Profiles

Wheatley Wentzell, senior vice president of operations for the Hartford HealthCare Heart & Vascular Institute, was named one of the Hartford Business Journal’s Top 25 Women In Business for 2022. The awards are an annual opportunity to recognize women in the forefront of their fields. Nominated by readers, 25 women are chosen by a panel of independent judges each year.

Who has had the biggest influence on your career and why?

Karen Goyette (Hartford HealthCare executive vice president and strategy and transformation officer). Karen recruited me for her team almost seven years ago and from the moment I met her, I noticed not only her tremendous skill as a leader and strategist but also her ability to build meaningful relationships with her colleagues, her team, and anyone she interacts with. She is the type of leader that inspires you and makes you want to perform at your best — one you do not want to disappoint. I strive to do the same thing in my work and am very lucky to consider her a mentor and friend.

The other honorable mention goes to my husband, Brett. When I started grad school for my MBA, a field outside of my historically more clinically focused comfort zone, he said, “You’ll get some great education at grad school but you really need to leverage your time there to build relationships and seek additional opportunities to learn.” I took that advice to heart and ended up getting a job opportunity by doing exactly that.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

I am not sure if this is attributed to anyone or if I just adopted it, but it’s what I share — “Just say yes.” Say “yes” to those projects that intimidate you. I’ve grown the most from those types of projects — the ones that scared me a little bit to take on. You don’t have to be the expert in everything you take on. Leaving your comfort zone promotes personal and professional growth.

Joel Vengco was heading into his third year of medical school at Boston University and starting a concurrent PhD program in biostatistics when a professor made an off-hand comment that changed the course of his career.

The right data in the right hands, the professor said, could help 1,000 patients in the same time a physician might treat or cure only one. “I realized,” Vengco said, “that the creativity required to harness data was key in transforming healthcare.”

He quit medical school, earned master’s degrees in biology and medical informatics at Harvard, and started his career developing data and digital strategies at BayState Medical Center. His work there earned him recognition as one of Becker’s Hospital Review’s “Top 100 CIOs to Know” for the past 10 years.

Earlier this year, Vengco, 48, brought his vision for a more Amazon- or Disney-like healthcare experience to become Hartford HealthCare’s senior vice president and chief information and digital officer. He spent the first six months on a listening tour across the system, meeting people and assessing technology.

He said he discovered that our culture — the reason he chose Hartford HealthCare — is strong, and credited that culture and CEO Jeff Flaks’ vision for enhancing access over the past decade.

“That’s why I chose to come here,’’ Vengco said. “Those are the ingredients for success.”

He also found that while our tech basics are sufficient, we need to focus on harnessing data to create a “frictionless” experience for clinicians and a “delightful” experience for patients and consumers.

“We want to be like Netflix or Amazon,’’ he said. If a heart failure patient were to have a Netflix experience, for example, a Hartford HealthCare provider would see them in either the hospital or an outpatient setting.