Meeting Title: Brainforge Interview w- Greg Date: 2026-03-31 Meeting participants: Jovanne Saldierna, Greg Stoutenburg
WEBVTT
1 00:09:49.280 ⇒ 00:09:50.620 Jovanne Saldierna: Hey Greg, how are you?
2 00:09:50.620 ⇒ 00:09:52.389 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, I’m good, how are you?
3 00:09:52.390 ⇒ 00:09:53.639 Jovanne Saldierna: Good, thank you.
4 00:09:53.640 ⇒ 00:10:00.919 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, I’m really sorry for the delay, I didn’t want to keep you waiting. I need to send one message real quick. I’m so, so sorry, but I don’t want to just, like, leave you in this waiting room in the.
5 00:10:00.920 ⇒ 00:10:02.040 Jovanne Saldierna: No, give me…
6 00:10:02.300 ⇒ 00:10:03.899 Greg Stoutenburg: And I will be right back.
7 00:10:03.900 ⇒ 00:10:04.670 Jovanne Saldierna: No worries at all.
8 00:10:04.670 ⇒ 00:10:05.790 Greg Stoutenburg: Outstanding. Thanks.
9 00:12:02.080 ⇒ 00:12:03.190 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m back. Alright.
10 00:12:03.190 ⇒ 00:12:04.450 Jovanne Saldierna: Awesome. Hey.
11 00:12:04.450 ⇒ 00:12:14.110 Greg Stoutenburg: Thank you for your patience. Sorry about that. That’s what we do. So, yeah, nice to meet you. I’m Greg. Tell me how to pronounce your name correctly.
12 00:12:14.110 ⇒ 00:12:15.620 Jovanne Saldierna: Yeah, of course, Giovanni.
13 00:12:15.620 ⇒ 00:12:18.509 Greg Stoutenburg: Giovanni, got it. Great, cool, where are you located, Giovanni?
14 00:12:18.750 ⇒ 00:12:22.229 Jovanne Saldierna: I’m currently in Elkton, Maryland, but I am moving to New York City.
15 00:12:22.640 ⇒ 00:12:24.389 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh, nice. I’m in York, Pennsylvania.
16 00:12:24.990 ⇒ 00:12:26.270 Jovanne Saldierna: Oh, really?
17 00:12:26.270 ⇒ 00:12:26.870 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
18 00:12:26.870 ⇒ 00:12:29.059 Jovanne Saldierna: No, wait, did he go to Penn State?
19 00:12:29.060 ⇒ 00:12:42.790 Greg Stoutenburg: Nope, I, no, I’m from Michigan, I’ve actually just moved all over the place. And then, I was a philosophy professor at York College, which is why I moved here. I’m not a philosophy professor anymore, but, that doesn’t mean I took off, so…
20 00:12:42.790 ⇒ 00:12:43.170 Jovanne Saldierna: 100%.
21 00:12:43.170 ⇒ 00:12:50.850 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, neat. We’re not that… we’re not that far apart. No, not at all. Hopefully you haven’t tried to fly at a BWI lately.
22 00:12:50.850 ⇒ 00:12:52.020 Jovanne Saldierna: Oh, I…
23 00:12:52.020 ⇒ 00:12:52.790 Greg Stoutenburg: saying.
24 00:12:53.000 ⇒ 00:13:00.080 Jovanne Saldierna: That’s what I heard. No, I normally actually fly into Philly. I’m, like, right on the Delaware line, so it’s, like, 45 minutes from BWI, 45 minutes.
25 00:13:00.080 ⇒ 00:13:00.400 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
26 00:13:00.400 ⇒ 00:13:02.969 Jovanne Saldierna: Philly, so… I normally just go to Philly.
27 00:13:03.180 ⇒ 00:13:10.690 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, got it. Yeah, cool. Alright, well, this is, this is the second interview, and,
28 00:13:11.100 ⇒ 00:13:22.390 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, whereas the first one is mostly about behavioral questions and culture and things like that, the second one is intended to be more about experience and skills and things like that. So,
29 00:13:22.600 ⇒ 00:13:28.120 Greg Stoutenburg: Looks like you have… Applied for the…
30 00:13:28.280 ⇒ 00:13:30.460 Greg Stoutenburg: What’s the title that you applied for?
31 00:13:30.680 ⇒ 00:13:36.340 Jovanne Saldierna: I applied for the… Senior Associate Data and Insights.
32 00:13:36.580 ⇒ 00:13:42.229 Greg Stoutenburg: Senior Associate Data Insights. Okay, cool. Alright, just want to make sure that I’m looking at the right…
33 00:13:42.920 ⇒ 00:13:44.330 Greg Stoutenburg: rubric here.
34 00:13:45.150 ⇒ 00:13:46.300 Greg Stoutenburg: Ba, ba-ba.
