The Atrómitos Way

#010: The Atromitos Way: Heroes and Hope

• Atrómitos, LLC • Season 1 • Episode 10

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We are closing out Season 1 of the Atrómitos Way by ending this year with Michealle Gady, the Founder, President, and CEO of Atrómitos. Michealle discusses the heroes who have influenced her personally and professionally and her hope for the future. She recounts pivotal moments from early in her career and lessons she has learned as a business owner about the importance of knowing your priorities and sticking to them.  

As we close out 2023 and look towards the new year, this episode encourages fearlessness, resilience, and proactive contributions to positive change. Michealle closes our first season with a last powerful message: if you see something that can be better and you think you can make it better, just try.

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Michealle Gady

In that moment, for me, it was a lesson in what matters. You know, we can all we always get wrapped up in the politics of legislation and policy changes. We get wrapped up in the adversarial tone of litigation, and it becomes a fight, it becomes a battle, it becomes a who's gonna win, and you can lose perspective of who you're doing these things for.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Adramatus Way Podcast, where we have meaningful discussions on the challenges in healthcare and the solutions behind them. Today I'm your host, church. If you're new to learning about Adramatus and the person who started it all, you'll learn about her today. Michelle Gady is the founder, president, and CEO of Adromatus. She takes nearly 20 years of experience in healthcare policy, program design and implementation, value-based care and change management, and puts it to work for Adromatas' partners who are trying to succeed during this time at dramatic transformation within the United States healthcare system. Every year the founder reflects on the challenges and successes of the year coming to an end and looks to the future for the year to come. This year is no different, but first we will spend some time getting to know Michelle. So, without further ado, let's begin with the fun questions.

Michealle Gady

So for me, I think that that's um an easy question to answer. Um I would want to live in England. Um, I think many other people might struggle with that because there's so many incredible places to live. I've had the opportunity to live in Australia and I visited New Zealand. But a number of years ago, uh we went to England and I intentionally left my three-year-old at home with my parents because I knew that if he came with me, I was highly unlikely to come back. And sure enough, um, he is the reason I came back. It was uh yeah, it was hard to leave. I'd say that when I stepped off of the plane and got out of Heathboro, it was like, I'm not a super spiritual person, but like my soul kind of chimed and it was like, oh, you're home. Yeah. So that's that's for me. If I could live anywhere in the world, it would be England. And I'll say in England, there's no particular place I loved, loved London. But I, you know, Yorkshire, what you know, wherever.

SPEAKER_00

How long were you how how long were you in England? Because I feel like you've had to see everything to experience it and then fall in love.

Michealle Gady

So I am a huge Anglophile. Um, I love all things that are British, and that means I spend a lot of time watching British TV. Um, so I've seen lots of parts of of England as a result of watching their TV. But we were only in um we were only in London for a week. And for me, it was just it was just enough. It really, really was. I um I would go back in a heartbeat and stay. This time I'd bring my son.

SPEAKER_00

William is coming along. I've never I have never been able to go overseas. I've never um, I mean, I would say the place I have visited the most and traveled to the most is somewhere in New York up north. I've never even gone out west. So, like to the idea of going to another country is just it's mind-boggling. It's an experience I've never been able to have.

Michealle Gady

Yeah, it's something I encourage anybody who is able to do it to do it. There's something about traveling to other places that um for me led to me being more open-minded and receptive to um to things being different. Uh, when you're in a different country, you just expect that things are not going to be the way that you're used to them being. And so for me, there was like um like a little switch that was flipped and just made it easier to be more open to that. And so you kind of learn that skill, I think, um, by traveling to different places and meeting different people and um having different foods and different um kind of cultural expectations, like how you're supposed to behave in certain places. And so um you become a bit more adaptable and a bit more open-minded. So it's definitely something I would encourage everybody to do. My son has been, you know, lucky from the from from that regard. Um you've dragged him all over the world. I'm not sure he thinks he's lucky, but I think when he's an adult, he will appreciate um that he had those opportunities. At least I hope he does.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I hope so. My brother did that. He traveled to Europe, uh, he went to Spain, Italy, and France, and then he went to Germany this past last year. Um, so he's been able to go to all these different countries, experience all these things, and he said it did open up his mind. He was so ecstatic about the food.

