Future of Global Informatics_ 13_KenyaMilladge_V2: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Future of Global Informatics_ 13_KenyaMilladge_V2: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

TJ Southern:
Hey, y’all! Welcome to the Outcomes Rocket Network – The Future of Global Informatics Podcast, where we discuss global informatics through conversations with industry leaders and innovators so that you can understand what it is, what it does, and how it shapes the healthcare of our future. I am your host, TJ Southern.

TJ Southern:
Hey, y’all! Hey, y’all! Good day! Good day! And welcome to another episode of the Future of Global Informatics, it’s your girl, TJ Southern, and today we have Kenya Milladge. Kenya Milladge, yay! Kenya, okay, y’all, as I always tell y’all, at the top of the episodes, make sure that you get your pen and your piece of paper because I am so sure that Kenya comes from a network of nurse informaticists, so I’ve met her through another network and she’s going to have some gems. So make sure that y’all have a pen and a piece of paper. All right, okay miss Kenya, welcome to the podcast.

Kenya Milladge:
Hey, T.J., I’m excited and you got me pumped.

TJ Southern:
Tell the people, about yourself. First, we want to know who you are so tell the people about yourself.

Kenya Milladge:
So my name is Kenya Milladge. I’ve been a nurse, man, since 2001. I call it my nursing journey, so that’s what it is. But everybody, it is a journey that you go on, you know, just, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I got into nursing school, well, I got into nursing, but they wouldn’t let me into the school. So I said, well, you know what? I’m going to revamp my life. I said, we’re going to take a step back, this four-year thing …, so I said, okay. So I went out, became an LPN. From there, that’s where my networking journey started, okay? I had an awesome teacher, her name was Shante Jackson, me and another classmate, my friend Timika. She and I were like this. She said, Y’all going to be something. Y’all going to be RN. Y’all going to be doctors. She said I see it, I see it. She and I, when I tell you, I can call her now to network 20 some plus years later, that’s what it’s about. I did LPN, I worked for Kaiser, I did ambulatory, I worked peds, O.B., I’ve done everything. Then I said, You know what? Okay, nursing is there for me, I got this. I call my friend Timika, she said, Girl, come over here and work this nursing home with me. I said, okay, I got it. I’m here. She plugged me, got in. Then she said, What are you doing for school? I said, Man, I didn’t get a kick out of that. And I don’t know, almost gave up on my RN. She said, Don’t, come where I am. She said, Matter of fact, I just started an RN program. Wait till I finish, I’m gonna give you all my notes, and then you just go through the same program, then same program, same teachers, pass boards, we both nursing right now. So it was like I, a dream had been fulfilled through our LPN teacher who said, Y’all gon’ do it. So now, working in a hospital, I worked at Emory, I worked Piedmont. After I did that, I left Piedmont in Atlanta, got married …. to my husband, I think I’m ready to travel. I’ve been doing nursing about five years and never … Had a two-year-old, he was like, okay. So we started out on a journey. We literally packed up a whole house of stuff … that my mom has and everybody else and got on the plane and flew to California for a travel nursing assignment. Yeah, from there I realized nursing was nursing the same wherever you go. If you know what you know, you know, then you know, right? So then I had another network because my contract ended, it was like, What do we do? In Southern California, I had another coworker who left. She called me, she was like, Hey, they hiring for nurses. I said, All right, I’ll be there. I go down there. The manager is like, No, I don’t need just a nurse on shift, I need a charge nurse. I said, All right, I’ll do it. You’re gonna give me benefits, you’re going to give? She’s like, Yeah, This your salary, your benefits, everything, I just need to sit at that desk. I said, ah cool. But, wow, I began to realize that if nursing is nursing, life is everywhere. I can’t, I can’t, there’s something more out here for me. And I’ve always been plugged with EHRs, you know, learning. Because when I started, we were still paper but doing X-ray and all that stuff. So while I was there, I then networked with the director of Clinical Informatics and I told her, I said, Hey, I’m going back to get my master’s in this. She said, okay, call me when you’re done. I went, did my thing. I had mentors at UC Irvine. Everything, I learned so much, and just part of my journey. After I graduated, you know, things didn’t go as they often planned. You know, you get low-balled, you get told certain things, but I knew where I was living and sometimes I would just take dummy interviews and I met a guy. My whole journey has been about networking. So I met a guy who.

TJ Southern:
That’s important, y’all. I hope you all got that nugget. I hope y’all got that nugget, Okay, go ahead.