35 00:13:48.410 ⇒ 00:13:50.460 Greg Stoutenburg: Am I looking at the right rubric?
36 00:13:52.850 ⇒ 00:13:55.739 Greg Stoutenburg: Senior Associate of Data and Insights, yes.
37 00:13:56.450 ⇒ 00:13:58.700 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, cool.
38 00:13:59.240 ⇒ 00:14:06.610 Greg Stoutenburg: So, I mean, maybe just to, like, help me focus on the right things, can you give me just, like, an overview of your experience so far?
39 00:14:06.610 ⇒ 00:14:16.130 Jovanne Saldierna: Yeah, of course. So, I’m a senior data and analytics professional with 3-plus years of experience building scalable analytics infrastructures, as well as AI-enabled workflows.
40 00:14:16.200 ⇒ 00:14:28.749 Jovanne Saldierna: At HCA Healthcare, I led enterprise analytics across 180-plus facilities, designing self-serve reporting infrastructure, as well as standardizing KPIs, and then delivering those dashboards and
41 00:14:28.800 ⇒ 00:14:31.789 Jovanne Saldierna: analytic insights to VPs, as well as leadership.
42 00:14:31.840 ⇒ 00:14:50.080 Jovanne Saldierna: And then, in parallel, I also did fractional consulting at M&A, and M&A essentially is just a private equity-backed portfolio firm. I built their entire data platform from scratch. That included hybrid AI workflows, combined deterministic SQL transformations with LLM-assisted classifications, and then…
43 00:14:50.140 ⇒ 00:14:56.410 Jovanne Saldierna: executive narrative generation, as well, was done with AI, and then full guardrails and audit logging.
44 00:14:57.400 ⇒ 00:15:07.130 Jovanne Saldierna: And then on top of that, I was with Dell for a year and a half, doing a technical business analyst role, so I was client-facing as well as analyzing the inside sales portion of it as well.
45 00:15:08.210 ⇒ 00:15:15.950 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, cool. And, alright, that’s helpful. And now you’re at, HCA Healthcare as an analyst.
46 00:15:15.950 ⇒ 00:15:16.830 Jovanne Saldierna: Yes, sir.
47 00:15:17.220 ⇒ 00:15:18.700 Greg Stoutenburg: Yo. Cool.
48 00:15:19.390 ⇒ 00:15:24.049 Greg Stoutenburg: All right, yeah, great. Alright, that’s an awful overview. So,
49 00:15:24.980 ⇒ 00:15:28.899 Greg Stoutenburg: So, I’ll just jump into some business problems. So, a client says revenue’s down.
50 00:15:29.350 ⇒ 00:15:31.200 Greg Stoutenburg: What’s the first thing you do?
51 00:15:31.950 ⇒ 00:15:39.480 Jovanne Saldierna: Well, when it comes to revenue down, the first thing you have to do is kind of clarify what do you mean by revenue? What are the…
52 00:15:39.970 ⇒ 00:15:42.590 Jovanne Saldierna: Variables that you’re looking at to…
53 00:15:43.150 ⇒ 00:15:47.610 Jovanne Saldierna: essentially define revenue. You have to clarify
54 00:15:48.210 ⇒ 00:15:53.680 Jovanne Saldierna: what decision does the revenue support? What decision… essentially, what is revenue?
55 00:15:53.940 ⇒ 00:16:09.189 Jovanne Saldierna: what variables go into revenue, and then from there, after speaking with the stakeholder about what they define as revenue and what goes into it, you have to understand the business model. So, with that, it’s understanding
56 00:16:09.970 ⇒ 00:16:16.980 Jovanne Saldierna: how… not how the data works, but how does this business operate? What is the workflow, whether it’s operational, or…
57 00:16:17.490 ⇒ 00:16:22.910 Jovanne Saldierna: If we’re looking at something that has to do with Salesforce or CRM, And then…
58 00:16:23.060 ⇒ 00:16:31.530 Jovanne Saldierna: you kind of need to structure it after clarifying, and you break the problem down into components. What do we know about the revenue? What do we not know?
59 00:16:31.870 ⇒ 00:16:35.590 Jovanne Saldierna: What data, kinda, will answer this, and then…
60 00:16:36.530 ⇒ 00:16:42.170 Jovanne Saldierna: When it comes to execution, you want to try to find the simplest and fastest tool, so…
61 00:16:42.630 ⇒ 00:16:47.410 Jovanne Saldierna: And a lot of times, it really just depends on what data they’re integrating into their…
62 00:16:48.240 ⇒ 00:16:54.530 Jovanne Saldierna: business model, essentially, with revenue. Is it coming from spreadsheets? Is it coming from SQL?
63 00:16:54.680 ⇒ 00:17:03.230 Jovanne Saldierna: And then… From there, you want to execute whichever analystic Model you find most helpful.
