How Does Authentic Transparency Drive Growth? Denise Dettingmeijer’s Approach to Healthcare Workforce Solutions

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Denise Dettingmeijer. She serves as the chief financial officer of Medical Solutions, a healthcare workforce partner that delivers consulting services, workforce technology, recruiting, and staffing. Founded in 2001, Medical Solutions empowers healthcare systems to optimize labor costs, improve patient care, and prepare for future workforce needs. Under Denise’s leadership, the company continues positive growth, receiving industry recognition for its mission-driven workforce solutions and work culture. Denise has extensive experience in financial planning and risk management, having previously served as CFO for Randstad, North America. She holds an MBA in finance from the University of Connecticut and remains passionate about uplifting others through mentorship. She also advocates for diversity, equity, and inclusion, encouraging women to pursue leadership roles across all industries.

Her dedication to mentoring future female leaders continues to inspire many professionals. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, AdBAC benefits agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the CFO of Medical Solutions, Denise Dettingmeijer. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yeah, Anthony, I’m so happy to be here. Thank you.

Anthony Codispoti : I should note that folks, once you’re done listening to today’s episode with Denise, you should check out an earlier episode with Patty Artley, who works with Denise. She is the Chief Nursing Officer at Medical Solutions. It was a terrific interview. You should check out after this one. Let’s get into this one here, Denise.

I’m ready. You received a bachelor’s and an MBA from UConn. I’m curious, was your career aspiration always to be a CFO, or did that intention develop later down the road?

Denise Dettingmeijer : That’s an easy one. It was far later down the road. So I’ll explain in another segment, perhaps, my why I went right from undergraduate to grad school. Short story, I played softball, got hurt, could do another year of eligibility, didn’t want to get an undergraduate degree in five years, so petitioned to see if I could get a master’s back in the day.

That was a big deal. Was able to go to grad school if I got in, I got in, and so I went right to MBA, played my first year, finished my second year, and then went off into the world. I had no idea what a CFO was. I undergraduate, I applied to the School of Business thinking I would play softball my entire career. That is what I would do. Somehow I’d get paid and have a life doing it, but as a backup plan, school of business sounded like as an 18-year-old girl, I could get a job if I had a business degree. So I applied, wanted really to major in psychology. Human resources was a degree that I could do one less required class and get a minor. So I picked human resources, again, so logical to be a CFO. Minor in psychology, went to grad school after I got hurt, did not understand finance, accounting, debits, credits, multiples of EBITDA, and thought, I need to learn that. So I took a MBA in finance and ended up learning that. Wow.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s how it got started. You weren’t pre-wired for this. No. I mean, a lot of people I interviewed that are on the finance side of things, they’re like, oh yeah, I sort of came out of the womb just loving numbers. I made spreadsheets as a kid.

Denise Dettingmeijer : They showed accounting. It was really, exactly.

Anthony Codispoti : No. You went through your undergrad and you still didn’t grasp this stuff.

Denise Dettingmeijer : I will publicly disclose the grades I got in finance and accounting undergrad, but enough to say that was not my cup of tea.

Anthony Codispoti : So why then did you decide to tackle that head on as you got into your graduate program?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Because it was interesting. It was challenging. I could never understand how, honestly, a debit and a credit equaled zero. Multiple of EBITDA, like who decides what the company is worth. Wall Street, I did my thesis on it being more psychological than actually mathematical. I just couldn’t comprehend the financial side of an equation, no pun intended, and found it fascinating. The puzzle of it, the story behind it, how it all works and fits together, why it’s so important. And as soon as I started to understand it, I thought, oh, this is really interesting because you see everything in a company, everything.

Anthony Codispoti : And so as you’re taking the MBA then, and you’ve got this heavy focus on finance, you realize this is my path, not the psychology, not the human resources. This is more where I want to go.

Denise Dettingmeijer : Actually, I left grad school and went to the Netherlands to coach a softball team. So no.

Anthony Codispoti : Which is what everybody does after getting their MBA.

Denise Dettingmeijer : Exactly. So I thought, I had got called and I thought, what other chance in life will I have to go do that? So the job I had lined up like every good MBA student does when they graduate, I asked if I could start in September instead of June. They said, no, I said, I quit. They said, why do you quit? I said, because I’m going home to coach, they said, oh, start in September. First rule of negotiation, right? So I went to the Netherlands and coached and then came back to my first job. So I didn’t have finance experience till six months after an MBA.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay. Yeah. And so as let’s go back, what was it?

Denise Dettingmeijer : It sounds so funny now that I’m like not 20 anymore.

Anthony Codispoti : Now that you’re saying it out loud. So what position did you play? I was a pitcher. But when they asked you to come over to the Netherlands, were you playing or were you coaching?

Denise Dettingmeijer : So two years prior, I’d gone on an all star team there. And one of the teams we played against, the coach called back to see if I would come and coach that team for the summer. So I went back as a coach to one of the clubs we played against while I was there.

Anthony Codispoti : So you go and you do that, you kind of scratch that itch, come back to the States. You start your first job. I do. And is this now kind of where you actually got your feet wet in the real world with finance?

Denise Dettingmeijer : So I started as a business management advisor. It was the coolest title for a 22 year old softball playing, MBA holding young lady. I worked with all engineers on a top secret clearance thing for the US government. I had secret clearance. So when they had top secret discussions, I had to leave the room.

I had no idea what they were talking about anyway, but I had go. And my job was to take offers and proposals and financially analyze them for correctness, not technically, but soundly in the financials, what they were delivering, what it would cost the time like to really, you know, analyze proposals. And I thought, it’s like doing business cases in grad school, but then in real life. And the engineers I worked with when I would ask questions, thought I was like a genius because they’re like, how do you think of that?

