For Senior Principal Business Consultant Steve Burch, being from Indiana means basketball is almost a religion. Learn what gets this seasoned product manager up and going every day as one of Trissential’s talented problem-solvers.
What makes you excited to start work each day?
The chance to lead and work with other brilliant and motivated people to solve important business and human problems.
What’s your biggest motivation in life?
Making a positive impact on people’s lives. Focusing on Healthcare IT has allowed me to apply my technical and business skills towards this personal goal.
What is the most important accomplishment of your career?
Several years ago I led a small team that built a platform to connect a wide range of health-related data, align that data to individual people, and develop an algorithm that identified the most significant health risks and needs for each person. This became the analytic engine driving a healthcare consumer engagement platform for a very large national health insurance and healthcare services organization.
What do you do when you are not working?
I’m a foodie, so on a daily basis, I enjoy good food and drink. I love a wide range of outdoor activities, but especially ones that immerse me in nature, like hiking, camping, and cycling. I also enjoy almost all kinds of music and love going to see music performed live. Once the COVID pandemic dies down, I will be able to engage in my other non-work passion, which is travel. Beyond sightseeing, I like exploring and learning about other parts of the world and the associated history, culture and food. Doing any of these things with my wife of 28 years and/or one or more of my three daughters (ages 22, 20, and 17) makes the experiences better!
What was your inspiration to enter the technology field?
To be totally honest, it was more of a pragmatic (or maybe serendipitous?) path to technology for me than one of inspiration. I was an Economics major in college and took only one Computer Science class. Coming out of college, I landed a job with Andersen Consulting (which became Accenture after the split with Arthur Andersen). I gained the foundation of my technical chops there and decided an IT focus was what I wanted to maintain. True to my Liberal Arts undergrad, I’m always curious about more than just one angle of anything. So, I’ve always viewed technology as a vehicle to serve a broader purpose. For me, remaining focused on the business goals at hand gives meaning to the IT work I do.
Who is your biggest hero?
For me, the world is too complex to have just one hero. A common thread across my heroes is the ability to help make needs and challenges clear (or at least better understood) “to the masses” and motivate them to action to make things better. Leaders who unite people across disparate backgrounds and mindsets to recognize common ground and achieve big and important things are vital and too scarce. You can never get everyone on board, but at least attaining critical mass drives change. One leader (and a hero of mine) who did this in incredibly difficult and divisive times was Abraham Lincoln.
What’s the best part about being a Product Manager?
The Product Manager role (especially for tech-based products, which is my space) keeps my focus on business problems & needs. This enables me to guide Product teams (largely comprised of IT folks) to deliver solutions to those problems & needs. The overriding focus on delivering business value is very motivating for me.
How would you describe Trissential in five words or less?
Innovative, agile business value delivery.
What would you be doing if you hadn’t gone into technology consulting?
I grew up in Indiana where basketball is nearly a religious thing. My dream as a kid was to play in the NBA. Ending up 5’ 10” made that a non-option! More realistically, if I weren’t in technology consulting I would still probably be in the business world with a different focus (likely Operations) where my passion for dissecting problems and finding a better way could be satisfied.
