When Rebecca Shanahan was interviewing for her first general counsel position in health care, she was asked about her ability to transition from consumer electronics to such a highly regulated industry.
"I know all about charged-couple devices in a television, and I'm not an engineer, but I know how to sit down with the engineer and really understand [the subject matter] in a way that allows me to apply it to the law," Shanahan recalled telling the interviewer, speaking of her then-job as an in-house lawyer at RCA. "If I can do that, I think I can figure out health care."
For someone who enjoys challenges and problem-solving as much as Shanahan does, the move to health care was an opportunity to hone her "rapid-fire" legal skills while learning to become a strategic partner with the business.
And so began a new chapter in her career that spanned legal and executive positions at several health care companies and culminated with the role of chief executive officer at Phoenix-based Avella Specialty Pharmacy, which operates a chain of retail pharmacies that provide specialty medications to patients in the United States. Under Shanahan's leadership, Avella's sales have nearly doubled in the past three years likely one of the reasons why Ernst & Young recently named her Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 in the Mountain Desert region's health care category.
Shanahan spoke with Corporate Counsel about what it takes to step out of the GC role and into the CEO position and shared some personal insights from her journey to the top.
As the general counsel at Community Hospitals of Indiana the job Shanahan took after her time at RCA she offered to help a finance department employee charged with developing a strategy for recruiting primary-care physicians. Together, they created a legal structure that would house a recruitment process one so successful that an academic teaching hospital recruited her as a senior vice president to help build a primary care network of physicians affiliated with particular hospitals.
Since then, Shanahan has largely moved from GC duties to executive roles and board memberships. She credits her success in making the transition to her "capability of understanding not only the legal issues and the constraints that would be required by regulations, but also a true understanding of the business that I was providing those services to."
"As an in-house counsel, you can just see yourself as a lawyer practicing law with one client, but I saw it as being in the middle of the business," she said. "I got to understand everything that was going on with the company. And pairing that with the legal skills, natural curiosity and fact-finding and problem-solving skills you learn as a lawyer together makes you incredibly valuable to your organization."