If you care about people-centered leadership that actually delivers results, this conversation with Eve Gray, Director of Health & Human Services for Lane County, is a must-watch. Eve shares a candid journey from nursing and quality improvement to executive leadership, offering practical insights on building trust before outcomes, leading through values, and creating real impact through partnership across government, healthcare, and the private sector. Her perspective on work-life integration, inclusive team building, and hiring for mission, not just skills, will resonate with anyone leading in complex, high-stakes environments or aspiring to do so.
The results were much better when I didn’t lead with the results; I led with the people and the relationships. – Eve Grey
Suzanne Hanifin: President at Acumen Executive Search. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannehanifin/
Tanis Morris: Business Development at Acumen Executive Search. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanis-morris-75a113266/
Eve Gray: Director of Health and Human Services at Lane County LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eve-gray-21bb16132/
Acumen Executive Search Website: https://acumenexecutivesearch.com
Lane County Website: https://www.lanecountyor.gov/
Hiring for Good Transcript
Suzanne Hanifin: Well, welcome. I am Suzanne Hanifin with Acumen Executive Search, and I am here today with my lovely co-host, Tanis Morris.
Tanis Morris: Good morning, Suzanne.
Suzanne: We are super excited today to have Eve Gray join us at Hiring for Good. Eve is the Director of Health and Human Resources or Human Services. There you go. For Lane County. So, Eve is driven by helping and supporting people. She cares deeply for Lane County and our Oregon communities as a whole. She works towards the motto of get back to service, especially while working firsthand in healthcare integration, and believes in wraparound services.
Throughout her work history, Eve has built strategies upon solid methodologies for driving connections between people and services while managing and developing a team towards those goals. Eve comes from a unique background with a really great career progression. After nursing school, she was recruited to Peace Health’s quality department. Here, she worked across the organization with other leaders and engineers to look at processes and systems and even became a Lean Green Belt herself.
From there, she was tasked to create their first patient safety program under the quality department, and she learned to look at root cause analysis and not to blame people but to look at how we can change to fix a problem. She continues to progress at, at Peace Health and moved into leadership positions. She then joined Oregon Medical Group. Similarly to Peace Health, Eve’s leadership progression continued.
Today, Eve lives every day as an industry leader in leadership with strong methodologies, ability to build teams, recognize the humanity of people. Eve states that her strengths include team building, listening, and connecting the dots.
So, welcome to Hiring for Good, Eve.
Eve Gray: Thank you, Suzanne.
Suzanne: Yeah, and I know I kind of did just a really brief highlight of your background, and at this point, we always like to start to hear from you. Tell us about your journey and how you became the Director of Health and Human Services.
Eve: Sure, happy to do that. And I think, you know, an important theme with anyone who ends up in an executive role are, is the people who helped you along the way. Um, so I’ll highlight that as well in talking about my journey.
I, I started out as a professional student in my 20s, not knowing really what I wanted to do. I dabbled in, uh, my first degree was in psychology. I went to part of a master of social work program. I studied dietetics. Um, and then took a little bit of time off and, uh, got a job in education research, which gave me this great opportunity to, uh, travel to New York on a pretty regular basis doing work in, uh, underserved schools and trying to promote, uh, curriculum related to college readiness.
And, uh, though that didn’t last as a career, I gained a lot of important skills there in how to connect with people, how to listen to needs, how to be creative and innovative.
Ultimately decided to go back to nursing school and, uh, and was, uh, planning to go into clinical care when I got a call from a family friend who ran the quality department at Peace Health, who said, “You know, I think this might be a good place for you.”
And that was that first opportunity for me where someone, uh, saw in me something that I didn’t see in myself, reached out, and gave me an opportunity that has done so much to launch the foundation for me in terms of my career.
In the quality department, we were half nurses and half engineers, which was a really interesting mix. So I learned, uh, to view the world from an engineer’s perspective also, and, uh, that has certainly helped me gain process improvement skills, uh, understand data, be very outcomes-focused. All of those are important leadership skills.
When I got into leadership, though, uh, from quality and patient safety, the, the thing that I really got to learn was the people side. That’s the side that the engineers didn’t teach me and, um….
Suzanne: Probably the hardest side.
