At the Nashville Health Care Council we are honored to have a diverse community of healthcare leaders of every level. As healthcare evolves and grows, so does our Council membership. One way we support building and growing the healthcare talent pipeline is the Leadership Health Care (LHC) program. LHC fosters the next generation of healthcare leaders by creating educational and networking opportunities for members.
The Nashville Health Care Council’s Leadership Health Care (LHC) Executive Briefing welcomed Lisa Davis, SVP and CFO of Growth & Ancillary Businesses at Ascension, moderated by Meagan Brasher, VP of Product & Solutions Management at Herself Health for a candid conversation on leadership and navigating change in today’s healthcare environment. Davis shared her perspective on leading with purpose, building strong teams, and embracing both challenges and opportunities in a rapidly shifting industry. From her “three C’s” of leadership to her reflections on mentorship, data, and risk-taking, Davis offered practical insights shaped by her own experiences at one of the nation’s largest health systems.
When asked about rallying teams behind common priorities and mission, Davis outlined her leadership philosophy centered on three critical elements she calls the "three C's":
Communication: Davis emphasized that transparency and constant information sharing form the foundation of effective leadership. Teams must understand not just what they're doing, but why they're doing it and how their work connects to the organization's strategic vision. She stressed making sure teams understand everything going on in the organization, understanding where those barriers are so that you can help. This becomes even more critical during crisis situations - Davis highlighted how communication became vital during Ascension's cyber event, noting that they would not have survived that if it wasn't for just that constant communication.
Collaboration: Davis pushes her teams to break down silos and work cross-functionally across the organization. She stressed that her team will not operate in silos and emphasized pushing teams to think outside of their traditional lanes rather than staying within comfortable boundaries. This collaborative approach extends beyond internal teams to include external partnerships, recognizing that complex healthcare challenges require diverse perspectives and expertise.
Celebration: Perhaps the most overlooked element, Davis emphasized taking time to acknowledge wins, both big and small. She observed the natural tendency in fast-paced organizations are constantly on the move. Often finishing one thing, moving on to the next and moving on to the next, and so on. Making intentional space for celebration becomes essential for team morale and recognizing progress toward larger goals.
These three C's have become even more crucial in the virtual work environment, where Davis noted the need to be super intentional about building relationships and maintaining team cohesion when working with leaders from all over.
Davis outlined her approach to evaluating candidates, emphasizing that technical skills are foundational. However, she stressed that the differentiating factors lie in the soft skills and leadership qualities.
The characteristics she prioritizes include:
Davis shared a crucial lesson about promotion decisions: exceptional individual contributors don't automatically make effective leaders. She emphasized looking for inherent leadership traits before promoting, recounting times when advancing technically strong performers without natural leadership abilities served no one well.
Lisa offered transparent reflection on her leadership journey, expressing one key regret: not spending enough time on the front lines earlier in her career. She wished she had spent more time sitting with patient registrars, billing clerks, and other frontline staff to understand their daily obstacles and challenges.
This insight shapes her current perspective on leadership, emphasizing how understanding frontline realities informs better decision-making and creates more empathetic leadership approaches.
The most compelling example of servant leadership emerged during Ascension's ransomware attack, which Davis described as potentially more challenging than the pandemic itself. The cyber event required complete organizational mobilization with all hands on deck. As CFO, Davis spent weekends at Ascension Saint Thomas in Nashville physically running lab results between floors because electronic transmission systems were down.
This hands-on approach during crisis exemplified her commitment to doing whatever was necessary to support patient care, demonstrating that leadership means stepping into any role required when the organization and its patients are at risk.
The cyber event generated approximately 1.5 miles of paper records when stacked, creating operational challenges that had to be manually processed afterward. However, Davis used this experience to highlight the transformative potential of crisis situations. The disruption sparked unexpected innovation across the organization, creating new scorecards, dashboards, reports, and processes that likely would never have emerged under normal circumstances.
Most importantly, the cyber event showcased how exceptional challenges can reveal innovative solutions and strengthen organizational capabilities. Davis noted how the teams showed incredible resilience throughout the event, suggesting that the combination of clear communication, visible leadership, and shared purpose can transform even the most difficult situations into opportunities for organizational growth.
Davis discussed her evolution from the traditionally conservative finance mindset to embracing strategic risk-taking. A key example involved anticipating the shift of outpatient joint replacements from acute care hospitals to ambulatory settings. Rather than waiting for the change to happen to them, Ascension proactively collaborated with providers and payer partners to get ahead of the transition.
Her team continues focusing on ambulatory growth strategies, including the recent AmSurg acquisition, which represents a significant organizational transformation for Ascension.
Davis made a clear distinction between mentors and sponsors, emphasizing that both play crucial but different roles in career and leadership development:
Mentors focus on skill development and tactical growth opportunities. They help with career growth by providing guidance on building capabilities and navigating professional challenges. Davis encourages potential mentees to be proactive: ask the person, will you be a mentor? But more importantly, she stressed that mentees should drive the relationship by clearly articulating their goals: stating that you have to think, what do I want from the mentor, mentee relationship? And really, telling and being upfront about sharing what you are hoping to gain from having that relationship.
Sponsors, however, serve a different function entirely. They advocate for you in rooms where you're not present, actively promoting your career advancement and looking out for opportunities. As Davis explained: your sponsor is someone who is going to advocate for you that when you're not in the room, they're the ones that are speaking up for you and looking out for you in your career.
Davis shared a powerful personal example of someone who served as the "trifecta" - boss, mentor, and sponsor combined. This former CFO in the Tennessee market had a transformative impact on her career trajectory. When she never considered pursuing the CFO path, he simply asked "why not?" and helped her work through her concerns. More importantly, he took concrete action to develop her capabilities: bringing her to meetings and conferences she wouldn't normally attend in her role, giving her stretch opportunities like presenting financials at board meetings, and using his relationships at the national level to advocate for her advancement.
Davis credited this relationship as foundational to her eventual promotion to a national role three years ago, noting that it was really based on the relationships that I was able to build at a national level because of his advocacy of my growth path. This example demonstrates how effective sponsors don't just offer advice - they actively create opportunities and leverage their networks to advance their sponsees' careers.
The briefing highlighted Davis's emphasis on external partnerships, acknowledging that we can't necessarily be the ones to do all. Her approach to stakeholder buy-in centers on collaborative decision-making that brings together finance, strategy, operations, and external partners.
She stressed that successful initiatives require careful coordination: sharing that it sometimes takes a village and you have to carefully move the pieces together. But you can't do it in a silo.
Lisa Davis’s perspective reinforced the importance of transparency, collaboration, and courage in leadership—especially during times of disruption and transformation. Her stories highlighted that effective leaders not only set strategy but also model resilience, invest in people, and create opportunities for growth. For emerging and established leaders alike, her message was clear: the path forward in healthcare requires intentional communication, cross-functional collaboration, and a commitment to building relationships that advance both people and organizations.
Learn more about the Nashville Health Care Council program, curated specifically for young professionals and emerging leaders, Leadership Healthcare (LHC).