Kenya Milladge:
It’s not about what you’re doing, is who you know. So he said the reason I wanted to interview you, he said, I know this is like an hour from your home. He said, I knew you wouldn’t take the job, he said, but I wanted to see what you knew. And he talked to me in a way that said, Look, Ken, you got it. He said, I ask you key questions about key systems, EHR systems that you learned while, with your mentor, and he said, you got it. He said, Don’t undervalue your work, know your worth. He said, Know that if you were working for me, I would pay you. He said, I was, L.A. County, California, he said, I’m going to pay you 95 plus 13% increase. I said, Really? So I got out, TJ, I made that phone call to that director of clinical informatics. I said, girl, I got my master’s, I finished this march. Just found out I was pregnant so I was really feeling myself. And she brings me in, interviews me. I mean, this was the perfect breeding ground for, like, just take off and go. When we get down to that pay. What do you make in base? I said, base as a floor nurse? Base in California is like 74, but after you work your overtime, you’re.

TJ Southern:
Oh yeah.

Kenya Milladge:
…. Yes.

TJ Southern:
Yeah.

Kenya Milladge:
She said, I can only. Yeah, she says, This is Layer Rock, and let me give you a 74.

TJ Southern:
And that’s …

Kenya Milladge:
I said, I have a family.

TJ Southern:
… came out and I took a full-time position, 70,000 a year. This was in Indianapolis, Indiana, 70,000 per year for an entry nurse informaticist.

Kenya Milladge:
And I’m sitting here thinking at this time, this is 2015, I’m about to hit the 20-year mark on nurse, and what are you talking about? No, ma’am. I thought I got a family to feed. Like, I had just found out I was pregnant with my second. We still living in California, rent prices ain’t going down, they’re going up. So that’s what my husband said, Well, play this ball game for a while. Then he got a call and moved us to Dallas, Texas. So I know something about Dallas. So then I networked again through my college friend, I said, Girl, I need a job. She said, I know somebody at Baylor. But she moved my resume up. I started out working on the floor at Baylor, but that just wasn’t it. And you gave me into Baylor, I’m about to be networking with the clinical informatics team, right? Network, network, network. Well, that didn’t pan out. So I am a faith-believing person, TJ. One morning I was leaving work. I said, I can’t do this no more, this floor ain’t for me. I need to be in informatics ASAP by, it was March, I said I need to be in by June. So, in my journey, TJ, I told you it’s all about the network. When I lived in California, I interviewed for a job in Houston with a young lady named Lori. She once again low-balled me. She said, I can only start you out of 69. How about, one day I was looking on the Internet, I said, This seems like a very interesting job playing a surgical hospital. I go ahead and apply. The next day I get a phone call. She’s like, Hi, Kenya, you don’t know who this is? I said, I have no idea. She said, This is Lori. Now, it had been two years since I’ve spoken to this woman, two years. She said, I saw your resume. She said, I don’t even, I want you to come in, not to discuss your resume, but to discuss salary, you already got the job. When I tell you and this was May, so June was right around the corner, right? I was like, I need to be out on a job in June. So she brought me in, we discussed. I said, What are we talking about? I said, She said, What are you worth? I said 95. She said, Well, only a manager can get that. I said, Well, how do I become a manager?

TJ Southern:
Amen! Come on, girl! …

Kenya Milladge:
Because as we learn, as we learn in this industry, you’ve got to take something to get somewhere else. So even though.

TJ Southern:
Let me tell you this, you just took my wig back, you know, I’m just being straight up honest with you.

Kenya Milladge:
I’m telling you.

TJ Southern:
It’s taking me back to my days of when I started in this industry. Like I said, I started, I took my very first actually, my very first informatics job was not even an informatics job. I actually took a clinical analyst job at IU Health. That job paid me $65,000 dollars a year as a nurse informaticist. I worked with the … integration team, shout out IU Health. Thank you for giving me that nice education. Thank you for allowing me to use your facility as a training ground. 65 … peanuts, 65,000 dollars a year, but I knew that there was greater, but I had to get in where I fit in. I had to spend somewhere. I had to finish my master’s program. So, A, I was looking for a place where I could have a preceptorship and finish my program, and at the time when I went to school, there were no master’s prepared nurse informaticists. You can only shadow MBA, …, Masters of Education preparedness.

Kenya Milladge:
There was no CIO.

TJ Southern:
Hello? Yes, so this is what we’re saying.

Kenya Milladge:
No CNIOs either!

TJ Southern:
Yes, there were none. So you were just, so I was trying to figure my way and fit my way in this industry because I knew it was for me. I knew that I wanted to be a informaticist. I didn’t want to go to the floor. I’m just going to be honest with you all. I’m ain’t built for stuff like that.

