Kai:

Welcome to brilliant in 20. I’m Kai Miller my guest today is Sophie Myers the director of the veteran experiences Services portfolio in the Department of Veterans Affairs office of information and Technology prior to VA Sophie worked in Private Industry in varied roles including as a consultant Solutions architect product manager and even as a research analyst her educational background is just as diverse with a bachelor’s in sociology a master’s in design leadership and an MBA she even had a short stint as an intern at the Smithsonian.

I love talking with people who have diverse backgrounds and Sophie is definitely one of those people so Sophie I’m very excited to welcome you to brilliant in 20 today.

Sophie:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me

Kai:

Well, I shared your bio right but can you tell me in your words what does the director of Veteran experience services do what do you do every day?

Sophie:

Absolutely it took me a little while to figure that out myself but I think I’ve got a good handle on it now seven months in so I’m responsible for a portfolio of 80 different products and five different product lines and all of these products are the ones that veterans families and caregivers are interacting with most so think of things like va.gov calling into a contact center even reaching out to the Veterans Crisis Line we’ve grouped those together with the VA so that we can think about that experience holistically and I help make sure that our teams have a vision road map and Direction when it comes to actually building and implementing these products and of course we want to do more cross product line thinking to make sure that we really have that end-to-end easy as possible experience for our Veterans family members and caregivers

Kai:

Can you tell me a little bit about what you mean by cross product line what is that

Sophie:

Yeah absolutely so I think that in general the way that a lot of I.T organizations have developed is building an application here for that contact center experience and building another application somewhere else for that let’s say front-end web experience and so we the VA has done a great job of developing a number of different applications for very specific experiences but now our next the next Horizon for us is to really think about now that we have all of these applications how can we create a more unified experience so that a given person doesn’t have to call this line for that call a different one for something else access a website for benefits a different one from Healthcare etc. etc. So I’m really trying to think about how across all of our different applications and product lines we can create a more unified experience

Kai:

Oh got it okay um so one of the things I was very interested in is you’re pretty new to VA right you you just recently came came to VA from Private Industry so what what brought the change on how did that come about?

Sophie:

Yeah absolutely so when I was working in Private Industry I actually had the opportunity to partner with uh the CTO and the Department of Veterans Affairs to build the new flagship VA Mobile app and it really was the first time that I ever saw a government technology team leading with best practices operating technology that is really on The Cutting Edge and I saw this vision for how in government we can actually lead the way we don’t have to just follow what’s happening in Private Industry the practices and ways of working were just so modern and so new to me even that I was really excited to be a part of what I think is a shift in the way that government thinks about it and builds technology so I was inspired to be part of the VA because I wanted to continue to scale these best practices across other parts of the organization and in doing that not only is that just exciting as a technologist to be a part of but everything you’re doing is ultimately going to impact someone’s life directly we’re not building apps because we want to grow our profit we’re building an app because there’s somebody out there who served our country and really needs our help and I’m excited that we are working on products that have such direct impact such as the ability to get benefits or to be reimbursed for traveling to a VA Medical Center so that impact is another driving force for me

Kai:

Yeah, it sounds like that mission Focus was a big draw for you something that really keeps you going every day

Sophie:

Absolutely and I would also just say for my career personally getting to work in government the amount of responsibility that you have and the scope of one’s uh influence in this space is so Broad and I really wanted to stretch myself to learn new things and to know that the decisions that I’m making would have serious Downstream effects and I felt like I was ready at this point in my career to take on that responsibility

Kai:

Wow thank you thanks for sharing that that’s a great that’s a great story and a great way to kind of Center yourself on your own personal principles and the decisions that you’re making about your career so um a lot of what you’ve shared about what you do sounds like you’re dealing with a lot of relationships you’re you’re working with your business partners but you’re also working across product lines in technology like you mentioned that that can be tricky navigating those relationships so what do you see as some of the critical steps to take to build trust that would then build relationships with those Partners in any area of the org

Sophie:

Absolutely I think that the most critical part about relationship building whether it’s folks on my I.T team or folks in other parts of the VA or other business lines is transparency I think we often as technologists think oh we don’t want to get into the weeds and explain to folks why there’s this complication that’s going to take longer but I think that being able to be transparent and translate what seems like a really gnarly technology problem into something that someone can digest and understand and appreciate and really make sense of why for example there might be a delay in something is how you really build that trust because you want to be able to um you want everyone on the team whether it’s the business team or the IT team to be sharing in the same vision and know the roadmap to get there and when things don’t go right there’s a responsibility to share that transparently and make sure that everyone understands the trade-offs that are being made to get there