And I’m like, it’s kind of easy, right? So the environment I was in enabled me to be, I don’t want to call it a thought leader by any means, but the one who knew in the room. And I gained a lot of great camaraderie, interest, excitement, teaching others what was going on, and also confidence because my husband often says, and I’m not trying to judge hard of seeing people, but in the land of the blind, the one I had as king, and that’s what I was to start. So I felt very comfortable in it, did it for six months, Anthony. And then I moved back to the Netherlands because I had fallen in love with who is now my husband. And I went over there to start a life with him. And so I started my finance career.

Anthony Codispoti : All right. Let’s, I’m been on the edge of my seat. When do we get to finance?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Are we there yet? We’re there.

Anthony Codispoti : All right. We’re there. And so where were you? What was the role where you started in finance then? Was this in the Netherlands?

Denise Dettingmeijer : It was in the Netherlands at a company that made Fork Trucks Heister. It was a US company that appreciated my English American language skills and an MBA in finance. So you get a job as a financial analyst. And that’s how I started in manufacturing with spare parts as a financial analyst.

And I loved it. Because again, that’s where you got to see all the connections, how it worked, what you purchased, what you sold, how it fit together, the productivity, the warehouse, how much inventory you had, like it all was bringing what you learned to life. And honestly, finance is not that hard. You just have to be super curious. You talk about connecting dots, like I talk about making a puzzle. And just knowing where the components are, you get to speak to everyone, talk to everyone, learn, learn, advise, change. It just became amazing for me. It was just such the right role that more like a financial planning and analysis leader that I learned accounting with and through and credit collection and all those other roles because it touched what I did.

Anthony Codispoti : And I loved it. Okay. So now you’ve really, you’ve really figured out that you’ve understood what your passion is, what you’re really good at, where all these pieces sort of come together in a very functional way for you. And as I look here at your, what was the name of that company in the Netherlands?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Heister. It was a US fork truck company, Heister.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay. And so now I’m looking at your LinkedIn profile. I mean, you had stops at Heister is a big company, but you had stops at a lot of other, several other big companies along the way, Alcoa, Ranstad. As you sort of look forward to some of these opportunities after you left Heister, which one of those was kind of the most formidable for you?

Denise Dettingmeijer : In the long term, it was Alcoa. And I can say that because I learned to lean there. And a lean way of thinking, a lean way of leading, a lean way of, of working, that is exactly what finance is. Lean process flows and the handoffs and where they touch and why they matter and where the value comes from and where there’s waste. That logic and that methodology is for my brain, exactly finance.

You just put a couple of numbers on top of it. And then you have the whole trajectory of your entire company. So Alcoa for me was a, they were a lean shop. They were ERP’d incredibly well.

Vanilla with some changes, all of those kind of life lessons that you learn along the way came to fruition for me in those years I spent there. And it’s a funny thing because it’s over a 100 year old manufacturing company. You wouldn’t expect it. But the way that they operated was really inspiring. I learned Sarbanes Oxley there. It was that time of life, right?

Anthony Codispoti : That that happened and real, real quickly, touch on what Sarbanes Oxley is for listeners.

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yeah, of course. So back in the day, it still exists. It’s about your internal controls. So basically what Sarbanes Oxley required was not only for auditors to say your numbers are okay, but that the processes that you use to develop them are in control. And when you think about a lean way of working with all of the process descriptions, the formulations of them, finding the control points in there.

So what really matters to make sure you have segregation of duties, people who pay in voices can’t change bank account numbers, for example, the way maintenance operates for safety, that all kind of accumulated together where things like controls in Sarbanes Oxley or internal audits, things like accounting, all came together in this business process that financial planning and analysis puts on top to report, tell stories, guide, direct, grow. And for me, that all happened at that company where right time in my life with experiences I have had, but certainly the way that they worked was priceless for me.

Anthony Codispoti : I want to get to medical solutions, but you also spent two, what is this, 11 years being CFO North America for Ransom, huge company. Yeah. What was behind the decision to leave there and come join medical solutions?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yeah, that’s always a tough one. I spent a lot of years at Ransom. When I joined, I had an argument with the CEO who hired me, whether I would stay for two or three years, because I thought I could get the job done in two and she thought it might take three. I’m like, well, let’s take the job and see.

Ten years later, I’m still doing it. It was such a dynamic company. It was acquisitions. Your portfolio changed all the time. Your title was the same, but you had an acquisition, then it went somewhere else. You got a different country, you got global, you did transformation. It was just such a great, paced, moving, exciting company that was my first experience in service. You don’t have a product to go look at on the shop floor.

How do you maneuver your way through that? After all the time there and the impacts that we made and hopefully that I also had there, I accelerated my advanced, I don’t want to say age, but experience and thought, is this really what I want to do forever, the rest of my working career? I thought, maybe it’s just time. There was nothing wrong.

Anthony Codispoti : You’re just ready for a new challenge.

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yeah. You never finish your job. I’ve never left a job because I was done, but the challenges were smaller. The environment you were in was very familiar and it just didn’t make my heart beat fast. When I decided to leave Ronstadt, I then went and interviewed for a teaching role. I thought, how cool would it be to teach international business, finance, be around young or earlier generation people that you can learn from, give back what you could. I was speaking to a university when the sponsors, the private equity firm for Medical Solutions called and within 10 minutes on the phone, my heart’s beating faster and I’m like, oh my God, this is amazing. I took the opportunity or the chance as anyone would call it and chose to continue the rest of my career here at Medical Solutions.

Anthony Codispoti : When I first looked at Medical Solutions, I have to be honest. I think I made the mistake of putting this company into a category as a staffing company. Of course. But as I dug deeper, I realized that this description kind of sells you short because you offer a whole lot more. Can you paint more of a picture of what Medical Solutions does? Yes.

Denise Dettingmeijer : Medical Solutions does provide clinicians to hospital systems and healthcare systems. There’s nothing wrong with the staffing component of what we generate revenue upon. The company itself is truly positioned in a consultative way to hospital systems, healthcare systems, to make them successful. A lot of that success comes through the quality of the clinician, the cost and price of the clinician, but also the understanding of how it all works, how it fits together, how best to use your talent pools on how to gain the best outcome you can, not just for your hospital system and your clinicians, but for your patients. And so Medical Solutions is able to provide that consulting and those offerings, not only clinician or nurse staffing, not only travelers, but on an array of positions, including allied, including temp, including leadership, including virtual, direct hire.

