Cory Ferrier
Episode 134

Narrator: Welcome friends to another episode of The Story & Experience Podcast. Join your host, Japhet De Oliveira, with his guest today and discover the moments that shape us, our families, and communities.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, welcome friends to another episode of The Story and Experience Podcast. I'm delighted with my guest that we're connecting virtually. It would be so good to see you in person, but alas, we are virtually connected, which is great anyway. If you're brand new to the podcast, we have a hundred questions. They're about stories and experiences about this particular leader that shaped them into the leader they are today. So I'm going to ask the first 10, and then they get to pick a number and they progressively become more vulnerable and open close to 100. So without any hesitation, let's dive into number one. Could you tell us your name? Does anybody ever mispronounce it?

Cory Ferrier: Yeah. My name is Cory Ferrier, and truthfully, no.

Japhet De Oliveira: Great.

Cory Ferrier: My legal name is actually Corbett, which I don't go by, so most people don't know that. So that's why I go by Cory.

Japhet De Oliveira: You just shared. The world now knows. That's great. I don't know Cory I can actually resist Corbett. That's just too much.

Cory Ferrier: Only my mom calls me that when I was in trouble.

Japhet De Oliveira: I don't know. We'll see how many people pick up on that from now on. Hey Cory, what do you do for work?

Cory Ferrier: I am the business development executive here at wonderful Adventist Health Simi Valley.

Japhet De Oliveira: Ooh, business development. So what does business development mean?

Cory Ferrier: The short answer is we handle the strategy for the hospital. A lot of service line planning, a lot of interaction with our community physicians, our ambulatory physicians, and just try to drive the mission of the hospital so that more people can come to our hospital.

Japhet De Oliveira: Now I know that you are a bit of a creative genius.

Cory Ferrier: I think that's too generous.

Japhet De Oliveira: You like to try things out all the time. In fact, didn't you try, you piloted some initiative at your hospital that others have adopted?

Cory Ferrier: You know what? I think internally here at my hospital, Jennifer will joke with me. It's like, "Please, can we just not be the pilot this time?"

Japhet De Oliveira: So it is a lot of fun for you. You like to try these things out? See that actually...

Cory Ferrier: I do. I went to the college for business. My dad was an entrepreneur, started his own business, and that's what I grew up in. I really liked the creative aspect, and more importantly, I like you felt like the CEO of your own business. So when I did an internship in Adventist Health, I felt like there was an aspect that met that creative side that I really wanted to do because business development was new to most healthcare systems. It was about providing high quality patient care. It was clinical and business development was an afterthought to be honest. I felt like that was an opportunity for me to plug myself in and meet the creative side of what I like to do and what I'm passionate about, but also help our organization as we expand our mission.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, that's great. Thank you, Cory. That's superb. Okay, now tell me where were you born?

Cory Ferrier: Portland, Oregon.

Japhet De Oliveira: Portland, Oregon. You laughed-

Cory Ferrier: Portland Adventist Medical Center, and I just got to share this real quick. A lot of people probably that are listening have heard this story, but I was actually adopted by someone who worked at Portland Adventist Medical Center. So the joke is somebody say, "How long have you been in Adventist Health?" I'm like, "Since 1981, the day I was born." It's a long story for another time, but I was so blessed to go into the family that worked at Adventist Health in Portland and take me in.

Japhet De Oliveira: Now, did you grow up in Portland then?

Cory Ferrier: I did.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay. All right. So when you were a child, what did you imagine you would grow up to be?

Cory Ferrier: We talked about this before we even started. Astronaut. An astronaut. If you went back to grade school and looked at all of my presentations, it was about all the astronauts. I would actually dress up. I had a motorcycle helmet. I would go in and pretend I was an astronaut. It's funny, I actually made it through. I got my pilot's license and that's about where the journey ended.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, I'm glad. I'm glad. Do you play with astronaut toys and space toys?

Cory Ferrier: I have a four-month-old son and he's not quite ready for that.

Japhet De Oliveira: Really, but apparently he will be.

Cory Ferrier: Yes.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's great. Hey, in the morning when you get up your drink of choice, you have tea, coffee, liquid green, smoothie, water, what's your thing?

