10 Most Admired Women in Healthcare

People say compassion is a virtue, but I would like to say compassion is hard. 

Caring for a day? Easy. Caring day after day? Hard. Caring for people you love? Easy. Caring for strangers and even people you don’t like? Hard. 

We write poems on how our heart bleeds from the caring and giving that we do. That it feels easier to build walls and save ourselves from the daily nicks and pricks of caring. That is why we often default to nonchalant responses like ‘Who cares?’ or ‘Whatever’ than admit that we do; we care so deeply that the instinct is to protect ourselves from the hurt it can cause.

So, what does it take to care?

Grit and courage. A willingness to take the hard path of caring again and again, even when it would be so much easier to give up. And perhaps the kindness to be compassionate to yourself because you can give only what you have.

It is easier to moralize than to practice virtues. None, perhaps, have faced the dilemma of practicing compassion than the people in healthcare. The difficulties that the collective industry has faced in the past couple of years are known to all. In the face of such adversities, how do you still show up and care? These were the thoughts that compelled the team of CIOLook to go in search of C-level women executives of the healthcare industry and gather their collective experiences in the edition of “10 Most Admired Women in Healthcare.” We wanted to see from their eyes and hear their perspectives on the leadership of caring. 

These women have decades-spanning careers in the industry of healthcare, withstanding its turbulences, its shifts, and its changes. Through all those times, not only have these women been compassionate themselves, but they have led other people who would have their own troubles with the practice of healthcare – the practice of compassion.

As you flip the pages of this magazine, you will find interviews with ten admirable leaders who have been leading with grit, courage, and compassion. Their journeys, successes, challenges, thoughts about the healthcare industry, and their plans for the future. There are also opinion pieces written by CxOs highlighting the current trends in the healthcare industry.