Michealle Gady

So yeah, food is a good one. Always about the food.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my goodness. So moving on to the next fun one. Who has been your most important professional mentor?

Michealle Gady

So I will say that I've never really had a single professional mentor, somebody who has been sort of older than me or further along in their career. For me, it's been more about learning from my peers and my contemporaries. Um, I found that we kind of are all struggling with similar things at around the same time, or maybe one of us went through a difficult situation just before I did. And so they figured some things out. And I feel like that um equalness or kind of being in the same boat made it easier for me to ask for help or to ask them what they thought or um what they would suggest I do. Um, and so I'd say mentors, really, for me, have been my peers, which might be a little unusual for people because you know, mentors are supposed to kind of help you along and bring you along based on their background and experience. Um, but I've never really had that. And so I've always looked towards my peers. I I think out of more comfort, um, less sense of perhaps maybe being judged, if that makes any sense.

SPEAKER_00

That does make sense because I actually I don't have I, whatever I thought this question for myself when I was preparing these fun ones for you, I didn't think I had any either. Like I was kind of thinking about it myself. Like, I actually don't really have any mentors either. And I don't necessarily go to my peers. Generally, I I'll end up going to whoever I trust the most in the company I work for, like, hey, yeah, help me understand this thing. You know, they're the ones who've been doing it for a while. They have to know. So I see that that there's nothing wrong with the equalness of um going to your peers because generally you're gonna have a really honest answer as well.

Michealle Gady

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you're gonna get genuine feedback too. So, what is the best advice you've ever received and how has it shaped your life?

Michealle Gady

Um so I had my son, you know, a number of years ago, and he's this tiny little creature who was constantly hungry and and always crying. And I was having one of those parent days of who thought this was a good idea? Why don't they come with manuals? Is anybody going to explain to me how I'm supposed to do this? And um, my best friend Katie had had her daughter about four years before I had my son, and she said, Look, your one job is to make sure your kid does not grow up to be an asshole. Focus on that and ignore the rest of it. And I thought, I can do that. I mean, that's accurate advice, though. Yeah, and so it that's in large part, that's exactly what I have done.

SPEAKER_00

I think those are good words to live by. I mean, maybe every parent needs to be told that, you know, like don't let them do this. That's too funny. Oh god. Oh, you're making me cry laugh today, Michelle. What's wrong? So this is not a good follow-up to that question, but uh, is there a historical figure that you were inspired by?

Michealle Gady

Oh, hands down, Eleanor Roosevelt, without question. Um you know, she you hear that saying behind every great man is a is a great woman, but Eleanor Roosevelt was was not behind President Roosevelt. She was absolutely by his side, if not outright in front of him. Um, you know, she stood entirely on her own, which is unusual for a first lady to do. They're usually not out front. Um, but when you think about when she did this about a hundred years ago, um, it's remarkable what you know she was able to accomplish, how she was able to get her message out there in highly effective ways. You know, she was a tireless champion for social and economic justice. Um and she she did it in more than just the words she wrote or the words she said in speeches. She did things like she held press conferences. I think she was the first lady to do that. She had her own press conferences, separate from her husband. And she would only allow female reporters to come to her press conferences, which meant that if news outlets wanted to cover her, they had to hire female reporters. Otherwise, they weren't getting into her press conferences. And she always had something to say. Um, she was highly controversial, so it was unlikely that a news outlet was gonna miss that opportunity. And whether it was her writing in her daily column, My Day, or on a radio show, whatever it was doing, all the way up to um, she was the chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights when they wrote the first Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Um, you know, she is noted have as having said things like to the lawyers there, we're not gonna spend the next three years arguing over where a comma goes. We have work to do here and we're gonna get it done. And she she absolutely did. And so um, you know, she took what were very controversial positions and she stuck to them because she believed in in making other people's lives better. Um, she always fought for the underdog, and that kind of resonates with me and it always has um in a very deep way.