Cory Ferrier: Grande cinnamon dolce latte hot.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, okay. Is that delivered to your bed? Is that how it works?

Cory Ferrier: I usually use the Starbucks app on my way into the hospital.

Japhet De Oliveira: Cinnamon dolce latte. All Right. I would never have guessed, but that's good.

Cory Ferrier: There's probably a little bit of sugar and calories in it, but it's okay. It's what gets me going.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, that's good. That's good. Personality people would describe you? Would they say you were an extrovert, an introvert, and would you agree with them?

Cory Ferrier: Yeah. No question. I'm at the far end of the spectrum on extrovert, and yes, I would agree with them. I was voted-

Japhet De Oliveira: No hesitation?

Cory Ferrier: Yes. I was voted in high school as the Never Met a Stranger and I think that's honestly just my philosophy. The reason I work in healthcare is I get to meet a new person every day and it's not the same thing every day. So for me, that stimulates why I'm here.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, that's great. That's great. Are you an early riser or late night owl?

Cory Ferrier: Early riser. Early riser, drives my wife crazy.

Japhet De Oliveira: What does that mean?

Cory Ferrier: It means on the weekends up at 5:30 and just wanting to get the day going, whereas my wife is the opposite. She's a night owl. So she likes to check her social media before bed and I'm the one saying, "Can you please put the light out from the phone? I want to sleep." Now that we have a four-month-old, it doesn't matter. That keeps me up more than the light from her phone.

Japhet De Oliveira: All right. I've got to ask you. Is your four-month year old, is he sleeping in your bed? Has he got his own space? How is it working out?

Cory Ferrier: Bedside bassinet. Yeah, so he's very close to us.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, already. Okay. All right. Was hard or easy?

Cory Ferrier: The first two months actually were really difficult. It's a change in your life, and so just getting used to the new routine. I would say now the only time it's hard is when I'm on call and we're taking care of him, because if he happens to sleep through the night, the hospital probably is not sleeping through the night. So that's the only difficult week.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah. I can hear. All right. Hey, that was great. This morning when you woke up, what was the first thought that went through your mind?

Cory Ferrier: What's on my schedule today? Then I saw your name, I was like, oh, man.

Japhet De Oliveira: It's going to be fine. It's all good. All right. Last one here. Leadership question. Are you a backseat driver?

Cory Ferrier: Whew.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hmm?

Cory Ferrier: Like in the car, backseat driver or figuratively.

Japhet De Oliveira: No. We can go literal and then we can go...

Cory Ferrier: I'm going to go literal because I'm going to be vulnerable here. I am a terrible backseat driver. In fact, it was the one thing when my wife and I were dating that was probably the most strain on our relationship, to the point where she'd say, I will just drive and meet you there. I realized I have to change, not her. It's something I've really worked on and I would like to think that she thinks I've made a lot of progress. If you want to joke with my executive team, Jennifer especially, feel free to ask her how's Cory as a passenger?

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, that's good. That's good. All right. Hey, floor's open, Cory? Where do you want to go? Anywhere between 11 and 100.

Cory Ferrier: Yeah. So let's start, I'm going to go with the day my son was born. So let's go 22.

Japhet De Oliveira: 22. All right. If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?

Cory Ferrier: Oh, my goodness. That is a great question. I think one of my most memorable times in my life was my honeymoon with my wife, and we were in the Maldives. It's probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. While the travel to get there was probably a little bit harder than most, 14 hour flight, layover, six hour flight, and then a 45 minute seaplane ride, taxi right up to it, it's hands down the most incredible vacation time alone with my wife that I've gotten and just in the most serene setting. So if I could go anywhere right now, I would go there.

Japhet De Oliveira: All right. Hey, that's great. How many years have you guys been married?

Cory Ferrier: We've been married three years.

Japhet De Oliveira: Well done. You knew the answer.

Cory Ferrier: Yeah, of course I did. My anniversary is next week, so I better know the answer.

Japhet De Oliveira: Well, when this comes out, it will have passed. We'll have to hear what you did, so that's great. Hey, well done, man. Well done. All right, where'd you want to go after 22?