Kai:

So transparency is a big one the honesty and just being clear and forthright

Sophie:

Yeah fair and forth right and then I think to be successful at that you also have to be able to translate technical jargon in a way that anyone can understand um and I think that that really takes being able to reduce let’s say an integration issue to really this is really what we’re working with here is two teams running communication now we’re going to be in better communication and that’s going to mean we’re going to be move forward so being able to really distill those problems into a way that anyone can understand

Kai:

That’s an interesting point and I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit more about the communication getting things that are very technical into plain language because I’m wondering if some of your background that diverse background you have has especially prepared you for this

Sophie:

Yeah absolutely so my first job out of college you mentioned I was a research analyst so I worked for a company that administered health insurance and it just so happened that when I got this job it was at the same point in time that healthcare.gov went live so here I was thrust into situations with technologists who are building a way for people to apply for the insurance that the company I worked for provided and we realized that there were a lot of issues with this website because there was such a deep disconnect between the technologists and the people that were developing the policy or on the business side and so I started to kind of get in the head of the folks that were actually engineering this website and realizing the ways that they were looking at information which was often very binary it was either are you below the poverty line or above the poetry line and these are obviously decisions that have affect people greatly whether or not you have the ability to pay for health insurance is a very nerve-wracking thing and so yeah what I helped to do was really make sure these technologists were building an experience that took into account that somebody might not have their tax information right in front of them so let’s really explain to people what they’re going to need before they enter this application so that they’re prepared and in the right state of mind and answer very sensitive questions so I think that uh I got interested in this disconnect between policy makers technologists and ultimately the people that are going to be using these systems and that’s really what my graduate experience was about you know it was about learning about business but paired with you mentioned this degree in design leadership which really was all about learning how to work with end users and how to empathize and design technology in a way that really meets people where they are

Kai:

So that’s I’m wondering if you can talk to us a little bit about what brought you into technology was it kind of that being able to put yourself in the user’s mindset, become that voice of the user.

Sophie:

absolutely yeah I mean I I guess I would say from an early age I’ve Loved uh gadgets my first screen name was cell phone one two three so I’ve always been very excited about you know what technology can enable for people and while I think that there’s so much that technology can power it’s really important to have those end users part of actually building and steering the direction of that technology or else you end up in situations like healthcare.gov where you have a website that is difficult to difficult to navigate and isn’t getting people what they need right away so I think for me um I can imagine myself as an end user often and I love to work with other end users to see what they need and then make technology work for them so

Kai:

What are some of the trends that you’re seeing in what veterans need right now from that perspective?

Sophie:

Yeah it’s so interesting because we have veterans that are of all different generations and I think one of the mistakes that uh is made is that thinking that folks that are in older Generations don’t want to do things on their own you know I’ve done a number of interviews and really realized that folks want to have a mobile app that lets them really easily check their claim status or update their dependents and the initial hypothesis was oh well only younger people are going to be want to want to do that but I think increasingly we’re seeing that everybody really wants that self-service experience and they want to be able to do things on their own and they can and so it’s our responsibility to make it as easy as possible for folks to be able to get things done on their own without having to come into a VA Medical Center or regional office or to have to get on the phone and have a lengthy conversation so I think self-service is a big Trend and then I would just say on the back end of what we’re building and some of the ways that we’re powering those self-service self-service experiences is by using architecture that is more composable so I talked early on about you know apps that are built in silos and while that leads to experiences that you know maybe have a really great experience getting your benefits and a really great experience on health care but it’s not in the same place that’s actually a pretty costly way to build technology and the more that we can look across and say hey when someone’s doing either of these things they need to log in so let’s build One login service that we can use in multiple different places the easier that we can make these end user experiences

Kai:

That’s excellent and I think I’m wondering if if COVID led to some of that desire for the self-service a lot of us you know couldn’t have anyone around us or it was on a phone or through zoom and it’s just awkward and difficult so that self-sufficiency I’m wondering if some of that is related to.

