Win the Day, Every Day | Elizabeth Smyers

Elizabeth Smyers: So there’s a saying that a colleague has used for quite some time that has resonated with me, and that is go win the day every day. And I think I would give that advice, that show up, do your best, know what you are trying to do, but then the reason why it’s win every day, is you have to stay consistent. You have to have that discipline, and you have to have the process as well. 

Anderson Williams: Welcome to Everyday Heroes, a podcast from Shore Capital Partners that highlights the people who are building our companies from the inside, every day, often out of the spotlight.  

With this series, we want to pull those heroes out of the shadows. We want to hear their stories. We want to share their stories. We want to understand what drives them, why they do what they do, how they might inspire and support others to become Everyday Heroes too.  

In this episode, I talk with Elizabeth Smeyers, the Chief Innovation Officer at PRO-spectus. Elizabeth got into healthcare as an occupational therapist where she found profound meaning in directly working with and caring for patients. But her subsequent career journey has been one of constantly seeking to solve bigger problems and to build better systems to care for more patients. In addition to offering insights on her approach to her career, Elizabeth also uncovers lessons learned from a strange place, racing sailboats, lessons about team, and risk, and process that have driven her success at PRO-spectus. 

So welcome, Elizabeth. Will you just start us off by introducing yourself, giving us your name and telling us what you do and where you do it?  

Elizabeth Smyers: Sure. My name’s Elizabeth Smeyers. I’m our Chief Innovation Officer at PRO-spectus.  

Anderson Williams: And what does PRO-spectus do?  

Elizabeth Smyers: At PRO-spectus? We partner with pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to make access, affordability, and adherence easier and more effective across the patient journey. 

Anderson Williams: And give us a real world example of what that means. If I’m a patient and I’m looking for a particular therapy, what does that look like for you all?  

Elizabeth Smyers: We take on the more complicated parts of coding, coverage and payment. Anything from managing benefit investigations, prior authorizations, affordability programs, um, clinical adherence, all the way to revenue cycle support.  

Our focus is to remove the roadblocks that slow access down. Supporting manufacturers, everything from early stage strategy all the way through operational execution. But at the heart of it all, it’s really about compassion and purpose. Making sure that patients have access to the vital therapies they need with the care and the support that really makes the difference. 

Anderson Williams: So before we dive into your Everyday Hero story, is there anything about you that we can’t find on LinkedIn that we ought to know? Families, friends, hobbies, interesting facts, anything we should know before we jump into the business side of things?  

Elizabeth Smyers: Yeah, yeah, sure. So what you won’t find about me on LinkedIn is I’m an avid sailor. 

Yeah, exactly. My husband Paul and I am actually even a racer of sailboats, so you’ll find us probably most weekends on a little lake. Yes, there’s lakes and sailing in Arkansas of all things, and we’re out there racing, and that’s been something that has just really meaningful to me over the years. One, it’s just plain fun, but it’s also a really great way to just be very present in the moment of what’s ahead of you.  

So when we’re thinking about racing, you know the course is going to be different for the day. The winds conditions are going to be different. Ideally, we have the same crew, but we have to take all of those variables in that given day, juggle them, try and act as a team and not just yell at each other the entire time and figure out how to set that course and how to win. 

Anderson Williams: How did you get into that?  

Elizabeth Smyers: Uh, my husband actually, so our very first date, he took me out on a sailboat. That was a long time ago.  

Anderson Williams: Are you a risk taker? It sounds like. I mean, it’s one thing to go out on the lake in the pontoon boat and crack a beer or whatever. This sounds pretty intense and pretty risky. 

Elizabeth Smyers: I think that you’ll get variable answers from different people. Um, I think risk is calculated and I think that if you have a really good plan in place, you can measure the risk. Now, I think if you ask probably my parents, you might hear a little bit of yes, because we actually have sailed out on the ocean, um, away from shore, and there’s certainly risk associated with that. 