64 00:17:03.850 ⇒ 00:17:06.510 Jovanne Saldierna: And then, once you do that, validate.
65 00:17:07.079 ⇒ 00:17:09.389 Jovanne Saldierna: Is this the number you’re supposed to be seeing?
66 00:17:09.890 ⇒ 00:17:11.610 Jovanne Saldierna: Is this what you’re expecting?
67 00:17:11.609 ⇒ 00:17:12.450 Greg Stoutenburg: And…
68 00:17:12.450 ⇒ 00:17:14.309 Jovanne Saldierna: Try to find if there’s any…
69 00:17:14.670 ⇒ 00:17:18.869 Jovanne Saldierna: Bottlenecks, as well as any issues with…
70 00:17:19.329 ⇒ 00:17:26.019 Jovanne Saldierna: Customer engagement, but that’s all done in the structure portion of it, so once you have your answers, you validate and then communicate with the customer.
71 00:17:26.970 ⇒ 00:17:42.839 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, great, yeah. Have you had an experience in the past where you’ve had to work through that sort of problem? Like, you know, client calls you up, or, you know, a colleague is like, you know, their hair’s on fire, there’s, like, revenues down, and then, you know, you follow some of the steps that you’ve just outlined?
72 00:17:42.840 ⇒ 00:17:48.779 Jovanne Saldierna: Yeah, of course. So, with that, actually, with the M&A portion of my job, it…
73 00:17:49.240 ⇒ 00:17:58.750 Jovanne Saldierna: Essentially, they were given… they gave me this whole entire data portfolio of a business that they had just recently acquired, and they noticed that some of the numbers
74 00:17:58.830 ⇒ 00:18:10.350 Jovanne Saldierna: were just not matching up to what they initially had thought on their end. So I went ahead and cleaned up all of the data firsthand, and this was actually a meal prep company that they acquired.
75 00:18:10.670 ⇒ 00:18:24.650 Jovanne Saldierna: So I was looking at different kind of data than what I’m used to, however, with that, I had to ask, you know, the important questions with the stakeholder, as well as with the head of technology that I was working with at M&A, and…
76 00:18:24.900 ⇒ 00:18:26.420 Jovanne Saldierna: I asked them, essentially.
77 00:18:27.000 ⇒ 00:18:41.009 Jovanne Saldierna: what is the workflow? What is the importance of the data that is missing? And then from there, I’m able to kind of go into the data, know which data to clean, and essentially kind of look at, instead of all the white noise, try to get rid of it.
78 00:18:42.090 ⇒ 00:18:53.500 Jovanne Saldierna: And from there, after cleaning up the data, I went ahead and inserted it into BigQuery, and from there, I ran SQL analysis, and I was able to find that the AR concentration risk
79 00:18:53.960 ⇒ 00:18:59.609 Jovanne Saldierna: Was essentially being measured differently with M&A, and then…
80 00:19:00.170 ⇒ 00:19:04.960 Jovanne Saldierna: At the meal prep company. And basically, it just came down to just definitions of
81 00:19:05.180 ⇒ 00:19:11.779 Jovanne Saldierna: what this data means to M&A, and what does this number mean to… The meal prep company.
82 00:19:12.530 ⇒ 00:19:14.650 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, alright. What was the outcome of that?
83 00:19:14.730 ⇒ 00:19:16.740 Jovanne Saldierna: So, essentially, the outcome was that
84 00:19:17.120 ⇒ 00:19:28.389 Jovanne Saldierna: the concentration risk, they were including an extra variable into it, which is fine. However, it kind of just threw the number off, because…
85 00:19:28.520 ⇒ 00:19:32.469 Jovanne Saldierna: With that extra variable, it was calculating a longer time.
86 00:19:32.620 ⇒ 00:19:40.650 Jovanne Saldierna: they wanted… M&A’s, like, way of, like, looking at the structure of a company is every 2 weeks, they want to see…
87 00:19:40.760 ⇒ 00:19:47.870 Jovanne Saldierna: how much revenue did we generate in 2 weeks? And this number was incorporating, like, 3 months’ worth of data, and it didn’t need to.
88 00:19:48.650 ⇒ 00:19:49.460 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
89 00:19:50.420 ⇒ 00:19:54.930 Greg Stoutenburg: So, what was the… what was the cause of the appearance that revenue was down?
90 00:19:55.590 ⇒ 00:20:00.099 Jovanne Saldierna: So, it was… it came down to validation. So, the calls of, like.
91 00:20:00.420 ⇒ 00:20:04.249 Jovanne Saldierna: I’m assuming you mean just, like, the difference in numbers? It came down to…
92 00:20:04.750 ⇒ 00:20:14.959 Jovanne Saldierna: validation when HCA received… because when HCA… I mean, sorry, when M&A acquired this company, they didn’t acquire any of the coworkers, just kind of all the data into one.