Cory Ferrier: Let's go to my best friend's Jersey number, number 44.

Japhet De Oliveira: 44. All right. What is something that you are proud to have created?

Cory Ferrier: Oh, man, I have too many to pick on that one. Let's go something Adventist health related. When I was a leader at another hospital in our organization, I had an employee who was going out for a leave of absence. So instead of putting the burden on the rest of my team, I decided to take his responsibility and his responsibility was rounding with our physicians in a secondary service area. So I was in Bakersfield at the time and his responsibility was the east side of Bakersfield plus Tehachapi. So I went up Tehachapi, and there was only a handful of physicians up there, and I had to sit down with one of the physicians. I could just tell I connected with him. At the end of the meeting, he just said, "This is the first time a hospital leader has ever stepped foot into my clinic." He's about 45 minutes away.

So I was just listening to him and saying, "What are your needs? What barriers do you have that why you wouldn't send us patients? What are the things that are most pressing for you?" Sat down with him and at the end of the conversation he said, "I'm going to take off my physician hat for a second." He's like, "I'm on the board of the local Tehachapi Hospital here." He's like, "We're struggling." He's like, "Do you think Adventist Health would be interested in this?" I looked at him, I said, "Don't tease me." I said, "I will have people here tomorrow if this is a realistic." Long story short, as you know, Adventist Health Tehachapi is now part of our family. So I think that's one of the most proud things that I helped create.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's an amazing conversation, being in the moment.

Cory Ferrier: Exactly.

Japhet De Oliveira: Don't tease me.

Cory Ferrier: That's right.

Japhet De Oliveira: All right, Cory. We won't tease you. Hey, that was 44. Where next, my friend?

Cory Ferrier: All right. Let's go step back. We got to go a Mamba. So 24.

Japhet De Oliveira: 24. Okay. Tell us about a time you were over or underdressed for an occasion.

Cory Ferrier: Oh, my gosh. All right. This one's going to be fun. I was at Cedars-Sinai and it was a tough environment. I learned a lot in that job, and I love it when people bring experience outside of Adventist Health because I think there's so much we could learn. We had a meeting with a potential physician acquisition who was personal friends with the CEO of Cedars-Sinai. My boss and I were scheduled to meet with him about this acquisition. I was two months into the job, so let's be honest, I don't know a whole lot.

Five minutes before the meeting, the physician's actually already sitting in the conference room, my boss says, "I'm not going to join. You're doing this on your own." I was like, "Okay." So I walk in and this physician is, I would just say, stereotypical Beverly Hills. It's about title. It's about dress. I was in a full suit. It was a hundred degrees outside at the day and the air conditioning wasn't working. I asked him, I said, "Hey, I need to take off my coat. I'm dying." He did the same. It took about 20 minutes for him to warm up and realize I knew what I was doing, but his anticipation was he was meeting with the executive at Cedars-Sinai, not the new kid on the block.

So I salvaged it. It took a long time to build that connection, but I think with my relationship skills and credibility, I was able to do that. So afterwards, I was really excited to go tell my boss it was a little touch and go at the beginning and go connect. I'll never forget this. When I shared with the boss how tough it was at the beginning, I was interrupted. My boss at the time basically said, "I know why he wasn't connecting with you." I just cocked my head a little bit to try to better understand why. I said, "So what happened?"

They were like, "Well, I walked by the fishbowl," which was our conference room there, "And I saw you didn't have your coat on. Automatically, he disrespects you at that point." I'm sitting here like, okay, you weren't in the meeting. There is no way, especially when we were talking about it. So to me, when you say dressed, underdressed or overdressed, I learned a lesson that time that my boss at the time expects me to have my tie buttoned, my coat on at every meeting. So it's a leadership lesson I learned about what not to do too.

Japhet De Oliveira: Different cultures.

Cory Ferrier: Yes, sir.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, that's fantastic. All right, where next?

Cory Ferrier: Let's continue with Mamba. Eight.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, actually we've done-

Cory Ferrier: You've got to be 11 or higher.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah. Yeah, I know.

