A Day in the Life at Cityblock

Marissa Giannetto '22 interviews Winston Huang at Cityblock about what a “Day in the Life” at the company looks like to provide care to underserved communities.

Winston Huang is the Chief of Staff to the CEO and Chief Health Officer at Cityblock, a primary care startup founded in New York in 2017 with the goal of providing care to underserved communities through personalized, prevention-oriented health and social care.

Marissa Giannetto: To start things off, could you provide a brief overview of your background and key responsibilities in your current role at Cityblock?

Winston Huang: My main responsibilities center around a few key areas. First is building and maintaining the rhythm of the organization: how do we organize our executive leadership layers, how do we surface issues for decisions, how do we ensure health information flows across different divisions. Second is serving as a strategic advisor and force multiplier for our CEO and Chief Health Officer: how can I be a set of eyes and ears that can assimilate information from different parts of the organization, and use that to help our co-founders see around corners and anticipate issues early on. Third is carrying forward a set of priority initiatives: how can I help drive forward key time-bounded initiatives that don’t yet have a clear home.

Prior to this role, I spent 18 months on the Growth team at Cityblock, working at the intersection of growth strategy, business development, partnerships, and strategic finance. Before Cityblock, I came out of management consulting at Deloitte, where I focused on building strategies for healthcare and nonprofit education organizations.

MG: What does a typical day look like for you in your role as Chief of Staff?

WH: I usually begin the day with a daily standup with our CEO and Chief Health Officer, where we orient each other on our priorities for the day and reprioritize if need be. I usually have a morning working session, either to work on my own independent initiatives, like prepping materials related to the next Board meeting, or working in conjunction with other leaders in the org on company strategy or business reviews.

Throughout the afternoon, I’ll usually have a mix of larger group meetings, external meetings, or one-on-one conversations. The topic of the day is always different – sometimes it’s a general catch-up and advice session with a peer, sometimes it’s a standing meeting to iterate on a recent org design decision, sometimes it’s an external meeting to pitch our model to potential investors or partners.

MG: When you were considering other roles, what was it about Cityblock that stood out to you?

WH: More than any other organization I’ve been as part of, Cityblock has chosen to dive headfirst into a problem space where current systems have failed and for which there has been limited investment— namely, providing high quality healthcare for marginalized communities. By far, the most common unifying factor for what brings people to Cityblock is a deeply aligned desire to work to break down systems of inequity. We do that by applying cutting-edge innovation, a technology DNA, and the empathy that comes from providing direct care. 

MG: What types of skills have you gained since starting this role?

WH: This type of role is particularly exciting, as it gives one a distinct sense of how an organization runs, particularly through the lens of the individual humans doing the work every day. You quickly realize that the best strategies, tactics, and operations break down if you don’t have a strong operating system for how teams relate to each other, how leaders show up, and how executives work to drive change amongst their direct reports. As someone who has spent a lot of time working at the 30,000-foot level, this work helps me think in less abstract terms and reminds me that, at the end of the day, the companies we work for are comprised of a collection of teams, and teams are comprised of a collection of humans.

MG: How did consulting prepare you for your role? On the flip side, what has been the biggest adjustment going from consulting to working at Cityblock?

WH: Consulting was instrumental for getting me to where I am today. At its core, the experiences in consulting provided the backbone for the really basic business skills that help one be an effective individual contributor. They're simple things like how to write a concise and direct email, how to convey a storyline through slides, how to maintain attention to detail while staying out of the weeds, but in a way, consulting provides a sort of “training wheels” environment to learn and fail and improve. Individual projects were also incredibly helpful for honing skills in specific domains (e.g., strategy, operating model, project management), as well as various industries.

Leaving consulting, I think the thing you learn pretty quickly is that while some of the structure and hierarchy in consulting is helpful, in the startup context in particular, going fast requires removing some of the formalities and polish that just take extra time. In some ways, it is possible to make slides that are too pretty!

MG: Overall, what has been your favorite part about your job so far?

WH: I continue to be awed by the sheer diversity of folks that we have at Cityblock. We are a healthcare services organization, technology organization, and corporate organization, all folded into one. It means that we are both an extremely vibrant community that draws people from all walks of life and that there are always ways to learn new things, try on new roles for size, and explore the lived experiences of others. We have folks who started in healthcare services and now work in the technology organization; we have folks who started on the tech side and now work on the corporate side; we have folks who split time between corporate and healthcare services. That is just not possible at companies that are narrower in scope.

MG: How has Cityblock adjusted during the pandemic? What have been some of the key priorities for the company during this time?

WH: Our focus from March of 2020 was to ensure that our members were safe, particularly since the folks we serve are disproportionately likely to be adversely impacted by COVID. We dramatically ramped up our telehealth visits, deployed a data-driven model to assess COVID risk, outreached to all of our members to make sure they had the support they needed, and stood up a community rapid response program to meet our members at home.

More long-term, we see COVID as hastening some of the broader trends we’re seeing in healthcare— namely the adoption of more flexible modalities of care, including virtual and home care, as well as a spotlight directed at our failure as a society to address the needs of underserved populations. Before we get there though, today we are still focused on making sure that our members are safe, cared for, and vaccinated.

MG: Looking ahead into the future, what are you most excited about for Cityblock?

WH: I think Cityblock’s future is incredibly promising. If we do our job well, we can dramatically scale a care model and care platform that brings truly positive health outcomes to individuals who have for so long been left behind by the social safety net in this country. We’ve proven that this model can work in the areas in which we’ve operated to date, and yet the size of the problem is still huge. This is a sobering thought, and at the same time a reflection of how much possibility there is for Cityblock, and others like us, to bend the curve towards greater health justice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marissa Giannetto is a first year 2Y MBA student. Prior to Kellogg she worked in management consulting and venture capital focused on healthcare innovation. Marissa is interested in finding digital solutions to improve health access to ensure affordable, convenient healthcare for all. At Kellogg, she is involved in the Kellogg Business of Healthcare Conference and is participating in Venture Lab to work with an early-stage medical technology startup.