SPEAKER_00

That's wonderful. I did not know, I I knew she was headstrong. I knew that she was one of the most remarkable that we've ever had, first ladies that we had had. I had not known any of that though.

Michealle Gady

I mean, yeah, you know, one of the one of the stories is President Truman uh sent her to the to be the chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights to get her out of Washington, D.C. So she would stop getting in his way. She was just sort of there with messages and things to say. And so um, yeah, she she absolutely made an impact at a point in time when um women weren't known to do that. And she was not quiet about it. She didn't work in the shadows, she worked in the light.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. One of the very first to start yelling and actually make some kind of change that things needed to be changed.

Michealle Gady

Yeah, that's amazing. And I love that she, you know, she took positions that were contrary to that of her husband, you know, on things like um uh civil rights. Um, you know, there was a an not shocking, but there was an anti-lynching um bill that was going through Congress and President Roosevelt, afraid of losing the um the Dixie crats, the Democrats in the South, um wouldn't sign it. And she was very vocal about her support for it. So, you know, she she didn't agree with the position he was taking, and she wasn't quiet about that. So she she was definitely her own woman, and she had um strong values and strong opinions about where the country needed to go in order to achieve the equality that you know our constitution and and so many of our founding documents um purported to strive for.

SPEAKER_00

If you thought about it, and I don't know if this is appropriate to ask, but how do you think she would be if she was here today?

Michealle Gady

I think in many ways she'd be saying a lot of the same things, which is a little disheartening because I find ourselves are, you know, I feel like we find ourselves dealing with a lot of the same social and economic justice issues. Um I won't ignore the fact that things have certainly gotten better over the last 100 years. Um, but I think we are finding ourselves more and more um contending with maybe not exactly the same, but certainly similar issues as it relates to civil rights, uh, gender equality, um, discrimination based on religion and and country of origin. Um, so much of the same things that she spoke out against are still things that we are trying to address now. Or some of us are anyway, some of us I think are making it worse.

SPEAKER_00

We're on the good side. We're trying to make as long as we're on the good side, that's the right side. So if we transition from historical, let's go into is there someone historical or contemporary that you view as a personal hero?

Michealle Gady

Yeah, there when I was in um in high school, I was a freshman. Um I was in my health class and uh a nonprofit organization in town called St. Philip's House that provides um housing and and other support services to people living with HIV or AIDS, um, had engaged with our school to have people who were receiving services come in and speak to health classes. Um, you know, basic message of don't do drugs, don't have sex. If you're gonna have sex, have safe sex. And um, I was in my health class and Eddie and John came in and, you know, they each told us about their diagnosis and what it has meant to them. Um, and they each told us uh how they ended up um with the virus and their what in their life they thought kind of led up to this outcome. And uh Eddie talked about his um his story, and it just was, you know, I was 14 years old and and it was just incredibly heartwaking to listen to um his dad gave him his first alcoholic drink when he was 10. And then his uncle taught him how to shoot heroin when he was 13. He had essentially no chance. Like he was he had no chance, and and yet he when he got his diagnosis, um rather than being a call to just give up entirely, for him it was the opposite, and he got clean and he got sober, and he started helping other people. And and one of the ways that he was doing it was by coming and talking to high school kids about what happened to him and um trying to help them. You know, Eddie never felt like he had somebody who he could go to to ask for help, to get out of the situation that he was in. And so just telling kids that if they were going through anything like this, that there's always somebody you can go and ask for help. And so, you know, with Eddie, it in life we I think we encounter these people, um, even if it's just a momentary um encounter, who have tremendous impact on us. Um and we don't always know why. And I can't tell you why Eddie affected me the way that he did, um, but he did. And so we were in touch all through high school. I volunteered at St. Philip House and we stayed in touch. And then I went to college and we lost track of each other. Um, I was out of state, um, you know, I was young and kind of having my own life, and I just sort of lost track. And then when I went to law school, I moved back to the town that I grew up in and joined the board of St. Philip's House. And I was at a lunch at the um at the building and for staff and residents, and um, and Eddie arrived. And so we reconnected. And I remember the look on his face when I told him that I wrote my college admission essay about him. And just the the look of um gratitude um and uh accomplishment. It was a a moment that he needed, he had had an impact. It didn't need to be a huge impact, but he learned that he had had an impact on somebody that he meant to help. And so um Eddie died shortly after that.

