Niyum Gandhi is the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Population Health Officer for Mount Sinai Health System in New York. With over 40,000 employees, Mount Sinai is the largest employer in New York City’s five boroughs.

In this episode, Niyum shares his perspective as the Finance leader and how that’s changed from his days in the operations and clinical side of the business. He talks about how he evaluates investments, how they adjusted during the pandemic, and the healthy tension between Finance and Operations.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Timestamps:

(3:27) – Niyum’s high-level overview of Mount Sinai.
(4:37) – How did your career path get you to the CFO seat for Mount Sinai?
(9:21) – How does your experience outside of finance play a role in your approach as CFO? 
(12:18) – Do you have an example of a situation where you had to lean more into your CFO voice rather than your Operations Voice? 
(14:25) – How do you foster an environment where there’s psychological safety amongst an executive team so you can create the right healthy tension? 
(18:31) – Was there anything done on purpose to create the relationship between the exec team or did it happen naturally? 
(23:07) – When you are making a strategic decision, how are you managing margin, mission, profit, and people?
(32:54) – What is the purpose of business?
(35:07) – Discussion on Shareholder Value 
(37:11) – Where is the balance between the tradeoffs of short-term value and long-term value and how do you keep a healthy ecosystem of happy employees, happy customers, and healthy margins? 
(43:20) – What were the key steps in making the change to value-based health care from pay for services in such a large organization? 
(50:48) – How do you keep your people energized and motivated during a big transition like that? 
(55:55) – What’s the relationship been between the exec team and HR leaders during Covid? 
(1:00:15) – What lessons have you learned over the last year that you will carry forward with you?