Eve: That’s right. That’s right. So, I think we’ll talk a little bit more about that and that transition later on in the podcast, but, uh, had a few opportunities to lead teams in inpatient hospital care. Um, got to the point where 24/7 on call didn’t work with my family. So, uh, that’s where I went to, uh, the outpatient world with Oregon Medical Group and acquired that job because I had worked with the Chief Operating Officer of Oregon Medical Group at, uh, Peace Health in the quality department.
Uh, so again, just building those relationships and those networks over time is really, really helpful as we’re trying to advance our careers and find that next best thing.
And at Oregon Medical Group, I went from being a manager to a director. And I had actually started to look for other job opportunities. Felt like I was starting to outgrow that role. Uh, and I saw this position, the Director of Health and Human Services, and I thought, “There’s no way that they would hire me. I have no government experience at all.” And I didn’t apply.
And then Molly from Acumen reached out to me and said, “Hey, are you interested in this position?” And just another opportunity for someone who saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself, uh, to be able to take that next step in my career. And I’m so thankful that that happened. Uh, this has turned out to be a really nice opportunity for me.
Tanis: It’s kind of funny because I think that you might – we have a number of folks that we’ve interviewed on the podcast over the year and a half or two years that we’ve been, um, recording. And, um, you know, we, we don’t really lead with the fact that this is a talent that, that Acumen placed, but it’s really, um, very fun for us to get to interview you because you are a great success story of, of, um, you know, one of, one of the fantastic placements that Acumen did.
And I, um, I came to work at Acumen after you had already gone to work for, um, the county. But, um, I had the privilege of, um, meeting you through, uh, on a public health panel that, um, I had coordinated and was just kind of blown away at how, some of the ways that you had kind of, um, created systems that reinforced the mission of the, of the work that you had been assigned and in new and imaginative ways. And I I hope that you’ll have a chance to kind of discuss some of those, those, um, experiences as well because I think they’re really valuable.
But, um, you’ve kind of alluded to maybe a few formative experiences, but if you look back over, you know, your career and this journey that you’ve kind of briefly given a, a snapshot of, what are things that you went through that really shaped what you believe about leadership, how you lead? Um, you know, how you approach your work. What would you say are a couple of those, or just one if you want?
Eve: Sure. I think I came into leadership very outcomes-focused, very much the person who wanted to demonstrate results, and that came from kind of the quality background, the research background. And as I, um, started into leadership, my first role I had 90 direct reports.
Tanis: Oh my gosh.
Eve: Yes. Um, they, they don’t, uh, you know, they kind of drop you in the deep end in the hospital. Yes. Uh, but in getting, trying to figure out how to get 90 people, who work seven days a week, 24 hours a day to all be operating with the same, um, you know, with the same outcomes in mind, uh, with focused on the same process improvement goals, doing, getting those outcomes that I was seeking, the only way to get there, I discovered the hard way, was to build trust first, to build relationships first, to help each and every person in that department understand that I cared about them as a human.
And I think that, that, that experience of trying to drive results initially before I had developed trust, um, and watching folks reject that, then in as I developed as a leader, building the trust and watching the results happen was really important and transformational for me in understanding that the role of a leader isn’t so much in doing the work. It’s in building the relationships. It’s in building the trust. It’s in motivating people who then do the work.
And I think that’s a, that’s a transition I see a lot of leaders kind of go through when they go from being an individual contributor to a leader, is a sense of maybe I’m not doing enough. I’m not accomplishing enough.
And I, I sit down with leaders, and I say, “You know, it’s not about what you accomplish. It’s about whom you influenced today and how did you spend time to build the relationships within our, um, department, within our broader organization, within our community that will lead to the positive outcomes and the results down the road.”
So we do a lot with partnership in our organization. We do a lot with empowering people, and that’s all from this early time in my leadership where I recognized that the results that I got were much, much better when I didn’t actually lead with the results. I led with the people and the relationships.
Suzanne: Absolutely. And you brought up something that I thought was kind of funny, that you were thinking, “Oh, I’ll never get this job.” But part of it was definitely they wanted that outside perspective and those new thoughts.
And then Tanis just alluded to being on this public health panel and hearing. I would love to hear some of the different approaches that you’ve taken because this is a big responsibility and people all over are struggling with this.
