Interview with John Fiacco, CEO and President, Leavitt Partners Insight

John Fiacco is CEO and President of Leavitt Partners Insights. In this role, John oversees the vision and strategy of Leavitt Partners Insights, establishes best practices, leads team development, and ensures growth goals.

John most recently served as Senior Vice President of Corporate and Business Development at Connecture, Inc., joining the company after its acquisition of ConnectedHealth, the company he co-founded in 2009. As its CEO and co-founder John was responsible for ConnectedHealth’s growth strategy, business finances, and operations. He also worked with the company’s leadership team to create cutting-edge decision-support tools in the rapidly-changing healthcare industry.

Prior to starting ConnectedHealth, John served as Senior Vice President at Subimo, a company he co-founded in 2000. Subimo licensed an award-winning suite of health-care decision-support tools to health plans, employers and other businesses for use by consumers. John continued his involvement in business development by leading WebMD’s national employer sales team when Subimo was acquired by WedMD in 2006. Over the course of his career, he has also held positions at Cigna, Aetna, Caremark, Equifax, and Ernst & Young.

John graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor’s degree in human development and social policy and received an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

I had the opportunity to interview John and I am so grateful for his time and willingness to add value to me and my readers.

Who are Leavitt Partners? 

Leavitt Partners is a health care intelligence business. We help clients understand the evolving role of value in health care by informing, advising, and convening industry leaders on value market analytics, alternative payment models, federal strategies, insights into the insurance market, and alliances. Through our family of businesses, we provide investment support, data and analytics, member-based alliances, and direct services to clients to support decision-making strategies centered on the shift to value-based payments in healthcare.

As the CEO and President of Leavitt Partners Insight, what is your personal mission? 

We are the newest company in the family of businesses. Consequently, the future of the company is largely unknown. I intend to bring shape and structure to that future so that the company can grow, providing solutions the market needs and careers to the people that deliver those solutions.

How do problems in the company present themselves to you and other leaders?

We communicate very effectively, using video technology when we can't meet face-to-face, so we understand the nuance of comments made by team members. It is during these frequent meetings that we identify problems and determine the solutions that solve them.

What is the biggest problem you are trying to solve right now? 

We have a lot of opportunities and we need to choose from all of them so that we can focus on the few that will best meet the needs of our clients and be aligned with the mission of the company. It's a good kind of problem to have -- we have a lot of opportunities -- and I am confident that our team will find a good solution.

When it comes to the company, what are you most proud of?

As a young company, team dynamics are so important. We have a very talented team of smart individuals. Separately, they are very good. Together, they are great and are delivering a very unique and essential solution to the market.

If you could change one thing, what it would be? 

I would love to find a way to have more hours in a day.

What is a threat that is keeping you up at night? 

I worry about the new company, just getting started, that I don't know about yet. They may be more nimble, quicker to respond to shifts in the market, and have a unique insight. So, I talk to a lot of industry leaders to better understand their needs and continually think about how best to meet them.

How do you spend your day? 

My top concerns are that we have a good vision, the right people, and enough funding to make it all come together. Most of my day is spent meeting with colleagues to continue the development of our company's products and identify new opportunities. When I am not doing that, I will join our sales team in product demonstrations so that I can hear how our company's products are being received by prospects and clients. There is also administrative work like budgets and planning that makes sure our ideas are communicated and that we gain consensus internally.

What do you do when you are not at work? 

My wife of nearly 35 years and I raised three beautiful children, and we enjoy as much time as we can with them and their growing families. I enjoy CrossFit and earned their Level 1 Trainer Certificate about 18 months ago so that I could better understand it and incorporate it into my schedule. With my wife, we like to travel, particularly to wine-growing regions, where we gain a better understanding of the history, economy, and culture of the places we visit.

What is your desired outcome if we were to decide to do business together? 

I would like you to be so satisfied with the work our company does for you that you would recommend us to others.

John with his beautiful family!