CMO Spotlight | Alex Morehouse - Banner Health
The CMO Spotlight is a chance to get an inside look into the minds and journeys of high-performing marketing leaders.
Setup CEO Joe Koufman virtually sat down with Alex Morehouse, the CMO of Banner Health, to talk about her career path and how she provides mentorship and value in her role and to her team.
Watch the full Interview below
Q1 | Tell us about your career path.
Alex Morehouse started her career working on the digital side of Financial Services. She then was recruited to work in Healthcare for Kaiser Permanente. Her role at Kaiser Permanente involved getting everything ready for when the Affordable Care Act was enacted. After working there, she moved to work for Banner Health which has over 60,000 employees. Over the past 5 years, she has worked to digitally transform the company and ensure all the teams are communicating effectively.
Q2 | Do you have any advice for leaders?
“Only hire people who are way smarter than you are and then get out of their way. Support them and get out of their way.”
Morehouse understands the importance of not micromanaging and surrounding herself with people who are smarter or more skilled. “It's like every single one of them [on my team] is so far ahead of me. Hire really good people, keep them happy, and get out of their way.”
Q3 | Is there a piece of advice that you would like to pass onto other marketers?
“Ask for mentorship. I’m only where I am because I have very generous people who basically helped me out when I said, ‘Hey, can you help me out? I don’t know what I’m doing here.’”
She added that marketers shouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes and get out of the comfort zone.
She reflected on a memory she had during her role at Epsilon which was the subsidiary of American Express. On her first day, they handed her a “data dictionary” in a four-ring binder and she was immediately intimidated. She told this story as a lesson because knowing the data became everything for her, “If you learn where the data is inside your company you know everything. You have the keys to the kingdom.”
Q4 | Tell us about an impactful campaign.
Morehouse described transforming Banner Health into a digitally centered organization as an impactful campaign. She initially thought this process would be easy, but quickly learned that there were too many complicated parts involved.
She realized she was creating more work for her already overwhelmed colleagues so she asked for help from an expert panel of physicians who ended up guiding her to the right way to transform Banner Health digitally.
Q5 | As a leader, what values are important to you?
“Be kind and be generous with your spirit because there’s too few of us and too much work to do. Unless you can be generous with one another and with your skills, it just won’t work.”
Morehouse understands the importance of supporting her team and being there for them if they make a mistake. She also expects the same in return.
Morehouse values leaders who are accountable and lift up their team. “Create an environment where people can be their best and where they can fail.”
For more marketing leadership advice and a view into the mindset of marketing executives in various industries, be sure to watch the full interview with Alex Morehouse, and keep an eye out for more thought leadership from our CMO Spotlights.
Setup CEO + Founder, Joe Koufman, spoke with Ben Boyd, the Chief Communications Officer at Chobani, about designing your own career path, the importance of empathy and understanding as a leader, and more.