Eve: Sure. Um, you know, I think focusing on the fact that none of us can solve the big societal problems that we face independently. Government can’t do it on our own. Private sector can’t do it on their own. Philanthropists can’t do it on their own. We all have to figure out how to partner together for the greater good. And, uh, and so some of the opportunities that I’ve had in this role are things like public-private partnerships.
So, um, we have a project going right now actually in partnership with Peace Health. That may not have happened had I not worked there and known the, the person who grew up into their Chief Administrative Officer there now, where, uh, we are building a crisis stabilization center.
We’ve been planning to build one in our community, which, uh, is essentially an urgent care and emergency services for people in behavioral health crisis. And, uh, Peace Health needed to build a new inpatient hospital. And, uh, they identified a property that they couldn’t buy on their own, and I got a phone call about, “Hey, what if we go in on this together?”
And it’s been this really incredible journey where we’ve been able to, uh, share each other’s strengths, uh, in terms of our ability to manage some of, uh, the, the land use pieces and legislative policy pieces that we’ve needed. Their ability to influence, uh, in the private sector in a way that’s different from how we can kind of influence elected officials sometimes, uh, as a government entity.
And, and all of that, uh, ultimately one of the biggest behavioral health campuses in our state will be created because of the relationships and the trust and the partnerships that I had cultivated over a decade or more with the people who are involved in this project.
And I think in looking at how we solve the problems that we face, uh, even looking at, uh, a very big problem in my community of Eugene, also certainly one that impacts Portland significantly, homelessness.
Uh, we know that the biggest reason that we can’t, uh, address the problem of homelessness is that we don’t have enough housing available to put people into that they can afford. Uh, people don’t become stable when they’re on the streets. They tend to become addicted. They tend, their mental health conditions tend to worsen. And, um, when we put people in housing, we can help them to get better. And we see it over and over again with successful results.
Addressing the housing challenges that we face is not something that government can do alone. This is where we need to bring in private developers. We need to bring in housing authorities and everyone who has a variety of different perspectives and be comfortable in that muddy, messy space of people coming with their different priorities and different goals and outcomes, but figuring out what is the best role for each of these entities to take so that we can collectively make progress on this problem.
Uh, so I think that’s, uh, largely how I view the, the big problems that we face. And, uh, then for the, the day-to-day work that we do, I focus heavily on empowering people and letting the experts take on the operations and do the work, which helps a ton too because it frees up my time to be able to do these big picture items and, and build big community partnerships and that sort of thing.
Suzanne: Well, and you just alluded to that because that really is a great segue about leadership and how do you lead and bring your values into everyday operations.
Eve: I think my values, uh, are very, very consistent with the values of Lane County. You know, certainly being clear that I’m speaking for myself now and not as a, a representative of Lane County. Uh, but, uh, the, the focus on, uh, serving those who are underserved, which is really what we do in Health and Human Services, is a significant value system of mine. It is one that, um, that the county, uh, holds very closely.
We have a core value of equity and respect. I’m very proud that we’ve maintained that core value over the last year and that our board of commissioners reaffirmed that equity and respect continues to be one of our core values in our most recent strategic planning process because it’s really about everyone having access to services and, um, and to opportunity.
Uh, I think a value that I’ve brought into the organization, which has been supported but didn’t fully exist before I was there, is really around, um, a value of work-life balance, thinking about that differently and from the perspective of how it benefits an organization, not how it’s a drain on an organization. So I am, I am a millennial leader. I am a very geriatric millennial, so, just so everyone knows. But I, uh, I am a millennial, and I do bring some of those values with me about not wanting to separate my personal life and my work life.
And, uh, when I came in, I started talking to people. I saw how overwhelmed they were coming out of COVID. You know, you can imagine because public health is one of the areas I oversee. Uh, and they, uh, they were hit even harder with the demands of COVID.
So, um, saw just how tired folks were. And I started to say, “I need everyone here to go on a two-week vacation.” You know, not all at the same time, of course, but everyone needs to get away. And people’s eyes got really big, and they thought, “Well, what’s going to happen for 2 weeks when I’m gone?”
