On this episode, we feature a conversation with Ashley Hammond and Stacey Lewis from the VA’s Pathfinder Program, part of the Department of Veterans Affairs Innovation Ecosystem. Pathfinder is a website and digital tool designed to facilitate designed to facilitate connections between external innovators, vendors, and VA employees in order to improve health care delivery for Veterans.

Stacey Lewis has served the VHA for over a decade in both clinical and administrative roles. She started her career as a Radiologic Technologist at the VA Maine HCS before moving under the Quality Management Service Line, where she now leads strategic operations as a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt Candidate at the New England Center for Innovation Excellence (NECIE). Stacey recently served as an FY23 VHA Entrepreneur in Residence Fellow with the VHA Innovation Ecosystem where she led the national design and implementation of the VA Pathfinder program. VA Pathfinder operates as the digital front door to innovate or sell to VA, with a back-end data solution that democratizes access for innovators and vendors, across all sectors, wanting to work with VA. Under her leadership and expertise, VA Pathfinder is poised to transform the way businesses innovate and sell within and across the VA healthcare system.

 Ashley Hammond is from Cincinnati, Ohio.  Ashley started her VA career in 2009 at the Cincinnati VAMC as an Administrative Assistant. Ashley entered the VA supply chain/logistics community as a Technical Career Field (TCF) Intern in September 2015 and graduated from the program in August 2017.  She has also held various positions within the Supply Chain, including Chief of Materiel Management. Ashley worked in the VHA Procurement and Logistics Office as a Project Manager. Ashley currently works in the Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics (OPAL) department in the Category Management Support Office (CMSO) as a Portfolio Manager, overseeing the Departments’ Information Technology category. Ashley also leads the Pathfinder program, an award-winning program which assists vendors in doing business with VA.

This week’s PsychArmor resource of the week is the PsychArmor course Course, Supporting Veteran-Owned Businesses: Supplier Diversity. In this course, you will learn strategies and best practices to implement Veteran supplier diversity in your business or organization.

 

You can see find the course here: 

This episode is sponsored by PsychArmor. PsychArmor is the premier education and learning ecosystems specializing in military culture content PsychArmor offers an. Online e-learning laboratory that is free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations.

 

Our theme music Don’t Kill the Messenger was written and performed by Navy Veteran Jerry Maniscalco, in cooperation with Operation Encore, a non profit committed to supporting singer/songwriter and musicians across the military and Veteran communities.