Cory Ferrier: All right. Let's go to the year I was born. Let's go a little bit more vulnerable. 81.

Japhet De Oliveira: 81. All right. What is something you've given you absolute best effort towards and why was it important?

Cory Ferrier: Yeah. Whoo, that is a great one. Okay. I know exactly what this was going to be.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay.

Cory Ferrier: So I took a break from Adventist Health back in about 2009 to 2012, and I was burned out at healthcare. It's funny to say, to have a younger person, I've been in Adventist Health now for about 18 years, but I just needed a change of scenery. I needed something different. So basketball was a big part of my life, and so I was traveling to China and Puerto Rico playing basketball with some guys that a lot of people on this podcast may know. A mentor of mine called me up and said, "I want you to volunteer for me. You belong in healthcare and I want to prove it to you." So I said, "Okay, I'm just traveling the world having fun right now." So I went to Haiti after the earthquake in 2010.

I was supposed to be there for about a couple of weeks. I ended up being there for approximately four months. I think the thing that I put my all into is, in Haiti, there's three hospitals that serve a population of 5.5 million in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. To put that in perspective, we have over 80 plus in Los Angeles that serves a population of 10 plus million. So we would have lines that we didn't measure how many people. We'd measure in how many days it was, because people were waiting to see and we were dependent on volunteer physicians.

One of the things that we took for granted, Haiti is the closest third world country we have to the United States. One of the things that routinely would happen is we would have patients die due to not having access to blood and transfusions. It was really sad because the healthcare workers would all donate blood, but in Haiti, half the people would be scared of needles and different religions and cultures that they just didn't want to do it. The other half, even if they were willing to do it, we would have diseases that it would prohibit us from being able to use that blood.

So I kept seeing American Red Cross advertising Haiti funds in the US and I'm like, how do I get that here? I kid you not, the entire time I was in Haiti at four months, I never met one employee for the Red Cross. I was like, this is so interesting to me. So I used my NBA friends, my musician friends to put out, at the time Twitter, a tweet and just saying, "Is anybody working the Red Cross High up that can talk to my friend in Haiti?" We were able to be connected to the director of the American Red Cross for the whole eastern seaboard of the United States. I basically pled out and said how frustrated I was that I couldn't get blood to patients here and we were having people pass away unnecessarily, in my humble opinion.

So long story short, it took about two weeks, but I got the American Red Cross to donate 500 units of blood every Tuesday for the duration that I was in Haiti.

Japhet De Oliveira: Wow. Oh, my.

Cory Ferrier: To me, and just to put that in perspective, we usually go through it in about 24 hours between the three hospitals. Yep. So every Tuesday we would have it shipped, and to me, it showed me two important lessons. One, you don't have to be clinical to make a difference in anybody's life and that's one reason why I still work in a hospital, and it showed me I belong in a hospital, truthfully. Two, social media. The power of social media is just incredible when it's used for good things.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, that is true. Especially when it's used for good things. I like that a lot. A good qualifier. All right. Hey, that's great. Thanks for sharing that, Cory. All right, where next?

Cory Ferrier: Let's go to 50.

Japhet De Oliveira: 50. All right.

Cory Ferrier: My dad's birthday.

Japhet De Oliveira: Share about who has influenced you professionally. Oh. Yeah.

Cory Ferrier: Whew. Man. I don't want to pick favorites here, because I've actually been blessed.

Japhet De Oliveira: Thank you. You will now, apparently. Great.

Cory Ferrier: Yeah, I've been blessed with so many mentors. Doug Duffield was one of my first CEOs. Jennifer Swenson is like having a best friend at work. I've been able to serve with her for the last six years and learn so much from her, but truthfully, outside of healthcare, I think that's where you can learn a lot as well. One of my friends plays for the Los Angeles Clippers and his business acumen is just off the charts and you wouldn't think that for an NBA player. He has been, I would say, a phenomenal mentor in the private equity space, the startup space, and just personal and professional development. Yeah, I would stick with those three.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, that's great. That's great. Do they all three know?

Cory Ferrier: Probably not.

Japhet De Oliveira: Well, hopefully they will now.

