Blog home
Melinda Giese has been getting rid of a lot of strange stuff since she joined CHG in 2018.
“Over many, many years of working in corporate America, I’ve accumulated a lot of weird ideas,” she explains. “Things like, ‘you need to be here at this time,’ and ‘you need to work this many hours,’ and ‘you need to put your work above your vacation.’”
She made an important discovery at CHG. “All those things I was taught in corporate America, I’ve had to unlearn here. Instead I’ve focused on working smarter and taking care of myself.” The result of this new approach? “I haven’t missed one goal and it hasn’t hurt business one bit,” Melinda says.
Melinda says every other place she worked put the emphasis on dollars and cents. At CHG, the emphasis is on people. And that’s an idea she’s behind 100%.
Born in Plano, Texas, Melinda grew up in Utah. She initially thought she’d like being an interior designer or maybe a graphic designer. One of her college professors pulled her aside and essentially said, “A design career won’t bring you the financial rewards you’re seeking.” She took the advice and, just shy of graduation, she changed her major to marketing and dropped out of school to think about her options.
She took a job as a customer service rep with a pharmaceutical company and began to rise through the ranks. By the time she was a mid-level manager, she realized without a college degree her chances of continued promotions were slim.
Melinda returned to college and earned a bachelor’s degree in business marketing.
Since then, she’s made a career out of building account management teams and bringing big dollars to the companies she’s worked for. The greater the challenge, the more she likes it.
As much as she loves being buried with a barrage of information and then simplifying and prioritizing those facts, Melinda says she often has to check her excitement at the door. “Not everyone thinks this process is fun,” she admits with a laugh.
Melinda encourages her teams by reminding them, “The first consideration isn’t how to hit our financial goals. The first consideration is how to hit our financial goals in a way that you have balance in your life, you accomplishing something for yourself, and you’re in a position to help other people do the same.”
She’s all about digging in, working hard, and having fun — at the office, on the ski slopes, her mountain bike, or at the beach.
“It’s simple,” Melinda says. “Just treat other people the way you want to be treated.”
Her people-centric attitude is a perfect fit with CHG’s core value of Putting People First. Respecting and caring for others is how we make a difference in the lives of everyone we serve: our people, our providers and clients, and our communities.
