Episode 3: Visionary Voices with Mike Mosquito

Larry Kaiser:
Hello, everyone and welcome to Visionary Voices, Optimum Healthcare IT’s conversational thought leadership podcast that hosts digital and technology healthcare leaders to discuss innovation and transformation. I’m your host, Larry Kaiser, Chief Marketing Officer at Optimum Healthcare IT. In this episode, I’m excited to welcome an award-winning innovator, business influencer, digital health evangelist and healthcare IT change-maker, Mike Mosquito.

Today we’re going to be diving into the power of a personal brand as a CIO and being an African American in healthcare IT. Mike, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me today.

Mike Mosquito:
Larry, thank you very much for having me. Glad to be here.

Larry Kaiser:
Awesome. We’re gonna get things going here with what I like to call—or what we like to call—Bandwidth Banter. It’s our fun take on icebreakers for IT professionals, and so let’s get started with that.

So, Mike, what was the last movie you saw?

Mike Mosquito:
Last Breath. My daughter’s birthday was last weekend, and she had a bunch of her girlfriends. So we decided to go to the movies, and we saw Last Breath, which is the movie about the pipeline that runs under the ocean—the guys that service that pipeline at deep depths. And it was based on a true story, and when something goes wrong… if you go, yeah. So it was.

Larry Kaiser:
Yeah, I think there was another—is that the one with—there was one a couple of years ago with Mark Wahlberg? I think that kind of explored the same thing with the offshore drilling.

Mike Mosquito:
Offshore drilling. Yes, yes.

Larry Kaiser:
Alright, cool. I haven’t seen that one. I’ll definitely check it out, though.

Mike Mosquito:
It was based on—

Larry Kaiser:
—a then true story. Those are my favorite kind of movies, to be honest. I like the true stories. They really add a level of intensity to the story, I think.

Mike Mosquito:
Yeah.

Larry Kaiser:
And they tend to hit the heartstring a little bit.

Mike Mosquito:
Yeah. Oh, my God!

Larry Kaiser:
So, alright, this one is always a controversial question. Are you Marvel, or are you DC, when it comes to superheroes?

Mike Mosquito:
Alright, I’m gonna tell you—I grew up DC, as most of us probably should have. I grew up DC. I actually collect series of comic books. There’s a comic book collection in my safety deposit box in here at the house. I grew up DC and converted to Marvel because of some of the character evolution that occurred. So I am—

Larry Kaiser:
Good.

Mike Mosquito:
An original DC, converted to Marvel.

Larry Kaiser:
Yeah, I think the answer I tend to get is very similar to that, right? I mean, I’m going to be 49 this year. So, you know—Superman, Batman, Aquaman—those were all the Saturday morning cartoons.

Mike Mosquito:
That’s it.

Larry Kaiser:
But as we’ve gone through, you know, now in the movie world, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is really what is the most powerful one out there. And DC has not done a good job—Warner Brothers hasn’t done a good job—of bringing those to life… so.

Mike Mosquito:
I 100% agree.

Larry Kaiser:
Anyway, I was born into DC. But I tend to lean towards Marvel now as well.

Mike Mosquito:
That’s it.

Larry Kaiser:
Alright, fair enough. Well, that was a fun conversation.

Mike Mosquito:
I appreciate that.

Larry Kaiser:
I’m sure our listeners are like, “Man, we don’t care about those things. Let’s get to the meat of the conversation.”

Mike Mosquito:
I’ll be using it, though. I’ll be using that one. No, Larry, that one’s coming back.

Larry Kaiser:
You know, we’ve had several episodes of the podcast so far, and that was the first time I’ve used that one. And I think it’s a fun one. You try to add a little levity to these things sometimes to keep people’s interest, and so forth.

Mike Mosquito:
Gonna be a little over, too. I’m saying—unappreciated.

Larry Kaiser:
Exactly, exactly. So, alright, well, let’s dive into the meat of the conversation here, Mike. You know, you’ve grown to be one of the most influential healthcare IT professionals in the country.

Whether it’s your work at several healthcare organizations, your work with HIMSS, your amazing recap videos, your buzz podcasts, and the countless speaking engagements that you have on the circuit—whether at all the different trade shows and so forth—I think all of the accolades you’ve received have been unbelievably deserved with the amount of success you’ve had in the industry.

So tell me, was healthcare IT your dream job early in your career? And if not, how did you find yourself in healthcare IT?

