Hello and welcome to this week's edition of underserved, the podcast for the rest of the

tech industry.

I'm your host Andrew Jilina. Here with me in studio today is Meredith Barnes

Cook who is a technology and operations transformation leader in the insurance industry.

Meredith, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for having me.

I appreciate you for coming back to the old stomping grounds in Needham to join us today.

My hometown.

So tell me, way back in your hometown or that era, what got you excited about technology?

I was always the person, even when I started running an employment program in college, I was always process oriented, trying to problem

solve and make things as efficient as possible.

And so when I went into my first job as a claims adjuster, I found I was staying late after hours, observing the

workflow around a very manual world in those days, and just working on streamlining

and then collaborating with different departments to say let's figure if we can take hours and days out of trying to get work done.

Were you classically trained operations management Toyota Lean person or is just something that came natural?

I think it's my DNA.

I think it's organic is just how I'm wired.

I think what others saw in me I evolved from a traditional management role in an

organization that was going through tremendous change in

coming in and evolving organizations and creating new ones and then it really evolved

too explicitly them offering a position for me to become an operations manager first

at the New England level, then nationwide, working through a tremendous amount of organizational and process and structural change.

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