Deborah Yount, CHRO at Sutter Health, joined us on The Modern People Leader to share her journey from finance to leading HR at one of the largest healthcare systems in the U.S. We discussed how Sutter reduced turnover by nearly 40%, built a culture of leadership accountability, and scaled employee experience and development across 60,000+ employees.
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(05:18) Deborah’s Career Journey: From Finance to CHRO
(08:15) Transition to Global Roles & Multinational Experience
(10:31) Why Healthcare: Mission-Driven Work & Impact on Lives
(11:21) Scale of Sutter Health: 60,000 Employees & Growing Network
(14:57) Mission, Patient Experience, and Workforce Impact
(16:22) Reducing Turnover from 18% to 9.8%: Key Results
(17:46) Where to Start: Leadership, Culture & Employee Listening
(19:06) Unique Challenges in Healthcare Workforce Experience
(20:55) Differences from Tech: Purpose-Driven Work in Healthcare
(22:00) “Power of One”: Bringing Thousands of Employees Together
(24:32) Biggest Levers Behind Turnover Reduction
(25:19) Fixing Early Attrition: Onboarding & Manager Enablement
(27:40) Creating Career Pathways & Employee Growth Opportunities
(28:00) Building a Development-for-All Strategy at Scale
(30:52) Embedding Career Conversations Across the Organization
(32:57) Leadership Modeling & Scaling Development Plans
(33:35) HR Tech Stack, AI Integration & Learning Platforms
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Past guests on MPL include Brené Brown, Annie Dean (VP of Team Anywhere, Atlassian), Josh Bersin, Katie Burke (Chief People Officer, Harvey), Liz Fosslien, Helen Russell (Chief People Officer, HubSpot), Dave Scott (Chief People Officer, ADT), Melanie Rossenwasser (Chief People Officer, Dropbox), Crystal Boysen (Chief People Officer, Sprout Social), and many more.