Mike Mosquito:
I’ll tell you, Larry, I have an engineering background. A lot of people don’t know that. So I started in the Air Force Academy. I also went to Auburn and Kennesaw State. And I started as an engineer. Mechanical major, materials minor. My MBA is in business information systems management with a specialty in IT.

And so I started designing point-of-purchase displays back in my early career. So I worked with Coke, Pepsi, and Gatorade and I had a company actually, before I left Auburn, an engineering company that I ran for a couple of years at postgraduate. And I received my first job when I moved over to Atlanta, and during the interview process the interviewer—his name was Mike Pinard—asked me, he said, Why are you here? You already have a company. I said, No, as a college student that was lucky. I don’t know anything. And I’m over here for you to teach me what I don’t know, and that’s everything of how to run a company from sales, operations, finance. I wanna learn everything you could throw at me outside of being an engineer, because that I do know what I’m doing.

And so I began that journey of being a business person along with an engineer. Well, the operations manager said, You need to go back to grad school to better yourself and career for later. So he was looking ahead at what I was doing for them at the corporate level. And so I went back to receive my MBA. And that was pivotal for me. That—George Thomas was his name—that gave me that opportunity. They paid for me to go back to grad school. Didn’t realize what that meant for me downstream. It meant a lot.

And so that put me on a track to not only running IT inside that engineering firm. So I ran all the operations for the servers. I had a Mac on one side of my desk. I had a PC on the other side of my desk, because I had to design in both. So I was already touching IT, so that MBA was only a launchpad for me, becoming a CTO. So that’s how I moved over in IT during the dot-com days of 2000–2001 and started developing portal technology. That portal technology created an opportunity for me to be called on by McKesson.

McKesson was developing the first patient portal or physician—which is what we now know as Epic and Meditech. So McKesson, back in the day—I was part of that group that developed that first technology. And that’s how I moved into that space. The informatics nurses taught me what I didn’t know as an engineer about healthcare. I spent the nights in the ED learning. This is how health care really happens. When there’s a computer that goes down, this is who it impacts.

And so my career in healthcare kind of started askew to being a doctor or nurse. It started by learning and watching how they interacted with systems. And that made me care a lot more how those systems were created, and how they had up time, and how they were supposed to be reliable for the patient and for the health system.

And so that was not my original path. I didn’t see me going down that path, but I learned to appreciate that path very much so after spending time with these nurses and doctors and other industry leaders that had lived this life. And so McKesson gave me that launch pad and I went from dot-com to Fortune 11 company that was killing it in healthcare.

Larry Kaiser:
Very cool. You know, I’m kind of the same way. I’ve been in healthcare now, and in my 21st year, and I got my start doing RFPs way back when at a company that doesn’t even exist any longer. And if you would have told me when I took that job that I would have been in the same industry for as long as I have been…

It was that one person who I worked for who encouraged me to not just do RFPs, but to take the opportunity and dig in and learn and ask the questions, which brought me to being in the same industry. So I definitely can relate to that. And you know, it’s obvious that you’re kind of like—your AHA! moment was that guy telling you, you need to go back and look at it this way.

Mike Mosquito:
Well, his words were, he goes, You’re gonna hit a ceiling that you don’t know is coming. You’re gonna wonder why you can’t get to the next level. And you need that education at that next level to be able to compete. Because it’s great, you know, you got schooling all over the place—you’ve been to, like, an academy, you finished Auburn with an engineering degree. He goes, But this next level requires you to dig a little deeper.

And I think that’s part of—when I go back and mentor at colleges, universities, Larry—it really is what I tell students. They say they’re gonna create the next app. And I’m like, So you’re a one-percenter before you ever understand what a job looks like for yourself. And that’s great to have those aspirations. But hard work cannot be replaced. You have to know, correct, correct, and know.

Larry Kaiser:
What I like to say is that everything that I have achieved, I’ve earned, and I’ve worked myself to the bone to get. So I agree, 100% with that one.

At what point—either before you graduated Auburn or before you went back for your MBA—did you attach to the idea or the concept that you need to build your own brand? And who you are and what you do and what you say. When did that come into the fold for you?

Mike Mosquito:
It came into the fold pretty early in my career, because while at that first job as engineer, twice I was on magazine covers for engineering excellence. So Coke’s Magazine and Mead’s Point-of-Purchase Display Magazine. My face is on the front of it for a patent for tracking bottles and serving bottles in quick-serve gas stations and grocery stores and designing these new innovative ideas.

