One of the things that makes AVIA so special is that many AVIAns are driven by a deep purpose and passion for bettering the healthcare industry, rooted in their life experiences. The Rooted in Purpose blog series highlights some of these stories. Today, we hear from Stephen Gordon, Vice President of Business Development at AVIA, about his background and what sparked his passion for healthcare.

Tell us a little bit about your background 

I grew up in a small town in Minnesota, where almost everyone was white and Northern European. My family was very Catholic – we never talked about diversity, and while we assumed we were open-minded, that assumption was never tested in such a homogenous community. As a part of that, the concept of being gay was never discussed, and I didn’t know anyone who was gay when I was growing up. 

When I went to college at Northwestern, I realized I was gay, met other gay individuals, and came into my own as a gay man. I graduated from college in the late 1980s and moved to Boystown in Chicago, which coincided with the rise of the AIDS crisis in the US. The gay community didn’t receive much funding or support from the government at the time to research and combat the AIDS crisis, so it fell on us to march, protest, and stand on our own to drive awareness and bring in funding. 

These efforts culminated in the March on Washington in 1996. I remember standing on the lawn in front of the Washington Monument, looking over a sea of quilts (the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt) with each square representing 16 people who had passed away from HIV/AIDS.  I felt so devastated and hopeless but was also struck with a strong desire to do something to help, which is what led me to pursue a career in healthcare. 

You’re married to your husband, Stephen. What was the national fight for marriage equality like for you? 

In California, where I lived in the 2010s, they repealed gay marriage three times. The most recent time was Prop 8, or the California Marriage Protection Act, which was passed into law with a 52% majority vote. Two good friends of mine have been married three times in California because their marriage was repealed twice due to changing state and federal laws. At the time, people told us that we should be content with civil unions, but marriage is a legal construct that comes with 1,138 state and federal benefits that couples wouldn’t be entitled to through a civil union. 

Finally, on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court made gay marriage legal across the entire country. The next day, I proposed to my future husband, Stephen. In July, I went on a cruise with my parents and younger sister, where I planned to tell them that Stephen and I were engaged. Luck would have it that my sister announced her engagement on the day we were planning on telling them, and I got to see my parents wildly excited for her and her fiance. So, Stephen and I waited two days and then told them we had also got engaged, and the news was met with silence – they were not supportive. 

Stephen and I waited three years to get married, in hopes that both of our parents would come around to the idea. Finally, we decided to marry without their presence, and we tied the knot on June 29, 2018 in San Francisco City Hall in the presence of our closest friends.

Switching gears – How did you start your career in healthcare, and what led you to AVIA?

In 2001, I joined Microsoft to work in two of their healthcare incubation divisions. Early in my time at the company, I heard Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discuss why the company was working in healthcare. He said that in order to change healthcare on a global scale, it would take a company like Microsoft that had the resources to invest deeply into healthcare. I was deeply excited to be with a large company with the scale and breadth of Microsoft that wanted to fundamentally change healthcare on a worldwide scale.

Even though the healthcare products I worked on at Microsoft weren’t successful, I gained this passion and understanding about what digital can do for healthcare. Digital innovation is the future of how we deliver care, and this belief brought me to AVIA. I love that AVIA works with health systems at a very strategic level and then marries that strategy with a spectrum of digital solutions.

How do your lived experiences affect the work that you do for AVIA? 

My experience living through the AIDS crisis, as well as the current COVID-19 pandemic, drives my passion for our work at AVIA.  I see tremendous parallels between then and now – government ineptitude and minority communities disproportionately affected by the disease. In addition, watching my parents deal with health issues and helping them navigate our current healthcare system has also guided my interest in healthcare. My dad recently had a serious medical issue, and even with my sister’s and my background in healthcare, we had an incredibly hard time coordinating care and getting his various doctors to come together on a care plan.  These experiences taught me that we are nothing without our health, and there is so much that could be improved about our current healthcare system. 

What do you like about working for AVIA? 

When I came to AVIA three years ago, I had rarely talked about being a gay individual with colleagues. When I married Stephen, I had only been at AVIA for a few months and only shared with a couple of people that we were getting married. It’s not that we were ashamed about our marriage, but it was hard not having my parents there and it felt like something very special between Stephen and me. However, right before we got married, AVIA had an all-staff meeting. Linda Finkel, our CEO, stopped the meeting and took time to celebrate our marriage in the most genuine way. AVIA is a really welcoming, kind, and transparent company and I have always been so grateful for that expression of support and love.