So if you’re looking for somebody, we can also find you a permanent employee. We can do that with domestic clinicians, with international clinicians. It’s a whole portfolio of support that can enable the success of those hospital systems.

And we do it. What makes Medical Solutions special and what excited me about it is the relationships. Medical Solutions is known in the industry for the partnership with the clients, with the clinicians, bringing them forward and not only placing a clinician and moving on. So much bigger than staffing. And the bottom line, when I worked at RONSTOT, I couldn’t just be more proud of giving people jobs and the way jobs change people lives. And here at Medical Solutions, we do that, but we also help save lives. And that is better than honestly making aluminum wheels or extrusion for windows, as exciting as that is, and lovely to see your product when you drive by something. It’s really, really incredible.

Anthony Codispoti : Not only are you helping to empower the people who you’ve helped find employment for, but you’re finding them employment in medical environments where there’s a shortage. Totally. And yeah, there’s the opportunity to help people, to heal people, to save lives every day. Mic drop, yes. So what’s the biggest project you’ve undertaken in the time that you’ve been at Medical Solutions so far?

Denise Dettingmeijer : There’s a lot of them. Listen, you never do a project on your own, so I’m going to give credit where credit’s due. But we had a portfolio before my time that included an international footprint. Medical Solutions acquired company called Worldwide, and they have a headquarters in Manila in the Philippines. And coming in externally and seeing that and thinking, wow, we should really take advantage of our global footprint and put the jobs where they best belong and where they could work and where the best support and service could come from. So we undertook an experiment with what kind of roles can we perform out of Manila, not only the revenue-generating side with international permanent clinicians, but on more of a BPO-shared service, we call them remote teammates. So just remote teammates that happen to sit in Manila instead of Omaha or Ohio.

Anthony Codispoti : But more administrative kind of roles then?

Denise Dettingmeijer : It could be anything. It could be recruiting, sourcing, payroll, billing, any work that can be done remote anywhere in the world. And pre-COVID, that probably would have been a huge description in details post-COVID. We have 50% of our workforce that’s not near an office.

So if you’re sitting in Florida or Ohio or Omaha or Manila, what’s the difference? So that initiative and experiment turned into more of a, I wouldn’t call it mandate, but more of a strategy on what work to put where across the company, how to do our work. On top of that, we put in Lean.

Again, I take no, I take some credit, but we have a Lean leader who is off the charts and just deploying that understanding of process, flow, connection, that end-to-end way of working, and people can be anywhere so long as they are working together is still ongoing, but super proud of the success that the company has had and the change that the leaders and our teammates had to go through to make it work.

Anthony Codispoti : Where do you see that heading? What do you think that can become?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yeah, it’s a great question. I see it as potentially even supporting our clients. So if our clients, again, we are here to help them be successful and honestly manage their costs as part of their financial success. So maybe next year we can expand that to support client needs or third party needs or as we grow additional teammates there. So I don’t think we’re done, but we certainly are on our way.

Anthony Codispoti : I’ve seen that you’ve participated in discussions before, Denise, on the reimagination of finance functions. What does that mean to reimagine finance functions? Finance has been around a long time. What kind of new things are there?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yeah. So I used to get a little bit frustrated as people would say, like reimagine the CFO role. They ought to be thought partners and operators. And I’m like, yeah, it can’t really be a CFO if you’re not.

So I don’t mean that. Back 10, 15 years ago, that was the thing. CFOs are no longer bookkeeping in the corner and flying out reports. They’re understanding business. I think the reimagine CFO role today for me is really like that growth leader, strategic leader, we don’t sell in my world.

I recognize the amazing work that the people who do that do, but enabling that to happen, strategically assessing, understanding all the puzzle pieces that we talked about. I could imagine a scenario where companies blend the CFO role with the COO, Chief Operating Officer role, Chief Strategic Officer role, and it becomes, you know, could one person do all that? Time will tell with AI and, you know, other techniques to support.

But that role is so gray on the boundaries right now that I could imagine that that comes together. And the knowledge of how it all connects to the numbers will always be critical. You know, we we’re all playing a business game, right?

You need a score at the end and that happens to be your financials. And so how what you do touches and connects, I think the CFO reimagined will be the leader of that type of environment more than perhaps a COO or Chief Strategic Officer could be.

Anthony Codispoti : Where do you see currently that delineation between a CFO and a COO? Because I’ve seen a lot of, not a lot, I’ve seen several other companies where one of those roles departs for whatever reason. And the other one ends up sort of consuming it. Are they that closely related in your mind?

Denise Dettingmeijer : It depends on the definition of the COO. So very often COOs will be project leaders, lean leaders. And then I think if you’re a good CFO and you understand that you can blend into the CFO role. It’s difficult for the COO to take over the CFO role because of that financial accounting control piece. So there’s a little bit of a table stakes that the CFO takes. But in other companies, you’ll see more and more often you see CFO slash COO in many people’s titles because that blend is very difficult in today’s modern way of working to distinguish.

Anthony Codispoti : Any examples you can think of of where you sort of kind of were able to merge these two roles and your role there at Medical Solutions, sort of the traditional finance with more of like an operator or strategy have on? Yeah.

Denise Dettingmeijer : So we don’t have a COO in Medical Solutions as titled. I would argue in our industry, a chief operating officer would be the expert at recruiting, the expert at credentialing, you know, the things in the front that make the clinician viable for work.