So I was a face of some of that technology back in the day and the marketing team was like, One, you can speak about the technology you sell without selling. And you’re able to have a camera in front of you without freezing and locking up. So you’re the guy.

And so for me, it was really about understanding that you’re representing a brand of the company—but of yourself, too—when you speak and you’re seen. And back in those days, there weren’t too many that looked like me around. So I was a unicorn in the room when I walked in.

But then, once they realize, Oh, that’s the guy that was part of that patent—part of that group that delivered that system—that’s what changed those dynamics in the room for me to be able to have a voice.

Larry Kaiser:
Yeah. So you know, being African American and coming up into just the business world as a whole, it sounds like really identifying and creating that brand right away was very helpful in effect to have people not necessarily just identify you as Mike Mosquito, African American, but as Mike Mosquito.

Mike Mosquito:
100%. I will tell you, back in the day, you didn’t have iPhones. You didn’t have, what we have now is Zoom. So they only heard the voice. So, you walk into a room and my brothers, and I have 2 brothers, Rodney and Tony, and we always laugh. It’s like you walk into the room, and they haven’t seen you, but then they hear your voice like, “Oh, you’re Mike,” so it’s one of those where you hope that the words you’ve spoken and the voice you’ve given receives anything that may be seen. So I remember walking back in the early days of healthcare walking in the room. Many may know Christopher Cunning. He and I were, would walk into a ballroom and guess what?

We’d look around and like… so we’re the two- only two African Americans in the whole room. That’s because we are there to blaze a trail to make that change for other African Americans to come behind us, reach back, pull forward, and give a diversified voice in the audience, a reality of what it’s like to deliver care from a different perspective. And hopefully that gets attuned to how technology processes. Outcomes are being delivered for the patient inside the health system across our industry. And so that’s why I think it’s important to have those voices and those perspectives.

Larry Kaiser:
100%. You obviously, you mentioned it earlier, and I think anybody that knows you, knows that. You know you were in the, you were in the Air Force, and I’m sure that experience played a huge role on how it shaped you as a leader. Is there a profound lesson you learned during that time in the Air Force that you bring to yourself as a healthcare executive?

Mike Mosquito:
I think, coming in… my father came over from Panama when he was very young, and so he taught us to work hard, no matter what you’re doing, work hard. He wasn’t in the military, but all 3 of us served. I have 2 brothers that are in the Army. I was Air Force. And it was really about how we were structured before we went to those—two of us attended academies or institutes. My brother Memorian Military Institute. And so it was really about when we went there. It wasn’t hard. Some students struggled. Some cadets struggled going into that environment. For us, it was about, we’re here because we’ve chosen a path that’s going to give us an opportunity that others don’t have. And for us to, we’re leaders. And we like leading. We like orchestrating a concerted effort that delivers on a mission.

And I think that’s one of the reasons I stayed in healthcare while I’m able to develop out, ran emerging technologies at McKesson. That military background gave me structure, and it gave me a fire to be able to lead and know how to lead those that didn’t have, didn’t have a path in front of them. They either were sent there by their parents, or they didn’t want to attend a military academy when they could have been partying every Saturday night. They chose to come down that path.

And so I think when you’re in the military, it gives you some structure. From the time you wake up. What’s the first thing you do? Well, it’s the first thing I still do. I make my bed when I get up in the morning. Right? It’s the little things that you do that you gain that perspective on early in a military career that gives you structure and guidance later in your career. And I think you’ll find a lot of our CEOs of the world. A lot of them have a military background. A lot of them have an engineering background. That structure gives you guidance.

Larry Kaiser: I agree with that 100% as someone who did not serve or has a family member that has served. You know I did have a father who gave me a lot of that structure. So I knew when I was, you know, 13, 14 years old what I was gonna do with my career. You know. So I had that. But not having the military side of it, I’ve always appreciated the people I’ve met and talked to in the industry who have, because it’s very interesting to watch them go throughout their day or do their job because they’re very regimented. They’re very task-oriented, and they tend to do a very good job of implementing their—

What they learned in the military to structure them to their team. So, let me ask you that question. Then how do you take your knowledge, and the behaviors and everything learned in the military, and then apply that to the teams that you’ve run over the years to make sure they are running efficiently and effectively, and are regimented and so forth?

