To hear Janice James tell it, she "pestered" her way into the consulting profession. "[Getting into consulting] was by design," she says. "I was a senior executive in my 40s when I went to Ernst & Young and pestered them until they hired me. They didn't know what to do with a senior level executive out of industry who wanted to be a consultant.
"[EY] was a good experience," she says, "but one I cut short after three years to pursue a fascinating opportunity with a cutting-edge company in the Pacific Northwest as a CEO. Seven years later, via a contact from my old boss at Ernst & Young, I got the opportunity to be one of the founders of Wellspring Partners. The rest is history."
Currently, James is a managing director with Wellspring, a Huron Consulting Group practice. With more than 30 years of healthcare experience in both the provider and payer arenas, James, in many ways, has had two careers. "Making the transition from industry to consulting was an achievement, at least in hindsight," she says. "At the time, I didn't give it much thought but while the differences in skills, knowledge and approach are subtle, they are powerful, and many people neither recognize nor master the nuances."
Her industry experience is management with strong emphasis in finance. When she was CEO of a hospital system in the Southwest, she re-engineered the revenue cycle, implemented a labor productivity management system and a non-labor cost-reduction initiative that resulted in a $15 million savings. She's also served as a chief financial officer for a large inner-city teaching hospital in the Midwest. —Joseph Kornik
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