93 00:20:15.300 ⇒ 00:20:18.560 Jovanne Saldierna: And once they received all that data.
94 00:20:19.180 ⇒ 00:20:30.320 Jovanne Saldierna: the head of technology went ahead and did his analysis on it, and he noticed from the dashboard that he created, as well as the dashboard they created, that the numbers were different. So that’s where I came in, and I went ahead and…
95 00:20:30.470 ⇒ 00:20:36.960 Jovanne Saldierna: try to find why are we seeing this difference number, and that’s essentially what I found.
96 00:20:36.960 ⇒ 00:20:46.390 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, okay, got it, great. Was there a… was there a solution after this? So, like, some kind of follow-on project to…
97 00:20:46.520 ⇒ 00:20:50.569 Greg Stoutenburg: Consolidate data sources, or represent everything in a single tool, or anything like that?
98 00:20:50.570 ⇒ 00:20:57.909 Jovanne Saldierna: Yes, so, with that, essentially, when I first started M&A, what I did was build that data platform, and
99 00:20:58.040 ⇒ 00:21:15.530 Jovanne Saldierna: our main goal, while I was working with the head of technology for them, main goal was kind of to create something that is scalable, as well as can be implemented for every company they acquire, with little to no changes needed to be done. So, what we ended up doing was incorporating everything into BigQuery, and from there, we already had
100 00:21:15.970 ⇒ 00:21:23.970 Jovanne Saldierna: pre-AI, built-in, like, LLMs, and it would kind of just clean up the data for us, as well as…
101 00:21:24.820 ⇒ 00:21:37.330 Jovanne Saldierna: we made sure that every single… this is where it all came down to, was the definition part of it. A field can mean something to this company, however, the M&A, what does that mean to him? What does it mean to us? How can…
102 00:21:37.550 ⇒ 00:21:48.680 Jovanne Saldierna: So, clarifying that was the business name, or the most important thing. However, fortunately, I’m really big into, hey, write it down in everything I do, and so…
103 00:21:48.920 ⇒ 00:22:02.449 Jovanne Saldierna: I went in there, we were able to, you know, took some time to sit down with the stakeholder, as well as with the head of technology, make time with them to, hey, let’s go through each field here, let’s go through each number, each metric, each KPI on this dashboard, and…
104 00:22:02.830 ⇒ 00:22:11.820 Jovanne Saldierna: please give me, like, an idea of what was already on there, like, what this meant to the meal prep company, and then what does this mean to you? What do you want it to mean?
105 00:22:12.120 ⇒ 00:22:17.280 Jovanne Saldierna: And then… It kind of just came down to making sure we’re all on the same page all along.
106 00:22:17.620 ⇒ 00:22:29.739 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. Now, in that, what was your role? I’m just looking at, like, HCA, for example, just trying to get, like, a sense of, like, where your own, you know, hands on the keys
107 00:22:29.870 ⇒ 00:22:48.270 Greg Stoutenburg: work has been, oriented toward? Is it more of the… is it more of the client side, where you’re talking with the stakeholder, like, hey, here’s how we prevent this sort of discrepancy in the future? We need to understand what you mean by revenue and how you calculate it. We’re gonna work through this, you know, workshop this thing, or are you more on the, you know, receiving end of that, in terms of
108 00:22:48.470 ⇒ 00:22:50.970 Greg Stoutenburg: You know, tickets to build the stuff.
109 00:22:51.150 ⇒ 00:22:52.400 Greg Stoutenburg: As an engineer.
110 00:22:52.560 ⇒ 00:22:57.950 Jovanne Saldierna: Yeah, so, the best part is, I do both. Essentially, when we implement
111 00:22:58.910 ⇒ 00:23:14.870 Jovanne Saldierna: this, new EHR into the facilities. I create the reports for it. However, we’re doing it every other month. There’s 180 facilities, it’s a 5-year project, so every other month, we’re starting with a new division. Each division has 3 to 4 facilities within it, and it comes down to hospital beds.
112 00:23:14.970 ⇒ 00:23:16.649 Jovanne Saldierna: Essentially, but…
113 00:23:17.120 ⇒ 00:23:23.480 Jovanne Saldierna: the one we just did most recently was Capital Division, so right outside Virginia, and then…
114 00:23:23.700 ⇒ 00:23:41.819 Jovanne Saldierna: a little bit, those two, into one. However, with that, it’s more so troubleshooting, so if there’s issues with that, with the reports that are created, with the EHR, whatever it may be, that’s where we come in handy, and we go ahead and we speak to the clients, and we’re talking to two nurses, doctors, even
115 00:23:42.640 ⇒ 00:23:47.140 Jovanne Saldierna: the managers, the whole, CEOs of the facilities themselves, however.
