Episode 40: Health Equity and DEI: Making Prescriptions More Accessible

Delve into the importance of health equity in DEI efforts. Saqi Mehta shares insights on how GoodRx addresses the challenges of a hybrid workforce, ensuring DEI remains a top priority.

Chris Riback: Saqi, thank you so much for joining us. We're looking forward to the conversation.

Saqi Mehta: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Chris Riback: So maybe let's start with a little bit of your journey, but also why a company like GoodRx is thinking about in any way, shape or form diversity or equity or inclusion or belonging. What does it have to do with delivering well-priced medications to consumers?

Saqi Mehta: Yeah, absolutely. My path has been fairly non-traditional or non-linear, probably like a lot of my peers in the DEI space. So I started off in higher education, so I went to school in Boston and started off as a career coach and counselor. And so really loved environments of continual learning and just being around diversity of thought and perspective was then curious about the corporate world. Definitely more fast paced dynamic. And then through a number of happy accidents, ended up on the tech side. I was first at VMware building out their first ever east coast office, and then started off in recruiting. So then utilizing a lot of my higher education relationships to then hire interns and new grads to an organization, which was really fun, really rewarding. And then over time expanded to industry level recruiting and whatnot. So that was the majority of my background.

At some point, being from the east coast, I'm from the DC area, originally had the California bug and said, Hey, I want to move out west. In my mind, I'm like, I need to go where sunshine and palm trees are, so what companies will work there? So the Walt Disney Company popped into mind. So I ended up on the corporate side there recruiting for folks, and I think that was the first time I was really inspired by DEI efforts. They really thought about d and i in a more progressive way in terms of, for example, their heroes work here initiative, bringing veterans or former veterans into the community to hire them from the front lines to what roles could look like on the backend. So during my time there, square had reached out. They were very much a startup at the time. This was back in 2012.

They were 200 employees. Square's Mission was around economic empowerment and founded by Jack Dorsey, who also founded Twitter. I just thought this is a really unique opportunity. Going from thousands of people in an organization to literally less than 200 was a really unique opportunity that I thought I'd regret if I hadn't tried it. So that's what I made the move up to the Bay Area, and I bring this up specifically because this is where D and I really came into play. So coming from the worlds that I did mostly naturally diverse environments, and that was the first time where I honestly saw a lack of diversity. So for example, we were planning our attendance for Grace Hopper Women in Tech conference, one of the largest global ones, and I could count on less than two hands, a number of women engineers. And I was like, oh, sometimes when you see a lack of something, that's what really inspires you.

I don't love “finding your passion”. I think it puts a lot of pressure on people, but I think leading with curiosity is really important and we find something you're interested in that can lead to the next and to the next. So that's what got me really started on officially my journey around DEI. And so when I went to help those from underrepresented communities to increase our representation in the workforce and to make sure when people are hired that they really find themselves to have a path to success. So fast forward to where I am at GoodRx, it was the first time that they really prioritize this kind of work. As you so eloquently said, our mission is really to provide affordable prescription medication to any American or anyone, regardless of whether they have insurance or not. So I think d and I is inherent in not only the mission of the company, and I love that it is simplified on the backend though. We need to make sure that our workforce internally mirrors the customers, the clients that we look to serve every day, and to make sure that they feel that they have an environment that is inclusive where they feel like they can be their most authentic selves. So it was the first time that they had prioritized that work. So I was really honored to come on board in August of 2022 to start to build that out. So it was really just building the entire DEI infrastructure from the ground up.

Dr. Alexandria White: So you said leading with curiosity as the head of talent acquisition and diversity equity inclusion. Want to put both of those. So you've got dual roles. How does leading with curiosity impact how you lead at GoodRx?

Saqi Mehta: I would say that building something from the ground up is a completely different animal than coming in and stepping into an existing effort or initiatives or someone's shoes. So in this case, I can say it was very much a bottom up as well as a top-down approach. So coming in, I wanted to meet the business where they're at. I've seen other leaders that I really admire emulate doing a listening tour for the first month. I really just wanted to hear from folks, and I've heard that you asked similar questions for varied feedback. I really had three simple things, what's working well? What could we do differently and what else do you want me to know specifically around DEI? So once I gathered that feedback then came up with proposed strategy initiatives, things that we could focus on in our roadmap for the following year in 2023.