Anderson Williams: So you talked about being present, but what is it about that experience that hooked you other than the person you were dating at the time who became your husband? What hooked you about in the experience?  

Elizabeth Smyers: I think, I don’t know, it must just be the chemicals that you are able to trigger. There’s a level of adrenaline, but there’s also a sense of accomplishment in being able, again, to take all of those different pieces, figure out how to do something that is challenging and then just actually do it, execute on that. 

Anderson Williams: I’ve had the fortune of working with Elizabeth previously through the leadership development work PRO-spectus has invested in and was surprised by this unique passion I never knew she had. But then as Elizabeth described it, I was struck by her analysis and the parallels to the work. She helps lead at PRO-spectus. 

You can’t successfully do the work of patient access without a solid and consistent team. You can’t problem solve or innovate if you’re afraid of risk. You likely can’t create patient access if you can’t turn something that can feel like chaos into a workable plan and a clear set of goals to execute against. 

But I still wanted to know more about how she got there to that mindset and to PRO-spectus.  

So you started your career switching back to that as an occupational therapist. 

Elizabeth Smyers: Mm-hmm. Yep.  

Anderson Williams: Will you take us back to your career journey and tell us sort of how you started there and what brought you into healthcare and how that journey has evolved? 

Elizabeth Smyers: Sure. So I don’t want to turn this into school, but I feel like I need to explain first what occupational therapy is.  

Anderson Williams: For sure.  

Elizabeth Smyers: Most people don’t necessarily know that. So occupational therapy is about enabling or empowering people to do activities that are really meaningful to them. So that can be anything from getting dressed independently to being able to make a meal one handed, or even tying it back, being able to sail or travel with limited mobility. 

So I had the opportunity in high school to be able to shadow an occupational therapist and be able to see her do really just very skillful deep things like facilitate tone, do neuromuscular inhibition, being able to work. There was this one stroke patient that I got to observe her with. That she went through all of these very technical aspects, but then what they were doing, they were trying to make a pie. 

And since she was recovering from a stroke, that was a very meaningful thing for her to be able to do that for her family. And so that was such an aha moment for me when I saw, wow, you can take this science and all of this, meaning put that together and really do something for people.  

Anderson Williams: Well, I can’t help but jump ahead based on that, this sort of merger of science and meaning with where you are at PRO-spectus. How did you find PRO-spectus and where along the journey did you find this opportunity?  

Elizabeth Smyers: Sure, so fast forward a little bit in my career, and I was working in pediatrics at the time and saw the challenges that many patients were going through and being able to get the medically necessary care that they needed. 

There was this one particular kiddo that I remember along the way that he kept getting denied. He didn’t have quite the right diagnosis and everything just didn’t come together that insurance liked. So thankfully for him, he had quite the care team around him. He had a amazing mama bear advocate who was willing to fight and push, and that really inspired me to do something a little bit different and something bigger. 

Fast forward a little bit further, and one day I got a phone call from a colleague. Her name’s Erin. She actually works at PRO-spectus and she said, I remember this very clearly. Oh my gosh, this is it, you have to talk to Charmie. And so I did, and that’s where I learned about the mission of PRO-spectus. And it may sound a little cliche, but honestly I was hooked.  

Hearing about the mission and what we do and what we strive after, and understanding that, you know, I had the opportunity to do this on a larger scale, and that really spoke to something very deep inside of me where, yes, it’s amazing to be able to work with one individual patient and help that person, but to be able to do that on a much, much larger stage and for so many more people, it was really, really impactful.  

Anderson Williams: Given Elizabeth’s clear memory of her first interaction with PRO-spectus and its founder and CEO Charmie Chirgwin, I wanted to hear directly from Charmie, who not surprisingly, as it all has turned out, also remembers her first interaction with Elizabeth. She also shares how valuable Elizabeth has become, not just to the company, but to her as the founder and CEO.  