116 00:23:47.810 ⇒ 00:24:06.679 Jovanne Saldierna: they don’t understand the technical aspect of it, so it’s a little bit different. However, they do put tickets in, and we work with them, and it’s a very neat experience. However, on the opposite end of that, it’s more so operational, so when you go ahead and you’re making this big of an implementation, that’s where I come in handy, and I speak with the stakeholders of
117 00:24:06.960 ⇒ 00:24:19.090 Jovanne Saldierna: HCA and the leadership, and we go through the operational data of it, and that’s where we do get the service tickets from the previous go-live, as well as any automation trends that we’ve noticed that maybe something wasn’t
118 00:24:19.680 ⇒ 00:24:25.279 Jovanne Saldierna: working to the pace that it should have, or it did beforehand, in the go-live
119 00:24:26.350 ⇒ 00:24:32.129 Jovanne Saldierna: That followed. Okay. But, yeah, so it was a little bit of both, and then between that little mix of…
120 00:24:32.290 ⇒ 00:24:49.619 Jovanne Saldierna: Implementations. Essentially, we call each one a go-live, and then cutovers the day that we go from the old system to the new system. That’s where we build the new reports. So we have to meet with business owners, and that could be the head of pharmacy, or the head of registration, whatever it may be. So it’s pretty neat.
121 00:24:50.230 ⇒ 00:24:57.229 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, okay, covered a lot of things, yeah. Okay, cool, yeah, that’s good to know. You know, versatility is always a good thing.
122 00:24:57.400 ⇒ 00:25:02.610 Greg Stoutenburg: What makes an analysis actionable?
123 00:25:03.870 ⇒ 00:25:12.920 Jovanne Saldierna: Yeah, so an actionable analysis, to me, is, of course, it solves the problem at hand, whether it be just
124 00:25:13.060 ⇒ 00:25:14.369 Jovanne Saldierna: They need a number.
125 00:25:14.480 ⇒ 00:25:15.420 Jovanne Saldierna: Or…
126 00:25:15.800 ⇒ 00:25:23.880 Jovanne Saldierna: they need to figure something out wrong, essentially, as we said earlier about revenue. However, I also noticed that to be actionable.
127 00:25:24.200 ⇒ 00:25:27.189 Jovanne Saldierna: It kind of means building something that…
128 00:25:28.100 ⇒ 00:25:34.650 Jovanne Saldierna: doesn’t require me, specifically, to work. I don’t want the…
129 00:25:35.800 ⇒ 00:25:40.690 Jovanne Saldierna: Actionable insights, the number, whether it be a dashboard, a query,
130 00:25:41.240 ⇒ 00:25:46.769 Jovanne Saldierna: to depend on me, because at that point, it just means that all I’d created was a dependency.
131 00:25:47.260 ⇒ 00:25:54.200 Jovanne Saldierna: So To be actionable, that means that… every engagement.
132 00:25:54.700 ⇒ 00:26:07.189 Jovanne Saldierna: doesn’t require the analyst to be right there for it. The company’s able to self-serve and find that number for themselves. And of course, any questions or any issues with that, they can reach out, but mostly self-serving.
133 00:26:07.670 ⇒ 00:26:13.360 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, okay, got it, yeah. Okay, so you think of it in terms of self-service. When you… if you, like.
134 00:26:14.030 ⇒ 00:26:23.210 Greg Stoutenburg: You put together… you do some kind of analysis for a client, and, you want to show that
135 00:26:23.240 ⇒ 00:26:36.910 Greg Stoutenburg: that Brainforge, is going to be able to, you know, do some project to, you know, benefit the company, based on your analysis. What are some of the things that are going to be on your mind as you’re putting that together?
136 00:26:39.550 ⇒ 00:26:47.880 Jovanne Saldierna: So, if a company were to reach out and see where can BrainForge add value, I think the main question that I would think of is…
137 00:26:49.270 ⇒ 00:26:54.770 Jovanne Saldierna: How can we look good, and how can you save? Or how can you increase profit?
138 00:26:55.350 ⇒ 00:26:59.159 Jovanne Saldierna: And… What can we do that makes you stand out?
139 00:26:59.390 ⇒ 00:27:08.489 Jovanne Saldierna: And, of course, that’s a pretty, like, broad question, but it’s not as broad when you start looking at the data. So, a company’s…
140 00:27:09.210 ⇒ 00:27:14.839 Jovanne Saldierna: Workflow, the way that a company is ran, is essentially the same across
141 00:27:15.330 ⇒ 00:27:20.049 Jovanne Saldierna: Whichever industry you’re kind of stepping into. So, having that mindset that you’re just looking at a different
142 00:27:20.760 ⇒ 00:27:30.569 Jovanne Saldierna: bucket of data, whether it be, you know, at HCA Healthcare or, at M&A Financial. It’s knowing the workflow, asking the right questions with the stakeholder about
143 00:27:31.340 ⇒ 00:27:33.889 Jovanne Saldierna: What does value look like to you?
