Pam Landis is SVP of Digital Engagement at Hackensack Meridian Health, where her team owns the full digital patient journey: acquisition, activation, access, and adoption. She started in 1995, when her boss asked her to figure out the World Wide Web and the department server lived in her cubicle. In this conversation from HCIC 2025, she talks through what three decades in healthcare technology has taught her about leadership, women in tech, and what to look for when you’re building a team. Her hiring philosophy is direct: she wants people who are intensely curious and relentlessly competent. She tells the story of a woman she met through her son’s school who had been out of the paid workforce for 19 years. Landis gave her a six-month freelance project. She finished it in six weeks. Landis hired her. The point: you can teach technology. You can’t teach how to solve problems. On AI, she credits a line from Mona Bassett of Intermountain Health that stopped her mid-session: AI is an enabler, not a strategy. Landis sees it playing out most clearly in patient access, where AI-powered voice agents handle routine scheduling so that contact center staff can move from schedulers to care navigators. Her advice to anyone new to the industry: respect the work that came before you. The organizations you’re walking into have been serving patients for decades. Learn that first, then be the person who helps them get ready for what’s next.