As we celebrate International Women's Day, a global holiday celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, we also recognize that March 8th marks the call to action for accelerating gender parity.
In the words of Health Catalyst Chief Marketing Officer Tarah Neujahr Bryan, to achieve equity in the workplace, we need to hold organizations accountable, ask hard questions, and “we need to measure and share what we find. Then work toward solutions to address gaps in meaningful ways. This is nitty, gritty work that causes uncomfortable feelings—and it should.”
The United Nations observes this year’s International Women’s Day under the theme “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality,” recognizing and celebrating the women and girls championing the advancement of transformative technology and digital education. This observance also explores the impact of the digital gender gap on widening economic and social inequalities.
One area of this theme that has a glaring gender gap is access. According to the United Nations, 259 million fewer women have access to the internet than men, and women are vastly underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers.
As a healthcare technology company, this theme hits home for us at Health Catalyst. We acknowledge that we must continue to work intentionally every day to foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. This begins by identifying programs and benefits that support the needs of our female team members and their families.
At Health Catalyst, we are committed to creating an inclusive environment where all our team members can thrive, and one way we work to do this is through taking the ParityPledge—a public commitment to interview at least one qualified woman and, or a person of color for every open VP, C-Suite, and Board position.
Supporting women in leadership roles is crucial. According to Forbes, while women's representation in the workforce has increased to 57 percent from 37 percent over the past 60 years, women remain underrepresented in the top levels of the labor force as only 28 percent of American CEOs are women and only 6.2 percent of S&P 500 CEOs are female.
As a result of our efforts in this area, currently, women make up 42 percent of the total leadership on Health Catalyst’s Board of Directors and 42 percent of our 24-member executive leadership team.
The benefits we provide as part of the Health Catalyst compensation package support the professional advancement and personal goals of our women team members. Health Catalyst offers educational assistance of up to $10,000 annually for any manager-approved learning activity. The company also offers family planning benefits, including infertility and adoption support and paid parental leave for the birth or adoption of a child.
To support our team members’ mental health, Health Catalyst offers Headspace, a meditation application, and Tava, a comprehensive digital mental health service, to all team members, their partners, and all eligible dependents. Team members and their loved ones can use Tava through unlimited meetings per year. These benefits are also available to part-time employees and interns.
To support the health and well-being of female employees, in 2023, Health Catalyst People Operations implemented a new benefit specific to women’s health called Bloom. Bloom provides comprehensive care for often-dismissed health issues, with specialists in pelvic health and physical therapy, among others. By offering this benefit, Health Catalyst hopes to show support to female team members in any season of life.
Work-life balance is a critical value we promote at Health Catalyst. Among our many benefits, we create a better culture for our team members by being remote-work friendly and offering flexible PTO.
According to a 2013 survey from Catalyst, a global nonprofit supported by CEOs and leading companies to help build workplaces that work for women, found that having access to flexible work arrangements led to a 31 percent increase in women’s likeliness to aspire to senior executive- or CEO-level positions. And 54 percent of high potentials with children living at home and 50 percent of those without children living at home reported that flexible working arrangements are very or extremely important.
To ensure the Health Catalyst work environment is supportive for our women team members with and without children, our technology is set up for easy access to databases and web-based meetings so that all team members can access and work from home as needed. We have a flexible PTO policy that encourages team members to take the time they need to refresh and balance their personal lives with work.
At Health Catalyst, we celebrate and are committed to diversity and inclusion across all dimensions, including but not limited to race, gender, identity, age, and religion.
Health Catalyst has six team-member resource groups, commonly referred to as employee resource groups or ERGs. These groups offer support and help in personal or career development and create a safe space where our team members can bring their whole selves to the table. The groups at Health Catalyst include Women Empowered; Shades; Queers & Allies; Military, Veterans, Families, and Allies; InspirASIAN; and Neurodivergent.
Women Empowered (WE), established in 2018, is Health Catalyst’s team resource group that strives to unapologetically advocate for the growth and advancement of women at Health Catalyst.
Health Catalyst is committed to supporting women among our staff and women pursuing a career in STEM. One way we have worked to support women in STEM outside of Health Catalyst includes our “Women in Engineering” scholarship. This scholarship provides tuition and housing to young women in DevMountain’s immersive QA or Web Development program. To date, the scholarship has provided three female students with a scholarship, and two of the students are now employees at Health Catalyst.
As a company in the healthcare technology industry, the UN’s theme this International Women’s Day of “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality” is one that fuels our current commitments to driving equity at our company. We will continue to look for new ways to bridge the gender gap in technology, seek opportunities to improve our team members' experience, and celebrate the many talented women who help drive healthcare improvement.
Every year Health Catalyst prioritizes submitting female team members for tech awards to help recognize their hard work and celebrate their achievements. Here are our some of the very talented women on the Health Catalyst team who have been recognized over the last year.