Charmie Chirgwin: You know, with Elizabeth, she started with us in 2017, and from the moment I met her, she made me smile. And here’s the crazy thing, back then it was all on the telephone. I had never actually seen Elizabeth, and so she just is the embodiment of a smile. I don’t even know else to put it. She’s so engaged and just all in and has this essence about her that you just can’t escape.  

Anderson Williams: Say a little bit about how that plays into your work. So why is that kind of magnetism so important for what you do?  

Charmie Chirgwin: So what we do is hard. We do hard things. Every single day as we are trying to get patients access to care. So, with Elizabeth having the attitude that is all in, she is just always all in. She’s ready, she’s engaged, she is ready to take on every challenge. It just makes life. Easier knowing that you have that person on your side and in your corner as you enter into some of the things we have to deal with every single day. 

And I know that the team around her feels the same way as well. She meets every challenge with this vigor and this energy that is infectious and it helps you level up to meet that challenge as well.  

Anderson Williams: And I have to believe that as a founder, that that has particular importance for the person who I’m sure feels like you’re carrying the burden of this company and its growth on your own. To have somebody like Elizabeth at your side has gotta be more than comforting. It’s gotta be just sort of solidifying for you.  

Charmie Chirgwin: It really is. Elizabeth, is that good, I guess touchstone, right? I am able to look at her. I think sometimes for reactions, which is incredibly helpful because when I have gotten into those moments of doubt, thinking can we really pull this off? 

Can we really do this crazy hard things that we keep trying to do? I just have to tell you, I see her smile, I see her head nod. The first words out of her mouth are, how can I help? Even if what we’re doing isn’t necessarily in her lane. That’s what makes Elizabeth an Everyday Hero to us because she is the first one to say, how can I help? 

And it doesn’t matter what it is, and that just brings a sense of calm that it just immediately puts you right back into the head space of, yes, yes, we can do this. Absolutely.  

Anderson Williams: Given Charmie’s comments and the obvious impact Elizabeth has from the moment you meet her is not surprising that her growth and impact at PRO-spectus has been rapid. 

And you started in a consulting role, right? And you’ve recently been named the Chief Innovation Officer. So in a relatively short period of time, even within PRO-spectus, you’ve had quite a lot of growth and advancement. Talk through what that has looked like and how the company has grown and evolved. And how that you’ve grown and evolved with it over the last number of years.  

Elizabeth Smyers: Yeah. So yes. So you mentioned risk taking a little bit of go, and I think that was a little bit of a risk for me. I’d never been a consultant before, but again, leaning in and seeing, Hey, there’s an opportunity here. There’s an opportunity that’s bigger than me, that sparked some excitement somewhere in that. 

And I think that seeing the opportunity that’s there and maybe being willing to take that step and take that risk is what has propelled my journey through PRO-spectus. So certainly there’s been times when there’s been an opportunity in front of me and I’ve raised my hand and I said, yes, I want that. Choose me. I can do this.  

But I think, honestly, maybe more often than not, it’s about realizing that there’s a need, there’s something that’s ahead. And a challenge or an obstacle or a problem even, and being willing to take that step forward and say, I may not know what I’m doing here, but I’m willing to try. I’m willing to help, and I’m willing to just give it my all.  

Anderson Williams: Well, and one of the things that was mentioned in your Everyday Hero nomination, just to double down on that, was your stepping into, uh, temporarily the Chief Technology Officer role when that position turned over at PRO-spectus. Talk about that in that spirit of, I might not know everything, but I’ll get in and figure it out. That’s a pretty big figure it out moment for a company like PRO-spectus, I imagine.  

Elizabeth Smyers: It really is and another thing you won’t see on LinkedIn is a litany of computer science degrees. So, no, I do not have that but I think truthfully, again, it comes to knowing the business, knowing what our patients need and then also listening to the team and the experts in the network that we have.  

