In her new job, Elise Cambournac can't wait to talk tech — "technologie," in her native French — all day long.
Cambournac is the incoming CEO of the Greater Nashville Technology Council, the leading advocate for one of the more dynamic and fastest-growing slices of the region's economy. She was born and raised at the northern tip of France, and her career has taken her as far as India. She landed in Nashville, and its signature health care industry, 23 years ago.
Cambournac is joining the tech council from Parallon, part of hospital titan HCA Healthcare Inc. (NYSE: HCA), where she was assistant vice president of information technology. Among her goals: hitting the council's target of doubling the region's tech workforce by 2025, compared to 2018 levels.
This interview, conducted shortly after her hiring announcement, has been edited for clarity and length.
NBJ: I'm sure you've seen the movie "Dunkirk."
Cambournac: I have, and it's beautiful. My kids spend most of their summers with their grandparents in France. Both of them were there when they were filming it. They actually did film a lot of, if not all, the beach scenes on our beach — my beach from growing up. The very first scene, there's this kid climbing over top of a blue gate. That is the backdoor to the yard of a friend of my parents. One day, Christopher Nolan or someone on his team knocked on their door and asked if they could rent their yard for filming.
What did you find so compelling about this career change? This opportunity, to me, really adds up my 20 years in tech and really touches on my techie-at-heart chord. I can now talk tech all day long, to all companies. It's also tapping into my purpose chord, where I can give back and help … young adults or adults change careers and move into technology. Because, on the corporate side, we all know we need more talent.
I fell into health care, and stayed in health care, because I do like health care. But I think if I were to compare health care and tech, I'm more tech than health care. In Nashville, you cannot avoid health care anyways. You're always surrounded by health care tech companies.
I'm a Nashvillian. It's the only city I've lived in, in the U.S. I moved to India for three-and-a-half years, but [Nashville] is my hometown. It's not Dunkirk anymore, it's Nashville. To contribute to a city that adopted me is very appealing.
Understandably, a lot of the region's tech economy lives in the health care industry. How can Nashville grow more tech companies outside of that space? The first thing I'll say is every company is a tech company. You have to talk to the right people and grab their attention the right way to realize that. Even if you're a trucking company, you have technology that supports you — so how do you make that part of your DNA and allow technology to improve your business? In my mind, it's more about talking about technology to every company in town or every company moving to town and tapping into their techie geek vibe.
In the job interview, what were some of the ideas you were touting as far as where this organization can go next? In a nutshell, I have ideas flying out of my head and my ears. A lot of ideas I've thought about are things that have already been in our foundation, that need to be developed more. Without selling myself too short too quickly, it's about evaluating what those ideas are, how we can leverage our programming and events that we have — the community that we've built. I need to go on my learning journey here for the next 30, 60 days before I can be super-crisp. But there's definitely a lot of ideas and opportunities … connecting all the dots for our tech community on how great we are and how we're impacting all those areas of the community. How do we make it a full story of the tech scene in Nashville?
At a time when more people want to read that story. It's no longer about selling Nashville. Everybody has had a friend, an acquaintance, a family member who has been to Nashville. We can leverage that story in our own narrative of 'why tech?' and 'what do you need to think about changing your career into technology in Nashville?' Now we can tell the story of 'why tech in Nashville,' not just 'why Nashville.'
How would you characterize the change you've seen in the tech workforce? All our members will tell you the biggest challenge in the last three to five years — and Covid just made it worse — is the need to find, attract and retain talent. We have more needs, more jobs than we can procure. It's nationwide, not just Nashville. It's young talent, but also senior talent. Companies need their CIOs or their VPs also. It's attracting all the different generations and levels of seniority talent in Nashville. I doubt a single member will say they fill every single job opening within a week of posting it. That's why tech workforce is our No. 1 goal, as the tech council.
The goal remains doubling the workforce by 2025, right? We're halfway there, 51%. But only three more years to go, so it's definitely a good challenge.