Mike Mosquito:
I like that. I’ve said many times on stage. I don’t want to be the smartest guy in the room. I want to be the smartest guy that put the right team together in the room. I believe in growing teams that could be tactical. That could be strategic. That could be operational. And you find those right people. I think that’s what’s required in today’s environment. Being able to notice how to put a team together that could deliver on plan, and for me over the years, whether it was at McKesson or Eclipsys, Allscripts, all these other companies, consulting, it was how, especially in the consulting world—how do you put a team together to go interview and deliver on a project?

And whether that was in healthcare or outside of healthcare, because a lot of people don’t realize that—don’t even know that I’ve delivered services, solutions, or technology in every industry except oil and gas. And I’ve had to put teams together to deliver each one of those industries, and whether it was SaaS or cloud, or what have you—it was about how to put a brain trust together that a client could believe in, and that I could believe in. I don’t do bad checks. I trust that I’ve hired you to do a job, and I expect that job to be done.

And if it’s not…

Larry Kaiser:
Yes, sir.

Mike Mosquito:
We’ll have to cross that chasm at that time, and I’ll have to either help you get retrained, or we’ll, as we call it, return you to the community. And so it is. How do you grow a team? And how do you ensure that team can deliver? And everyone has their challenging days. Everyone can’t be a hundred percent. But how do you grow that team that can lift each other up when someone’s sliding down?

I like building those teams. I just had a launch party for the podcast in Vegas last week. And I wasn’t on point for putting all that together. I had to trust a team to, when I landed, what needed to be done was gonna be done, and there was no reason. When things went wrong, they were worried. I’m like— I trust you to deliver, that is not on me to worry. Everything delivered perfectly, because I think we can stress our teams out unnecessarily. If we keep stepping in, stepping in—bed check, bed check. I think you take power away to be able to deliver.

Larry Kaiser:
Yeah, I’m the same way. You know, I love building teams. I love mentoring people. This is probably the second or third time that I’ve mentioned it on the podcast already about mentoring people. And you know, it takes a certain level of hit or miss sometimes in building that team and realizing, okay, I’ve made a bad hire. Let’s go ahead and return that person to the community and find somebody else. But you’re 100% right—nail on the head. You have to empower your employees, not micromanage your employees. I definitely can again agree with a lot of things you say. You and I are always on the same page. We talk about this stuff.

Alright, let’s shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about a topic you and I have talked about before—about equity and representation in healthcare. The latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census shows that the percentage of healthcare information leaders who identify as Black or African American is shrinking. In 2011, it was 14%. Last year, 2024, it was 9%. So with that being said, what do you think the healthcare industry can do better in attracting a diverse workforce within the IT space?

Mike Mosquito:
Well, I mean part of that is showing—it never bothered me, because there was no one before me, right, for me to look forward to in this industry. One, that was my upbringing. My parents were like, go blaze your trail. Don’t worry about what others are thinking or looking at—what you’re seeing. Follow your path.

I think today the youth want to see people that look like them going down that path to make them feel comfortable going down these spaces. For me to go speak at a historically Black college and introduce this theme is important. I think it’s more so important for these students to understand why they need to have a voice in this industry, because they need to be able to be their biggest supporter and proponent of how healthcare engages their communities that look like them.

They need to know that narrative and that story, and I don’t think we tell it enough. I don’t think it’s requested enough. Healthcare is what it is, and you get what you’re going to get with the people who are here. But I think we miss how to get that different voice and perspective and mentor the next generation of collective voices that give a better outcome of healthcare in these disparate communities.

They need to know how to address these communities—where to go in these communities and have a conversation. How do you understand that the barbershop is a melting pot? The community center is a melting pot of information. And there needs to be someone that looks like us in that community.

Now, what does that mean? That means you have to be educated around those conversations at a corporate level, because that offering comes from corporate down through that voice. If that voice isn’t sitting in a seat, it’s delivered from someone that’s not from that community or doesn’t look like they live in that community.

I think you’ll find there’s a group of CIOs and executives around healthcare—you’ve seen me on stage with several of them—and those voices believe in mentoring and giving back and pulling those voices forth. But there’s not enough, and that’s why it’s shrinking. There’s not enough of us who are in the fourth gear of our career. Some of us have a fifth gear. Some of us don’t.

But we’re in that part of our career where we’re trying to work feverishly to mentor at universities and pull that voice forward. When I go back to my alma mater, Auburn, I speak to the Black unions that are educating students on why they need a professional view of themselves.

