A Day in the Life of Junum's CEO
Molly Hegarty, is the founder and CEO of Junum. She is a former Intel engineer turned Registered Dietitian and Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist with over 10 years of experience in clinical nutrition. Her career began in technology but shifted to clinical nutrition after experiencing a personal tragedy when her college roommate passed away from Crohn’s disease related complications. She witnessed firsthand the value of nutrition in the critical care setting.
Molly saw the silos and gaps across the healthcare system that existed due to a lack of cohesive, supporting nutrition-focused technology. Molly decided to refocus her career path from direct clinical care to using her tech expertise to create software that would help to make a difference. Her passion motivates other people who share that vision to work with her on this mission to put nutrition on the forefront of healthcare.
There is no typical day for Molly at Junum. As a startup founder with a completely remote team, daily priorities can shift quickly. Junum was a 100% remote team prior to Covid and everyone was hand selected for the expertise that they bring to the team. Molly stays connected with her team through Slack, email, Zoom, and Google Meet. Every day each team member posts a daily standup in Slack. This helps to ensure everyone is unified on tasks across teams. Molly reviews her calendar first thing in the morning, checks the team slack messages, and goes through her emails. This enables her to set priorities for the week and manage her time efficiently.
To keep her vision for Junum on track, Molly maintains a running task list for each team with priority items that are shared with the entire organization. This encourages an environment of transparency, accountability, and teamwork. It is not uncommon for team members to lend a hand to different departments in need. Monday’s are typically meeting heavy and begin with a full Junum team meeting to go over her priority list and get team updates on open tasks. By holding these team meetings on Mondays, it frees Molly up to spend the rest of her week doing other important tasks like meeting with investors, working with the advisory board, hosting informational webinars, reviewing budgets, checking in with customers, or attending a conference. Although her day never looks the same, Molly is always up for the challenges of a health tech startup. To help stay grounded, Molly takes yoga breaks or tea breaks throughout the day and allows time to recharge herself for the next task.
The Junum team is focused in many areas this year. The main focus is providing optimal support to our existing customers as well as generating new sales. Previously the sales team focused on east coast hospital systems, but now that reach has expanded to systems across all regions of the US. There is also focus this year to expand the team. The team expansion will further Junum’s progress in implementing its technology solution to disrupt traditional malnutrition care in the acute care environment.
Covid has impacted all of us in so many ways personally and professionally. In terms of work, it means getting better at building digital relationships and engaging customers through webinars and other virtual events. (Molly wrote a whole article about this–see Springboard blog article.) In terms of team building, Covid has presented many challenges. Before Covid, Junum would have in person staff retreats to help foster relationships. Since Junum is a nutrition company - the employee retreats always have the best food. Unfortunately, Covid has forced these retreats to be put on hold, but Molly is looking forward to many more employee retreats in new locations with fantastic food. In the meantime, Molly makes sure there are thoughtful, special events to break up the monotony of the Covid routines for the employees. She fosters the remote team relationships by holding bi-weekly “Tea Time’’ zoom calls to just chat among employees and catch up on life without mentioning work. This has been a great way to build friendships and learn more about the team. It’s important to have social time to build relationships.
Covid has pushed Molly to find a good balance between taking care of her home, prioritizing self care, and fostering relationships with friends and family in new ways. Although she does miss travel for work and for personal travel adventure, she is thankful not to spend so much away from home. She much prefers her own cooking to airport food!
Molly is excited that 2021 is a year where health systems are focusing on the importance of technology that actually benefits physicians instead of creating more work for them. Digital health technology that is made correctly should reduce pain points for physicians and improve the clinician experience. Molly is proud that Junum is a new way for physicians and other providers to embrace technology that helps improve patient outcomes in a way that saves clinician time and improves patient outcomes. It is amazing for Junum to be part of such a big shift in the way care is delivered. For more information about Junum please contact our sales team at sales@junum.io.