144 00:27:34.310 ⇒ 00:27:45.729 Jovanne Saldierna: And it’s really not that clear, you know, cutthroat, because a lot of times, they’re not sure it’s data. That’s kind of what we’re there for. So, I found that by cleaning up the data.
145 00:27:46.040 ⇒ 00:27:48.139 Jovanne Saldierna: Making sure you understand the workflow.
146 00:27:48.310 ⇒ 00:27:52.879 Jovanne Saldierna: Like, the back of your hand, which sometimes is a little tedious part, but it’s the fun part, and then…
147 00:27:53.490 ⇒ 00:27:59.229 Jovanne Saldierna: Running just simple queries on it, whether it be just trying to find trends, trying to find…
148 00:28:00.870 ⇒ 00:28:05.769 Jovanne Saldierna: Where we’re training, depending on, like, if it’s a sales company or not, or, like, with leads,
149 00:28:06.210 ⇒ 00:28:11.120 Jovanne Saldierna: It’s really just running the analysis on it, and the data always tells a story.
150 00:28:11.230 ⇒ 00:28:15.390 Jovanne Saldierna: So knowing that when you’re looking at all this data, there’s a story to be told, and…
151 00:28:15.390 ⇒ 00:28:15.840 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
152 00:28:15.840 ⇒ 00:28:17.260 Jovanne Saldierna: That’s the fun part, is…
153 00:28:18.060 ⇒ 00:28:28.799 Jovanne Saldierna: getting into it, and running your own kind of queries onto it, and then from there, creating visuals, and that’s when you’ll be able to find the value that the customer needs. And…
154 00:28:28.800 ⇒ 00:28:29.320 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
155 00:28:30.320 ⇒ 00:28:36.239 Jovanne Saldierna: as I mentioned, the answer’s never cutthroat. All they want is value. They want profit.
156 00:28:36.580 ⇒ 00:28:37.350 Jovanne Saldierna: So…
157 00:28:38.240 ⇒ 00:28:48.209 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Cool. Alright, I’ll ask a couple more of these, sort of, like, project questions. Describe how you explain technical findings to a non-technical executive.
158 00:28:48.640 ⇒ 00:28:50.070 Jovanne Saldierna: Yeah,
159 00:28:50.390 ⇒ 00:28:55.850 Jovanne Saldierna: as I mentioned earlier, the data always tells a story, so the data kind of tells you what happened.
160 00:28:55.950 ⇒ 00:29:00.050 Jovanne Saldierna: And then, my job is to tell them what it means, and then what to do about it.
161 00:29:01.820 ⇒ 00:29:18.100 Jovanne Saldierna: at M&A, as I mentioned before, whether it be an AR concentration risk that I found through the analysis, I didn’t just hand them, like, a spreadsheet. I kind of told them, like, hey, here’s the risk, and then I connected it to a strategy about what decision they should make.
162 00:29:18.220 ⇒ 00:29:22.929 Jovanne Saldierna: And of course, that’s up to them. And then at HCA, kind of the similar thing is I…
163 00:29:23.110 ⇒ 00:29:32.660 Jovanne Saldierna: went ahead and translated our go-live kind of risk, where we were falling off at within each facility, and then I gave the leadership
164 00:29:32.930 ⇒ 00:29:36.630 Jovanne Saldierna: recommendations that I believe we should employ.
165 00:29:37.960 ⇒ 00:29:46.330 Jovanne Saldierna: And then, I feel like, with it, it’s just good analytical communication. Does this person leave the room knowing what decision to make? Because…
166 00:29:46.890 ⇒ 00:29:59.180 Jovanne Saldierna: That’s my job, is to find the number, but also tell a non-technical stakeholder, like, hey, this is what this number means, this is what you should do. If you don’t, there’s this risk, and let them kind of make that decision on their own.
167 00:29:59.340 ⇒ 00:30:12.889 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay, cool. Okay, that’s helpful. So, thinking about this role specifically, one of the things that’s really important is, like, managing client relationships. So this is partly, while this is a technical role.
168 00:30:12.930 ⇒ 00:30:29.889 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s mainly oriented toward, like, account management of clients and their technical projects. So, everyone who’s… everyone who’s at Brainforge is at least… at least somewhat technical, who’s on the delivery side of the business.
169 00:30:29.890 ⇒ 00:30:33.250 Greg Stoutenburg: But a lot of this is, like.
170 00:30:33.250 ⇒ 00:30:57.789 Greg Stoutenburg: Regular outreach to clients, making sure that they are satisfied, making sure that the various things that we’ve committed to doing for them are proceeding on time in a satisfactory way, that our deliverables are high quality, and, you know, understanding, being able to listen to and understand a client’s needs, and, sort of anticipate where they’re going to want to go next, or what sorts of, you know, objections or thoughts they might have about
171 00:30:57.790 ⇒ 00:31:03.890 Greg Stoutenburg: Say, a presentation that you put in front of them, or, you know, questions about things like data sources.