So that's one example of I think you just have to understand because everyone probably has their own biases, if you will, coming in with, okay, these are the things that I want to focus on, but is that what the business needs? Is that what our employees need? Where in the employee life cycle are they? And with talent acquisition, I think it's really about having conversations. I think a lot of times with DEI and talent, there's a natural intersection there, but a lot of times we over-Index to how do we improve diversity by hiring a more diverse workforce, which I'm completely on board with, but that's not the only way because if you hire people and they're leaving within six months a year, and that's a lot of time investment resources that what is that resulting in? So once people are hired from the moment they're hired, they're onboarding process, how are they welcomed, ushered into the company? How are we finding opportunities for their learning development trading and to hopefully give them mentorship and ways for them to elevate. And it's not only about a career ladder promotion, but it's also just internally, how do you break down barriers? Communication? I've worked on things like Great Places to Work surveys, which are around employee engagement. So looking at all the different components, I very much believe in talent and hiring a diverse workforce, but it's also the entire ecosystem of that lifecycle.

Dr. Alexandria White: So let's talk about those initiatives and those intentional things that you found out about doing your speaking tour in August, 2022. So what are the things that came about? What's something our listeners can take away that you are actually implementing from listening to people? What are you doing now? So

Saqi Mehta: There were six core themes that came out of that listening tour, and a lot of them had to do around communication and transparency, psychological safety. I don't love the term safe space. Not everyone has that physical ability, but brave spaces to be able to, you say

Dr. Alexandria White: Brave spaces. I am proponent of brave space. Yes.

Saqi Mehta: One of the biggest things that we launched in January of 2023 was I call them CRGs Community Resource Groups, which are akin to ERGs. I wanted it to move away from feeling like an HR entity to something where it was more employee led and really built from the ground up. So we launched five of those in January. So AAPI, BIPOC, Latin-A Women and LGBTQ plus, and even some of the names of those CRGs evolved over time and still to this day continuing to evolve. So we did that, but I wanted to overly structure it because you can always kind of par it down, but it's hard to kind of ramp up. So not only did we establish our five CRGs, we had a lead for each, and then I advocated for them to have compensation because this is a job on top of their really busy day job.

  So they received a bonus on top of their compensation. And then we had an executive sponsor. So we have what we call ELT, our executive leadership team. So we had one or two executive sponsors, which are at the top level or above to help just usher the work forward and to be an advisor for our leads. And then from there, we built out, we use Slack as our primary communication tool. So we started there, but then moved to monthly meetings and then promised that we would have at least one core cultural event per month. And of course, as you probably know, the first half of the year is very busy between Black History Month, women's History Month, OPPI heritage Month, so on and so forth, pride, Juneteenth. So we committed to doing at least one core educational activity from a communication standpoint. We launched DEI newsletters monthly. So the intention behind that was to come from a more proactive understanding so that when there was a crisis or something unfortunate happens in our society, it's not reactive to that, it's more, okay, well, ERGs for example, started in the 1960s with Xerox. So just to give people a baseline level of understanding on a different side of the spectrum when it comes to DEI,

Chris Riback: It sounds like you've worked and continue to work with organizations that culturally put diversity and equity and belonging efforts at the center of their thinking around talent, thinking around internal sentiment and culture, thinking about who they work with and maybe even to some extent, maybe you can help bring this to life into their business processes. At the same time, we all know that the sentiment and the conversation around these efforts culturally in our society right now is evolving. And there are many more outward questions, challenges even around the why business case around a little bit the how. So one, I'm sure you are hearing those sentiments. What do you feel about those? How do you react? Two, how do you characterize the business case? What's your argument? And three, do you see the DEI effort as being separate distinct? Let's say you said there was overlap with talent. Do you see it remaining distinct or do you see that blending together more and becoming part of a joined up effort?