They need to have a brand for themselves, no matter what industry they’re in—but especially in healthcare. Right outside of that is Tuskegee, which we all know has a tainted history around healthcare. So why do you need to be educated in this industry? You live around it every day. You see it every day. It doesn’t matter what neighborhood you live in—it’s still around you. I live on the perimeter of Atlanta, and it doesn’t take too far of a drive south before it hits you in your face.

Larry Kaiser:
You know, I think a show like ViVE does a really good job of trying to push that—mentoring. They have their special sessions or collective groups, and they have “Black at ViVE,” they have “LGBTQ+ at ViVE.” I think they do a really, really good job of bringing those groups together and lifting each other up, and then really emphasizing the need for exactly what you said—to mentor and to educate the up-and-coming on what it takes to be a professional.

Because in some cases—and I’ve met several—whether it’s white, Black, Asian, whatever, they didn’t have the direction. They didn’t have that mentorship growing up. And it’s fascinating, and sometimes very sad, to see how someone can be incredibly smart, but without the correct guidance and the correct mentorship, will not go to a particular career because they don’t think they can cut it. Because they haven’t been supported enough or mentored or educated enough to get there.

Mike Mosquito:
That’s 100% correct. If they don’t see a path for themselves or get guidance in that… Even one of my mentors was outside of healthcare, but he brought me in. He’s a board member for a large telecom company—the only African American on the board—and he was one of my biggest mentors.

Still today, I can pick up the phone and call him, and he will give me that guidance. He’ll say, “Maybe you should think about it like this,” because we all have that left shoulder and that right shoulder talking to us when we’re coming up through our career. You need that third shoulder to be able to lean on and help give you guidance. And I think there are fewer shoulders now. That’s why that number—14% moved to 9%—there are fewer shoulders to lean on, and there’s less optics around seeing what looks like me in this industry.

Larry Kaiser:
So let’s go last question here, and we’ll call this an opportunity for you to be a mentor to anybody who’s listening to the Visionary Voices podcast.

What is one thing that you would share with somebody who is looking to achieve the same level of personal or professional success—not just in healthcare, but in any industry—that you would give them?

Mike Mosquito:
One—educate yourself on your industry and keep educating yourself in that industry. Find a mentor—not necessarily in your industry—but someone who has seen success and keeps seeing success. Your education and being educated enough to know that you need help will help you get to that next rung.

I’ve been successful because I stay attuned in my industry—on the topics of technology, emerging technology, healthcare, and how it’s touching the patient, the doctor, the operational team from IT, and the financial team that has to purchase IT.

That education for me keeps me on the forefront of being able to walk onto a stage with the likes of Microsoft or CMS and have a very candid conversation about what’s good, bad, or ugly in our industry—and be able to back it up with evidence. I think that if students start in a place like that—of educating themselves about the industry they’re going into—and then they find a mentor that can help pull them along, that breeds success.

Larry Kaiser:
I think that is an outstanding recommendation, so thank you for that. Well, I enjoyed this conversation immensely, Mike. So thank you very, very much for joining us today.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience around personal brand, which I know is your favorite thing? It’s my personal favorite thing. I love watching you in the industry. But is there any last thing you want to share with anybody?

Mike Mosquito:
Yeah. I wrote an article not too long ago on LinkedIn—“Your brand should never have a day off.” And I think that no matter where you are, somebody’s always watching you. They’re always listening to you. It’s okay to have fun, but know that if you’re in this career to have growth, make sure your brand is always on. Make sure you’re always putting that in front of you so that people see that when you’re serious about what you’re doing, your intent is earnest, and your delivery is true.

My brand is always with myself and the folks around me. People know that I have a cast of CIOs and CXOs that are in the industry—we have fun together—but the brand is, we deliver on what we’re talking about. If you are intent on this, make sure you hit your social media.

And I’ll tell everyone—please do not send me a LinkedIn request if you haven’t put a picture on your profile. Because that’s about like putting on your military uniform and forgetting all of your badging and your name tag. So upload a picture on your LinkedIn profile. People see you. People know you. They need to get to know you.

Larry Kaiser:
Yes, sir. Appreciate that.

Alright, well that concludes our discussion on Visionary Voices. Again, thank you, Mike, for joining us and sharing your insight. And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in to this episode of Visionary Voices, powered by Optimum Healthcare IT. And remember—the future of healthcare starts with your vision.

Catch you next time.