172 00:31:03.890 ⇒ 00:31:06.280 Greg Stoutenburg: We find ourselves in a business where
173 00:31:06.420 ⇒ 00:31:24.550 Greg Stoutenburg: the folks that we’re dealing with are, you know, they’ve got some technical knowledge, but not nearly as much as we do. So, so the quality work is important, but so is just, like, working with them. How would you feel about being in a role that’s client-facing in that sort of way?
174 00:31:25.040 ⇒ 00:31:25.700 Jovanne Saldierna: Yeah.
175 00:31:25.750 ⇒ 00:31:40.369 Jovanne Saldierna: I love it. That’s essentially what kind of brought me to this company, as well as this role specifically, was the client engagement aspect of it. I love being technical, and I love getting into the nitty-gritty and kind of tweaking out on the data myself. However.
176 00:31:40.370 ⇒ 00:31:47.560 Jovanne Saldierna: I do find joy in kind of speaking with people. I feel like I have a pretty personable personality, and…
177 00:31:47.560 ⇒ 00:31:58.809 Jovanne Saldierna: I’ve always gone along with everyone, however, I love just… I don’t just want to be, like, put in a corner and just sat there and just typing. I like the conversation aspect of it, the relationship building. It’s something that…
178 00:31:59.010 ⇒ 00:32:00.840 Jovanne Saldierna: I’m used to,
179 00:32:01.220 ⇒ 00:32:11.950 Jovanne Saldierna: with HCA, it was just a different kind of audience. It was with business owners of nursing, medications, non-meds, registration, they’d reach out to me.
180 00:32:12.060 ⇒ 00:32:15.800 Jovanne Saldierna: I meet with them, try to figure out how we can help them, and then…
181 00:32:16.110 ⇒ 00:32:28.589 Jovanne Saldierna: Same with M&A, but M&A was more so with leadership, and they weren’t as technical. They were mostly non-technical, honestly, but I enjoy it. I enjoy it more than anything, so I feel very comfortable.
182 00:32:28.590 ⇒ 00:32:34.619 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, okay, cool. Alright, just in the last little bit here, are there any questions you’d like to ask me? I’m just…
183 00:32:34.620 ⇒ 00:32:49.599 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m just someone who’s on, you know, sort of the same track that you’d be in if you were hired at Brainforge. I’m not, you know, in recruiting, I don’t, like, make the decisions or anything like that. But, you know, if you have any questions about, like, you know, life at Brainforge or anything like that, I’m happy to try to answer.
184 00:32:49.640 ⇒ 00:32:59.180 Jovanne Saldierna: Yeah, honestly, with the life of, like, Brainforge, I guess, like, what is your favorite part about the company, and joining here, being that you were a professor at York beforehand?
185 00:32:59.480 ⇒ 00:33:12.319 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I mean, well, I started being a professor in 2021. Since then, I’ve been to a few other, SaaS companies as a growth product manager. But, I, I mean, I think… I think I’d say
186 00:33:12.320 ⇒ 00:33:19.459 Greg Stoutenburg: two things, mainly. One… well, actually, this is sort of just the same thing. The velocity of learning.
187 00:33:19.460 ⇒ 00:33:36.139 Greg Stoutenburg: I… I cannot believe how much I’ve learned… I started here in January. I cannot believe how much I’ve learned since the beginning of January. It’s kind of astonishing, and I’m really grateful for it. So, you know, and that’s because I’m… I’ve just been exposed to so much more.
188 00:33:36.420 ⇒ 00:33:54.889 Greg Stoutenburg: business, and so, like, you know, it’s like, you know, they say as you go through your career, develop T-shaped competence, you know, breadth, and then pick what your depth is going to be. My depth would be, like, product analytics, but it was all in a SaaS context, and in the… in just the last few months, that just…
189 00:33:55.470 ⇒ 00:34:01.230 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, that’s gone down and wider, so I don’t know, getting a bigger T.
190 00:34:01.230 ⇒ 00:34:01.930 Jovanne Saldierna: 100%.
191 00:34:01.930 ⇒ 00:34:04.649 Greg Stoutenburg: I guess is sort of the main thing.
192 00:34:05.350 ⇒ 00:34:11.570 Jovanne Saldierna: I love that. I mean, I think that’s honestly one of the biggest things about a company, is just learning. It’s being able to…
193 00:34:12.310 ⇒ 00:34:15.589 Jovanne Saldierna: Not find fulfillment doing the same thing every single day, but also just.
194 00:34:15.590 ⇒ 00:34:16.150 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
195 00:34:16.150 ⇒ 00:34:23.960 Jovanne Saldierna: it’s really good for the brain, and I’m… I get into this, like, weird kind of things where I don’t want to develop Alzheimer’s. Yeah, yeah.
