Hometown: Schroon Lake, NY
Graduating Class: 1992 BSIE
Career Overview: In January 1993, Angela Colden Lanning joined Premier as a data analyst and helped build Premier’s first quality benchmarking solution. She later became Vice President of Client Management, responsible for Premier’s performance improvement products. Currently, Colden Lanning is the Chief Operating Officer for Premier’s Informatics and Technology Services Group. She is responsible for the product strategy, product development, product implementation, customer support, training and data management for Premier’s product portfolio.
- What is the single most important experience or understanding you gained in the ISE department? The importance of being a critical thinker. I find that being able to use data to form an objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to make decisions and drive action has been vital to my career.
- What is the most pressing issue facing human society that engineers should be working harder to solve? In my opinion, we need more engineers to focus on healthcare delivery. While there continue to be tremendous advances in the medical field, we don’t make it easy for patients to access it and clinicians to deliver it safely. The technology systems and processes are fragmented and siloed. We need to improve data interoperability and integrate processes to make it easier for frontline healthcare workers to deliver cost-effective, safe care.
- What would you like to accomplish in your career? What are you most proud of so far? I would like to be known as a leader who mentored and helped other women grow and develop their careers. While there is more work to do, I am proud of the technology advances we make at Premier that help our hospital members drive high quality, safe, cost-effective care. I am also proud of being on the Premier team when we won the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award in 2006.
- If you were not in the engineering field, what would you likely be doing? If I were not in the engineering field, I would likely be doing something in the fashion industry. It feeds me creatively, and I am fascinated by the advances within sportswear and the focus on using sustainable materials.
- What advice do you have for current ISE students?
- Work Hard
- Explore opportunities across industries
- Recognize the value of people skills and networking
- Find a mentor and when the time is right, be a mentor