SPEAKER_00

He left a really amazing impression on you.

Michealle Gady

He did. Um and he overcame so much um just to help people, and that to me, he'll always be a hero for that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and and you're right, we do run into people like this that they leave that impression on us. They are heroes in some even though they're not wearing capes, they are heroes in some way. Him taking the time to educate kids, educate everyone, and to teach them like these are the things, here's what you do. To give them the guidance even if they didn't have it. And since he didn't have it, it's his his mark saying, Okay, I'm going to make sure that other people don't have this so they have a chance.

Michealle Gady

And I think it's yeah, and and you know, kids knew that if they didn't feel like they could go to a teacher or guidance counselor, everybody knew where St. Philip's house was, everybody knew how to get there, and they and he said, I'll help you, you know, talk to me.

SPEAKER_00

Words cannot express the emotions in this episode, Michelle. There's so much. But really, though, this is Freddie for not only inspiring you and the lasting impact he had on your life, but his dedication to help others. So going from the personal to the professional questions, can you share a professional experience that has had a significant meaning for you?

Michealle Gady

Shortly after I um graduated law school, I moved to DC and I took a position as the um deputy policy director and counsel at a nonprofit called the Medicare Rights Center. And what they did was to um kind of did three things. They were um a source of education for people joining Medicare, um, you know, a well-developed, constantly updated and curated um web-based resource for people who are um soon becoming eligible for Medicare or who are currently enrolled in Medicare, um, because Medicare is complicated. This the second thing they do is they provide um advocacy support to people who are going through what's called the Medicare appeals process. So if Medicare, whether it's the traditional Medicare program or the private Medicare program, denies coverage of a benefit or service or drug or whatever that should be covered, you can go through an appeals process. So they would help people through that. And then the third thing they did was to advocate for policy changes in DC. And so with my role, I kind of wore both hats. I did I did both things. Um and um when cases uh through the administrative appeals process or um through the policy process were just intractable. So things that we just couldn't make headway, the organization would um pursue a class action lawsuit against Medicare to get a change made. And one of those lawsuits was in process when I joined the Medicare Rights Center, and it was one to get coverage by Medicare. Medicare Part D, which is the prescription drug benefit, for what's called off-label medications. And so what a lot of people don't understand is typically when a medication is approved by the FDA, it's approved for a particular thing. Like high blood pressure medication is approved to treat high blood pressure. But studies will, you know, once the medication is out in the market, studies are ongoing, and they can, the medications can be found to have other benefits. So for me, as an example, the I had migraines and my physician prescribed for me a high blood pressure medication because it had been shown through studies to also have a positive effect on migraines. Well, the manufacturer of that drug isn't going to take it back to the FDA and get it approved for migraines because that process is exceedingly expensive. And physicians have latitude to prescribe medications as long as they're doing so safely, if they're effective for the condition they're being prescribed for. You don't have to have FDA approval to use a medication to treat a condition once the drug is already approved and out on the market. So that's called off-label. Like the most common thing known is aspirin is not approved for people who have heart conditions, you know, people who take an aspirin a day or two aspirins a day to help with their heart disease. It's not what aspirin is approved for, but I think at this point everybody knows that's sort of a common use of aspirin. So anyway, um, Medicare was not covering those uh prescriptions. And we were pursuing it through uh litigation, which was going to take a long time. And then my the team I worked with in DC, we were trying to get law passed that would change it. And we did. We were successful in in getting it changed. And one of the um plaintiffs in the lawsuit, um, she had uh had ovarian or I think it was ovarian cancer from way back in the early 1980s, and she'd been treated with a particular drug for like 30 years. When she retired from her job and switched over to Medicare, her drug was no longer covered because it was off-label. It had literally kept her alive for all of this time, and it clearly was safe and effective. But because off-label wasn't expressly permitted, uh, plans weren't covering it. So this woman, when she learned of this, drove from New York to DC so she could give me a hug because she knew what this meant for her. And in that moment, for me, it was a lesson in what matters. You know, we can all we always get wrapped up in the politics of legislation and policy changes. We get wrapped up in the um adversarial, you know, tone of litigation. And it becomes a fight, it becomes a battle, it becomes a who's gonna win. And you can lose perspective of who you're doing these things for. And so it was a valuable lesson to learn really early in my career. And it's stuck with me all the time. So I always try to think about that, you know, when I'm working with clients, and we're even just doing things like writing internal policies and procedures or we're designing programs. It's always, you know, you can get lost in the complexity and do the systems work and will the departments collaborate? And you have to always go back to who are the people affected by this and are we doing what is best for that?

