant professor, I wanted to go back to consulting. Before that, I had worked for McKinsey and Company for three years full time, then three years part time while I was finishing my doctorate at Stanford.
At that point, I decided to take the academic appointment rather than go back to McKinsey. After the assistant professorship, I decided that I was really a more natural consultant than I was a researcher. I’m more of a problem solver than I am a researcher anyway. I like to bring lots of research to bear on problems. I was looking around and I found this small consulting firm in New York that had some good people, and they were healthcare consulting firm. So, that’s how I got into healthcare. It was actually a pretty good platform because that firm, APM, did operational consulting as well as strategic consulting. I learned how hospitals work and how doctor’s offices work and a lot of operational details that I probably wouldn’t have learned otherwise.
CEF: So, as you look back, what stands out for you?
Dave Anderson: The Carol Emmott Fellowship and Foundation is certainly one of the things I look back on as a super success. I mean, it’s been remarkably successful for a startup foundation. I’ve been involved in lots of mergers, some of which worked, some of which didn’t. Lots of strategic work for health systems, which added value. But I think the Foundation is one of the most valuable.
I go back a little further to what was a seminal experience for me when I was at McKinsey. I worked with Tom Peters on the In Search of Excellence project. That led to an elongated career at McKinsey, because I could work part-time while I was getting my doctorate while explaining what we found and what we were doing and what the implications were for organizations all over the world.
In advancing talented women in healthcare, we’ve made a lot of progress. There is still a significant way to go. For me, that is the driver of what I’ve been doing with the Foundation and for the Foundation. That’s always been the north star of what I’ve been focused on for the Foundation: advancing women in healthcare leadership.