The finalists for WashingtonExec’s Chief Officer Awards were announced April 15, and we’ll be highlighting some of them until the event takes place virtually May 27.
Next is Chief Executive Officer Award finalist Michele Kang, who’s founder and CEO of Cognosante. Here, she talks key professional achievements, primary focus areas going forward, professional risks and more.
What key achievements did you have in 2019/2020?
Despite being an unpredictable time that required greater agility and increased responsiveness, Cognosante was able to achieve numerous notable milestones in 2019 and 2020. We were able to execute against our ambitious M&A strategy, support government COVID-19 response efforts, expand our company culture and employee satisfaction programs, realign our corporate structure to support scalable growth and better serve our customers, and launch Cognosante Cares, our corporate social responsibility program.
Starting with the 2019 acquisition of Black Turtle Services, Inc. and the 2020 acquisitions of the VA Home Telehealth contract from HMS and of Enterprise Information Services, Inc., we have augmented our core capabilities — particularly in the business process outsourcing, telehealth and security solutions space. We were also able to expand our customer base and grow our brand awareness in new, adjacent agencies.
In 2020, Cognosante also assisted the government’s national COVID-19 response by supporting pandemic management and relief programs such as remote health device monitoring and remote device management at the Department of Veterans Affairs, contact tracing in individual states, and family assistance through Federal Emergency Management Agency. Being able to live our commitment to streamlining access to care and improving delivery of care was particularly meaningful amid such widespread devastation.
Other key growth achievements include securing the National Contact Center program contract with Department of Labor. This program allows us to apply our expertise running some of the largest public-facing contact centers in the country, to continue our commitment hiring persons with disabilities, particularly veterans, and to innovate on traditional call center operations with creative cutting-edge security solutions like eSante Aware.
Aware provides the remote oversight that ensures compliance and data security, while protecting consumer programs that rely on personal information, and has been integral to maintaining program integrity as COVID has forced many customer service representatives to perform their duties remotely.
In 2020, we also re-aligned our organization to better support our plans for growth, delivery and continued improvement of internal processes and systems. Our new structure separated our market sectors and formalized internal functions into a corporate shared services model. Our technology and systems integration sector focuses on providing our IT solutions and services to customers through our health, civilian, military and veterans health, and EIS business units. Our business process outsourcing sector focuses on growing and delivering our best-in-class contact center solutions.
COVID-19 also pressure-tested our employee engagement programs and accelerated our corporate strategy around enhancing our employee-centric culture. I am proud that we acted so swiftly and implemented several programs aimed at preserving connection, collaboration and productivity — many of them remain in place today.
With the help of our Employee Engagement Committee and internal communications and IT teams, within 10 days of moving our employees to remote status, Cognosante launched:
- Weekly town halls that still occur today
- A centralized reference website that is updated weekly
- Virtual team coffee breaks and happy hours
- Weekly “Kids Corner” reading hours to engage at-home children while parents worked
- Virtual quizzes, contests and competition with prizes
- Food delivery for quarantined families
- Web training to all employees on successful work-from-home strategies
We also polled our employee population on culture satisfaction. We engaged CultureIQ and Great Place to Work to solicit this critical feedback from our team members and the feedback was invaluable. In addition to securing a Great Place to Work distinction based on employee survey results, the CultureIQ data helped us determine which areas align closely with employee needs and new areas to explore as we continue to build.
I was especially pleased to learn that more than 90% of our employees are proud to tell people they work here, feel welcomed when they join and think our customers would rate our service as “excellent.”
To track our progress and accountability to these many ambitious goals, last year we also formally instituted new companywide lagging indicators. In addition to the standard indicators that many of our industry peers track and measure, we added specific goals to increase the hiring from within our veteran, military spouse, and disabled communities.
This goal is a shared goal across all our programs and departments with hiring responsibility, and I am excited about the progress we are making in all three areas. We are outpacing our hiring activity from last year and are exceeding the national average for veteran hires, specifically.
What are your primary focus areas going forward, and why are those so important to the future of the nation?
I am fortunate that, as the leader of Cognosante, my focus areas are always aligned with our corporate strategy. In 2020, we made the bold choice to articulate our ongoing commitment to key mission and impact areas that directly benefit the health and safety of people. My primary focus area is developing the strategy, relationships and leadership teams that are committed to serving those important segments of our population.
I founded Cognosante when I saw the opportunity to help the government create the customer-focused public services they envisioned. I knew technology could assist with some of the challenges they faced and ultimately, it was an opportunity to be of service to the American people.
I am focused on developing a pipeline of opportunities that, when awarded, will directly improve the lives of veterans, military spouses, persons with disabilities, seniors and residents in underserved communities. As we evaluate which new opportunities we will pursue, our leadership considers how a given opportunity will support our impact areas — ensuring that we always remain mission-aligned and purpose-driven.