SPEAKER_00

Um, when you started working on this, how long ago was it?

Michealle Gady

Um I was 28, so it was a long time ago.

SPEAKER_00

I feel like with having the experiencing being able to see that firsthand at a young age, I mean, I know I'm the young one is saying this, but 30-year-old saying it. But um, I just, you know, with with what you experienced with getting to know Eddie, learning him, how he inspired you, and then you got into this world and learned from a young age of like what I'm doing actually helps people. I'd like to continue doing that. I feel like the things that we see, like we, you know, healthcare doesn't need to be this bureaucratic monster. If you just stay on the focus, we're trying to help people, things can change. We're doing it for the people. And I just um I don't know. I was I've unfortunately looked at the news yesterday, and um I try not to do that. I try not to do that. It's just uh it makes me sad, but like seeing different things in the news, and it's uh the I come to that question, like how we lost sight that we are trying to help the people, like who are we trying to solve this for? We're not we're not giving somebody an ego trip, we're not trying to make someone feel special about themselves, it's the collective, you know. And um, I feel like that's it's it's a powerful story that you've learned that and that you were able to impact someone's life. And with that one particular woman coming to you, even though she was one, I feel like there were many that were so grateful for it. And there's that too.

Michealle Gady

And I know, I know, you know, it made a huge difference to a lot of people. It was um it was significant. I it was um, you know, it's amazing to be a part of something like that, to be a part of getting um identifying an issue and working with smart and amazing people um to get a law passed that has such a um an impact. It certainly was um a remarkable experience, but truly at the end of the day, it was um it meant so much to her that she, you know, it's not easy to get from it's not easy to drive from New York to DC. And then, you know, she we spent like two hours talking and she got in her car and she went back home. Like that was her purpose for coming, and it was um I was grateful for it.

SPEAKER_00

So um shifting gears a little bit, let's talk about Audromatus. You founded the firm over seven years ago. What inspired you to create the company and um what it is it that you hope to achieve through Audromatus?

