As a woman in the STEM career, Catherine Tinsley had to work hard to get to the stage she is in her career life. Having a bachelor of science degree in marketing with a concentration in systems following with a master of business administration in Information Technology, landed Tinsley her first job at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois working as a Divisional VP, Strategy Development and Implementation.
While working at Blue Cross Blue Shield, Tinsley worked on the Blue Home Intelligence project which was the creation of a large claims' dataset for all the Blue Teams. Being involved in this project, Tinsley quickly became interested in analytics and data which fueled the passion she has for the career path she is in. As Tinsley was surrounded by an insurance company, one that specifically deals with medical issues here and there, she fell into an analytics capability.
“I saw that there was a huge opportunity because there's a ton of data and information out there, but a lot of people don't know what they're looking at,” said Tinsley. “They don't know what to ask for or how to break it down and turn data into information.”
After working with them for about nine years, Tinsley was looking for something closer to home. In 2014, she was hired to start an analytics department for Community Healthcare System which at the time had three hospitals: Community Hospital, Munster, St. Mary Medical Center, Hobart, and St. Catherine Hospital, East Chicago. Since that time, Community Stroke & Rehabilitation Center, Crown Point, has been built, further expanding the system. Her teams have grown as well, first consisting of just a couple of staff members, but that number has now increased to around 20 and is made up of analysts, data miners and data engineers. A lot of the people who work for her consist of women as she encourages other women in this career and gives them a chance to get hands-on experience in this subject. Tinsley and her team help the hospitals configure data analytics, help them improve quality, look at cost opportunities to process redesign and find anomalies in the data.
Now throughout the hospitals she is the Vice President of Data Analytics and Informatics and oversees two other departments. What her team does from an analytics perspective is help hospital administrators streamline operations and assist in workflow efficiencies.
“So, the hospitals will come up to us and say, ‘Hey, I'm concerned that we're over utilizing blood products among our cardiology groups, can you help us gather some insight?’,” said Tinsley. “We then pull up data, ask questions about what they're trying to look at, and then give them information that helps them make better decisions or change the way they do things.”
An upcoming goal that Tinsley’s department plans on executing is helping to save more money than they cost every year. That has always been their goal and they will continue to work toward that as they grow their department. As Tinsley likes to say, “we have some aggressive savings goals.”
For Tinsley, this career is extremely rewarding and fun. In 2019, Tinsley was nominated for the NWI Women of Influence award in the STEM field as well.
When Tinsley isn’t working at the hospital, she is caring for her family like any mother does. While her children go to Lake Central High School (LCHS), she stays very involved within their lives. In her free time, she has the responsibility of being the president of the LCHS Athletic Booster Club which covers all sports within LCHS.
Originally, Tinsley was the Treasurer for LCHS swim team, The Barracudas, because of her children being on the swim team but then the swim coach asked Tinsley to be the swim mom which then led her to be exposed to the Athletic Booster Club. The Athletic Booster Club needed to fill positions, so she agreed to be the vice president, but as of this spring, took the position of president.
Being the Swim Team Mom, she is responsible for organizing fun events to get the kids excited such as pasta parties before big meets, Christmas gatherings, breakfasts before every meet. The whole goal is to make the sports a little more fun and a little more involved as opposed to just coming in practicing every day.
As the president of LCHS Athletic Booster Club, Tinsley is responsible for raising funds for things such as scholarships, equipment, etc. Last year, the Athletic Booster Club was able to give out seven scholarships, $1,500 each, to graduating athletes.Then two years ago, those funds were used for new uniforms for various sports teams.
“I've always just wanted to help make sports a good experience and help provide all the things that all athletes need. Athletics help team building and is a good source of physical exercise,” said Tinsley. “There's a lot of really good lessons you learn from high school sports. So, we've always encouraged our kids to get involved.”
Tinsley’s love for sports originated from her youth as she played sports throughout high school and in college. While in college, Tinsley studied abroad in England and played on the college basketball team there. Tinsley studied international business and on weekends was able to go to Dublin, Amsterdam, London, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria and Germany.
“It was phenomenal. It was such a great trip; you learn so much about yourself and so much about the world. It really helps open up your eyes to what else is out there, not just your own community or family.”