Avein Saaty-Tafoya, CEO of Adelante Sustainable Healthcare

#160: How a Purpose-Driven Brand Story Will Increase the Health of Your Organization

#160: How a Purpose-Driven Brand Story Will Increase the Health of Your Organization

In 2005, Clinica Adelante was an organization struggling to stay afloat. Today, they are a 500 employee-strong community health center serving more than 75,000 patients every year.

What makes this transformation even more amazing is that they have achieved this without losing sight of their noble philosophy of providing affordable healthcare for all.

In this week’s show, the incredible Avein Saaty-Tafoya, CEO of Adelante Sustainable Healthcare in Phoenix, Arizona, describes how crafting the not-for-profit’s brand story helped the community health center achieve 300% growth in just five years, and where they are today as a national leader delivering sustainable healthcare.

This inspiring episode starts off with Avein sharing her story. She got her first lessons in entrepreneurship at the tender age of 4 while working at her Iranian father’s jewelry store. But Avein’s strong passion for eliminating health disparity can be attributed to her Middle Eastern origins.

Fostering strong community ties is an integral part of Middle Eastern society, and this community-driven mindset motivated Avein to get her medical degree. Avein provides some great insights about the American medical system, including how socio-economic societal differences between the Middle East and the United States spill over to each region’s medical systems.

Avein’s struggle to keep Adelante afloat in the organization’s initial years are sure to inspire you. You’ll learn about the various challenges (internal and external) that Avein managed to overcome with bold decision making and through skillful negotiations.

In 2009, Adelante launched their new brand story. Since then, they’ve grown from 65 employees to 500+. Patients have increased from 14,000 to 75,000. And, Adelante’s revenue has gone from $13 million in 2006 to more than $41 million in 2016.

Tune in now to discover how you can manage a business effectively without losing your humanity, and how you can use that humanity to establish an authentic brand story.

In This Episode, You Will Learn

• The strengths and shortcomings of the United States’ medical system
• The art of crafting an authentic brand story
• How to profitably run a business without losing your humane touch

Key Quotes

“What medicine taught me is that I have an affinity for human connection but I could give so much to changing systems and affecting many people’s lives rather than just one panel of patients that I might care for directly.” –Avein Saaty-Tafoya

“Profit is not a bad thing. You need resources to reinvest in the organization, to compensate people fairly, to recruit the best and the brightest, and to offer your patients a wide variety of services.”–Avein Saaty-Tafoya

“We learn in medicine how to treat through the medical model. We don’t learn how to care. We don’t know how to show we care. And we don’t know how to describe that we care. The words matter, the body language matters.” “–Avein Saaty-Tafoya

Mentioned In This Episode

• Adelante Sustainable Healthcare
• Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
• Avein Saaty-Tafoya LinkedIn
• Case Study: Community Health Center Grows by More than 300% into National Leader in Sustainable Healthcare
• Adelante Healthcare on Twitter

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