Spotlight: Anne Lang, director of healthcare finance
Based in Columbus, Ohio, Anne is a director of healthcare finance who recently celebrated her 15-year work anniversary at Sharecare this past January. Her work provides Sharecare’s account management team with key insights to measure and deliver our performance guarantees for clients. But Anne’s contributions extend beyond being a tenured employee and an all-star member of Team Sharecare. She’s also an avid explorer and outdoor endurance enthusiast, often in training mode during her free time or spending time with her daughter, Arbor.
Passionate about empowering women to explore and occupy outdoor spaces, Anne has spent the last several years as a lead navigator for her all-female adventure racing team and supporting her daughter’s participation in outdoor sports like cycling and rock climbing. In her most recent adventure, Anne led her team in the Expedition Ozarks race, a five-day, 390-mile course race, which included mountain biking, trekking, orienteering, pack rafting, caving, and rappelling.
During her spotlight interview, Anne shared her perspective on pursuing daily happiness. “Seek out things that serve you. If you notice that something is draining your energy battery, seek out support and help from those around you in order to change that into something that fuels you and your day-to-day life.”
Join us in celebrating Anne’s 15-year anniversary and read her feature below.
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Anne, can you tell us about your role?
“Healthcare finance” in my title is a little bit of a misnomer; my role aligns more with reporting and business intelligence. As the director of healthcare finance, my main responsibilities are managing performance guarantees (PGs) for our clients and overseeing our billing processes. PGs for our clients are contractually defined and range from measuring outputs like prompt service when members call customer service to the number of members engaging with our digital platform over a defined period, or evaluating the return on investment for one of our services.
Our guarantees vary across all different areas of our business and in their structure. We have over 300 PGs, and I work closely with my supervisor to report on the results on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, and annual basis. In addition to sharing outcomes with our internal teams, we create client-facing reports so that Sharecare customers can sign off on our performance. Beyond PGs, my work also includes coordinating with financial planning and analysis (FP&A) to get dollars recognized for PGs that were realized or return credits to clients where we have not met our guaranteed output.
Can you tell us about your journey to Sharecare?
I earned a bachelor’s degree in nutrition from Ohio State University. After working for a fitness club, I started as a health coach for Healthways, which was later acquired by Sharecare in 2016. Working here for 15 years, I’ve had several different roles and titles. After working as a health coach on the phone, I became a health coach manager within the call center in the San Antonio office. I then moved on to be an implementations manager, working with account management teams to ensure that the call center had everything they needed when we were supporting new products or new clients.
From there, I transitioned to working as an account manager for several years, until I transitioned to working on special projects – which is still kind of my role. I basically work on anything that helps improve our revenue streams and/or our efficiencies with our existing implementations. In my current role, I’ve spent the last several years focused on proactively seeking improvements for the business based on the PGs that I analyze. I am grateful for starting as a health coach. It has allowed me to understand the soup to nuts of our business.
What do you enjoy about working at Sharecare?
When I first started my career in fitness, I was excited to be in the health and well-being space but became disheartened while working in a role that focused more on sales and membership rather than improving people’s personal health. I love working at Sharecare because it’s entirely the opposite – I’m proud of the multi-faceted benefits our services provide to help individuals improve their health, while also encouraging organizations, health plans, and health systems to promote well-being for their populations.
I love the model of the services we provide, because all stakeholders benefit; it’s good for the individual, it’s good for whoever’s paying for the program, and it’s good for the growth of our business, which leads to increased innovation and offerings to help people everywhere manage all their health in one place.
I also love the people I work with. My colleagues are the key to my longevity at Sharecare. I’ve been really lucky to align with people who make me excited to come to work every day. My relationships with my peers keep me satisfied and motivated in my career.
How do you enjoy spending time with family outside of work?
I have a daughter Arbor, who’s 10 years old, almost 11. She biked her first 100 miles when she was seven years old, and we’re still really heavily engaged in cycling together. It’s amazing what kids can do when you don’t tell them what’s “normal” and what’s not. She’s also a rock climber – better than I am – and has been climbing since she was two and a half years old.
(Pictured above on the far left: Anne Lang and her team after finishing Expedition Ozarks, a five-day, 390-mile course including mountain biking, trekking, orienteering, pack rafting, caving, and rappelling.)
How do stay healthy, happy, and keep your RealAge down?
I’m an outdoor endurance junkie and I enjoy a bunch of bonkers athletic activities in the wilderness. I’ve run ultramarathons (meaning anything that’s over 26 miles) and have also done something called Adventure Racing, which has a set amount of time for you to move through the wilderness either on foot, by paddle, or on bike – using nothing but a map and compass.
Helping other women realize that the wilderness is also for them has been key for me in recognizing my place within a community. I enjoy participating in organizations like Trail Sisters, who work to make the outdoors and especially trail running events more accessible and fair for women. I’m also the lead navigator on an all-female team and I’ve been doing that for the last several years. It’s important to me to strive to inspire and encourage other women to be in outdoor spaces. In addition to the physical exercise the outdoors provide, participating in these spaces translates into keeping my brain, my heart, and my body happy.
Wow! How did you first get involved with all these outdoor endurance activities that you enjoy?
I’ve always loved the outdoors but what kicked things off is when I ran the Honolulu Road Marathon with my dad for his 50th birthday in 2013. After the marathon, I thought “I don’t want to run at all faster, but I think it would be fun to run longer.”
So, I ran my first ultra the spring after the marathon. I did a race where the goal was to run the loop as many times as possible within 24 hours. I figured if I hated it, I’d never be more than a half mile away from my car. But I loved it and ran 78 miles– so I proceeded to run my first hundred-mile foot race in the fall and have kept doing stuff like that. I’ve got a lot of great stories at this point!
