HR Leadership Built Through Operations, Not Theory

Full October Davis Ambrose Transcript:

[00:00:00] Jonathan Duarte: Hey everyone. Today we’ve got an incredible guest. I think this you’re gonna learn a lot from October. Ambrose is a, now we’ll call her the operational lead, but also an HR old school leader who came up through operations.

[00:00:17] Jonathan Duarte: It made a flip into operations, into healthcare, but still runs HR talent acquisition. So Ambrose welcome to the show and give us a little insights about yourself and how you got to where you are today.

[00:00:31] October Davis Ambrose: Sure. Thank you so much for having me, Jonathan. Excited to be here. I am a non-traditional student so didn’t get a degree until very late in life. I am by all intense and purposes a direct patient care healthcare individual. Thought I’d naturally go into nursing, was in a nursing program, took an elective, changed my major to hr, most of my experience and all of my education is HR [00:01:00] related while being in, hR had the opportunity to be leveraged as an operator with HR expertise. I’ve been in multiple industries when I flipped to healthcare. I could not get into healthcare. When I graduated with my HR degree, they told me I needed to have healthcare, HR experience to be there, and I kept thinking, how do you get to experience?

[00:01:24] October Davis Ambrose: If no one gives you an opportunity. So I did fast forward had a great opportunity to transition to operations. I wasn’t sure if I was gonna remain in operations and go on an operational track, but the worst case scenario, which is where we landed today, is my time and operations has given me credibility and an understanding for the healthcare business.

[00:01:49] October Davis Ambrose: And now I flip back to where my passion is and what I love because I have the opportunity to have a larger. Impact. So not just on my team or department [00:02:00] or that specific segment of our patient population, but the global team. So here I am today with the privilege of leading a team that supports the uninsured and underinsured in my local community to ensure they get excellent healthcare.

[00:02:16] October Davis Ambrose: I lead in the people department and we are the conduits to connect talent to the right places.

[00:02:23] Jonathan Duarte: Wow. That it’s, and it’s interesting. And you started in did you start in telecom? Was that your first HR role?

[00:02:30] October Davis Ambrose: My first HR role actually was in mental health care for super tiny agency. So I built their HR program from the bottom.

[00:02:41] October Davis Ambrose: They had never had any hr, and that was when I had an associate’s degree. It really stretched me and gave me the confidence to continue to move forward in hr.

[00:02:50] Jonathan Duarte: It sounds like you’re not afraid of taking on different areas, and growing.

[00:02:55] October Davis Ambrose: I think it’s important to explore and figure out where your passion [00:03:00] is.

[00:03:00] October Davis Ambrose: Healthcare is my passion. I’ve been in a few other industries in between, but I am naturally led back to saving and changing lives daily. If there’s something you’re interested in, make sure you explore it. Be afraid, but do it anyway.

[00:03:15] Jonathan Duarte: Alright, so how’d you get into telecom?

[00:03:17] Jonathan Duarte: And then make the leap back. Because I believe you had mentioned you got really exposed to operations there, right?

[00:03:24] October Davis Ambrose: Yes. I got there because they took a chance on me. Please keep your LinkedIn profile up to date. You are a passive candidate. Their recruiter reached out to me and said, Hey, we have an HR manager role here all the way in Tennessee.

[00:03:40] October Davis Ambrose: I lived in Minnesota. Are you interested in coming? I knew nothing about the work. I only had HR experience and then I got there and just had an amazing opportunity to learn and grow with that organization for roughly five years. My first stint there, so I went to two [00:04:00] different locations for them.

[00:04:01] October Davis Ambrose: I met what would. Now be named as a sponsor. A person that had my name in rooms I wasn’t in. My GM really mentored me informally, made sure I understood how to read my p and l and really demanded that HR had a seat at the table. He asked his team when is October in a room? They named different meetings and he said, every meeting we’re in.

[00:04:28] October Davis Ambrose: Finance operations, call center operations, October’s in the room, people are at the center of what we do. That gave me, a voice and someone truly telling me what it looked like for HR to be at the table.

[00:04:42] Jonathan Duarte: Wow. That’s interesting. And we talked about in the Green Room, and I’ve talked about several other HR leaders about how they got to reading.

[00:04:52] Jonathan Duarte: Is an understanding, the language of business, the, balance sheet and expenses and budgets. Did you ever [00:05:00] study accounting or anything when you got your degree, your associate’s degree?