We find them, we place them, you talk with the client. So that kind of front of house, many CFOs in our industry who have slashed titles with COOs, they’re talking about the operating side behind it. So in our world, it’s called VMS Reconciliation. But it’s reconciling hours between what the hospital says the clinician worked in, what we say. It’s paying clinicians and employees, it’s billing, it’s credit and collections, it’s really the financial operations that matter so much in this type of industry that you’ll see dual titles because of that piece. And in Medical Solutions, our chief accounting officer leads the people who lead that operations.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay, gotcha. So I kind of want to come back to the softball thing because I’ve found, you’re extra excited now. My favorite topic. I found that people who have a strong sports background that there is, without exception, some big lessons that they take from that experience that they’re able to bring into their professional life. Yeah. Yeah.

Denise Dettingmeijer : You know, I didn’t realize that until I started working how related it is. So it is about, you know, back in the day, they had a big commercial about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. That’s real.

That’s real. So you know how to win, you have this innate, I’ll say need to win. You fail, you dust yourself off, you get back up, you might cry, you might, you know, take five minutes to stomp around or maybe say a swear word or two, but you get back up.

That, I don’t know if you do that because you were playing as an athlete or if you were an athlete because you can do that. I don’t know where the chicken and the egg start, but it is so applicable to business. The team is the number one thing. It’s the team. When you play on a team sport and you know, I pitched, I could not pitch without my catcher telling me what to throw. My first baseman has more outs than probably anyone on the team. I can’t catch a fly ball as well as those outfielders and my shortstop can’t catch a fly ball and they can’t, like so everyone has a role to play.

You’re experts in your role and together you are bigger than the parts. That’s business. That is business. Everybody has a role to play. You have to let them play their role. You can encourage them.

You can share your observations. You know, hey, next time put your glove down. You know, I tell a shortstop how to play short.

That would be crazy, but little tips and tricks you can give to each other, but you count on your teammates to be the best that they are at the position that they play better than anyone else and you cannot win without them and you can only be bigger together. That for me is the biggest relationship to business. I wake up every morning, maybe not 18 years old, 20 years old in my head thinking how am I going to throw that rise ball better and you wake up every day thinking how can I be a better CFO, a better leader. What did I do yesterday that I could have communicated better? That constant improvement and desire to be the best that I could have done. I was so applicable. Right on.

Anthony Codispoti : I’m extra curious. What’s your fastball?

Denise Dettingmeijer : We have all agreed back in the day never to share how fast we throw.

Anthony Codispoti : Why is that? Is that like an end of sports?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yes, because it was like this girls can’t throw that hard kind of thing, so we kept it a mystery. But as soon as you, this is another great thing about playing soft being a pitcher, as soon as you can throw a fastball, you’re not allowed to throw it anymore because it’s just a straight pitch and any great batter. The first thing I realized when I was at Yukon is I’m pitching against every number four batter I ever met because only number four batters go on to division one and now they’re batting ninth and you’re like, they used to be a number four batter. You can’t throw a straight pitch because they’ll hit it. So as soon as you master your fastball, you’ve got to throw a cut off, a curve, a rise ball, something off speed because they can hit fastballs. Okay. And that’s a huge lesson in business too, right? Once you master something, everyone can hit it.

Anthony Codispoti : And so you’ve got to have other pitches. You’ve got to have other tools in your tool belt.

Denise Dettingmeijer : You do.

Anthony Codispoti : And you have to constantly try. So what was your best secondary pitch? That’s funny you asked that. So I had a reunion about a month ago and the team asked, one of the what is said, it’s a thing called a cut off. It’s like a drop curve. They said a rise ball.

Denise Dettingmeijer : And Anthony, that was another life lesson to me because my rise ball was so difficult to throw and I never truly mastered it. And it was always the thing that it could have been a little bit better. And to hear your teammates from a very long time ago, reminisce upon the fact that what you thought was your struggle was actually your strength. I was like, wow, another lesson to apply to business.

Anthony Codispoti : And what is that? Maybe we’re not always sort of the best judge of our skills or we’re our own worst critic at times.

Denise Dettingmeijer : We are always our own worst critic. And if you have a team full of critics, you’ve got to lift each other up, you got to share what they’re good at, celebrate their superpowers.

Nobody’s good at everything. And, you know, retrospectively, you wonder if I thought someone thought my rise ball was pretty good when I had had more confidence in it. I don’t know.

Anthony Codispoti : Probably. Yeah, I think so too. There’s a lot to be said for confidence and kind of getting that little momentum going forward in a positive direction.

Denise Dettingmeijer : A little bit of courage to try it harder, faster. So that’s all part of the application I have every day here.

Anthony Codispoti : Now, you mentioned something interesting about there sort of being an agreement not to share the speed of your fastball because there’s this whole like girls can’t throw fast kind of a thing. And the professional level, you’re known for champion women in healthcare leadership. Why? And maybe can you share a personal example of overcoming a significant hurdle in your career?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yeah, I can. So this gets so my whole I’m just gonna say my whole life and this isn’t a sob story. But as long as I can remember, I was always like different, right? So in high school, I played sports, but I was in the band. And I was kind of smart. I was a national honor society. And I so you were not the jock, the nerd, or the band kid.

You were kind of awesome. You never really like fit. And then you go to play in college and you’re now a female division one athlete, that’s very intimidating to a lot of people. A lot of men you would like to date that you, you know, I remember one boyfriend said to me, Okay, you’re lovely and whatever. But he goes and I bet you could kick my butt at softball. And I said, Yeah, I bet I could end of the relationship.

Right. I’m like, Do I have to hide what I am so that whole not really being comfortable with who you are, being proud of what you do but not really fitting in, I fast forward into my career. So you’re a female in finance, that’s odd. You’re a female in manufacturing, it’s kind of odd. And you’re a female in finance and manufacturing, which makes you kind of really odd.

And I just wanted to be known for the work I did. I didn’t want to be the female. I didn’t want to be the not female. I just wanted to be

Anthony Codispoti : you’re not a woman’s CFO, you’re a CFO, just a CFO, right?

