Alumna using MHI program skills to bring well-being back into the workplace

Be honest, could your work environment be better? Lindsay Lagreid says in most cases the answer is yes. Which is why the College of Nursing and Health Innovation alumna is on a mission to improve work for everybody.

She's currently doing that, through her role as a solutions architect at Limeade, a technology start-up that provides employers a platform to encourage and support their employees' well-being.

Helping her land the job and continue to make an impact are the skills and experiences she gained through the Masters of Healthcare Innovation program. The 2013 graduate said the degree was unlike anything she’d seen before.

“I loved the idea of health care innovation as a way to discover new ways to help people feel good and to think about problems differently, so that was what initially attracted me to the program,” Lagreid said.  

Her interest in health care stemmed from personal experience. Lagried says as a teenager she was looking for answers around her own health and well-being but struggled for information because of a complicated and hard-to-navigate health care system.

She would go on to study kinesiology as an undergraduate, learning how the body moved and worked. But when she graduated with her bachelor’s degree she wasn’t interested in pursuing a career as a physical therapist or as a practitioner at all. Instead, Lagreid wanted to tackle health problems on a larger scale. As a result, she went straight from her undergraduate program into the MHI program.

“I knew the types of roles and fields I wanted to be in were more likely to be accessible with a graduate degree and specifically I felt something like the MHI would be more appealing to the types of jobs and companies I was thinking about,” she said.

Her instincts were right, in addition to acquiring new ways to think about and solve problems, the MHI degree in and of itself became a point of interest with potential employers.

“People always want to hear about that degree, they look at your resume and they’re like what’s that? Tell me about that. So I think it opens doors for conversation and it just catches people’s eye because it’s unique,” said Lagreid.

One of her favorite takeaways from the program was becoming even more comfortable with change and innovation. Both of which are constant in start-up businesses and growth environments where she says change is inevitable as they’re trying to solve big problems in different ways.

When it comes to innovation itself, Lagreid has three key elements that she has identified as being part of the process; creativity, courage and resilience. Not surprisingly, well-being also plays a role. 

She also offered this advice for current MHI students who might be struggling with what comes next.

“Don't worry too much about "what you do with your degree" after graduation. You don't "do" anything with a degree. The program experience changes the way you think and approach situations, which opens up lots of doors, including many you may not have even known existed!”

The same goes for all nursing and health innovation students. Lagreid says no matter what program you’re pursuing, you will have the opportunity to apply your unique perspective and the proficiency gained to any job, whether that position correlates to your major or not. 

“If you have integrated the skills of being an innovator of being creative, being courageous and a problem solver, a bunch of problems are going to come to you. Let go of your career being linear and sequential. Focus on the innovation and let it lead you to the things that are interesting.”