[00:05:03] October Davis Ambrose: Not in my associate’s degree.

[00:05:05] Jonathan Duarte: Uhhuh,

[00:05:06] October Davis Ambrose: it was part of my undergrad degree.

[00:05:08] October Davis Ambrose: Some accounting and finance classes. But it’s one thing to do it in the book. Yeah. And it’s another thing to do it. Real time. So again, my first exposure to that p and l and that operations life was in a call center. And I say that is one of few businesses that actually measures itself daily.

[00:05:30] October Davis Ambrose: Oh yeah, the next day, what was our call volume yesterday? What was the abandonment? Being able to see that in practice and being brought in, is our staffing correct? Where are we at? And helping me tie back what my team did to the actual business was really beneficial for me as I continued.

[00:05:49] Jonathan Duarte: , That’s super interesting because I never realized, how accurate your last statement was. Some people could say, with Taylorism, it’s all broken down to [00:06:00] science, but there’s a huge people element on the backside of that some people can pick it up and learn the process and want to be there and understand it, and other people don’t want to be there and then you have to churn ’em out and everything else.

[00:06:14] Jonathan Duarte: But it’s a truly a numbers game. In the context center world, it’s like how long were the calls? Were you able to get through? Have you learned the script? Have you figured out where all the data, is?

[00:06:24] Jonathan Duarte: And from a people management side, I just thought, oh yeah, it’s just a bunch of numbers and people just do their thing

[00:06:29] Jonathan Duarte: no, it’s actually people who are getting trained and marked on the spreadsheet daily. Really interesting. That’s a really interesting way to look at from an operations side. HR is an operations side too, and people for sure. That blew my mind. I’ve talked to a whole bunch of HR teams in call centers and I’ve never talked in that way with them.

[00:06:50] Jonathan Duarte: Alright so then once you’ve gone from there, what was the process going back into healthcare?

[00:06:56] October Davis Ambrose: Going back into healthcare again. Remained [00:07:00] open, did a lot of volunteer work in the communities that I lived in, and then got a tap on the shoulder in a LinkedIn passive way.

[00:07:09] October Davis Ambrose: My first health system role was in the middle of the desert, I had the opportunity to join healthcare and appreciated that. I loved it. I knew it from the direct patient care. Side doing inpatient most of my career as a direct patient caregiver. So being able to finally go back home, though it was far away from where I lived, just felt like home.

[00:07:33] October Davis Ambrose: It felt right, and I knew I did not want to leave healthcare again.

[00:07:38] Jonathan Duarte: Yeah, could be, because it sounds like you have, from the operational side, and I know there’s a path forward for a lot of other people that are seeing the same thing, which is in healthcare when you’re, because it’s such a face-to-face business.

[00:07:50] Jonathan Duarte: Even though I had some experience I mentioned, I worked at Kaiser Permanente, but building product, but everyone I worked with. At the [00:08:00] company. 25% of their time was at least, was patient front. Even in the product team, like they were still even leadership.

[00:08:11] Jonathan Duarte: They were like, okay, now we go in ops or now we go on the floor. It was all during COVID. I never went into a hospital, so I was one of the only people that never was on site. Everyone else was on site doing things. To just be part of it because it is a forward facing, the whole business is forward facing.

[00:08:33] Jonathan Duarte: It’s almost like working at Disney in the entertainment side, you have to see people. It’s part of the work.

[00:08:39] October Davis Ambrose: It is for sure.

[00:08:40] Jonathan Duarte: And is there things now that are areas in your transition and moving from HR to operations that have worked or things you could have done better?

[00:08:50] Jonathan Duarte: What would be your advice to someone else who is maybe in hr, maybe even an HR generalist, or maybe as a HR business partner who’s just looking for the [00:09:00] next step.

[00:09:01] October Davis Ambrose: Yeah, I think remaining curious is what worked for me. You alluded to it during COVID, even as an HR partner in healthcare, I was curious.

[00:09:13] October Davis Ambrose: I spent time shadowing in my departments and with my teams. I had a big portfolio of customers. From the flight care team to facilities to the ed, security, inpatient rehab, my portfolio of stakeholders I supported, again, very broad, but what I did is I spent time with them.

[00:09:37] October Davis Ambrose: I would shadow teams in the ED overnights. And they’d say, no one from HR has ever been here I worked intentionally on a holiday with my facilities team, the 4th of July I can remember, and we watched the fireworks over the Mississippi River from the roof of our facility.