Sophie:

Yeah absolutely I think COVID forced a lot of us to get more familiar with navigating things on our own and I think a lot of people just the way that I think prior to covet if you had asked you know my grandparents what do you think of remote work they would have scoffed and it would have made no sense but now that they sort of were forced into a situation where they had to do that you know they learned that there’s advantages and I think that that’s the exact same thing for self-service um it’s not something that maybe people thought before covid would be any easier but now that they’ve had to do that they’ve had that aha moment where they’re like I never want to go in person again if I can just really quickly update this myself.

Kia:

Yeah sure it makes sense so let’s let’s switch gears really quickly because I asked you a question off air if there is anything about you that I wouldn’t learn from LinkedIn anything about you that I wouldn’t learn in the course of a you know a professional conversation or throughout the course of the day tell me tell me a little bit about your college career Sophie because you shared something very interesting

Sophie:

Yeah so the thing that came to mind for me is I think when you look at my LinkedIn you’d be like oh wow she’s done all these things in her career but what’s missing is I didn’t have the greatest college career and for that matter I didn’t have the best grades either in elementary school or high school I even got rejected from the college that I ended up graduating from the first time I applied uh so I think it’s really important to acknowledge that just because you have difficulties in school and for me you know there were other things going on in my life that made it hard to get homework done every night that made it hard for me to pay attention in class but that doesn’t mean that you can’t redefine and reinvent yourself in your career and that’s what I think uh motivates me in my career is just that I get to kind of prove to myself that even though I had hiccups along the way or didn’t excel in certain areas I can still excel in my career and be a resilient a resilient person

Kai:

I love that and I think it’s something that ties so tightly with the fact that empathy is such a big part of your job because you’re acknowledging the humanness in yourself and you have to think about that humanness of your end users every single day um so I really that was such a great moment to hear that from you when we were first talking about it and I’m wondering thinking about that and thinking about where you are in your career right now this season of Brilliant in 20 is all about Rising federal leaders so our younger Federal Workforce who’s looking to get into leadership what are some things that you would share with them not it doesn’t have to be advice but what are some things that you might share with them

Sophie:

I think one thing that I have learned from leaders that I really respect in this space is that it’s very easy to get caught up in the politics of the bureaucracy and the mechanics of how things get done and there is endless stuff that could be optimized but what you really can control is um what you’re delivering so I think that to the extent that you can find something that you really see an opportunity to deliver and have an impact on the citizens or in my case veterans families and caregivers lives uh it’s best to focus on the things that the impact you can have outside of the organization instead of getting caught up in some of the swirl within the organization so I think about experiences that have been delivered like that mobile app or va.gov and that’s an example of really just hunkering down to try something try out a piece of technology and get it out there as quickly as possible and I think that once you get something out there you learn a lot about how it’s doing and can iterate from there so um what I’m trying to do in my new role is really find those specific areas where I think I can have impact out in the world and find a solution that’ll work and just drive towards getting it out the door as soon as possible

Kai:

Great. Well Sophie it has been an absolute joy to talk to you today but I do have one more question before you go because I just can’t get enough of you so we really love talking about balance right and choice and living life outside of work and having impact in a number of different ways so knowing you and hearing about your background I imagine that your life outside of work is pretty diverse and well-rounded too so tell me what does your ideal Saturday or Sunday look like?

Sophie:

I love one sleeping in on the weekends because

Kai:

I think you deserve it

Sophie:

Uh yeah I am not a morning person and I’m also on Central time so during the week you know I’m up early but anyway so I love to sleep in uh we have I live with my husband here in Austin Texas and we have two dogs that on every Saturday morning we take out to a new uh nature place there’s a lot of different water uh swimming holes in Austin so I love to take the dogs out to a swimming hole get our coffee and just sort of move slowly because during the week things can move so fast and it’s hard to really um take that time to enjoy what’s outside of my head and in the world around me

Kai:

I love that it I and I can’t thank you enough again it’s been a pleasure hearing from you and hearing how thoughtful you are about all of the different parts of your life and the impact that you’re having and from someone who has veterans in her family that mean a lot to her I want to say thank you for everything you’re doing and the fact that you’re putting yourself in their shoes every day and thinking about what they would need from their technology so Sophie Myers thank you so much for joining us it’s been wonderful

Sophie:

thank you thank you so much for having me