Michealle Gady

So I I um I'd reached a point in my career that I wanted to create something of my own and do it, do things in a way that I thought that they should be. Um, I worked in a lot of different settings for a lot of different people, and I rarely appreciated the um the way things were done. Um I really wanted to create a work environment that enabled smart, highly capable people to do their work, to support communities, to feel appreciated and respected. And so uh I guess I would say it more succinctly of um I wanted to create a work environment where people feel valued and they value the work that they do. And I felt like the only way that was going to happen is if I started my own company and I could create that dynamic and that culture. Um, I wanted to be able to provide flexibility and autonomy for people to do their best work while also dedicating time to taking care of themselves and their families. You know, I have a child, um, I have a family, I have responsibilities that go beyond my office and um having the flexibility to take care of them and say things like, uh, no, I can't have that meeting then because my son has an event that I need to be at, and that be not only okay, but um normal. Like everybody in the company just expects that that's how everybody is treated. Um so you know, that was really important to me. And then I, you know, I had worked in environments and and I understand that there needs to be a balance between um revenue, because the thing is you don't get to run a business for free. You have to pay for things. And so you have to have revenue, you have to make money, and I understand that, but I do think that there is a way to balance um revenue with mission. And so that was the second reason why I wanted to create my my own company was being able to have that control, that decision. That you know, it's it's my company, so it is in fact my decision. Um and you know, we find ways to work with clients who are doing good work. And maybe they just don't have all the funds in the world right now, um, but they're doing good work. And so that goes back to creating a work environment where people feel valued and they value their work. So I feel like they're kind of mutually reinforcing notions. So that's what that's what led me to it.

SPEAKER_00

It also feeds to the client because it's very you can pick up really fast when someone does not like their job, does not like what they do or they're unhappy. And when you are in an environment that you love that passes to the client.

Michealle Gady

Right. So um and that's you know, I definitely want everybody to to feel that. Um, you know, we are a small firm and so we don't take on a lot of clients at once. Um, because I want to make sure that the team is not overstretched and burned out. And I also want to make sure that clients um know we're there for them and that um we're not running from call to call, meeting to meeting, project to project, not really paying attention to any of them, that when we're working with them, we are there with them entirely.

SPEAKER_00

So each year you reflect on what has occurred and you look to the next year and what is to come. What reflections do you want to share for 2023? And what do you look forward to in 2024?

Michealle Gady

Well, I think 2023 is one of those years that we want to put in a closet and shut the door and never look at again. Um It just feels like there's so much awful right now. I think it's easy to get really fixated and kind of wrapped around the axle on that one, which I really don't want to do. Um that's a big reason why I proposed our WTF series that we did earlier this year, is to give um myself and and and you and others on the team an opportunity to just call out something that is happening that is not okay. And it kind of goes back to what we talked about regarding Eleanor Roosevelt, like a lot of the same social justice and economic justice issues that um we're dealing with, some new, like school shootings, not so much a thing in the um 1920s, um, don't believe that gun violence was the number one killer of children as it is now in the 1920s. Um but when you look at it, when you look at the issues that we talked about in the WTF series, and you look at the ones that she was talking about, that's what I mean. It's so much similarity. And and Eleanor Roosevelt talked about um fear as being so much a driver of um what was happening, and and I see that now, and um there's so much um manufactured fear, and there's so much intentional um fear-mongering, like people creating fear where there maybe wasn't any. And so with the series that we wrote, it it gave me an opportunity to talk about how this cycle of fear is what is, from my perspective, driving this anger and hate. And there's so much of it that we all feel it right now. And I think a lot of that is what is impacting so much of the mental health crisis, burnout with work, and just in general, everybody sort of feeling like it's another day. What I'll say is that when we wrote these this series, when each of us wrote a piece, there was remarkable response and reception to it. Uh, so much so that it gave me hope. And so that is what I take away from when I look at 2023. Yeah, yeah, lots of yuck, lots of bad, lots of awful. Um, but I see where there is lots of people who are um trying to push past it, trying to be beyond it, trying not to get sucked into it, trying to find those moments of hope or create those moments of hope. And so that's what I'll take away from 2023 is seeing that um as easy as it can be to get stuck in that um fear and anger and hate, um it's not as much as we seem to think it is. Um, there is genuine kindness out there and there is genuine hope out there. So I think that you know, as we move into 2024, that's that's what I take. Um I take hope with me. And I think it will be, we'll get there. A little bit of time, we'll get there. You know, on a on a personal level, I think um 2023 was a year for me where I had to um accept and acknowledge that I'm not capable of doing all of the things. Um, and so for my own sanity and for that of the people who work with me and and and live with me, I had to start saying no to things. I had to stop doing some things, and these are things that I believe very much in. Um, but I heard um, it was a number of years ago, and and I heard this uh woman speak at a um like a woman's luncheon, and she said, you know, what I have figured out is that um I can do one thing at a time exceptionally well. I can do two things at a time really well. I can do three things at a time moderately well. And if it's anything more than that, I'm not doing anything well at all. And so with that playing in my head, I made I had to figure out what my priorities were this year. And um, it took a number of months to kind of shed some things and let some things go and move some things off of my plate. But um, it was a valuable exercise to figure out what those priorities are so that I can focus on just those couple of things and do them very well. Because if you're doing so many things for so many people, you're not doing any of them well, which means you're not actually doing them any good. You're not helping the people who you think you're helping or having the impact you think you're having. So for me, it was about figuring out what those priorities were in 2023 and um focusing on those.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So in the beginning of this year, you wrote the piece about acknowledging the burnout. It was in January of 2023, and um, I don't remember when it was earlier this spring. I acknowledged that I was going through the burnout. So um, like you just said, like I had to learn, I still struggle with this, and I know you will admit you will say agree, but I still struggle saying no. I still struggle saying no. I do try to multitask on an ungodly amount that um it's it's getting to be dangerous. Um, so you know, taking that time, you are right. I would I would say you're starting to feel like you can breathe again. Yeah. I'm gonna be able to do this, I'll be able to do this, and you have a better level head and know what's going on. I yeah, I think.

