People of PointClickCare – Mandira Singh

Introducing, Mandira Singh! As PointClickCare’s SVP and General Manager of Acute and Payer Markets, Mandira works to ensure the organization is hitting its growth targets, driving innovation for health systems, health plans and ACOs, and executing on PointClickCare’s overall goals, purpose, and mission.

Starting off on a high note

Fun fact about Mandira, she actually studied opera in college and was an opera performance major. She says while she didn’t continue with her studies professionally, she does use the skillset learned from opera more than people would think in her current job. “The ability to tell a story or empathize with someone is a lot of what we do when trying to improve outcomes for vulnerable populations. A deeper understanding of needs is crucial to delivering the right solutions.”

Mandira says that her performance background also helped her to develop her sense of humour and taught her not to take herself too seriously. “Performance requires you to expose your vulnerabilities and to show up no matter what else is going on in your life. This vulnerability and sense of self has helped me throughout my career. It has also underscored the importance of creating a psychologically safe work environment where everyone can feel comfortable with their vulnerabilities. Work, in a challenging space like healthcare, can be stressful enough, we need to be able to find the good in what we do if we want people to be happy doing it.”

Journey to PointClickCare

Like Chris Klomp, Mandira’s story with us begins with an acquisition, but her career in healthcare started long before that. Interestingly, she accredits her first job in investment banking with the discovery of her love of healthcare. “I’ve spent most of my career in healthcare technology but I actually got my start in investment banking. It was there that I saw the different motivations of corporations and it had a profound impact on me. I saw biotech CEOs who were deeply passionate about what they were doing even when the odds were stacked against them. Companies that were 10-20 years away from ever having a drug in market but it didn’t stop them or slow them down at all. That sense of mission was something that I realized early in my career excited me and motivated me and I knew then healthcare was what I wanted to do with my life. Now, I can’t picture working anywhere that isn’t healthcare.”

Passion for the mission

Since she got her start in healthcare, Mandira knew she wanted to make a big impact but she needed to find the right place. “I knew I needed to find a place that would allow me to enable transformational change by being closer to the end-impact of our work. We have that in spades here. We have patients, facilitates, and providers that rely on us to achieve better outcomes; that is what led me here.”

Mandira has been with us for almost 4 years now and says that she finds purpose in the organization’s goals. “At the end of the day, it’s the mission that gets me out of bed. I think that we have the opportunity to really make a difference in how healthcare works and have a positive impact on patient outcomes.”

What brought Mandira to this industry in the beginning has now been magnified through PointClickCare. “When we were acquired, we very much saw how combining with PointClickCare accelerates and builds upon the mission we were all already deeply committed to. It was perfect because our missions were so closely aligned and we are both passionately dedicated to caring for the most vulnerable patients.”

It starts at the top

Mandira told us that she believes the best leaders need to know what they don’t know and be comfortable with that and willing to say it out loud. “Being able to be vulnerable and build trust with your team is incredibly important. I also think leaders need to be upfront, drive decision making, create an atmosphere that allows people to have autonomy, but always with clear direction. And last but certainly not least, the best leaders need to be capable communicators.”

She also says her own management style is direct but fair. “I care deeply about my team, but I also do not shy away from hard conversations. I do not resist being in the weeds and on the frontlines with my team. I do not resist making decisions and being very open with the fact that they might be wrong. My goal on a day-to-day basis is to create the psychological safety required for us to be a high efficiency and high performing team. If you create the right environment, people will speak up and you will make the right decisions together as a team.”

Ask Mandira

When we asked Mandira her advice for others entering the healthcare field, she told us that it is crucial to be prepared for hard times and to have a passion for the mission behind the work you are doing. “I think you really need to care about the mission because healthcare can be painful. It can be hard to get things done, sales cycles are long, and some of the processes are still very old-school. We might be the only industry where fax machines still play a crucial role! This isn’t a field that you enter into lightly or just to make a quick paycheck. You must care about what you are doing and find a mission that you connect with.”

Mandira also had advice for future female leaders. “The first thing I would say is to look around and make sure you can see yourself in the organization. Make sure you can see the kind of woman you want to be at the leadership level. Sometimes there is a choice to be made – you can either be the person who changes culture and values, or you can choose an organization where the culture and values align with your own – those are separate paths and understanding which journey you are on is important to make sure you are set up for success. You could be the person who creates change or you can find an organization whose values and culture allow you to be who you are. I also think we have an obligation, as female leaders, to pave the way for others and ensure that the next woman who enters the workforce has fewer barriers. Be a mentor, advocate for yourself but also amplify other women! ”

Thanks for sharing, Mandira!