196 00:34:23.960 ⇒ 00:34:28.770 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, well, I forget which way it’s supposed to go, right? Too much brain activity also sort of…
197 00:34:29.050 ⇒ 00:34:33.050 Greg Stoutenburg: fries some connections, I don’t know. Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure.
198 00:34:33.659 ⇒ 00:34:36.500 Jovanne Saldierna: I guess… and then, thank you for sharing that, by the way.
199 00:34:37.889 ⇒ 00:34:42.409 Jovanne Saldierna: For you, what did success kind of look like within the first, like, 90 days?
200 00:34:42.409 ⇒ 00:34:51.499 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s… I gotta tell ya, 90 days is totally… that’s a good question.
201 00:34:51.589 ⇒ 00:35:03.469 Greg Stoutenburg: At Brainforge, it’s more like day and a half. It’s like, you land and you go. So… I mean, I think success ultimately is…
202 00:35:03.909 ⇒ 00:35:08.059 Greg Stoutenburg: is sort of, like, getting acclimated to the company. It’s,
203 00:35:08.909 ⇒ 00:35:24.649 Greg Stoutenburg: for whatever projects you’re on, understanding the client’s stakeholders, their needs, their preferences, having, you know, building that relationship there. Sort of quickly demonstrating competence in a way that is… that inspires confidence in the client.
204 00:35:24.779 ⇒ 00:35:30.969 Greg Stoutenburg: Getting up to speed on the past history of the client engagement.
205 00:35:31.479 ⇒ 00:35:41.469 Greg Stoutenburg: And, you know, just really understanding it, you know, like the back of your hand. I think those are some things that I would say are, like, top priority from the moment you first log on.
206 00:35:42.290 ⇒ 00:35:45.419 Jovanne Saldierna: Love that. Yeah, no, 100%. And…
207 00:35:45.850 ⇒ 00:35:48.120 Jovanne Saldierna: One other question, if you don’t mind, was…
208 00:35:48.120 ⇒ 00:35:52.329 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, sure. I will have to hop right at 1.30 Eastern Time, but sure.
209 00:35:52.420 ⇒ 00:35:58.809 Jovanne Saldierna: Awesome. So, what was, like, the biggest issue, I guess, you ran into within onboarding and kind of…
210 00:35:59.140 ⇒ 00:36:00.340 Jovanne Saldierna: Getting started.
211 00:36:00.670 ⇒ 00:36:06.570 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, documentation being all over the place, disorganized Notion, disorganized Google Drive.
212 00:36:06.800 ⇒ 00:36:10.479 Greg Stoutenburg: Hmm. Github repo that was, like…
213 00:36:11.830 ⇒ 00:36:20.460 Greg Stoutenburg: beginning to have a structure. Or… well, that’s… actually, that’s unfair. Had a structure, but wasn’t sort of consistently followed.
214 00:36:20.500 ⇒ 00:36:31.090 Greg Stoutenburg: combine that with, you know, the need to go pretty fast for the business, and you end up, like, looking for stuff. So I found, in my first few weeks, you know, consistently having to say, like, hey, I’m trying to execute on this deliverable.
215 00:36:31.090 ⇒ 00:36:56.089 Greg Stoutenburg: ask, but, like, I can’t find this thing, and I’ve been looking for it for an hour, you know? So it was that kind of thing. And, you know, very much to their credit here, though, they take that feedback very seriously, and then, you know, the next morning you log on, it’s like, here’s this new cursor skill that you can just, you know, run into your AI. We use a ton of AI here. That’s part of the speed. So, it was, yeah, it was lack of that context, and actually, so
216 00:36:56.090 ⇒ 00:37:00.339 Greg Stoutenburg: So that is something I’ve pushed for. I am the person who goes, I need to know who these people are.
217 00:37:01.100 ⇒ 00:37:09.429 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, satisfied as their client success owner. So, yeah, but they’ve made significant improvements, especially in the last
218 00:37:09.820 ⇒ 00:37:12.060 Greg Stoutenburg: Five weeks on that kind of thing.
219 00:37:12.270 ⇒ 00:37:14.340 Jovanne Saldierna: That’s awesome, love to hear, but…
220 00:37:15.700 ⇒ 00:37:27.109 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, alright, well, hey, great to talk with you, I gotta hop for this other thing, and I’ll just, you know, they’ll have the recording, and I’ll share feedback with the team, and you’ll hear from Kayla.
221 00:37:27.110 ⇒ 00:37:29.709 Jovanne Saldierna: Awesome, I appreciate it. It was really nice meeting you. Thank you, Grace.
222 00:37:29.710 ⇒ 00:37:32.410 Greg Stoutenburg: You as well. Joanne. See ya. Bye. Take care. Bye.