From back-office numbers crunching to the term “C-F-no,” hospital and health system finance leaders have dealt with many stereotypes, including the reality that it has been a male-dominated field for many years. However, three female CFOs are proving that the future of healthcare finance looks different and sounds different, too.
“When I started, I think healthcare CFOs were 2% female, now it’s 17%,” Shelly Schorer, south region CFO of Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, said during the Becker’s 16th Annual Meeting panel, “Navigating Healthcare Uncertainty: How Female CFOs Are Leading Through Change.”
Ms. Schorer said she was passed over several times for roles just for being female, an “old-school way” of thinking. Many of her former promotions came with the title and pay one year after she began performing the duties, with a male sponsor having to support the change.
Fellow panelist Judy Peek-Lee, CFO of the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, faced similar trials, becoming a CFO at just age 26 after being the second-choice candidate.
“I will always say I got a wonderful jumpstart in my career by being second choice,” Ms. Peek-Lee said. “They said, ‘Because this position has been open for a while, and the person we asked [a man] said no, it’s going to close tomorrow. Would you like it?’ … I took it and was very happy to be second because it launched my career.”
For Monica Price, vice president and group financial officer of Texas Health Resources, Mid-Cities North Tarrant and Denton region, an accounting class in college redirected her career path from pre-med. While she was also passed over for controller and CFO roles earlier in her career, she said the experience ultimately solidified her resolve, and sent her back to Texas with a clearer sense of what she was looking for.
When asked about the moments that shaped them most, the panelists pointed to real-world experience.
Ms. Price said leaving the nonprofit world for for-profit was a shift, but she gained exposure to a structured ACFO program, which helped prepare her for the uncertainties that followed, like the pandemic and changes around AI.
“Taking a leap of faith is a big thing,” she said. “There’s a lot of things, even now, that we go through uncertainty with … [like] AI; it has changed the landscape on the denial side in the last eight months.”
Ms. Schorer’s defining moment came in 2011, when she was the administrator on call the night a tornado struck Joplin, Mo. She spent the next five years managing business interruption insurance negotiations, Federal Emergency Management Agency relationships, construction, temporary housing and facilities — an experience she said taught her to trust her instincts when it mattered most.
Ms. Peek-Lee said her moment was diving head-first into a CFO project with a two-hospital Pennsylvania system that had seven days’ cash on hand, no CEO and a provider group that hadn’t been paid in three months. She said the experience taught her the power of building trust rapidly, including the importance of telling hard truths clearly.
“Sometimes you do have to go toe-to-toe and reflect to them information that they need to have to make good decisions,” she said.
When asked what they wish someone had shared earlier in their careers, they offered pointed, practical answers.
Ms. Peek-Lee said she spent years thinking that her title meant people would listen, and that speaking louder or more firmly would work when they didn’t. “That didn’t work so well for being female and doing that,” she said. “That’s just the honest truth.” Her advice now: Understand who holds the unspoken power in a room, and build influence through being a trusted advisor rather than demanding authority.
Ms. Schorer said she didn’t fully anticipate the degree to which a CFO is the person who delivers bad news, and absorbs the friction so others don’t have to. “You learn to be tough without making everybody angry,” she said.
Ms. Price urged younger women in finance to be confident and to stop waiting until they meet every listed qualification before raising their hand. “Other people, especially men, will put themselves out there when they may have one of the requisites — and sometimes they don’t even meet the requirements,” she said. “Put yourself out there, make the right connections, be bold and believe in yourself.”
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