Chief Marketing Officer: Nancy Lewis

PUBLISHED JANUARY 2024

Ask Nancy Lewis about what makes her tick—what really went into her leadership tool kit from an early age—and her thoughts drift back to Palmyra, Mo., a few miles west of the Mississippi River, to a wall that stood next to a cornfield outside of town, and to the inspiration from one Carol Ann Johnson, once her high school teacher and coach. “She’s one of those people who made you believe you could succeed,” Lewis says, “and for me, that meant I could succeed in spite of my small size and complete lack of natural athletic ability.” 

Thus elevated by Johnson’s influence, Lewis would attack that wall armed with a tennis racket, whacking at a ball day after day for hours on end. “I ended up getting a tennis scholarship to college,” Lewis says, “and that taught me that nothing is impossible if you work hard enough.” That same lesson came from watching her parents—Dad owned a small business; Mom was an ever-present force in civic life. “Every single thing Dad did, he did ethically; that was more important than anything else. And once my mom set her mind to doing something, it was going to happen. That taught me a lot about not taking no for an answer.” 

And that, folks, is how one connects the career dots between broadcast journalism, public-school communications, and where Lewis finds herself today at one of the region’s biggest health-care providers, University Health, where her work has distinguished her as our pick for chief marketing officer of the year. 

Once she decided that journalism would be her calling, she left behind the tennis courts of William Jewell for Mizzou, where she could indulge her passion for the written word and create visuals to complement it. “There was a kind of bigger picture I saw where I felt like maybe I could use the power that came with broadcast to make a difference,” she says. From small-market KQTV in St. Joseph and then Fox 4 in Kansas City, she spent nearly two decades not just as a storyteller but digging into real-world problems and exploring solutions, particularly with Channel 4’s Problem-Solvers segment. “That kind of reporting fed me,” she says. But after years of weekend work that kept her away from her husband, she opted for a better work-life balance with the communications role for the Independence School District.  

She became the face of the district’s efforts to build community consensus for absorbing seven Kansas City district schools into the ISD system—a move not everyone embraced. “The majority of people had already decided it was a good idea, so keeping them close, connected and involved, and letting them be ambassadors was key to acceptance to the people who might not have accepted it,” she says. Less than a decade removed from the TV studio, Truman Medical Center came calling. “It might seem like an unusual move to go from K-12 education to health care, but I think (CEO Charlie Shields) saw a natural transition,” she says. “Both the district and TMC were strong, quality organizations, but not enough people knew it. Both had to overcome some ingrained misperceptions; both had an economically varied base. For me, most importantly, both do good things for their communities that deserve the spotlight.”

She came on board in 2015, leading the communications efforts for a two-hospital system that admits more than 21,000 patients each year and is uniquely positioned to deal with urban health challenges while serving as an academic medical center. In 2021, she ran point on Truman’s rebranding as University Health. “Consensus building is so important in creating change and getting things done,” Lewis says. It began with the opening of the first University Health tower in 2015 and a second in 2021, setting the stage for her branding task. Shields, she says, “thought a new name could better describe who we are. He handed me that ball, and we worked up a total rebrand and plan and supported it every step of the way. It helps to have an incredible staff who helped me develop this very complicated plan that would take years to implement.” 

The key to success, she says, was a long, deliberate listening campaign. “That let us hear from community leaders for sure, other community members, staff, patients. It wasn’t one of those campaigns where we went out already knowing the answer. We really listened. It was instrumental in determining how we progressed and how we developed our messaging. Change isn’t always easy, but once people were truly convinced that we were not going to lose our mission, that made things easier. What surprised me was how supportive some groups were, which I wasn’t sure were going to be. They became our champions.”