Cory Ferrier: Yeah, probably not.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, that's great. That's good. All right. Where next after 50?

Cory Ferrier: All right. Let's go to Michael Jordan, 23.

Japhet De Oliveira: 23. All right. Here we go. Tell us about the most outdated piece of technology that you use on a regular basis and why?

Cory Ferrier: I'm drawing a blank. I cannot think of an outdated piece of technology that I use. I'm up to date.

Japhet De Oliveira: You're up to date.

Cory Ferrier: Maybe lingo. We run an athletic training sports medicine program and we teach sports medicine for high school students, and I got to tell you, sometimes I need a little key card decoder to say what in the world are you saying right now? So I would defer to that.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah. Our friend Google.

Cory Ferrier: Yes. See, I don't have a MySpace account. I'm not asking Jeeves for anything. So I don't have a flip phone.

Japhet De Oliveira: Apparently it's coming back for some people, so we can pray for them together.

Cory Ferrier: That's true.

Japhet De Oliveira: All right. Where next then?

Cory Ferrier: Let's go to 31.

Japhet De Oliveira: 31. Tell us about someone you'd love to eat dinner with. The sky's the limit.

Cory Ferrier: Ooh. Love to eat dinner with. Truthfully, I would love my grandpa. My grandpa and my wife's grandpa, because both of them passed away the year before our son was born. Sorry, I'm getting a little emotional here. My grandpa was 99 and her grandpa was 100 and they both passed away during the COVID pandemic, but not as a result of COVID. So to me, I would love to have dinner with them and let them meet my family.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah. Well, maybe one day my friend.

Cory Ferrier: Yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah. That's good. That is good. Hey-

Cory Ferrier: I thought you said it got more vulnerable later on.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah. The thing is, family's important, right?

Cory Ferrier: It is.

Japhet De Oliveira: Family's important and the relationships that we have and the people that we remember, and talking about them. So you got to tell us something amazing about each of them that you remember that you love.

Cory Ferrier: Yeah. Actually I had like to share, they both passed away in different circumstances. One was actually at my hospital and the other one was in an outside organization. My grandpa, who is 99, passed away during some of the toughest restrictions of the pandemic. I thought one of the most inhumane things that we could do as a society is to prevent visitors into someone who's passing away into their room. I think some of it was misguided, but it was just one of the most inhumane things. So my grandpa passed away by himself. Jennifer and I talk about this all the time and saying, if there's another restriction like this, we are going to do everything we can to not just make sure that this doesn't happen under the constraints of what we can do with our job.

Whereas on the flip side, at my own hospital, my wife's grandpa who was a hundred who helped move the whole family from Afghanistan to the United States, and so that was an incredible story on its own, we were able to have 44 people go say goodbye to him. I thought, what a contrast in difference. I feel like that's the opportunity that we have in healthcare is not just when people enter to the world, not just when people hope to get better, but at the end of life and the compassionate care that they get, we have an opportunity to surround ourselves with the families that are there and make those last few days as bearable as possible.

Japhet De Oliveira: The work that you do, that we do with hospitals and with patients is about change every single moment, right?

Cory Ferrier: Yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: It's heavy transitions and being able to listen and hear them. Where did you learn to understand that?

Cory Ferrier: I think it's because I was not a clinician. I had a chip on my shoulder that basically said, I belong in healthcare and even though I'm not a clinician, I can make a difference, and the attitude to go in and listen. So I've run several clinical departments from our cardiac cath lab, Aspen Surgery Center, our robotics program, which sometimes is not typical for a non-clinician to run those departments.

If you were to talk to the leaders that collaborated with me and that worked with me, they will say that I wouldn't come in there telling them what to do. It was I knew what my limitations were and I said, "Tell me how I can make your job easier. Tell me how I can have a better outcome for our patients. Tell me what I can do to better partner with our physicians who want to bring volume here." I think that attitude is where that comes from. It's just like we don't have the answers for everything. Even though we're in the leadership position and sometimes it's assumed we're supposed to, any leader that says they have all the answers, I'd actually be more scared of them than the ones that don't.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah. Now you are a strong advocate and a believer in helping next generation.