This is an area where I was incredibly thankful to have the network of Shore and the Centers of Excellence. I think some of the first phone calls I made were to the heads that were available to me to say, Hey, here’s what we’re facing. Here’s what I see ahead. I need to keep the team focused. I need to keep them motivated. We need to recenter in these areas, but I don’t know what this acronym means. Can you help me out here and help me understand and putting those pieces together. So that was really how I approached that.  

Anderson Williams: Yeah, it’s almost a problem solving and orchestration approach. It’s not a sort of subject matter approach.  

Elizabeth Smyers: Right? Yes. And I think, honestly, you say that, that really resonates with me. I love doing problems and I love figuring things out and I think maybe even more so than problems, it’s about solutions.  

Anderson Williams: Yeah. Your Everyday Hero nomination. I want to read you a piece of this and then just kind of get your reaction because I think it aligns with what we’re talking about now. It said, Elizabeth embodies a process driven mindset building and optimizing systems that support both high stakes emergencies and everyday operational excellence. She consistently models resilience, accountability, and patient-centered focus in all she does, going above and beyond to serve the mission and inspire those around her. Does that sound right?  

Elizabeth Smyers: That’s incredibly humbling, and those are large words, but honestly, to be completely truthful, Anderson, I almost find them uncomfortable because I think that there’s so many people at PRO-spectus that those words describe and while I take that as a compliment to myself, I really think that a lot of that is what I’ve learned from the colleagues around me and from the experiences that I see every day.  

Anderson Williams: Where does that come from for you? Because I think what’s interesting about what you’ve described is figure it out approach, a risk tolerance, and so someone who’s willing to go into ambiguity and abstraction and make sense of it, and yet at the same time, this describes you as someone who’s process driven can build and orchestrate structures and things like that. 

Those two things don’t always go hand in hand, like where does that come from for you in terms of how you’ve learned, how you’re wired or how you think or what really drives you?  

Elizabeth Smyers: I think this is a two part answer. I think the first piece is the near term. You said what drives me, what motivates me right now. 

And I really do think we have a phrase, it’s the team PRO. We put it on all of our items and it’s because we truly believe it. And I think that it’s those people that push me every day that are showing up. I have to show up. But if I look back even further, and to give you a little fun anecdote. I grew up in a family of overachievers, I would say. 

I have two older brothers and we played a lot of board games, and so there was always competition at Heal. There was always something pushing us, and being the youngest sibling, if you will, it was often challenging to follow in their footsteps, so you had to figure it out. You had to figure out how to shine, how to adapt. 

But I think that while there’s that competitive nature there with my brothers, it’s also in a sense of support. They’re actually both in tech and so they were two of my first phone calls I made this summer. Help me understand this acronym, and again, having that support system there, whether it’s in your professional network or in your personal network, I think has really helped me be able to do many of the things I’ve done. 

Anderson Williams: Talk to me a little bit about how when you started your career in occupational therapy, you were drawn to something that had this one-on-one kind of empowerment and very much a figure it out. Like, how do I create an opportunity for this person to find meaning in this?  

How do you maintain that same sense of personal drive? And personal connection, rather. As you move up through leadership in a larger organization, how do you stay grounded in that relational piece that got you started and clearly still motivates you, but as your role shifts and moves up in an organization?  

Elizabeth Smyers: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. I think, again, it really comes to building the culture and being a part of that culture. 

I certainly have not built the culture of PRO-spectus by myself. I think that there’s an element of making sure that we think about the impact. And so again, for this role as innovation, it’s about looking ahead, looking to the future, where are we going? What do we need to consider and how is that going to impact our patients, our team, our clients? And putting all of those pieces together.  

Anderson Williams: Here again is Charmie speaking to Elizabeth’s impact on the PRO culture.  

Charmie Chirgwin: We talk about culture carriers, we’ve talked about this even in our own works together, Anderson, but Elizabeth walks the walk. She doesn’t just say, how can I help? She then jumps in and helps. 

