Tech Teams Today

The episode contains moderate insight density with useful frameworks (Analytics Business Partner model, three-tier team structure, Responsible Use of Data committee) and practical leadership lessons, but also includes significant stretches of conversational padding, personal anecdotes about family, and softball follow-up questions that dilute the substance-to-time ratio.

“The ABP role can kind of serve as the representative from the analytics team in the product meetings to say, hey, well, would it be helpful to you guys if we would build a model that would predict which patients are going to do X versus Y?”

“We have what we call our Responsible Use of Data committee that when we talk about building new products, when we talk about bringing a product to market, we will go through a process where we review what is this information, how is this information going to be used?”

The core ideas - data governance, business-data partnerships, ethical AI oversight - are standard practice in mature data orgs and not novel. The 'Responsible Use of Data committee' is a reasonable framework but not a breakthrough insight. The discussion lacks contrarian takes or first-principles thinking; it reads as competent best practices rather than original strategy.

“We created a position called an analytics business partner, the ABP team, modeled much like after, like an HR business partner, which is a pretty common role”

“we also have AI governance at the company. So that, and we don't consider them to be the same.”

Lynn Nowak is a credible practitioner - a practicing physician turned CDO/CAO at a substantial healthcare data company with real operational scope (80+ person team managing complex data infrastructure, cloud migration, multiple product lines). She has genuine domain expertise and has navigated non-trivial technical and ethical challenges. However, she is not a founder or CEO, and her visibility/notability in the industry is not exceptional, so the score reflects solid but not elite tier.

“Chief data and analytics officer at surescripts”

“The team is evolving and growing, which has been really exciting...I have one that we call our enterprise platform team and that's really just the foundational...My data engineering team...we have what we call a data trust and enablement”

While Lynn references real team structures, specific products (Foundation14, Surescripts), and concrete examples (opioid addiction prediction model, prescription data challenges), much of the discussion remains at a medium altitude of abstraction. She avoids naming specific metrics, concrete failure stories, budget figures, or detailed performance data. The healthcare data complexity discussion is specific but somewhat generic within the domain.

“We built a very robust model to predict a patient's likelihood to become addicted to opioids before they had even gotten one prescription”

“even things like, say, a blood pressure. A blood pressure has a systolic and a diastolic. There's two numbers that could come as one field, that could come as two separate fields.”

The host (Josh) asks reasonable questions and demonstrates engagement, but rarely pushes back, challenges assumptions, or probes beneath surface-level answers. Questions are mostly open-ended invitations rather than sharp follow-ups. The conversation meanders into personal territory (family, work setup, leadership philosophy as parenting analogy) without extracting deeper operational insights. There is minimal evidence of intellectual tension or skeptical questioning.

“And it's a wonderful thing when somebody believes in you...Similar, similar discussion. And it took me, I'd say, six months before I got over, um, realizing I actually am pretty good at this. What was your path to take you 6, 18 months, or you still figure that out?”

“Well that's like minority report type stuff of uh, we should not give this person this message. That's, that's, that's crazy.”