Saad Chaudhry’s Leadership Journey, Part 2: The Power of Community

In a few weeks, Saad Chaudhry will embark on the opportunity of a lifetime when he becomes the first-ever enterprise CIO for Saudi German Hospitals Group, a multinational health system based in Dubai.

The opportunity, however, almost didn’t happen. Being a diligent associate CIO, Chaudhry was hesitant to click on an email about a CIO job in the United Arab Emirates; “I thought it was spam,” he said. In fact, it wasn’t until he received a phone call that he realized it was a legitimate offer to fulfill a dream to lead an organization on the other side of the world, applying the lessons he has learned during his career.

Recently, healthsystemCIO had a chance to speak with Chaudhry about what made him interested in pursuing the role at Saudi German, how he hopes to leverage his “human leadership” philosophy to drive change; why he isn’t worried about being able to adjust to a new culture; and what he’ll miss most about Anne Arundel.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* First priority as new leader – “To meet everyone who’s responsible for keeping the lights on.”

* Driving change – “A CIO doesn’t do it alone.”

* The “adventure” of adapting to a new culture

* Abu Dhabi’s data exchange – “I truly believe in the local power of a good HIE.”

* Creating a framework based on CRISP

* Crowded vendor market in UAE

* Dubai’s expat community – “You’re never left to your own devices.”



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Bold Statements

A change of this magnitude, or any magnitude really, is not done by the CIO alone. The CIO is only one person. And as CIO, my leadership approach has never been to dictate something from the top-down.

Whenever there’s a change, I choose to approach it as an adventure — as something to learn and grow from. That has allowed me to have that positive outlook when there’s a change occurring at work or in my personal life. This, I think, qualifies as both.

My goal once I get there is to continue building that out and continue understanding, as we’re standing up these regional HIEs, what their pain points are. How do we bring CIOs from all the other organizations in those parts of the world to the same table, just like we did here, and as a result of that, how do we make those interoperability pieces better?

The good news is that for people relocating to such hotspots of expats, there’s always going to be some sense of community. There’s going to be a set of organizations that fluidly and specifically deal with the action of moving abroad and getting settled in. You’re never left to your own devices.

Gamble:  What do you think is going to be your approach in starting this new role? Obviously it’s not something where you can flip a switch on day one, but what do you expect to be the big priorities early on?

Chaudhry:  My first priority is to be to get out there and meet the leadership — everybody who is responsible for running the organization and keeping the lights on. That’s going to require a fair amount of travel because of the footprint, but my goal is to essentially meet all the directors of IT, the CEOs, CFOs, and CMOs of the individual facilities spread out across these continents.

The reason is because a change of this magnitude, or any magnitude really, is not done by the CIO alone. The CIO is only one person. And as CIO, my leadership approach has never been to dictate something from the top-down. My approach has always been to build a coalition to help understand what would benefit the practice of medicine, the business of medicine, and every other supporting entity in the health system ...