Remarkable leadership: 10 questions with Angelique Hill, Operations

A lot of my career has centered around consumer-driven healthcare. Early on, I was a card operations manager at Optum. Five years later, I was running the entire operations group. But I was ready for a new challenge so I hopped over to another healthcare firm. I was only there for about a year before I started craving a higher energy environment. A former colleague recruited me to HealthEquity for my experience with Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) and I correctly sensed it was a rapidly growing organization where I could make a difference.

When I first started here we only had eight teammates in the Flexible Spending Account (FSA) and HRA department. When someone needed help with an issue, a teammate would hold up a flag and I'd zoom over to help. I was tasked to help us ramp up quickly from 11,000 to over 100,000 HRA accounts, plus build in a claims adjudication system. Needless to say, we met those goals. Several years later, my role is EVP of Operations and I'm responsible for operations as well as the member and client service teams.

2. What is your guiding principle or North Star?

I am all about openness and candor. Whether it's simply sharing an opinion or having difficult conversations sooner rather than later, I strive to be clear about how I feel and why. And I encourage teammates to do that too. I advise people to be clear about which commitments you can make and those you can't. Along those lines, simply asking for help is a great habit for both your personal and professional lives.  

3. HealthEquity has a strong commitment to deliver a remarkable experience. How are we continuing to improve in this area?

I'm so glad you asked this because ensuring our stakeholders get a remarkable experience is my top priority. It goes back to our Purple culture-going above and beyond to deliver exceptional service to millions of members nationwide-that drives everything we do. Our most critical enterprise program right now is Commit to Purple. It's a way to focus attention on our clients with four main buckets of work. We're looking at ways we can make renewals faster and better for our clients. We also have some great new tools that will help us optimize processes. Plus, we're upping our game on how we train our teammates. And we're rethinking how to do that best in a fully remote environment.

It's my team's honor to do whatever we can to make it easier for our people to service our customers better. Stakeholders know us for our remarkable service and we're pulling out all the stops to make sure we can keep our promises. I know that what we're doing is moving the needle. It made me happy recently to hear a client say they liked the direction we're going. I take any opportunity I can to hear directly from our customers what we're doing well and where we can improve.

4. What advice do you have for people just starting out in their career?

I'm going to switch this question up a bit and talk to all of us that are now working remotely. The pandemic changed our working environments. We're disconnected now and it's important that we all get creative to stay connected.

I've been asked how I keep my energy high in a remote environment and I admit it can be hard. I have to focus a little more on making time for communication. In this new remote workplace I encourage people to ask for a skip level meeting. I personally enjoy when teammates who aren't my direct reports ask for a meeting with me. I often pop into virtual team meetings and town halls to talk to different groups across the organization to try to initiate what I call cross-team information sharing.

Don't be afraid to call or message people randomly. In fact, that exact situation happened to me recently. I messaged the wrong person, but we struck up a conversation and I made a new connection. Make time to find time to reach out to people. Look for people who aren't in your regular circle. Just say, "Hey man, can I schedule 15 minutes with you to hear about what you do?"  It'll be magic, I promise.

I also want to stress that this doesn't come naturally to me. I'm hilariously bad at small talk at a party. But, I am great one-to-one, so striking up conversations with just one person works for me. If I can do it, I know others can make this a habit too. When we're talking to each other regularly-even if it's just over chat-we can all keep work relationships strong.

5. What would surprise people to know about you?

I'm not certain if this will surprise people, but I love going to concerts and listening to live music. I'm a big Steely Dan fan and I get to see them in concert soon. My favorite song of theirs is a deeper track, "Green Earrings." It's important to know that at concerts I do not just sit back and enjoy the show. Sit down at a live show? No. That doesn't work for me. I can guarantee you that I'll be standing up to dance at that concert.

6. What is a defining moment in your life?

That would have to be my first job after college. I started at a large workers compensation law firm making it easier for injured clients to get the financial help they needed. I enjoyed helping people, but I also quickly realized that I wanted to be self-employed at some point. That entrepreneurial itch stayed with me. I got my chance to strike out on my own when I moved across the country to Jackson, Wyoming. My husband and I launched and operated a delicatessen for four years. I'm telling you, the lessons I learned as a small business owner were absolutely instrumental for me as I continued in my career in Operations. I don't know if I would be where I am today if I hadn't run my own business. That's where I learned how to quickly make decisions, rapidly adapt to drive financial results, and above all listen to customers. When it's all your own money at stake you learn the ropes lightning fast!

7. What book influenced you in your professional life?

(Laughs) I'm exercising my right to skip a question! I think it's clear by now that I'm a hands-on, real life learner. I honestly don't read business or self-help books. This might surprise some people, but I haven't even listened to a podcast. It's just not my jam.

8. What cause is closest to your heart?

I'm a dog lover and my heart breaks when I see people have to give up and re-home older dogs. I've adopted the harder-to-place older dogs with a bit of gray on their snouts. It's amazing how many more years of life and enjoyment those dogs can have. My dream is to create a place where old dogs can enjoy the rest of their lives in a friendly place.

9. What's your favorite part of helping clients and members reach their goals?

Honestly, my favorite part is our core mission of helping people pay for out-of-pocket healthcare costs. We're helping to solve a crucial problem in America today. This is important stuff, and maintaining that connection to what we do day in and day out is vital. My father was a social worker and my mother was a teacher. Their ethic of generously giving back to others made an impression on me. This is my way of adding meaningful value like my parents did in their professions. Whether I'm processing COBRA elections faster so folks have insurance, or educating members on how to maximize their healthcare dollars, I know that my work matters. The teams I coach all love making a difference and lifting up the people we help.

10. What absolutely excites you right now about HealthEquity?

There's a lot to love right now. One thing I'll say is that if you're reading this and want to work for us we have some killer positions open. We're investing in and expanding the Broker Services area. We have positions in Operations for folks who like to work behind the scenes. And for those that crave working in a client-facing role, we have Service Delivery Manager roles open. 

I just returned from our semi-annual sales conference. I was blown away by the new programs designed to help people really understand how to get the most out of their HSAs. And I saw firsthand how our product team is making it easier for clients and members to interact with us. We're releasing smarter tools, easier web interfaces, and so much more. Hearing about the ways we're improving our services got me jazzed about this year and next year too. Stay tuned because HealthEquity listened to feedback and is delivering on our promise of remarkable service.  

Wrap-up

HealthEquity: Angelique, thank you for telling us more about your role. Your energy is contagious. Thanks for all you do to help our members, clients, and partners.