Denise Dettingmeijer : I still get that you don’t look like a CFO. And depending on the tone I go is that because I’m a girl or because right. So that’s always been the case. And then when I was at again, Alcoa, I was asked to join the Alcoa Women’s Network. It was 23 years ago when these were first forming. Some very senior amazing women got together and said, We need to have this affinity network.

They’re now EIGs and BRGs. And I said, No, And that’s shocking to a lot of people who know me today, but I just didn’t want to be the female. I just wanted to be fine at finance, good at my job, make a difference, and it didn’t matter to me what my gender was. And at the time I had what they call today an unlikely ally. At the time was my CEO, he was male South America, he’s from Brazil. So not somebody you would imagine would 25 years ago be the promoter of me. But he called me into his office and he said, why did you say no?

And I told him it’s hard enough being a female. I don’t need to draw attention to it. I don’t. And he gave it to me. He said to me, Denise, people are watching you like it or not. You’re a role model, like it or not, you can put your head in the sand or you can help these people. And I was just like, what the burden of recognizing that people were watching you and it was immense.

It was immense. So I decided to fine, I’ll do it. I don’t know what I have to offer because I don’t fit in anywhere, right? And then it just, Anthony sprang from there. I had a little girl, she was born and I thought, man, that girl’s not going to go through what I went through. And every chance I get to speak, preach, tell people I had a meeting on Monday with one of my vice presidents, it’s okay to feel that way. It’s normal. When you make this transition in your career, it happens. You just need someone to

Anthony Codispoti : be with you to feel that way. What do you mean? It’s okay to feel.

Denise Dettingmeijer : When you go from being an excellent doer and a

Anthony Codispoti : rewarded watched and considered a role model

Denise Dettingmeijer : and you’re a role model and people watch you and you’re winning awards and now you’re leading people who do that. It’s very difficult to be that leader in the beginning because you’re the one who used to be recognized.

And now you are ensuring your team is recognized. And if you’re not used to that, that’s the transition she’s going through. You have to just talk about it and understand it and understand it’s normal. And you can make choices in your life to go back and be the doer. You don’t have to be the leader. You don’t have to grow a career.

You can be happy where you are. Anthony, I could spend the whole hour talking about this. So every day, whether they’re college students, friends of my daughter, athletes at UConn, vice presidents in medical solution outside the world, anybody that I can help to share an experience, a message, a journey, a learning to make their path faster, smoother, easier, hands down, I will do it. Hands down. Because it’s not easy.

Anthony Codispoti : So it was really that conversation with your CEO many years ago, the gentleman from Brazil, and the birth of your daughter that was sort of like these wake up moments sort of awaken this giant within. Huge. How did you sort of come to terms with, because I could sort of see it in your eyes when you’re talking about the weight of that realization that I’m on stage now. How did you get comfortable with that?

Denise Dettingmeijer : I don’t know that you ever are. When I played sports, and I’ll just use UConn as an example, we were told the ethics, the representation you make of that university, if you get caught doing something wrong, it’s another way to keep us out of trouble, right? I know that. The headline’s not going to say Denise did this, it’s going to say a UConn softball player.

And I get chills when I say that, because it’s the same thing right now. It’s like the CFO of medical solutions. The North America CFO of Ransom. That headline is what I want to not ever see. And so I gladly, it gets tiring, but I gladly carry the burden of aiming to never be that headline and ensuring anybody I can touch and help be great and prevent anything like that for them. Whatever the headline is, it doesn’t have to be your arrest. It could be, I don’t know, you forgot your kid at school or whatever makes you upset that that’s prevented.

Anthony Codispoti : Say more about DEI and how that fits in with medical solutions, mission, and how you sort of measure the effects of that.

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yes. So I think medical solutions is a DEIB company. So how does it fit into? It’s all the clinicians that we place. DEIB is beyond, back in the day it was gender when I first started, right? It was the women’s network or not. And then it started to expand into Black excellence or Asian communities, LGBTQ, like into different areas. But diversity is also, once that’s conquered, experience, culture, where you lived, how you were raised, there’s just so many components to it. And in medical solutions, with the number of people we touch, the tens of thousands of people we touch, that diversity is innate in it. So as a company, it’s just part of who we are and how we bring ourselves forward into everything we do. It’s about trust and safety and ability to bring your whole self to work, whatever your work is.

Anthony Codispoti : It sounds like this is one of those things that’s more of the right thing to do. So you do it, rather than a, we have a measurable outcome from it. I’d be right in that.

Denise Dettingmeijer : You are about that. I’ve been in companies where we started programs and we measured. We take to heart, as every company does, our employee engagement surveys. And there’s a lot of questions about DEIB on those.

And so those scores matter, all the scores matter, but that’s where we get the true voice of our teammates. In my experience, the biggest thing you can do to evidence DEIB, like in numbers, would be diverse slates. And I would never say hiring, because you hire the best candidate. But to have a diverse slate really triggers eye-opening experiences of what diversity could bring, and generally then a very diverse workforce. We don’t count those or measure those. I think a lot of programs are beyond that these days, hopefully. And it’s about that feeling, that comfort, that safety that people have in our company.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s great. Doing the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do. Exactly.

Denise Dettingmeijer : You can’t not. You can’t not. That’s the represent.

Anthony Codispoti : Medical solutions has gone through some really significant growth. And I understand that a lot of that growth has taken place by way of acquisitions that allow you guys to broaden your reach. What are the biggest things that you’re looking for when assessing a possible acquisition?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Such a great question. At Medical Solutions, we look at two things. We look at what we call close to core. So grow volume of what we do and what we do well.

The consultative, travel nursing, direct hire, nursing, clinician kind of support. And we look at what we’ll call adjacencies. So we’re developing virtual on our own, but we’d look at tech support. We would look at other types of needs of our clients, like maybe locums, that’s doctors, and other areas that could expand our portfolio to satisfy our clients even more in their portfolio of managing their whole talent system. The value of, so that’s the kind of what do you look at? The value of that, of course, is why you would do an acquisition. So what’s the growth, the opportunity, the synergies on the client side? So where can we cross sell and where can we grow together on the cost side? So do you need two CFOs, for example, and how do you eliminate a cost space? What opportunities do you have with best practice sharing, tech sharing?