Michealle Gady

Um you know, I found myself in a place where I actually couldn't think anymore, and I couldn't make decisions, and um making decisions is literally my job. So I gotta do the thing. I really need to be able to do that, I really need to be able to make decisions. Um, and so for everybody who who goes through this, um it can be hard to say no, it can be hard to say I can't do this anymore. Um, but I do encourage everybody to realize that if you find yourself in a position where you are so taxed that you can't keep track of everything, you're forgetting things, um, you can't make decisions, you can't focus. It's time to let some things go and figure out what your priorities are and the rest can go. And I will say that the people I had to have those conversations with, everybody was understanding and gracious. So um I just expect that others who have to have those conversations, I can't imagine that most people won't also be understanding and gracious because in many ways we're all going through the same thing.

SPEAKER_00

So, in being understanding and gracious, to close the year, in reflecting on these significant transformations and milestones in more than 20 years of experience, you know, what's one piece of advice or a call to action that you would like to leave listeners with?

Michealle Gady

Um, you know, it goes back to the name of the company. It's be adromous. And so for those who don't know, Adraminus is Greek and it means fearless, but not in the sense of an absence of fear, it's um more of a willingness to act in the face of fear. And so I encourage people to not be deterred by fear, to not be influenced or governed by it. If you see something that can be better and you think you can make it better, just try.

SPEAKER_00

That's a good one to leave it on. Just try. Well, that's that's it, that's everybody. That's all that that's all the questions I got for you, Michelle. Thank you for talking to me today. Absolutely.

Michealle Gady

Thanks, Liz.

SPEAKER_00

We're ending on a year of big things. 2023 has a lot of growth, challenges, fears, struggles, but also joy and celebration. I want to thank everyone who was a guest on season one of this podcast, our first endeavor to amplify the voices of those who fearlessly challenged the barriers in healthcare. All of our guests are doing good work and should be known as such. If you've missed previous episodes, I encourage all of you to go back and listen. We do have a season two in the works, and don't worry, we won't be gone too long, but we will be on a short break and return in early 2024. Thank you all again, listeners, guests, friends, and family for supporting us along the way. The Adromatus Way is produced by me, Liz Church. Editorial assistance for this episode was by my fantastic team at Adromedas. We are a boutique consulting firm with the imperative mission of creating healthier, more resilient, and more equitable communities. I encourage all of you to reach out and get to know us. You can listen to all of our previous episodes on our website, Adromedus Consulting.com slash Adromatas Dash Way. We can also be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until then, have a safe, happy holiday, safe new year, and we'll see you in 2024

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Liz Church

Guest
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Michealle Gady, JD

Guest