Saqi Mehta:  All great questions, and there's so many things that are popping up in my mind as you're asking this question. I think my north star that I go back to is a quote from Martin Luther King who said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” So yes, at the moment, d and i is certainly under higher scrutiny, and I think it's a function of a larger economy. It's heartbreaking to see all the layoffs that are happening on LinkedIn. There's constantly announcements and whatnot. So I think whenever, from a practicality standpoint, there's headcount and numbers in question D and I will be one of the first things to be unquote on the chopping block, right? Because it's seen as sometimes a supplemental kind of initiative. I think in an ideal world, it should be embedded into everyone's work and performance and whatnot.

But I think there's also a trend right now, and this is more from a talent and HR leadership standpoint for HR leaders to have more business savvy versus being just people leaders first. So I bring that up because I think that is an important intersection in terms of understanding at GoodRx our healthcare funnel, which it can be very complicated, and understanding that in each layer we need to showcase our commitment to d and i. So one specific example, we have a manufacturing solutions team, and so they reach out to me when they do RFPs, request for proposals from big pharma clients to say, Hey, what are the d and i efforts that you all have going on? Because big clients like that don't want to sign on with corporations unless they feel like there's an embedded initiative there. So I think not only internally to our organizations, but even with future partners, people are interested in that kind of information and understanding that there's a bigger effort going on there.

So while I do think that there is a bigger spotlight or scrutiny attached to it, I do think over time when we think about George Floyd and his murder and how a lot of DNI roles and initiatives opened up after that, that wasn't the first time. There was definitely a cacophony of voices and things elevated after that point. But again, going back to the 1960s when ERGs were launched, this is a longer term effort. And so I think it's going to continue. It's just probably going to come in waves. But I do think we'll get back to where we started from and there's still plenty of roles, plenty of companies that have large teams that are focused on it. But I do think in terms of the future, there's a number of things that are shifting. So for example, more ties in with social impact. So at GoodRx, I've worked really closely with our ESG social impact team because d and i largely has been internal employee efforts.

Social impact is more like external. What are we doing in the community? And I think tying that together, to be honest, my ideal role will be head of impact, which includes D and i and Social Impact and ESG. So I think there's that. There's definitely more tie-ins with legal or compliance. I check in really frequently with our legal team on anything employment law related or just any questions that might come up. Data that we're looking to show. Some places are actually rolling DNI under legal, but I don't think that's the majority, right? I think that's more the exception versus the rule. So there's a number of ways that things can go, but I think there's still so much conversation. Just as a quick aside, I had the opportunity to watch Origin about a week ago, which is Ava DuVernay's movie - I see you smiling - based on the book cast by Isabel Wilkerson.

And so I think in the US particularly, there's so much more opportunity to talk not only about race and ethnicity, but socioeconomic challenges and the reasons why. Yes, there's underlying things that are going on, but how do we layer all of that together to have a more robust conversation? I think DEI often indexes on the things that you can see, but when you think about accessibility, you think about socioeconomic things, you think about a multitude of challenges. So a long way to say yes, I think there's a lot more to be done in the d and i space,

Dr. Alexandria White: So I'm getting goosebumps and so many questions wouldn't Look, we have a limited amount of time. ESG, social impact are my things. Growing up in Chicago, there were food deserts. Food deserts lead to higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, coronary disease. So we're not eating right. You're not eating, you're going to be more likely to need those prescriptions. You can't afford those prescriptions because you don't have a job or some jobs just don't have health insurance so that you can do that. When I think of the importance of GoodRx and social impact and understanding that people have to have accessible prescriptions, I remember there were some of my friends who went to Canada to get their prescriptions because it was cheaper. I really want you to speak more on that social impact for our listeners and how good RX got it. How they knew is just DEI is just not internal, something that just came about, but that it has macro impact in our communities in which we live and play,

Saqi Mehta: This is a tie-in right to the external communities and the work that we're doing. Why do we do what we do? Because let's be honest, a lot of times within the tech world, and this is more from a recruiting standpoint, we look at those that have worked at the Google’s or the Meta’s or kind of had that “pedigree”. We're not tapping into those that have that kind of lived experience. So tying things in at GoodRx specifically to health equity is super important. And I think a number of things just with more remote workforce, we've been able to tap into more diverse talent pools and we're trying to have a conversation. So for example, from a talent acquisition standpoint, we have a New York office. So we did an entire networking night and recruiting was part of it, but it was really more to have a conversation around how we're trying to make prescriptions more accessible and just stories of how we personally have been impacted.

