Lanie Dixon

Education

• University of Michigan, Industrial and Operations Engineering, BSE, 2001
• University of Michigan-Flint, Organizational Leadership, MBA, 2016

Career summary

Lanie Dixon is Vice President of Patient Experience at Essentia Health, where she leads strategies to improve patient satisfaction, service recovery and loyalty. With extensive experience at the Henry Ford Health System, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Trinity Health, she’s skilled in HCAHPS performance, healthcare labor benchmarking and Lean methodologies like Six Sigma and 5S. Lanie is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and active in the National Association of Health Services Executives. She has served in leadership roles with organizations such as the University of Michigan Black Alumni, Michigan Hospital Association and the Institute of Industrial Engineers. Lanie gas also been honored as a Woman of Excellence by the Michigan Chronicle.

Q&A

What piece of advice would you give students looking to join the workforce?

You may be incredibly smart, but you don’t know everything. Much of what we do is help people improve processes and systems, and I firmly believe that the real source of truth about how work is done comes from the people doing it. Remember that you bring a valuable set of skills learned at U-M that can benefit many industries, but the true experts are those who perform the work. Approach these spaces with a humble mind and heart, and learn from those who do the job.

Why do you love your job in healthcare?

I’ve found something that brings together both sides of myself. I love data, spreadsheets, pivot tables, and things of that nature, but I’m also very much a connector and a people person. I can’t think of a better way to apply my skills as an engineer than by directly seeing how they impact people.