So you look at all of that to determine what option that you will take. The healthcare market at the moment where we have medical surgeons has grown incredibly and the whole COVID experience for healthcare was completely different than what I experienced in general staffing, which was a huge decline. The industry is difficult at the moment. The clinicians are on shortage.

The hospital systems are looking to use their internal resource pools first, which we’re helping with technology to help them do, again, consultatively, not just trying to sell a staffing product. And it’s a tricky environment at the moment to determine the speed of growth, where you place your bets, and how much is your bet. What’s making it so challenging?

The combination of all of that at once. So often in a market, you’ll have scarcity on supply, scarcity on demand. You might have an economic condition. You might have uncertainty in some administrative ruling. You might have changes happening in your client environment today in healthcare. All of that’s happening at once.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, it’s just a tornado of things to try to consider at the same time.

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yet you know it’s going to grow. People are living longer. People need healthcare. It’s not a limited demand. So that timing is difficult at the moment.

Anthony Codispoti : So obviously as a CFO, one of the things that you’re looking at in the numbers, you’re looking for cost saving opportunities. Can we cross sell to clients? Like you said, can we learn from your tech stack or just other sort of best practices? Those are some of the things that you’re taking into account. In your role, are you considering it all culture fit? Is that something that you can even measure or kind of wrap your head around?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Always, always. There’s a, I’ll go back to my early days of the HR degree and the finance degree. So that’s the financial CFO answer. The real success of an acquisition is your ability to deploy the acquisition plan, meaning the integration. And the integrations are most successful when like cultures. It’s not about they have to be the same, but like culture. So if you’re both, if one is a partying, doesn’t care about process, kind of lucky in their results. And the other one is, you know, process focus and oriented, that blend becomes very challenging. When you’ve got people who believe in only the financial results and it doesn’t matter how we get there and how the people feel safe or not, that blend is very difficult. So we also consider in any kind of discussion, the best match for success of deploying that business case. Cause without it, you, all you did was spend money.

Anthony Codispoti : Is that something that’s easy for you to ascertain during that sort of dating process? Or do you feel like it feels like if I’m in a position and I want to be acquired, I’m going to kind of put on my best face that I think is going to appeal to you, right?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yes. So in these days, I would expect that, but in the older days, when, you know, the money was around and the market was growing and it was all glory, many acquired targets, like the targets would say, I don’t want to be acquired by you because so it’s a two-way dating. It’s not only one way.

That’s, you know, part of the magic and the success of the acquisition is on both sides. So you’re not going to end up going in on a big giant lie. What you end up, what I call is deal fever. People get deal fever and they think, oh, we can overcome that. Oh, it’s not going to be that bad. Oh, so it’s more of convincing yourself that it’s possible instead of truly looking at what the possibilities are.

Anthony Codispoti : And so how would you describe the culture there at Medical Solutions?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yeah. So Medical Solutions, we’re a bit of a transformation of our culture. So when you are growing and you’re kind of printing money and you’re doing acquisitions, it’s very different than when you’re facing the market that we’re in right now. And so in the last 18 months or so, it’s been more oriented toward those processes, the very, I won’t say detailed, but intentional way of working, ensuring that everything we touch and do matters. And that shift toward, you know, people call it more performance-based.

I think Medical Solutions was always performance-based, but it’s more front of mind on how you impact not only your teammates, your clinicians, and your clients, but the scorecard at the end of the day. And so that’s a little bit of a difference. But culturally, it’s a very open, transparent, again, we’re putting in lean.

So the person doing the job knows the job the best. You have a voice ensuring that people feel incredibly safe and comfortable sharing their voice every time that they can or should will continue to be our aim. I love that.

Anthony Codispoti : What’s a personal or professional challenge, Denise, that you’ve had to overcome in your life? What was that? How’d you learn from it? How’d you get through it?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yeah, you know, there’s the one that sticks with me for so long. I’ve got to go back to that. I got injured my junior year. And when you are, it’s not about playing a sport, but when you have something in your life, that is your life.

If it’s a person, a job, a school, a friend, a team, a sport, and it’s ripped away from you in an instant because of an injury, dare I even compare that to a death or anything that’s even way more tragic. You don’t know what to do. And I got hurt and was like, what do I do now? I played softball since I was 16.

I played it every day for hours. How do you react to that? And retrospectively, I don’t think there was ever a moment where I thought, I’m decided this is what I’m going to do.

But you just, again, dust off, pick up the pieces, pivot, find your way through. Sometimes, you know, I wanted to play softball my whole life. After I got hurt, I thought, I should probably make sure I get good grades too, because if I do want a job, they’re probably going to notice. So you just pivot a little bit along the way and end up with all the lessons learned and the choices you made. And honestly, what you learn is if you don’t like where you are, you have to make different choices. It sounds super privileged. A lot of people don’t have multiple choice, but to try to create your own options was the biggest lesson.

It worked too. If you don’t like the job you’re in, the boss you have, the company you’re in, change it. If you can’t change it and you tried and no one’s listening and they tell you no, change where you work. It sounds so easy to do. It’s not any crisis in your life like that is not easy, but it’s turning in a pivot point for where you head to in the future.

Anthony Codispoti : You know, I’m really glad that we get a chance to talk about this, because I think it highlights something that doesn’t get a lot of attention. And people who haven’t gone through it under appreciate the significance of it. Your identity, a huge portion of it was wrapped up in softball. For some people, and this is also true for you, true for me, identity is also wrapped up in career or whatever it is.

And when that part of your identity suddenly disappears, it’s very destabilizing. It’s very confusing about how do I fit into this world? What am I supposed to do with myself? How am I supposed to contribute?

Where do I go today? Some things as simple as that. And then it’s like you’ve been dropped in from outer space and you need to figure things out all over again.