Because a lot of times that storytelling kind of gets overshadowed by the data and all of the very important things within Intacct, but how do we bring that home? So we opened it up and we invited folks from the larger New York community. So how do you have conversations in person that term of it's hard to hate up close, so you really need to understand and see people face to face and have that kind of interaction. We also have a number of folks who are hired in from the medical community. So we have an amazing woman, Dr. Preti, she's our medical advisor. She's an active pediatrician herself. So she really helps us understand things around, for example, women of color and how when it comes to childbirth, mortality rates can be higher. There's people who feel very reluctant to go into a hospital or you think about a bodega and how people who work there don't have access to even union workers or healthcare as you're saying. And so how do we think more broadly about that and have these conversations? And then from a social impact standpoint, the team does amazing popups where they're trying to increase education and even have cards, for example, that are printed in Spanish that we are handing out just with understanding that not everyone has access to a laptop or easy ways to find information. So it's very much about also going out into the community and having these conversations.

Chris Riback: What are the obstacles or the challenges, particularly Andy, that were unexpected with a hybrid workforce?

Saqi Mehta: It can be challenging sometimes there can be, and I imagine this is not only with GoodRx a feeling of, oh, are people who are in a physical office, do they get more from an employee engagement standpoint or just are they quote the favorite child? So how do you really extend all of those efforts to those who are remote? So we try to do things like any speakers, even if they're coming into an office, we do it all on Zoom so that everyone feels like they can see the speaker up close and personal. If we have a panel, same kind of thing. We do fun things like cooking classes or have other speakers come and do virtual events. And so just making sure that everyone feels the opportunity to be part of something. And also increasing opportunities for those who are remote to come into one of our offices just as part of regular travel and recognizing that that FaceTime is also important. That's been a little bit of an ongoing kind of discussion.

Dr. Alexandria White: That is wonderful. We love it. Soki that you've got all these intersectionalities, you're head of talent acquisition and DEI. What about leadership? Because you are one woman with a passion obviously for what you do. Tell me how the leadership at RX is helping you accomplish all of these. Because what we find is in DEI spaces, we have these titles, we have access to this, but we sometimes don't have the funding. Sometimes we don't have the support access to the things that allows us to go forward and prosper. So talk about the leadership a good GoodRx and how they help you implement all of your strategy and all of the things that you are passionate about.

Saqi Mehta: Yeah, this is a fantastic question because as I had mentioned, leadership had prioritized this work, which I really appreciate that they identified that need, but it was a one person role in appointment. And so I came in initially to do that and then took on a larger role within talent, but I made that really clear of this is not a one person job and ideally managers, they should have. Are you helping to hire for D and i within your objectives and part of your performance, part of bonuses? All of those practicality, our leadership has been really welcome to it. And I think what I found is I have to be a little bit more prescriptive, so I have to come saying, this is what I need you to do. And they've been really receptive to it, unlike other places where it's very much like, this is what we're doing and you go execute on it.

So I found that to be really refreshing at first. I'm like, wait, is this above my pay grade? But it's been a really great, honestly growing opportunity for myself too to say, okay, here are the themes. Here's what we're seeing from the data. Here are the goals that we want to set. And they've actually advocated to set goals across the company. So for example, we set a 4% year over year increase for increasing our diversity of talent adversely from a retention standpoint that we wanted to keep 90% of our women and underrepresented groups from a non-G regrettable attrition rate, and from a training and development perspective that we did roll out things like unconscious bias training, cultural competencies for our people, leaders and managers. So there are a number of things that they put into place to help move that work forward, not just to say, oh, we're just building things from a programmatic perspective, but how are they tying into the goals that also tie into our revenue, which is really real right to the street at the end of the day.

Chris Riback: Saqi, thank you. Thank you for the ideas that you're sharing. You clearly have gotten to work with organizations that have put these types of efforts into their business processes, and it sounds like you've not only learned a great deal from those experiences, but got to bring your own experiences and ideas and goals and values to the efforts. Good for you on that. And thank you for discussing these topics with us today.

Saqi Mehta: Thank you so much for having me and for helping to keep the momentum going.