Profiles in Telehealth: Kirk Goodman - Director of Sales
Get to know Wheel Director of Sales, Kirk Goodman!
What’s your role at Wheel?
At Wheel, my role is to create meaningful partnerships with our customers to drive virtual care forward and build a team to grow faster together.
Every day, I get to spend time learning from innovative healthcare organizations that are helping clinicians and patients. I also get to work closely with a fantastic team of individuals across product, engineering, clinical regulatory, and marketing.
What’s your background? What did you do before working with Wheel?
Go Blue! I got my Master's & Bachelor's in Engineering from Michigan and still watch every game, thinking this year will be our year (2022 National Champions, let's go!).
I started my career working in factories (e.g., airplanes, cars, engines) and moved into healthcare through my time in management consulting. I then joined a couple of digital health companies (Kinsa and Virta) working in San Francisco and NYC. I love to travel and spent almost a year in South America with my now wife. I love to cook and take my lovely dog Layla out to Prospect Park in Brooklyn.
Why did you join the Wheel team?
I joined Wheel in May of 2020. I was inspired by the company's vision and the unique moment in time for virtual care to truly change healthcare. The most exciting part of my job continues to be seeing innovation daily and meeting with amazing entrepreneurs and healthcare leaders looking to make an impact.
A day-in-the-life for me starts with a run or walk in the park with my dog. Then I spend the day trying to catch up on email/Slack, diving into many a zoom meeting with colleagues and clients, and blocking off some time for deep work to drive our partnerships forward with thoughtful proposals.
What’s your recent Wheel Moment of Reward?
So many great moments come to mind. My favorite moments are always seeing partnerships come to life. When a client launches with Wheel and opens a new avenue to care for their patients and our clinicians, it's a powerful moment.
One core example was helping a national laboratory partner expand testing to re-open NYC, which was an incredible feeling. Another was a large partner looking to bring virtual care to patients striving to lose weight. Both were incredible to watch.
What do you think the future of healthcare holds?
Let's face it, US Healthcare is a mess, and it has been for many years despite the ambitious sentiments for change. Change is hard. Now is a unique time as a silver lining of a global pandemic emerged: waking us up to the inequities, challenges, and waste in our healthcare system. It also shined a light on the best, with a rapidly developed and deployed vaccine saving millions of lives and the adoption of virtual care. Still, we spend nearly 20% of GDP more per capita than anyone else in the world -- and we get less for it.
This will finally change in the decades to come. Smart consumer-driven initiatives, new tech-stacks to inspire innovation ,and a wave of venture capital are already making an impact. I'm excited that in my lifetime, we will see a shift to personalized consumer-driven healthcare that finally achieves that mantra of better outcomes and lower cost.
Thanks, Kirk, for all your hard work with The Wheel Team! We appreciate everything you do.
Interested in joining our team? Check out the latest career opportunities with Wheel!
Get to know other team members through prior staff profiles with Rachel Boles - Marketplace Operations Associate, Kelsie Hernandez - Operations Lead, and Amanda Simoni - Operations Manager.