And I went, “Well, if we haven’t built succession planning here to the point that a leader can walk away for two weeks and feel confident that the people reporting to them can make good, solid decisions in their absence, we have a problem.”
Tanis: Yeah.
Eve: We have single points of failure here. Um, so just beginning to get people to think that taking time away isn’t a drain on the organization. It actually helps prepare us. It helps create leaders in our organization. It empowers people who otherwise wouldn’t have that opportunity for an extended period. And, you know, big bonus, it helps us renew as leaders when we leave and, uh, we focus on life.
And I think that that’s true just in every part of flexibility. You know, I came in, and I said, “I’m going to work, but sometimes I’m taking meetings from soccer practice, and sometimes I’m taking meetings because I’m carting my kids around from place to place, and I’m still fully present. Uh, but I’m not going to give up, uh, that opportunity to be a mom.” And I’ve really worn that on my sleeve.
And it’s been, uh, it’s been supported by my leadership, which I feel really great about. And the number of people who have come to me and just said, “You know, people have told me that it was okay to be flexible or to, you know, prioritize my family, but I haven’t seen that at the top. And I didn’t really think it was safe because I didn’t see it modeled for me by the top leader in the organization. And now I know it’s safe because I see you doing it.”
That was an outcome that I didn’t necessarily expect. You know, I kind of expected that people would look at me and go, “Oh, she’s not really committed here.”
Suzanne: Right.
Eve: But it’s been the opposite, where folks have felt, uh, like they can be their full self more, uh, and they can, uh, focus on everything that’s important to them in life, which has helped gain commitment to the organization. It’s helped reduce turnover and helped for folks to be, um, more fully present in the work when they’re there.
Suzanne: And it helps their mental, you know, cuz, cuz as a mom and a business owner and, you know, somebody who works, it’s, there is no separation. It’s not like work is over here, family’s over here. It’s all about integration, and then what are the priorities, and then that’s how, how you succeed.
Tanis: Yeah. I, I’m there’s so much there. I, I love this line of, um, discussion because I think we don’t necessarily examine it enough. It’s fun, honestly, and very affirming to hear, to hear your story. And I love how it impacted, um, you know, everybody at your organization, it sounds like.
You know, you’ve, you’ve been very clear on what your values are. When you add to your team, you know, when you build or when you hire, how do you go about that? You know, with, with you, do you keep those values in mind, or are you building based on skills? How do you, how do you typically build teams in your role?
Eve: Sure. I think there are some foundational pieces that everyone who works for me needs in order to be successful. So, you have to be committed to the mission. Uh, you, you have to be focused on, uh, the service to others and in, uh, creating a better community. Uh, and you have to have humility because without humility you don’t have the ability to examine your blind spots and, um, and that is so critical for a leader.
Then from there, when I’m hiring for a position, I look at the rest of the people on the team, and I identify where we may be off balance.
Um, so looking at things like task orientation versus people orientation. Um, someone who moves fast versus moving slow. Someone who is highly analytical versus being a little less analytical, viewing the world, uh, in, in, in a way that is maybe not quite as scientific but story-based.
All of these are characteristics that bring value to an organization. And though it is hard to operate on a team where you have people with all of these traits on it, there’s definitely, you know, the, the forming storming that happens.
Um, it I find that, uh, that by supporting diverse leadership and really looking for where are the holes on our team, we can solve problems so much better.
So I know about myself, I’m a fast mover, and I’m more of a task-oriented leader. I can, I can show up with heart and empathy. I can do that. Uh, when I am very stressed, it is harder for me to do that.
There are people on my team, though, who lead with their heart. And I know sometimes, gosh, if I’m really stressed and overwhelmed and there’s a problem over here that requires intense people orientation, I can pull from another leader on my team in order to fulfill that role.
Whereas if I hired everyone who was just like me, this is another thing that I see leaders do. They, um, they hire people who are like them. Uh, that then creates, sometimes it can create a team of yes people, which is very dangerous for a leader, uh, because we all have blind spots and we all need to surround ourselves with people who will push back on us.
Uh, but it also then limits our ability to connect with unique individuals within the organization, uh, or make decisions that have the needs of the, the diverse population within our organization in mind.
