Who We Are

Driving disruption from the Inside

The Providence Digital Innovation Group is a team of strategists, software engineers, marketers and investors focused on digital innovation that further Providence’s vision of “Health for a Better World.” The organization works hand-in-hand with clinical and operational teams at Providence to identify opportunities and deliver innovative solutions through the use of technology that will have an impact on patients, clinicians, communities, and the strength of our organization.

Video: A Conversation with Sara Vaezy (clip)

Teams

United in the mission to transform healthcare

Strategy & Commercialization

This team is charged with having a deep understanding of healthcare and the digital health market and is responsible for the prioritization of transformative digital opportunities. They build and maintain relationships with our B-2-B stakeholders across the industry including health system digital innovation teams, venture capital organizations, industry influencers and digital health organizations. And they bring the business expertise and support required to commercialize and bring our incubated technology to market.

Product & Incubation

This global team consists of gifted engineers, data scientists, product managers, researchers, and UX experts from the world’s top technology organizations. They incubate novel patient and consumer centric health care solutions and test, learn and prove value within Providence—and then package them for commercialization. The team is focused on building white-space health system-specific solutions not previously available in market, that transform healthcare.

Marketing & Digital Experience

This powerhouse team of world-class marketers, engineers, data scientists, e-commerce experts, and human-centered design specialists is responsible for bringing to life the Providence promise of “Know me. Care for me. Ease my way.” This customer-obsessed team drives growth for Providence’s key lines of business, provides an industry leading e-commerce experience, and develops platforms to make it easier for patients to get safe, quick, and easy quality care and information.

Think you might be a good fit for one of our teams?

Careers at DIG

Leadership

We draw our leadership and talent from organizations outside of traditional healthcare—bringing the expertise and mindset of disruptors, inside.

Sara Vaezy

Executive Vice President
Chief Strategy and Digital Officer

Andy Chu

Senior Vice President
Product and Technology Incubation

Shweta Ponnappa

Senior Vice President
Chief Marketing and Digital Experience Officer

Dana Langford

Director
Chief of Staff

How We Work

We believe health is a cooperative effort.

We value the need for combined expertise and are committed to building relationships across a diverse set of talent, partners, and systems. This isn’t a journey we can go alone.

We value informed action.

We balance our bias for action with a rigor that ensures there’s insight and information that support the direction we’re headed.

We take risks, so others don’t have to.

We’ve created an environment to fail fast and build confidence in solutions that can help better the health of all.

We
never
settle.

Both health and technology are ever-changing, so we operate in a state of continual improvement.

We design for them, not us.

We have a customer obsession and we constantly start by identifying the biggest issues THEY have and solving for them.

We’re opportunity, not technology focused.

The technology doesn’t matter unless you understand the need it solves. We don’t talk solution until we have a full understanding of what we’re solving for.

Our values

Compassion

We nurture the spiritual, emotional and physical well-being of one another and those we serve. Through our healing presence, we accompany those who suffer.

Dignity

We value, encourage and celebrate the gifts in one another. We respect the inherent dignity and worth of every individual.

Justice

We foster a culture that promotes unity and reconciliation. We stand in solidarity with the most vulnerable, working to remove the causes of oppression and promoting justice for all.

Excellence

We set the highest standards for ourselves and our work. Through transformation and innovation, we strive to improve the health and quality of life in our communities.

Integrity

We hold ourselves accountable to do the right things for the right reasons. We speak the truth with courage and respect. We pursue authenticity with humility and simplicity.

Sara Vaezy

EVP, Chief Strategy and Digital Officer

Sara Vaezy is Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Digital Officer for Providence where she is responsible for system strategy and digital innovation for the integrated delivery network (IDN) which includes 52 hospitals and 1,085 clinics and serves over 5 million unique patients.

Sara brings deep experience to the organization in both digital and enterprise strategy development and leads system strategy, the ongoing development and evolution of Providence’s integrated strategic and financial plan and cross-collaboration of the Providence councils as Providence continues to advance toward and design the system of the future.

