2023 Top Consultants: Brenda Pawlak

With more than 20 years of experience in the health care industry providing strategic consulting, problem-solving and program development services, Brenda Pawlak focuses on supporting health care stakeholders to advance transformative change in complex environments and improve the management and delivery of care, with a particular focus on care delivery innovation, incentives alignment and responding to a broad range of implications stemming from health care reform.

For over 15 years at Manatt, she has led complex, multistakeholder client engagements with an emphasis on strategic planning, affiliations and partnerships, scenario forecasting, clinical program development and optimization, health system-physician alignment and collaboration efforts, and innovative models to address gaps in care and/or fragmentation across the continuum of care.

Prior to joining Manatt, Brenda was with the Advisory Board Company, working with senior health system executives with a focus on strategic, financial, organizational and operational issues. She also worked on the launch of the Advisory Board's leadership academies for physicians, frontline nurses and rising talent. Previously, Brenda focused on new service and product offering development, partnerships and brand extension at National Geographic and Fox Broadcasting.

What has motivated you to excel over the course of your career?

Health care is complicated—at every level—and it is also fascinating. The health care ecosystem is complex, multifaceted and interdependent. Every individual touches the health care system at various points of their life. A high-performing, high-quality health system not only saves lives, it improves lives and livelihoods. There are many challenges in our health care system—including very big, pressing and complicated issues we need to address, such as the proliferation of health disparities and inequities—but there are also many aspects of health care that are amazing. It is an industry of constant innovation and discovery. Some have said that health care is slow to innovate, but my experience has been the opposite. Health care is filled with individuals and organizations seeking to have greater impact, find cures, foster continuous learning and create transformation. However, sustainable change is hard and can take a long time—years—and requires alignment across a large and diverse group of stakeholders, addressing fragmentation and aligning incentives. But it's worth the effort and has long-term societal impacts as well as uniquely individual implications. I think what has motivated me the most is an understanding that serving people who are working to make health care better today is a privilege and is likely to have an impact in unforeseen ways tomorrow. Bringing insights and perspectives from different parts of the industry and working with clients to help develop creative and effective solutions is also, well, fun!

What do you enjoy most about your career in the consulting industry?

It's an honor to be a trusted resource for clients and to be able to collaborate with—and provide value to—leaders who are navigating health care's greatest challenges. Health care attracts incredibly smart, passionate and knowledgeable individuals who are committed to making a material and measurable difference. The demands and challenges on the shoulders of health care executives and policymakers today are real and extensive. Our clients generally do not hire strategy consultants to support routine business needs—they hire us to help with the thorny problems, and often there are time pressures and many sensitivities that come with that. Providing value to our clients in these situations and developing long-term relationships is deeply personal to me. We work hard to create integrated teams with our clients whenever appropriate, to help develop strategies that work best for and will be owned and embraced by their organizations. I still, after all these years, sometimes have "out-of-body moments" of appreciation for the privilege we have in being trusted to help leaders work through their most pressing challenges and develop solutions that will have an impact.

I also enjoy the variety consulting brings—not only the variety of clients and the work itself, but also the different skills each engagement requires. Sometimes you're called upon to provide industry or policy knowledge and subject matter expertise, other times analytics and assessment, process support or facilitation. Often all of the above. Growing and developing my capabilities and skills across multiple dimensions is very rewarding.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

There are two pieces of advice that have shaped my career. The first is not a new adage, but I was fortunate enough to hear it early in my professional life: "Don't choose a job; choose your boss and your colleagues." That has guided me to seek out the opportunity to work with people I admire and colleagues who will push me to grow. And it led me to Manatt Health, where I've had the privilege over the past 15+ years to be an integral part of building and growing our unique and leading multidisciplinary professional services model, combining legal and business expertise to help health care stakeholders respond to constant business and regulatory changes. At Manatt, I'm surrounded by passionate colleagues who demand excellence.

The second has been the guiding star of my consulting work: "Hold truth-telling sacred." All organizations, even the most successful ones, have mythologies. Analytic rigor and data are important but just one piece of a puzzle. Developing actionable and transformative strategies that shape the future and impact of an organization or developing pathways to respond to complex regulatory challenges requires clarity and confronting difficult decisions and realities. One of the most valuable roles a consultant can play is to provide thoughtful, objective assessments and to facilitate the hard conversations to help executives navigate challenging paths. As a client once told me, "We don't need light to be shed on what we know; we need help bringing light to the areas that are dark to us.

What does this recognition mean to you?

I am deeply honored by and proud of this recognition – not only that Consulting Magazine selected me as a trusted adviser amongst such accomplished peers, but equally that my Firm valued my contribution enough to nominate me. That this award is for "Excellence in Client Service" means so much to me professionally and personally because it captures the essence of why I have built a career in consulting – the privilege of being able to tackle challenging problems, help transform organizations and build long-term relationships with people I greatly admire and root for every day. Even more important to me, however, is that in reality this award is a recognition of the collaborative, team-based, interdisciplinary work we do at Manatt and I share this with incredible colleagues.