Cory Ferrier: Yes.

Japhet De Oliveira: I know this about you. So somebody new, young thinking about healthcare, thinking about service, thinking about leadership, what would be the one gift you'd want to give them? What would be the one thing you'd hope that they would learn or know?

Cory Ferrier: Truthfully, what the purpose of Adventist Health is and what the responsibility we have to our community. It is a blessing to be in a not-for-profit, faith-based organization. We talk about, I think it was Alex Bryan that wrote The Sanctuary, the hospital is a sanctuary, and the word sanctuary can be perceived in different ways. For me, what I like to show to the younger generation is here's the purpose and passion of why I'm in healthcare. If you don't have that, please go find an industry that you do have that. So I think it's more helping give guidance and trying to find and match them with what they're passionate about.

Japhet De Oliveira: It's great. All right, Cory, we have time for two more. Can you-

Cory Ferrier: Two more. All right.

Japhet De Oliveira: Two more numbers. Where'd you want to go?

Cory Ferrier: I'm going back down to the bottom.

Japhet De Oliveira: Okay.

Cory Ferrier: Let's do one in the teens. Let's do 18.

Japhet De Oliveira: If you had to eat just one meal for a month, what would you choose? Three times a day this meal only.

Cory Ferrier: My wife's going to kill me because one of my favorite dishes in Afghan Dish called Mantu, and so her mom makes it all the time. So I'm going to make my wife and her make Mantu for a month, three times a day.

Japhet De Oliveira: So what is Mantu?

Cory Ferrier: Oh, man. You're asking the wrong person.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah. No-

Cory Ferrier: It's a dumpling with different types of spices and sauce with filling inside of it, but it's a special Afghan one. So next time you come down you will get some Afghan food.

Japhet De Oliveira: We're on. All right. Last one then. Where do you want to go?

Cory Ferrier: Let's go. 40.

Japhet De Oliveira: 40. Oh. Tell us about a time where you failed.

Cory Ferrier: Oh, I like that. I like this one, because you learn a lot from your failures.

Japhet De Oliveira: Don't you? Yeah, we do.

Cory Ferrier: The correct answer is I don't, but... I'm just kidding. We all fail so many times.

Japhet De Oliveira: I know.

Cory Ferrier: So I had a physician that we were going to hire that filled a need, that this hospital, that we had, a gap in care in our community. I was so excited. Great personality, great background, good references. I was so excited to get the deal done that I wasn't paying attention to some of the clues the physician was doing in terms of asking for things that were a little outside the contract. So in retrospect, there's a few exceptions that we made that those, except those rules are probably in place for a very good reason. So on day one, he basically didn't start with us and went to one of our competitors. It's not easy. Physician recruitment can take months on end. I'm recruiting for August of 2025 right now, or excuse me, my team is recruiting for August of 2025 right now.

So the lesson I learned is if there is... I was lucky, because I actually didn't have to pay the consequences of this one to be honest, because he technically didn't start. So it didn't really affect us too much other than it wastes a lot of time and resources and anxiety, and truthfully, workload for a lot of people from system credentialing to the P&MG network to my team, etc. The thing I learned is just to pay attention more to those signs up front when they start trying to go outside the contract and get money up front and make exceptions for things that they want to do on the weekend. It's just like, I need to pay more attention to that and that's the lesson I took away from it.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, it's good. Cory, I want to say thank you so much for taking the time to be share. Challenging, and for the entrepreneurial spirit that you bring into work and you bring into your life, and being a dad now as well and adjusting it all. I want to encourage people to do the same. Sit down with a friend, ask them good questions. We both learn, we both become better human beings for it. It's a good thing to happen.

Cory Ferrier: Amen, brother.

Japhet De Oliveira: Blessings to you and God bless everybody else and we'll connect to again. Thanks so much.

Cory Ferrier: Thank you my friend.

Narrator: Thank you for joining us for The Story & Experience Podcast. We invite you to read, watch, and submit your story and experience at adventisthealth.org/story. The Story & Experience Podcast was brought to you by Adventist health through the Office of Culture.