Sara is the architect of the Providence digital innovation model upon with the Digital Innovation Group (DIG) was founded, resulting in company partnerships and incubation of technologies that deliver value for Providence as well as other health systems. The model has resulted in the commercialization of three incubated technologies into independent companies from within DIG—all of which are supporting Providence in delivering on its mission and vision of health for a better world. Her framework for building and maintaining deep organizational relationships with stakeholders across the industry has resulted in partnerships with over 150 health system digital and innovation teams, venture capital organizations, industry analysts and influencers, and digital health organizations.

Before Providence, she was at The Chartis Group, a health care management consulting firm, where she advised clients on enterprise strategic planning, payer-provider partnership, and the development of population health companies. Earlier in her career she worked at the intersection of health services research and health policy with the Office of Financial Management, the Office of the Insurance Commissioner, and the Health Care Authority in Washington State.

Sara is active in the broader healthcare industry serving as an NCQA Board Director, as a member of inaugural class of the Frist Cressey Ventures Collective, a Harvard Executive Education Faculty Member, a Health Evolution Forum Fellow, World 50 Digital 50 member, a Forbes Business Council Member, and a board observer for DexCare. She has won numerous awards and has been recognized as a Business Insider 30 under 40 Transforming the Future of Healthcare (2019), Catholic Health Association Tomorrow’s Leader (2019), a Becker’s Rising Star in Health IT (2020), and a Becker’s Women to Watch in Health IT (2020 & 2022).

She holds an MHA and an MPH in Health Policy from the University of Washington School of Public Health and BAs in Physics and Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Andy Chu

Senior Vice President
Product & Technology Incubation

Andy Chu serves as Senior Vice President of Product and Technology Incubation and is responsible for building world-class digital experiences for both consumers and caregivers at Providence and for incubating healthcare SaaS solutions that become commercial offerings for the broader healthcare ecosystem.

Prior to Providence, Andy held number of leadership roles in career management, travel, omni-channel commerce, search, consumer messaging and enterprise software including Microsoft to bring customer-centric, innovative, and profitable solutions to market. He brings over 20 years of cross discipline leadership experience in product, design, technology, business development and marketing—within both mature and start-up companies. He hold a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Shweta Ponnappa

Chief Marketing and Digital Experience Officer

Shweta Ponnappa is the Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing & Digital Experience Officer at Providence where she is responsible for system-wide marketing—including strategy, platforms and the consumer experience online. Shweta’s driving philosophy is to consider the consumer within the full context of their lives and connect them to the care they need through empathetic marketing and frictionless digital experiences.

In her seven years at Providence, Shweta has built the teams and technologies required to transition the organization toward digitally enabled experiences that drive business growth for the organization and deliver value for its patients. With a world-class team of marketers, e-commerce experts, engineers, analysts, data scientists, and consumer strategists, she stood up an industry leading e-commerce platform that delivers nearly one million online appointments annually and spearheaded the consolidation of over 50 web presences into the system’s largest digital touchpoint, providence.org.

With over 20 years’ experience in marketing, Shweta has led marketing functions at global eCommerce powerhouses such as Amazon. Shweta holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and a Masters in Information Technology and Management from the University of North Carolina.

Dana Langford

Director
Chief of Staff

Dana Langford is Director and Chief of Staff for Providence Digital Innovation Group where she has end-to-end responsibility for business operations and enabling the organization’s leadership team to fulfill the organization’s mission to re-invent health care.

Dana brings extensive experience building and managing industry-leading operations teams for tech companies. Her background contains a blend of program and project management, strategy, and technical operations. Prior to Providence, Dana was Director of Compliance Services at Avalara with a focus on operational efficiency and customer enablement. She spent 14 years at Expedia Group leading a variety of teams in the Program Management and Account Management space for the Media Solutions Advertising team.

Dana holds a Bachelor of English Literature from Portland State University.