Kenya Milladge:
No, no, no. …

TJ Southern:
I wanted to sit at this computer and rule the world. That’s what I wanted to do. So that’s, all of this right here is taking me back too, and the cool thing about it is now we are starting to see some of those progressions in salaries. You know, I ended up leaving IU, going to Saint Vincent or Ascension where I started out of 70,000 a year. So I took another, and that was the thing that a lot of my friends, a lot of my cohorts, when I first got out of nursing school, they would laugh at me. They would laugh at me because I took a new job every year. So they would be I mean, literally, I would be like, harassed about it. They’re like, Oh, what are you working it now? You got a new job, You take a new job every year. You get so many W-2s, so guess what?

Kenya Milladge:
That’s what nursing …

TJ Southern:
In five years, I quadrupled my salary by doing that. I went from taking a job at 65,000 a year, which was 30, $30 dollars an hour maybe, to taking my first contract at $55 an hour. When I decided to leave the consulting game, I was being paid well over $100 an hour.

Kenya Milladge:
See? That’s what I’m talking about. Let me tell you what, TJ, once I met Lori, they … me. They gave, Oh, hey, we can give you 84. I said, okay, I’ll take it. But lo and behold, the new year, a year and a half later, the whole company went belly up, they laid me off. I said, Lord, they lay me off. I said, once again, still got family, still got kids, mouths to feed, what else? My then boss, she left and got a directorship position, and from that director position, shift position, she then was able to hire me. So it’s who you know …

TJ Southern:
Let me ask you this, what you’re doing now? What are you doing now? Tell us.

Kenya Milladge:
I am currently, my main goal has always been the informatics, right? I’ve been trying to get into my kids … and I said, God, the end result is I need to be working from home. I was sitting at the computer one day doing like I do, I was looking for a job and found a job working for United Health Vilify. I took that job, within two months, a pandemic hit and we were working from home. So I started working on the tech start-up remote patient monitoring site. It thrusted me into that. And I said, this is revolutionary. This is where I’ve always wanted to be since I found out about RPM and we learned about RPM as like, it revolutionized everything, and so our customer base for RPM is everybody. You mentioned Ascension. I started back and looking, lo and behold, a recruiter reached out to me from Ascension, and I’m now, I’m working my, as a technical product owner for Ascension on a contract.

TJ Southern:
Oh, yes. Let me tell you.

Kenya Milladge:
Making 60, look, making 60 an hour. So I went from that 84 to that 60, to that 120 a year.

TJ Southern:
Come on, y’all. So let me tell you, shout out to Ascension. I ain’t gonna lie. I love y’all. I love Ascension Health, the culture, the …, I love it. So I am gonna shout them out. So, and I worked there for a number of years. I even stayed on staff part-time to do some analytical work for them for years.

Kenya Milladge:
I can tell already, they are awesome.

TJ Southern:
So yes, shout out to Ascension. Y’all got one of the best and the brightest in informatics on y’all’s team. So hey, now let me tell you this. That is the critical mistake that a lot of organizations make. They think that because we’re employed to them, that we owe them, okay? And I would like to dispel that myth among a lot of leaders and organizations. These are resources, don’t owe us anything.

Kenya Milladge:
Nothing.

TJ Southern:
What you have to do is you have to treat them in such a manner where they long to be in your culture, and that is what you have to do as an organization. You have to build a culture where individuals or resources are dying to break down your front door, to work for you, to help, to move your needle, and to further your vision. And there are a lot of companies that you guys may want to model after that have done that. I mean, we know about the infamous Google. Who don’t want to be a Googlelite, you know, or whatever y’all call yourselves, who don’t want to be one? So it is the culture that begets the culture. I own a staffing firm. I treat my employees with love. I give them, I mean, my employees are probably spoiled. That’s why they work for me.

Kenya Milladge:
Yeah.

TJ Southern:
It is the culture. So when my employees talk to other people who are on other organizations, they’re always trying to recruit for me because.

Kenya Milladge:
And what I learned is, even though we’re working with all these clinical people that don’t mean nothing. That means absolutely nothing. They’re the same people you work with in the hospital, they’re just in a business setting, able to transfer those same bullying skills that they had when you on the floor to corporate America, and it fits. And you got to be able to, like it goes back to what my LPN teacher said, if you know what you know, what you know nobody else can, nobody can take that away. But networking, knowing your words, just getting out there, speaking and advocating for yourself, and understanding what you want to do in informatics. I tell people all the time, nursing is an awesome profession. You have so many avenues you need to get in there, figure out what you need to do, and go make it happen.

