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Andre Reid, senior vice president of compliance and internal audit and chief audit executive at Jackson Health System, has always been competitive. A former student athlete, he was invited to walk on to Florida State University’s basketball team.
These days, he’s transitioned to road cycling, and is team captain of Jackson Health System Miracle Riders. The team participates in the annual Dolphins Challenge Cancer ride with a focus of raising money for cancer research. “I just love competition,” Reid explains. “It’s about tenacity. In cycling, you have to be consistent and persistent, and always keep challenging yourself.”
He’s applied these lessons to his twelve-year tenure at Jackson, during which he’s risen through three different roles to the C-suite. Over the years, he’s reported to the Miami Dade Public Health Board of Trustees, overseen the internal audit and compliance departments, and led large capital program control oversight and cybersecurity-related pro-active audit engagements.
Reid, formerly the vice president internal audit and chief audit executive, took on his current combined leadership role after the vice president of compliance and chief compliance officer retired. The job was redefined to merge both the compliance and audit functions, which provided him the opportunity to bring a more proactive, strategic approach to both functions.
“I spent my first ninety days just making my rounds,” Reid explains. “I made sure to meet with everyone on the compliance team, leadership, and my peers in similar roles at other health systems.”
“Without the people, nothing moves forward.”
Andre Reid
That was a year ago. Currently, he’s working to implement standardization and structure in the delivery of service/projects and partnering with human resources to facilitate a change management training for the compliance team to help people talk about the idea of change and see the value in it.
“Everybody gets a little bit nervous when you start talking about change,” Reid admits. But, from senior leadership and the board member perspective, “I think they’ve seen some of the proactive value-add deliverables we’ve provided on the audit side to be more effective, efficient, and innovative. We’ve got the opportunity to do that on a bigger scale combining oversight of both the audit and compliance functions.”
Reid has never been one for cookie-cutter implementations or ideas. He’s attended numerous leadership conferences, including Dale Carnegie Professional Development Courses, and says the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein greatly informed his own leadership.
“The book talks about the idea that you sometimes have to push folks in uncomfortable situations in order to help them grow,” Reid explains. “It’s so true, and that resonated deeply with me. I do it with my team. They’re probably tired of hearing me encouraging them to grow.”
They’ve certainly grown, though. In the industry, the average audit department has approximately 70 percent of its staff certified in its respective fields. Reid’s team is nearing 100 percent. Reid’s former executive assistant is now an auditor on his team. His current executive assistant will be obtaining her bachelor’s degree this summer.
“You sometimes have to put folks in uncomfortable situations in order to help them grow.”
Andre Reid
The SVP doesn’t just happen to be around a lot of people interested in pursuing their professional development. He is a catalyst, an agent of growth, or, simply, a supreme nudger.
Reid is working on multiple projects that demonstrate the growth and evolution of his departments as well as their ability to add value. Several focus on controlled substance reconciliation (ensuring that the actual physical inventory of controlled substances matches the expected amount of inventory), while others aim to enhance collaboration between audit and compliance or work towards 100 percent population analytics to help mitigate sampling risk.
Reid is proud his internal auditing team is doing work that no other similar organization is pursuing, especially when it comes to controlled substance reconciliation analytics, cybersecurity assurance related work, and capital program proactive control oversight.
He’s also finding new ways to lead by serving on the financial committee board for Community Health Inc. of South Florida. Reid was identified by leadership at Jackson Health as an ideal candidate for the position and hopes it will open the door to more opportunities in board leadership.
“Even if you’re not working on the front lines, it feels good to help an organization behind the scenes,” the SVP explains. “I always keep in mind that you can learn so much from every individual, and so I continue to soak up as much as I can from all my colleagues and members of the board.”
More generally, Reid says, helping his people find their purpose is what really directs his own leadership. He understands the value of empathy and sees his job as one where supporting his people is paramount.
“From a technical standpoint, you need to see the big picture for the organization,” he explains. “But, at the end of the day, you need to remember that organizations are run by people. Without the people, nothing moves forward.”