Denise Dettingmeijer : And there’s not a network of support for that, because everybody’s position is different. How you manage and deal with that is different. What you talk about, what you look like while you’re going through it, if you’re dealing with heartache pain or physical pain, it’s incredible. And when you’re through that and out on the other side and content with where your journey has been at that moment, I have a lot of people say to me, aren’t you lucky you got hurt? Because I got hurt, I got an MBA.

Then I went to the Netherlands and met my husband, and now I have amazing children. And that injury definitely was a catalyst of change. But I stand by, it’s also the choices you create, the energy you have to adjust, the drive you have to pivot, everybody in support around you trying to help you find your way. I’m not sure we’re all lucky when those moments happen, but when you end up on the other side of it, you’re stronger for sure.

Anthony Codispoti : It’s so hard in the moment when you’re kind of wallowing in what just happened in this loss of identity, this loss of self. But I don’t know, I’d be curious to hear your thought. The advice I would give to people is if you can be curious in that moment. And pretend that you’re looking in the rear of your mirror a year, five years, 10 years from now at this moment, what is it that you want to be grateful for? What is it that this moment could have been an inflection point, a fulcrum for you sort of finding leverage to get into a new situation? How do you think about it?

Denise Dettingmeijer : I think you should have been around when I got hurt. So I was much more short-term focus. I wanted to play again. I knew that people said you’ll never play again. And I’m going to play again. So stubbornness, perhaps naivete, I don’t know. I don’t pick a positive word.

Anthony Codispoti : Those can be great at times. Those can be a powerful combination at the right time.

Denise Dettingmeijer : I wanted to play again. I wanted to get a degree with good grades. I didn’t want to get an undergraduate degree in five years. So could I please go get an MBA? So there were things more short-term for me that I thought, okay, this happened. Now you’ve got to figure out the next two or three years of how that could be to make what happened not the end of everything. And then you grew from that. And then when I look back, I think, man, if I had thought about five to 10 years at that time, I don’t even know what would have happened. So great advice. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : Denise, how would you characterize your superpower?

Denise Dettingmeijer : I would say I genuinely enjoy people. As funny as that sounds to be a superpower, like I’m intrigued by how people think why they work, how they work, why they think things are a problem, how they come up. Like I’m fully intrigued by people. And when people recognize it’s genuine and you do care or are truly interested, I think that turns into the possibilities that you never imagined because you have transparency, openness, trust, respect, pick a word that can launch into something again bigger than yourselves. And I truly find people so incredibly interesting.

Anthony Codispoti : This is generally more of like an HR kind of a question, but curious to get your thoughts on it, especially given what you just said there. You guys, big company, lots of employees. Recruiting is a big part of what you guys do. Retaining the good folks, also a big part of your success. What are some things that in your career you’ve seen tried and found success with when it comes to the recruiting and the retention of good team members? Yeah.

Denise Dettingmeijer : So I’m going to say it straight up. It is tell the truth. So when you are in an interview, when I’m in an interview, you’ve got to tell the good, the bad, the ugly. When you think about how do I describe our company to you as a candidate, a lot of people’s head goes toward the marketing story or the reality.

There should be no difference. You might have a marketing story for where you’re headed and what the joy will bring and hug, but in the moment and who you are, I say full transparency, my aim is an interview to never enable anyone who joins us to come back and say you didn’t warn me. And I mean the warn of the good and the bad.

So you warn you that we are a diverse company. We will embrace DEIB. We will talk about it. We will have tough conversations about it. In an interview, everyone’s like, yeah.

And when they come, they’re like, oh, I didn’t know you meant we’re going to talk about that. So in the good of it and in the bad of it, we work hard at Medical Solutions. We’re going through change. We’re aiming to put the right jobs in the right spot across the globe. We want to be the best partners we can to our clients and to our clinicians. And that takes enormous passion and hard work and change that during an interview, everyone’s like, yeah.

But you have to really describe what it’s like because if I interview it somebody who says this interview, they said, Denise, we just deployed an ERP. We have a growth plan that’s working. We did a reduction in force.

So we’re all set to launch. And I’m like, why do you need me then? Because that just sounds really boring. And then they said, well, ERP is not really working well.

And maybe the growth plan isn’t succeeding in growth. And I’m like, oh, okay. So you have to get the match at the start. It may take a minute. It’s sometimes difficult. There are people out there that love your company, whether you are changing and chaotic or smooth and greased and routine. There’s people who love that. And once you find them, they stay because you give them what they love, what they thrive in.

Anthony Codispoti : I love this answer. And it’s not a traditional one that I get. Tell the truth. Let them know what they’re coming into, the good, the bad, the indifferent. It makes a lot of sense once you say it out loud because you want somebody coming into an environment that they’re going to be comfortable with. Yes, they want you want them to be a good fit for what it is that you guys have already established in terms of culture. Yes.

Denise Dettingmeijer : And where we’re headed, like you always have the beautiful marketing story in the vision, every company does. But you there’s very many different people out there. And if you get somebody who likes routine, smooth process, doing the same thing every day, and that’s not your environment, you have no you have no luck with that.

Anthony Codispoti : What are you most excited about for the future of medical solutions? Where is this going?

Denise Dettingmeijer : I’m super excited about I’m going to call it growth from the finance side, but that true partnership in healthcare to provide what the patients, the users of the healthcare systems need to live. There are the intricacies of what they do and how clinicians work, how healthcare’s systems manage in a business in a non for profit, the complexity of what’s happening in the administration with you know, Medicare, Medicaid, what’s going to happen. It’s a it’s an environment which every human needs eventually in their life somehow some way. That’s so incredibly complex. If we medical solutions can make that difference in there with the partnership and helping hospital systems and healthcare systems to be smoother, quality workforce, lower costs so that they can continue to invest in the right equipment and perhaps more clinicians to help more people. If we can be a part of that, while growing our company, I think that would be thrilling. And that is alright. That is alright.