TJ Southern:
Nursing does. Let me tell you, and I’ve said this multiple times before, even if you’re new to informatics, and you don’t find your niche the first time, informatics is so fluid, and even how just Kenya told us about her journey of going from one place to another, I mean, that really was true, a true journey, and it mimics so many of us who have had careers here in informatics. We started one location and we end up in a totally different location. So the thing about it that I want you to speak to is the opportunities. You know, we just spoke about how there’s so many facets to do, but have you seen those opportunities in informatics? Have you seen them blossom, bloom?

Kenya Milladge:
Oh, my gosh, the opportunities, so one of my coworkers, she’s a nurse. She left our company. She’s working with a tech startup in San Francisco, making 130,000, you know, unlimited PTO, she negotiated stock options.

TJ Southern:
I’m gonna say it again.

Kenya Milladge:
She was like …

TJ Southern:
Get your money.

Kenya Milladge:
This all with the basis of, she’s a nurse. She speaks clinical. You have transferable skills you have these skills. Once you graduate in nursing skills, you have the skills then to do it, no one just instills it in us to do it. You got to speak it. You got to get around and prove and create your network of people and make it happen. I’ve seen nurses, Oh, my gosh, it is beyond me, when I did my mentorship, my mentor was a nursing architect. What is a nursing informaticist architect?

TJ Southern:
Yeah!

Kenya Milladge:
She is, she was the one that people were calling around to say, Can you build this into the system? Can you create that workflow for us? So I was sitting there thinking, Wow, she’s like, Oh yeah, in California, making easy 200 … And I was like, Man, I said, This is hard.

TJ Southern:
I never took a contract in California without making at least 250, it was not worth my time. No, it was not … flying back and forth to California. If I was making less than $200,000, I would pass on it every time. It’s not worth it.

Kenya Milladge:
You have to, you have to. I mean, even now, when you talk to some of these companies and they ask you, oh, the hiring HR are like, so what’s your rate? I tell them, Oh, that’s contract rate? No, honey, that’s my rate. That is really my rate. I say, Well, let’s factor in, you’re not speaking to just a new person. I’ve been in this industry of nursing and clinical for over 20 plus years. I’ve worked in.

TJ Southern:
So now, this is what I had to, this is what we need to really talk about because I’ve been contracted for quite some time. Pre-pandemic we were getting numbers like that. So let me let y’all in on a little secret. This is why nursing informatics is one of the best-kept secrets. I remember, I’m going to take you all back a little bit, I remember going to a festival, a music festival in Ohio, and getting off the elevator, I was getting, sorry, getting onto the elevator, and it just so happened that I was in an elevator full of nurses. They were at the festival but they were playing … And so they start talking about their profession, I just say quiet. And so as I’m walking off the elevator, I tell one of the girls who’s a nurse, I say, I’m a nurse informaticist. And as I turn and say I’m a nurse informaticist and I walk away, the girl says to the other girl, she said, Oh, she makes money, money. And I turned around and I told her, And I do.

Kenya Milladge:
That’s it, that’s it. why we are the best-kept secret, and everybody now is trying to flood the floodgates because pre-pandemic a contract for me, it was 125, but that was because in the industry I had pretty much garnered the name of the cleanup woman. I mean, I was giving crappy projects that were late, overbudget, I mean, I was getting some of the dumpster fires and then turning them around. So by the time I got to my final contracts, which were pre-pandemic, yes, 125 There’s nothing to talk about because I know the hours that I’m going to have to put in to turn this project around. Like we’re not talking about a regular 40 hours. We’re talking about 60, 70, 80, if not.

Kenya Milladge:
Let me tell you how I brought a good girlfriend along with me. You know how I used to work night, work nights for 13 years. And this was back in 2010, probably 2009, 2010. She was a traveler, stopping at our place, she was like, Girl, what can we do besides this? I said, You never thought about nursing informatics? We pulled it up right there, the computer, one, two in the morning, you’re talking. She pulled it up, she said, I’m going back to school. She became a nurse informaticist. 2011, she … landed her job. She’s still in informatics, still working at the same hospital, making well over 100,000. She’s like, Kenya, I’m so glad you told me about.

TJ Southern:
Let me tell you.

Kenya Milladge:
… 2009 ’til now.

TJ Southern:
My very first interview, LaDonna Grace, I smacked her. I’m like, Dee, come on, go back to school. She’s like, No, I don’t feel like it. I’m like, I’m telling you, let’s go back to school. Now, she makes well over six figures a year easy with her eyes closed. But, you know, we say all this, guys, to say, we can make it now because we’ve been in this game for five, ten, fifteen years. No, you may not necessarily make this type of money coming in, but for the vets, you know, we’re not lying.

