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Ashley Ridgeway-Washington left healthcare human resources in 2021, burnt out due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It felt like the right moment to take a gamble and enter a sector she’d always been curious about: tech. She spent time at several startups before landing at Amazon.
“I learned two critical things about myself,” Ridgeway-Washington says. “First, I prefer people to widgets. My heart lies in work where I’m impacting the lives of people, where the service we’re selling is about people and enriches lives. Second, I learned that sometimes you need disruption to accelerate.”
Ridgeway-Washington’s brief career disruption ultimately brought her back to healthcare. In July 2023, Ridgeway-Washington assumed the role of senior vice president and chief human resources officer at JPS Health Network.
“I want the employee experience to be so positive that it’s something our patients feel.”
Ashley Ridgeway-Washington
Though she realized working in the tech sector wasn’t exactly her sweet spot, the experience was a masterclass in globalization, design thinking, and service excellence. Ridgeway-Washington became fluent in Lean Management and Service Excellence, a depth of expertise she might not have achieved in healthcare alone.
She notes, “In healthcare, we’ve always had an inherent customer base, which contrasts sharply with the tech sector. In tech, you have to create value and win the customer over daily. I believe that this is possible in healthcare too. Today, I have a much more customer-centric perspective. It has reframed how I drive value through the HR organization.”
“We are honored to partner with a visionary leader like Ashley Ridgeway-Washington,” Lance Pendley, senior vice president – employee benefits, McGriff. “Ashley is someone who’s always looking ahead and advocating for her team members at JPS. She’s a servant-leader who knows how to inspire employees to deliver nothing less than the best in patient care. Our role is to help her deliver best in class employee benefits so team members can focus on those patients.”
Stepping away reinforced all the things she loves about working in healthcare and allowed for her next great chapter.
Returning to healthcare may have felt like coming home, but Ridgeway-Washington wasn’t interested in the status quo. Since coming to JPS, the CHRO has launched an assessment of what the HR organization is doing well, where it can improve, and how to build a best-in-class experience for patients and team members at the Texas-based system. Ridgeway-Washington says, “HR is on a transformation journey, we want to ensure that we are positioned to drive strategies and initiatives that support the organization in delivering on our mission and impacting the communities we serve. We are assessing our processes and tools to focus on system harmonization, and value creation … not just implementing bells and whistles.”
Her approach for assessing technology is three-pronged: does it enhance system harmony, create accessibility or improve efficiency, and does it simplify. If technology is the answer, or part of the answer here, then it must make sense. I’m most concerned with making people’s work more efficient and their lives easier.”
Some early wins have come in the form of JPS’s enhanced culture of employee engagement and commitment to total wellness. In 2024, JPS won the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award. An honor bestowed upon just fifty companies across the globe participating in the Gallup Employee Engagement Survey. “This was a tremendous honor, and it validated the great work we are doing every day at JPS to engage and retain the best and brightest in healthcare. When 95% of your employees rate you in the 97th percentile of employee engagement, that’s huge.”
The system’s total wellness approach is a true driver of employee engagement. JPS has added daycare as well as caregiver support for staff who may be taking care of family. After seeing rising cases of colorectal cancer, JPS responded by providing at-home screenings for staff so they wouldn’t have to wait to schedule and undergo a colonoscopy. The company also introduced a weight management program that provides employees and their families with access to fitness and health coaching. In 2024, employees at JPS joined together to track more than 300 million steps and, together lost more than 5,600 lbs.
“Many of the resources we’ve rolled out are extended to our employee’s family members and employees who don’t choose to have health coverage with us,” the CHRO says. “We want our team members to have access to holistic health and lifestyle offerings like financial wellness and mental health tools.”
The CHRO knows exactly what she wants her legacy to be. She wants to have a substantive and demonstrable impact on JPS’s employee experience so that employees can deliver excellent patient care.
“I want the employee experience to be so positive that it’s something our patients feel,” the CHRO says. “When they come to us, I want service excellence, quality and empathy to be palpable. I want to provide an employee experience that empowers team members to be their best at work and in life, because patient care is a calling and not just a job.”
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This role, like so many others in Ridgeway-Washington’s career, places the leader at the intersection of people and possibilities. The HR leader says she has always been a connector—the person in her neighborhood who reminded everyone on Tuesday, that the ice cream truck was coming on Thursday, and helped everyone assemble their change and get lined up. She was the one who scheduled a meeting with the principal in seventh grade to create a peer conflict resolution team, after years of informal mediating peer squabbles on her bus route. Ridgeway-Washington is a natural problem solver and fostered a positive experience for those around her.
“I believe in holding the vision for others and getting people excited about what the future can be,” the leader explains. “That’s where I get energy. It’s at the core of who I am.”
While fully committed to her work at JPS, Ridgeway-Washington is also deeply passionate about looking for new ways to expand her reach. She’s writing a book about the power of courage as a tool for transformation. She mentors young professionals and offers executive coaching through community organizations to empower individuals that typically lack access to advanced leadership development resources.
“I prefer people to widgets. My heart lies in work where I’m impacting the lives of people, where the service we’re selling is about people and enriches lives.”
Ashley Ridgeway-Washington
The healthcare leader is also an active member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and has leaned into more public speaking work in the last few years. Ridgeway-Washington aims to use her platform to bring attention to issues she cares about.
Despite everything on the SVP’s plate, she still finds a way to read between seventy-five and a hundred books every year. Books are the leader’s happiest place, offering reflection, escape, or just a few minutes of thinking about the possibilities of another time and place. Because of all things, Ridgeway-Washington remains focused on the opportunities that lie at the intersection of people and possibilities. Building a legacy that comes from a life dedicated to shaping a future defined by excellence, empathy, and impact that her children and community can be proud of.
Cigna Healthcare is a health benefits provider that advocates for better health through every stage of life. We guide our customers through the health care system, empowering them with the information and insight they need to make the best choices for improving their health and vitality. Products and services are provided exclusively by or through operating subsidiaries of The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI), including Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company, Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, Evernorth Health companies or their affiliates and Express Scripts companies or their affiliates. Such products and services include an integrated suite of health services, such as medical, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy, vision, supplemental benefits and others. Learn more at cignahealthcare.com.
When it comes to protecting what matters most in business and everyday life, we believe our clients should never settle for less than the best. For more than a century, we’ve relied on relationships, specialized expertise, and market-leading innovation to deliver insurance, risk management, and employee benefit solutions. Today, McGriff is part of Marsh McLennan Agency, with nearly $5 billion in annual revenue and 15,000 teammates across 300 offices in the United States. At McGriff, we believe every teammate has an obligation to help make our clients’ lives better and to help protect their most valuable assets.