Um, so as hard as it is and as much as we have to work through every time we add a new member to our team, how are we all going to norm and, um, and get into that performing stage? It, uh, I, I have so valued having people with a variety of different strengths.
Um, and I’ve found that I’ve grown from it. I’m much, much better today in identifying what people need in a situation and how they’re going to feel about something. Uh, how they’re going to respond to it because I’ve got people first people on my team who have provided me that feedback over the years. So, I’ve developed that skill.
And for them, maybe they’re at the beginning, it’s harder to hold people accountable when you’re really focused….
Tanis: Right.
Eve: On making, on building and making those relationships. And so, I’ve been able to share that with them. And I’ve seen them grow.
Uh, so, all of us have grown into much better-rounded leaders, uh, also because of those diverse skill sets. Uh, so that’s I, I think there’s, there’s not really any characteristic that I look for exclusively. Um, it, it really is just when I have a hole on the team, what is it that I need in order to fill us out?
Suzanne: Yeah, absolutely. And looking at both the hard skills as well as the soft skills. And we believe in that. It’s all about, as you mentioned earlier on, it’s about that alignment between those goals and values. You can learn the others, the other pieces.
Eve: Right.
Suzanne: Absolutely. So, Evie, here you’ve had this incredible career. Looking back, what advice would you have given your 20-year-old self, or what advice do you give your own daughter?
Eve: Uh, I think the advice that I would have given myself and that I give my daughter is don’t be so hard on yourself.
Tanis: Yeah.
Eve: You know, I think, um, so many of us who are high achievers have really high expectations of ourselves coming in, and it can be hard then to, um, to admit when you make a mistake, um, to reflect upon that and to not just beat yourself up over it.
And I think if I would have had a greater openness to the fact that I was going to come in and bungle things up and that was going to be okay, and that was normal, and I was going to continue to grow, I think it I, I, it would have just been easier on me and a whole lot less stressful.
And I, I want for leaders who work for me also to feel like it’s okay to make a mistake, that, uh, it’s okay to live and learn, that, uh, you know, that’s one of the nice things about having worked in a hospital. If someone comes to me and they say, “Oh my gosh, this terrible thing happened,” my first question is, “Okay, if we don’t act right now, is someone going to die?” Because that’s what I came from. And the answer is always no in this environment. It’s wonderful, you know. Um, so then I say, “Great, we can fix that. It’s, it’s not a big deal.”
Tanis: Yeah.
Eve: And that just lets people be freer to take risks and to be creative and to not worry that their head’s going to be on a chopping block because they made a wrong, a wrong move when actually, when they’re doing those sorts of creative, innovative, and risk-taking things, that’s how we can advance much faster as well and solve the problems that we face.
So, I think that’s, um, if I had someone speaking to me in that way, it probably would have been helpful.
Tanis: Excellent advice. Yeah. And yeah, very, I think, um, something that probably all of us need to hear no matter what age, but better to learn early.
Eve: Right?
Tanis: So, the last question that we always ask our guests is, you know, what hiring for good means to you. We chose that title for the podcast because it is iterative and, um, I’m curious to hear your interpretation.
Eve: Sure. I think in, in my setting, hiring for good is about bringing people into our organization who want to make a difference. And, uh, particularly people who want to make a difference for those in our community who haven’t had opportunity or who don’t have access to resources. And I think more so than any organization I have ever worked in, this is one where every person I talked to who works in my department has that feeling of wanting to serve the community, wanting to make it a better place, and particularly wanting to make the community better and more accessible for people who don’t have what they have.
Uh, so that is, I think for me, the best thing that we can do as an organization is build that culture where everyone’s in it for the right reasons, and from there we can figure out the details.
Tanis: That’s wonderful.
Suzanne: I was going to say that’s so beautiful because I think for doing this almost two years, when you look at the impact that, that as a hiring manager, you impact the individual, you impact the team, the department, and you all are really impacting the community. And so, thank you as not only an Oregonian, but thank you for, for what you do.
Eve: Thank you.
Tanis: And for sharing your wisdom.
Eve: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Outro: Thanks for joining us today at Hiring for Good. If you were inspired by our conversation, don’t forget to like, follow, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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Thanks so much, and don’t forget to join us next time for another in-depth conversation about transformational leadership.