[00:09:57] October Davis Ambrose: A lot of my colleagues will have never experienced [00:10:00] because they don’t put themselves out there. I’m part of the business, but getting to know the team members is extremely important. So if you’re a generalist and you wanna grow your career, how do you spend time engaging, learning and getting credibility?

[00:10:15] October Davis Ambrose: People are excited to talk about the work they do because on the surface, I have the general idea of. What a facilities team member does in a huge hospital setting. But to go to them and see them changing out filters that are this large for the air system, right? Like all those things are extremely important and we think, oh, it just somehow magically happens.

[00:10:40] October Davis Ambrose: But no, it doesn’t magically happen. There’s a process, there’s a routine. People are trained. If you wanna grow your career. Get to know your business. By spending time not just with the leadership team, but with the frontline team members that make the magic happen.

[00:10:56] Jonathan Duarte: Wow.

[00:10:56] Jonathan Duarte: That is such great insights because [00:11:00] I had another podcast guest who literally was on the sales team. She was A-C-H-R-O and they taught her how to sell, it was a mail order company. And so she knew what the people were going through. She knew what the people were going to be, that she needed to hire, she needed to know what management was trying to get out of them.

[00:11:24] Jonathan Duarte: She goes, I’m never doing sales long term, but now I get who the people were trying to hire.

[00:11:31] October Davis Ambrose: And that’s important.

[00:11:33] Jonathan Duarte: Absolutely. And she said that she had done some frontline stuff, worked on the pick and pack line. ’cause it was a mail order company.

[00:11:39] Jonathan Duarte: She did that too. And I’m like it depends on your company, but even at a big company, I remember. Times that I worked at do you remember the old gateway computers with the cow boxes? I

[00:11:51] October Davis Ambrose: Yes.

[00:11:52] Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. I worked as a consultant in Sioux City, Iowa for a year.

[00:11:57] Jonathan Duarte: Lived in the Sioux City [00:12:00] Hilton. Flew in on Sundays, flew out on Fridays, I saw every part of the business and I was 23. I was extremely fortunate at that age to have access to the executive team all the way down to the guys on the manufacturing floor doing pick and pack.

[00:12:18] Jonathan Duarte: I could ask anyone a question, I wouldn’t do their jobs, but I could get right in and just watch what they’re doing and understand. I talk about a way to understand business ’cause I got to see it from hand on in every corner of a manufacturing facility. Very cool. Yeah. All right.

[00:12:37] Jonathan Duarte: So what’s next for you? What’s your next big push for your career and what do you see coming in the next couple of years for you and in HR and all the things that are happening? 2026.

[00:12:48] October Davis Ambrose: My next push is I am doing a passion project and collaborating on anthology.

[00:12:57] October Davis Ambrose: So my new official [00:13:00] additional title is author. So I am working to finish up my chapter for a book that’ll be released in July. Our e-version will be released in July. So right now I’m really just focusing on that outside of my work. Yeah. Here within the org, I continue to help grow my leadership team, making sure we are meeting the supply and demand with candidates, team members.

[00:13:27] October Davis Ambrose: I, again, am privileged to lead a team and have responsibility from when an individual is a candidate. So you apply for a job. Through your entire lifecycle sits within my center of excellence here. So again, my focus this year is enabling my leaders to continue to lead with excellence.

[00:13:47] Jonathan Duarte: Alright, thank you so much. October. How could anyone find you on internet on since all these recruiters have found you on on LinkedIn? What’s your LinkedIn profile? URL

[00:13:58] October Davis Ambrose: my LinkedIn [00:14:00] profile URL is the https://www.linkedin.com/in/october/ like the month. I was one of the first Octobers on there, so I got to have just my first name or you can search October Ambrose.

[00:14:13] October Davis Ambrose: My profile is open and I’m always open to new connections and having meaningful conversations with anyone.

[00:14:21] Jonathan Duarte: Awesome. I love that too because my LinkedIn profile is the best. It’s called best LinkedIn profile back in the old day. So thank you so much and I definitely wanna have you back when you release your book.

[00:14:35] Jonathan Duarte: Awesome. We’ll talk about that. That would be amazing. And help you promote it and all too. All right.

[00:14:40] October Davis Ambrose: Thank you, Jonathan, so much for having me today.

[00:14:42] Jonathan Duarte: All right. We’ll talk to you later.