When Kalyn Weber was a teenager, she was eager to enter the workforce as soon as
she could. She got her permit to work at 14 years old and worked service industry jobs
throughout high school and into college.
Now serving as the SVP of Clinician Experience at connectRN, Weber says that
working in the service industry taught her a strong work ethic and showed her that
exceptional customer service can pay off for an organization.
When Weber attended college, she knew she wanted to work in healthcare. Her studies
included pre-medicine courses and preparation for such a career path, but it wasn’t long before she realized that a clinical path wasn’t for her and started thinking about non-clinical roles in healthcare.
After graduation, Weber moved to Boston (where she currently works) to obtain dual
master’s degrees in Public Health and Health Policy. Her focus was on population
health and “the upstream drivers of what impacts our health and healthcare.”
Before finding her role at connectRN, Weber served in much more traditional corporate
roles and government jobs.
She found her home in the healthtech space after joining athenahealth and working as a member of their product and customer success groups. Delivering support to enterprise customers at the time, Weber knew she would rather work with a smaller organization. She sought out opportunities to be a member of a team for a startup. Before long, she found connectRN and joined the team as their 35th
employee.
Since Weber joined connectRN, the organization has grown from 35 employees to more
than 250. During that time, some culture shifts have occurred within the company, but
its mission and motivation have remained the same: to support and improve the work
lives of nurses and CNAs in every corner of the country. .
The COVID-19 pandemic sparked within Weber more motivation than ever to achieve
this mission. The pandemic made it clear just how much society relies on health care
professionals.
Weber says, “I think it’s just made the work all the more valuable to feel like, ‘oh, yeah,
this is actually why we’re here — our nurses really need us.’ So I think I’ve felt very
privileged to have a job that is very fulfilling during incredibly challenging circumstances”
The “number one thing” Weber says she tells people about connectRN is that everyone
at the company has a very strong belief in their mission, and they are committed to
solving all of the crises in the nursing profession today.
“There’s this crisis right now facing nursing professionals, it’s huge and systemic,”
Weber says. “We really believe that we can change it and … do the right thing for this community of people, and for the greater healthcare ecosystem.”
According to Weber, connectRN feels unlike a typical tech company in its mission and
the way the organization operates. She says that while the company is a startup in
many fun ways — offering perks and benefits like cold brew on tap and vibrant work
environments for their employees — there is still a distinct method to the way
connectRN operates that sets it apart from the generic startup experience.
At connectRN, leaders strive to establish an atmosphere where employees and team
members feel valued and included, making diversity and equity core essentials in the
company’s ongoing training.
Speaking about diversity at connectRN, Weber says, “We aren’t going to have one
Diversity and Inclusion Leader or Diversity and Inclusion team that’s responsible for
sharing this information.” She adds, “Equity and inclusion needs to be part of the entire
company’s ethos.”
How does connectRN achieve this goal? According to Weber, the organization is able to
instill values centering around diversity and inclusion through programs that educate
and inform employees and team members at all levels.
“We have regular corporate training that helps us all understand how we are
participating in an unconscious bias. These are courageous conversations that we need
to have,” Weber says. “This has been core to who we are from the beginning.”
Within connectRN, Weber says, there’s ample opportunity for growth for each team
member, and this is just one of the things that makes connectRN so special. She says
her own career path is a great example of the opportunities that can open up for
members of their organization as they navigate their careers and develop their skills.
Weber continues, “In some ways we cannot hire fast enough to fill the sorts of
responsibilities that we need to have managed, so we ask our people to reach both up
and down in different ways.” In this way, employees learn new skills by taking on
different tasks and creating new responsibilities for their positions.
“We have someone on my team who was one of my first direct reports. This was her second job out of college. Now, she’s running an entire engagement platform for tens of thousands of clinicians, and building her own team,” Weber says, further exemplifying the type of growth that members of connectRN can expect during their tenure with the company.
When asked what she believes leads to this type of growth on an individual basis for
employees of connectRN, Weber says a lot of it has to do with the company’s culture,
alongside the reality that they have grown quickly over the past three years.
“I think that [growth for our employees] comes from not just being fast-growing and
being relatively small, but also having this sort of culture of trust. An expectation that
we’re not going to get everything right from the beginning, but that we expect people to
learn as we grow,” Weber says.
Weber emphasizes that transparency plays a core role in the way the organization
operates. According to Weber, the management and leaders at connectRN are upfront
with their team members about the chaotic and explosive growth of the company,
acknowledging that their jobs may feel like they are constantly evolving — for the time
being.
“When I started with connectRN, a lot of our team members were ‘jacks-of-all-trades,’
and now they are building into different specializations,” Weber says. She stresses that they encourage “horizontal” improvement alongside “vertical” growth so members of the team can retain influence over past projects or departments while their roles transition throughout their careers.
Concluding her thoughts about connectRN, Weber says it is “one of those places where
you feel like you’re having this amazing social impact and you can still be successful in
different ways. I think if you care a lot about doing good work and building a fun career
then connectRN is a great place to be.”
