“5 Questions With” is an ongoing series featuring kickass entrepreneurs, community leaders, and other superheroes.
Lauren “L2” Howard specializes in clinical operations and healthcare technology. As President and CEO of VirtuELLE Health, L2 provides infrastructure design, market fit insights, implementation strategies, growth models, and more to healthcare and allied healthcare companies. She works with groups around the globe to help direct strategy and advise on growing digital health technologies and programs in a post-pandemic world.
Enter L2:
Question 1: What’s your superpower?
I speak telehealth and digital health. It’s like a second language to me. I have both clinical and operations experience, and I can see from the top of an organization down to identify problems and find solutions pretty quickly. I’m also good with words. Everything I do is kind of really that repackaged.
Question 2: Why are you the exact right person to do what you do?
There are a lot of clinical people and a lot of operations people, but there are not a lot of people in digital health that have both. I think it’s really important. Operations or business people are much more likely to make revenue driven decisions that we’ve seen lately. Meanwhile, a lot of clinicians miss the business acumen because business and caregiving are mostly incongruous. Someone who has been exposed and can think on either side of the aisle is necessary.
Question 3: Tell me a story about a time your work made a difference.
When I was in college, my dad, a psychiatrist, held up his new iPod and told me that in 40 years, people would be able to get all of their mental health treatment from one of those. It was his big vision that he thought would undo the need for a lot of medication and improve treatment adherence. Flashforward about 15 years, and I got to be part of the roll out of the largest virtual substance use program from coast-to-coast at the beginning of the pandemic. Three months later, they tracked outcomes and found that they were the same as in-person treatment. My dad had died 5 years earlier. It hit me as I was reading the outcomes that I had seen my dad’s big vision through and been part of making it real.
Question 4: What’s your go-to move for drumming up business?
I create more and go back to people who may have fallen off in the months prior. I don’t have a magic trick though. Things come in waves. Down periods are usually followed by rushes of business, and they usually represent a general lull for everyone. I am getting better at just riding them out and working on the business that I have. It’s imperfect, though.
Question 5: Tell me a story about a time you fell down and got back up again.
When I left my job in March 2021, it felt like I had fallen down hard. I went from being a healthcare tech executive to “just” a person figuring things out. I had a lot tied up in that identity. It felt like I had fallen on my face, even though it was my choice to do it. It took a lot of waiting, resting, and staring in the mirror to figure out that that wasn’t the case. Soon, people started reaching out to me with questions about what they were doing and how to do it better. They found me. It started to build my confidence, but I was still looking for validation through titles and external things and not from internal confidence. I didn’t really hit my stride until I realized that everyone is making it up as they go, and I’m not alone in all of these big and overwhelming feelings. My business, my LinkedIn, my network and the things that this process has brought to me have taught me a ton about myself, and that put me where I am.
Where to Find L2
LI: https://www.linkedin.com/company/virtuellehealth/
E: lauren@virtuellehealth.com
W: https://virtuellehealth.com/