We focus on our military families and veterans, especially disabled veterans, because there is no better show of gratitude for their service than to ensure they have easy and responsive access to health care. We are proud to support civilian programs that benefit seniors and underresourced individuals and look forward to expanding that support through programs like the Department of Labor National Contact Center.
As the government continues to develop a more customer-centric approach to delivering services, opportunities for us to offer our core capabilities become more apparent. Innovation within our BPO service offering will increase customer support capacity and reduce risk, leveraging our cloud foundations and enterprise IT solutions will make it easier for government programs to envision a secure, connected hybrid workforce, and our data science solutions are already showing how data aggregation, integration and analysis can improve government’s response to the next public health crisis.
Internally, I am focused on growing our community impact. We have relaunched our corporate social responsibility program, Cognosante Cares, and are already seeing increased employee participation supporting our pillar areas of service. We focus our philanthropic efforts on veterans and military families, promoting holistic wellness, supporting people with disabilities, empowering young children interested in STEM and broadening access and opportunity for college students of color. Serving these important groups within our society has been rewarding.
In 2020, we donated over $20,000 toward Personal Protection Equipment that Direct Relief distributed to frontline health workers, we donated $80,000 across 10 nonprofit organizations that focus on social justice and equity in communities across the country, and our employees have nominated almost a dozen nonprofits to receive support through Cognosante Cares already this year. With Cognosante’s corporate support of 501(c)(3) organizations and our employees’ engagement and local support, we are making a meaningful impact in the lives of people throughout America.
Lastly, in response to our national reckoning with the race-based violence we all witnessed in 2020, one of my recent focus areas has preparing to launch our HBCU Partner Alliance program. Beginning with partnerships at three Historically Black Colleges and Universities, we are designing a multifaceted program that will create more chances for HBCU students to gain the opportunities and experience that will help them successfully transition from collegiate to professional careers.
HBCU Partner Alliance includes welcoming summer analysts to a 10-week paid internship program each year, a Cognosante Scholars program that is a paid, semester-long fellowship for college credit and establishing Cognosante on Campus, a series of live and virtual opportunities aimed at developing the invaluable leadership and soft skills necessary for career success.
Which rules do you think you should break more as an industry leader?
Break the “best practice” rule sometimes. Cognosante was built on the concept of innovation, which essentially requires us to break some rules. I challenge Cognosante team members to think beyond conventional best practices and to use their customer knowledge, understanding of key requirements, and technological expertise to envision what solution is “the best right thing” for our customers.
This means that we are more often able to tailor solutions to meet the needs of the customer and the constituents they serve. Our bold idea may not always fall within scope and it may not yet exist with the technology already in place, but we should always be thinking of what is possible to best serve the communities that our government customers are charged to support.
What’s the biggest professional risk you’ve ever taken?
My professional journey was a risk from the start. Leaving my home in Korea as a young, single college student was the risk I hoped would change my life — and it has. Coming to the United States to complete my education gave me the skills and experience to confidently enter the professional world of consulting and is a risk I look back on fondly as I have navigated my business career.
As my career progressed, I would eventually take the biggest risk of all by leaving a stable, successful job at a large, reputable government contractor to start my own business.
While working for large organizations in consulting and government contracting, I learned the challenging and gratifying aspects of running a business and gained knowledge necessary to strike out on my own. My rewarding career as a GovCon leader in the health services arena showed me just how vital health services were to U.S. residents. I saw many areas for the American health care system to optimize and improve and I wanted to be part of that change. That is how Cognosante was born.
The chance to lead an organization with such a large mission was intimidating but also invigorating. I started Cognosante in the garage above my home with little more than my savings, my network and the support of my family. Each day, I am excited and humbled by the opportunity to live my dream while leading such a dynamic team of employees who make my dream a reality.
In return, the responsibility of running this company and realizing a vision that will sustain the livelihoods of our employees while improving the lives of Americans is a charge that I am honored to lead.
I am proud of what we have accomplished as an organization, and it often reminds me that bold choices are the beginning of meaningful change.
What’s your best career advice for those who want to follow in your footsteps?
Dream big, expect obstacles and succeed anyway. It is more like life advice, but it has served me well in my career all the same. Progress and success are the result of knowing what you want, preparing to seize the opportunity when it arrives, and making sure you perform at your highest ability. There will be times with it feels like all work and no recognition, but every successful professional must spend time planting seeds before they reap the harvest of their hard work.
Even as an accomplished executive, I continue to envision and work toward new dreams also. I never imagined that I would be the first woman owner of the Washington Spirit, but when the opportunity presented itself, I was ready. I knew that I wanted to make an impact in the lives of women, and I am proud that I can apply what I have learned in business to help this vibrant club of women continue to pursue excellence. These are the things big dreams are made of.