Video produced by: 
Laurie Beth Pliakos is an accomplished health care leader, attorney and law professor who has devoted her career to advancing health care accessibility, quality and privacy. She joined InStride Health in 2022, and has played a significant role in InStride Health’s expansion into New Hampshire and the services it makes available to the state’s youth. She previously held roles with Catholic Medical Center, Hinckley Allen, KidsVax, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, among others. In addition, Pliakos has been a law professor at UNH’s Franklin Pierce School of Law since 2019, where she teaches health law and policy.
What takeaways have you learned over your career?
Something I had to learn specifically in my personal life is that I am friendly. I’m emotional. I’m all these things that we don’t really let ourselves be in the workplace.
At one point I had someone really close to me who needed this specialty type of care, and I knew there was one person in the world who’s an expert in this type of care, but they weren’t accepting new patients. So, I called their office every day asking if they had appointments, and they’d be like, “we will call you,” and I kept saying, “no, I’ll call you back,” and they were like, “no please don’t.” But I made a relationship with the person who answered the phone, and eventually either I annoyed her so much or she liked me that she gave us an appointment, and we got into this specialist and that specialist changed our lives.
You hear about people doing the elevator speech to a doctor — that was what I was trying to do to advocate for this person I love. And that was so successful in my personal life, why should I hesitate to be that persistent, that willing to build relationships, in my career?
I stopped hesitating to transfer all those skills over.
I just found that I became more successful and more confident working in business.
What challenges are you seeing in your sector?
It is really expensive to get health care in America. So, as a company, we decided that that is something we don’t want to be a barrier. A core piece of our mission has been we are going to get in network with as many insurance companies as we can. Really tackling the payment barrier is something that we’re doing really well, and making it so that care is accessible to people.
We think so often in American health care about the patient as this one tiny unit that we are treating, when actually — especially in mental health care — we’re helping families, we’re helping communities and so we don’t just talk to our patient; we have family groups, we meet with parents and support systems. That is a key element of our program — activating the community around somebody to be able to support them. So, I really see what we’re doing is not just delivering care, but also helping to improve communities.
What advice would you give to future female business leaders?
Don’t get so busy being a leader that you forget to be a human. What I mean by that is people will follow a leader who projects confidence, who’s efficient, who’s strategic, but they’re actually going to connect with somebody who’s real.
And again, connection is not something that we really prioritize in the workplace. You often hear that professionalism and personal connection are pitted against one another. The best leaders I’ve ever worked for cared about me as a human. They invested in me, and it was my connection with them that actually motivated me to work harder and earn that trust that they gave me.
So now that I’m a leader, I realized that investing in people isn’t just a nice thing to do, but that actually makes them committed to a business. It motivates them to work hard, and it ultimately makes your business more successful and stronger.
Our motto at InStride is never worry alone. If you are worried about something, our internal rule is you go to someone and you tell them and they will worry with you and help you figure it out. We’re not just executing plans here; we’re showing up for each other. We’re making it safe to ask questions, to have a weird idea — to fail forward is something we also always talk about. We’re going to try it and see how it goes. And I just think that, if you’re honest and you’re human, that’s going to build loyalty and trust and a team that can learn together and grow together. And I think that that is a superpower that women leaders don’t often lean into.