Anthony Codispoti : From your experience Denise, share with the audience maybe a helpful resource podcast, a book, of course, something that has been helpful in your personal or professional trajectory.

Denise Dettingmeijer : This is like the worst question ever. Oh! Inspired stories podcast, listen to them. True, listen to my teammate Patty Artley. She was amazing. I do genuinely mean that. I don’t have a favorite book. That’s why I get to read, listen, learn a nugget from everything that you touch. I don’t have one book that I put you know, back in the day you read, Don’t Move My Cheese or Who Moved My Cheese and you read, Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office. I learned don’t bake and bring baked goods to work from that book because only like moms bake and they’ll see.

So there’s nuggets from everything you read, but there’s not one that I thought this is the one. Most recently I served on a panel and as a gift they gave me Dare to Lead, Brene Brown, because they felt that I was that type of leader. It was intriguing to read a book about how people perceive you because you can learn from that too.

Anthony Codispoti : What did you learn about yourself reading that book? That people perceive me in a completely different

Denise Dettingmeijer : way than I perceive myself, which is critically important to know. And I don’t say incredibly different. You know, when you organize, I could never organize myself into five or six points of leadership of exactly how I lead.

I have to talk and tell stories and reading the book. I’m like, I can see why people say that. What you don’t like about it, you can change. What you do like you can embrace. I just tell people, listen to truly your podcast is amazing. Listen to all podcasts you can read the business books, read the old ones because they’re still valid and take the nuggets from them. Because I don’t think unless you write your own book, there’s probably not a lot you can take to make yourself who you want to be from one book. Fair enough.

Anthony Codispoti : How about daily practices that are helpful to you? Something to get your day started or keep you on track? Yeah.

Denise Dettingmeijer : So there’s two things I do. In the start of the day, I’m like, this is what I’m going to do today and then I never do it like every person who works. But it’s about improvement to me. So I promise you, I wake up every morning thinking, how am I going to throw a better eyesball?

Seriously. So how am I going to do this meeting better that? What could I do different? I have to do this today. So it’s like that prep for the day to make the business better, my teammates better, clinicians and clients more successful.

What are you going to do today? And at the end of the day, we have some really, as you do so many things, you have at the end of the day, you think, here’s the 10 things I didn’t do, the five things I meant to do, all the two things I really should have done. But I sit there and I always say to myself, with everything you had going on and all the choices you had to make and everything that happened during the day, could you have done it better?

And very often the answer is yes, but it’s one thing or the thing. So that’s what you take away for the next time the next day to continue that improvement. But if you constantly have a list of 50 things that somebody asked you to do, know is a complete sentence, by the way, and you say no to the 20 and you have to organize the rest, you’re just never going to be satisfied, motivated, and you’ll be exhausted.

So you really need to find your one thing that you’re going to change as a result of your day, that you start your day with, and then the next day, the one thing.

Anthony Codispoti : Do you think that mental process is more challenging as a woman and a mother also balancing a very demanding career?

Denise Dettingmeijer : I’m going to say, of course, but I don’t know what it’s like to be a man and a dad, right? So I’m not judging that it’s harder, but you grow up in your career always wanting to be somewhere else. So when you’re at work and you’re doing the best you can there, you think, I’m missing this with my kids. So when you’re with your kids, you’re like, oh, if I could just do that one email. So you’re always needing to be somewhere else. Many women ask me, do you get used to it? Many answer, yes.

My answer is I don’t. They ask, sorry, does it get easier? My answer is no, but you do get used to it. So I do think it’s difficult for anybody in a dynamic role with outside interest, be it families, parents, children, it’s a work-life blend. I don’t think there’s a work-life balance when you’re in a certain role.

Anthony Codispoti : I’ll agree with that as a dad, a husband, a guy. Right. Yeah, similar challenges. It’s hard because when you’re in one place, yeah, your brain is sort of working in the other place. Unfortunately, I’ve got a very patient and loving wife who recognizes that and gently kind of pulls me back to where I should be at the moments I need to be there. I love that. Yeah, it’s a challenge.

Denise Dettingmeijer : And Anthony, I think if you’re in a family relationship, like my husband is, okay, I’m being recorded. He is amazing, but hopefully he will never listen to this. Joking aside, he’s amazing. And without that, neither of us could be successful, right? And without us, stepping back when we need to, neither can they. So that partnership doesn’t mean equal, it just means partnership and who needs what and which day is critical.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. Denise, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. I’m going to invite all the listeners to go ahead and hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app. We’ve had a great conversation here today with Denise Detttingmeyer from Medical Solutions. I want you to continue to get more great content like this. Denise, I also want to let people know the best way either to get in touch with you or to continue to follow your story. What would that be?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Yeah, I love that. Thank you. I’m LinkedIn. That’s the easiest way to do it. I’m probably the only Denise Detttingmeyer on all of LinkedIn. I never checked. Certainly, the only one at Medical Solutions. So if you just link me in, tell me that you listen to the podcast, I will link you back and we can take it from there.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s awesome. Very gracious of you. So last question for you, Denise. We’ve had a nice conversation here. I hope we stay in touch. You’re from now. We reconnect and you’re celebrating something. Really excited about that. What is that thing?

Denise Dettingmeijer : Oh, my kids got their master’s degrees. It has nothing to do with work.

Anthony Codispoti : How many kids are getting their master’s degrees at once?

Denise Dettingmeijer : I have two children. They are two years apart. I have one who did college in three years, one who did an extra semester, Chris, of a study abroad. They’re both headed to the Netherlands for master’s degrees in August. Super proud of them. One will finish in a year. One’s a two-year program. And if they thrive, they survive even there. Never mind thrive. I will be celebrating.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s amazing. Such a selfless answer. You can go right to your kids. Yeah, oh, for sure. Denise Denning-Meier from Medical Solutions. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Denise Dettingmeijer : Thanks for making it so great, Anthony. I appreciate you too.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today. Thank you.