She is the embodiment of the culture that we have built here at PRO-spectus, which is I guess in how can I help? You’re never gonna hear the phrase, stay in your lane. At PRO-spectus, which I think you’ve experienced yourself, Anderson, uh, with us.  

You know, elizabeth, every single day when she shows up in these meetings and these projects comes with this spirit and attitude of today we are going to do great things and it just, it really permeates through the rest of the team and because of that, we have been able to do some pretty incredible things with her leadership.  

Anderson Williams: When you think about your current role and innovation at PRO-spectus, what does that mean? When you’re thinking about looking forward, you’re in a growing company, in a dynamic market with a private equity sponsor and all of these other things that are like fuel on a fire. 

What does looking forward look like for you, and what does innovation mean when you’re looking at it from the perspective of PRO-spectus?  

Elizabeth Smyers: That’s a big one, but it’s such an important one and it is something that certainly I am giving a lot of careful consideration to pulling again from that professional and personal network and just really digging into it and I think where it is for us.  

We have to think about where this industry is going. We have to think about, there’s such an evolving, fast changing aspect to healthcare and patient access. There’s new legislation every day driving this. We have to look at the levers that are influencing those variables and drivers. But also, you know, there’s so many buzzwords right now around AI. That’s just every other podcast I listen to every other article I read, AI is a piece of that.  

Anderson Williams: Well, now it’s in this one, so.  

Elizabeth Smyers: And now it’s in this one, and here we are. But you know, we have to think about how do we start using these tools? How do we start building processes? How do we start designing systems that will allow us to not just continue to grow, but leapfrog forward to the future so that we are that partner that. 

Our clients seek out and look for and say, yeah, PRO-spectus is it. That’s who we want. That’s what we need for our patients, and I think that’s what will really help us to grow and thrive as an organization.  

Anderson Williams: Given Elizabeth’s rapid growth, impact and evolution across her career and the compelling and obviously powerful story of her stepping up when PRO-spectus needed someone most, I wanted to ask her what she had learned or what advice she would share to anyone listening about how she’s built her career. 

If somebody’s listening to this and they’re in a dynamic and growing company like PRO-spectus where these kinds of opportunities can emerge and candidly can be career changing, what advice do you give them based on what you learn about that flexibility or being able to step in, not only and raise your hand and say, yeah, I’ll do it, but to be able to succeed? 

Elizabeth Smyers: I think it’s about. Understanding that careers are definitely not linear anymore. I think that it’s a spiderweb at best, and it’s about, one, knowing your path and knowing what you want to pursue and pursuing it heavily, but then also actively listening to what’s around you and being willing to take that step forward. 

So if I had stayed on that linear path, I would probably have a caseload and be doing direct patient care. But I took other options and here I am, and I’m now leading innovation and this is such an exciting space to be in.  

Anderson Williams: Elizabeth Smeyers is an Everyday Hero whose superpower is her attitude. Whether you call it can do or you look at it from the perspective of winning the day every day. 

Elizabeth’s attitude has propelled a remarkable career, rooted deeply in her how can I help spirit. From helping a stroke victim learn to make a pie again, to helping create and innovate systems that help more patients access more care more broadly. As PRO-spectus grows and she grows and innovates with it. You can’t help but feel that the true impact of Elizabeth’s attitude has only just begun. 

If you enjoyed this episode, check out our other Everyday Heroes at www.shorecp.university/podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts. There you’ll also find episodes from our Microcap Moments as well as Bigger. Stronger. Faster. series. Each highlighting the people and stories that make the lower middle market space unique. This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners and recorded in the Andrew Malone podcast Studio with story and narration by Anderson Williams. Recording and editing by Austin Johnson. Editing by Reel Audiobooks sound design, mixing, and mastering by Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks.  

Special thanks to Elizabeth Smeyers and Charmie Chirgwin. 

This podcast is the Property of Shore Capital Partners, LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the Terms of Use page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.