Deb Woods, the CEO of Morrisville-based ShiftWizard, is a seasoned software executive with a passion for working with customers and driving strategic direction. Her experience includes working with domestic and international customers in identifying marketing solutions that deliver strong ROMI (return on marketing investment) while helping clients solve business problems.
She has built high-performance teams that have delivered significant growth across a diverse set of industries. She has helped grow revenue, improved customer satisfaction, and brought new products to the marketplace while increasing shareholder value at companies such as Dude Solutions, Red Hat, Teradata, and Relias. Deb has spent her career working with customers to understand how technology can be of use to help clients solve problems. She graduated from North Carolina State University with a BS in Electrical Engineering.
1. What is in your pockets?
Normally a lot of my clothes don’t have pockets but because I’m working at home today, I’m actually in a pair of jeans. You’re going to laugh at this but I have my father’s gold pocket watch in my pockets. My father was a great influence on me. Normally, my phone is in my back pocket and has my license and credit card in it that I pretty much take with me wherever I need to go.
2. What exciting thing has happened recently for you or your organization?
ShiftWizard is a resource-management tool to schedule healthcare professionals, primarily nurses. We have over 80 hospital clients that use our solution. Depending on the patient census and what skillsets and shifts are needed, the hospital can real-time adjust the nurses that are needed between departments. So you can see the advantage it has, especially in the COVID times when census rates are flexing up and down.
We help provide that predictability of utilization of the staff within a fast solution. Before our solution, nurses were scheduled on a piece of paper printed on the wall, and people would just go and pencil in what shifts they wanted. Now it’s all done online and nurses can sign up for their shifts, they can swap shifts, they can request PTO, and all those things online reduces the overhead of managing staff. During the times of COVID, so many companies have been struggling and our application helps health systems manage resources.
What’s exciting is that we just closed a major deal, probably one of the largest deals of our company. We have not announced it yet.
3. What is your favorite coffee spot?
The Ugly Mug off of Highway 42 where it crosses I-40 (in Garner). It’s a 25-minute drive from the house, but I make it regularly just to get my favorite brew. They’re phenomenal and they have a cool logo, too. I have their coffee cup, and it’s funny. I can call them and they go, “O.K. Deb, what do you want?”
4. What keeps you up at night?
I’m a real people person and always struggling with: Am I doing everything I can to grow this business and to grow my staff? I want to make sure that where they’re going to work is their top choice in the world. I’m always trying to make sure I’ve got my best foot out there, I’ve got the company in the right position, and I’m providing great opportunities for the staff. I was literally, this morning, on a call with someone, trying to say, “O.K., where are you struggling? How can I help you?”
I’ve been fortunate that I had some great coaches and mentors in my career. I struggle with: Am I being that great coach and mentor to my staff? I like to jump into the work and there’s a delicate balance. Am I pushing too much? You get in the day-to-day grind, and you’re like, “O.K., did I do this? Did I cover that?” And I’m always very hard on myself which, I think, all CEOs are.
5. What is your favorite restaurant or happy hour?
I love sushi. It’s kind of interesting because my favorite sushi place just closed in North Hills, so currently it’s Sushi Blues and LemonShark Poke.
6. What is next for you or your organization?
We’re at the point where our pipeline is booming like crazy, we’re hiring and in demand. What’s next is keeping up with it, scaling and keeping true to our identity.