Kenya Milladge:
And you know what, TJ? The fact that when you get before some of these people and they’re like, you don’t have it or you need more of this, you got it. You just sitting with the wrong people. You need to, that’s why that networking piece is so critical. It is beyond me, like, I don’t think, as soon as I moved back to Atlanta last year, as soon as I moved, I joined HIMSS. I was at a, just saw HIMSS, Georgia conference back here two months ago. Then before that, I was at a networking event. I met a young lady, she’s a clinical informaticist, working for a company in Virginia. She and I, we correspond every month to check-in. You have to create your group. You have to make it a solid group. You can be picky about who you want in it because you work hard to get to this point. It was not easy, but I am very picky about who comes into this group because if you’re not sharing gems and nuggets and you’re not, you’re being greedy with your knowledge and you’re being greedy with the next step. So, girl, what do you think you’ve got to do next? I don’t know. I don’t like that. I don’t know, you know, we all know. You know what you’re about to move.

TJ Southern:
Yes, come on, y’all. Let me tell you this, there is always room for everybody out here. Anybody who knows me. Tonjameka Southern, they will tell you I’m a giver. I definitely will put you on if I have an opportunity to. I’m going to always lift you up, period. You don’t have to worry about that with me. I don’t, I’m not going to withhold information because at the end of the day, guess what? Y’all can’t do it like me, no way.

Kenya Milladge:
We have to put the information out there. Why hold it? Them other nurses that has been in this profession for years, they’ve been holding it. You understand me? We got to give it out? Stop being quiet about it, and then when you get in it, take advantage of all the resources that are around you.

TJ Southern:
Yes! See? Thank you for confirming why I’m here doing this podcast, I’m trying to give the information out to the people. Yeah, this is a real discipline. Yes, we are needed. And guess what? We get money.

Kenya Milladge:
We are needed, we are wanted, we are respected, we are everything. They are surprised when you get on calls and they find out, you are a nurse? You sound like you’ve been in project management for years. You’re a business, and you’re not a business analyst? No, no, I’m a floor nurse, I used to take care of probably your parents, your mom, and your dad, or your cousins when they came to the floor. Because I kept them alive, we’re going to keep this project going. You can keep this moving.

TJ Southern:
I’m telling you, El Captain.

Kenya Milladge:
Okay? I’m telling you, I’m telling you.

TJ Southern:
So what’s your final words? What you gonna leave for the people? What you want them to know?

Kenya Milladge:
Network, network, get out of your comfort zone. I’ll tell people in a minute. I’m an introvert, but in being an introvert, you have got to dig deep within yourself saying, Where do I want to go? What am I trying to do? Where am I trying to be, and what am I interested in? There’s so much stuff out there in tech and healthcare tech and healthcare informatics and clinical that once you learn one, it opens and exposes you to everything else. Who knew I would be a technical product owner? Well, I learned about, you know, sprinting. I learned about Scrum, I learned about all these things that I’m like, I can now speak to. And do I want to get certified possibly one day? But there’s still other avenues. So network, figure out what certifications you can get because that’s the next step, get certified in something, and I can’t say network, network, network enough. Open your mouth because you are in the room with the people. Those people need to know who you are, and they need to know what you’re doing.

TJ Southern:
Come on y’all, come on y’all, come on y’all! So I will add to this. Certifications actually pay off, they do, certifications pay. My project management certification is actually what put me over the top for all of my projects. So when I started work as a project manager, I got so much more looks because I was a nurse and a project manager together. So it was like, Whoa, we got us a Golden Nugget. Yes, you do.

Kenya Milladge:
You do.

TJ Southern:
Oh, yeah, that networking piece, though, I’m going to tell you all this, that’s how I got Kenya. That’s how we got Kenya, we got Kenya from networking. Thank you, Danielle Siarri, shout out to you, thank you.

Kenya Milladge:
Shout out! Danielle networked me from California to Texas to here. I know people that have met her. So she, three states, on three states far from her, and she has, her name has popped up in all three states.

TJ Southern:
I’m telling you, if you know her, you know somebody, you know somebody.

Kenya Milladge:
You know.

TJ Southern:
Hey, y’all! Thanks for joining us today for another episode of the Outcomes Rocket Network – The Future of Global Informatics Podcast. If your organization is looking for informatics talent, go to www.Beryllus.net. That is www. B E R Y L L U S .net, and we can assist you in finding some of the best nursing informatics talent this continent has to offer. We’ll talk to you later! Have a great day! See ya!

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