Colleen Cozzens, Director, Head of Talent, Healthcare, joined the firm in 2022 and works closely with our healthcare portfolio companies on talent initiatives.
Colleen joined Oak HC/FT from Oxeon Partners, where she spent more than four years building teams for healthcare clients ranging from seed stage startups to publicly traded companies. Prior, Colleen held various roles at Collective Health, building the partner ecosystem and operational processes with major health plans, provider systems, and ancillary networks. She began her career at Deloitte Consulting serving provider and payer clients.
Colleen received a Bachelor of Science degree in Policy Analysis and Management from Cornell University.
I took an untraditional path to executive talent. I started learning about healthcare by working for a big national payer as a Deloitte consultant. I then moved into a startup, building partnerships with major industry players. I loved trying new things, failing, and learning what it takes to build from scratch. Finally, I took a chance on executive search based on my love of building teams and found my calling: I love bringing people together.
I joined Oak because of the people - everyone is intelligent, humble, and positive. And my role at Oak is an awesome blend of all my experiences to date: A dash of consulting, a lot of recruiting, and overall a lot of problem solving for our portfolio companies. One thing I’ve always prided myself on is scrappiness, which is why I love working with entrepreneurs.
Great CEOs are constantly evaluating their teams and understanding who is in the right role for them right now versus who they will need in 6-12 months. They are always laying the groundwork to make changes that will need to be made. They're also finding ways to leverage the talent that they currently have, especially opportunities for developing people from the inside.
CEOs will also see amazing leverage from the right amount of process. Sometimes founders are suspicious of process and they worry that it will slow them down. But after working with so many companies, I've learned that it's actually the opposite. The biggest mistakes we find are when companies don't standardize things early and invest in tools that can give their teams leverage without hiring extra bodies. When you have to ramp up hiring quickly, having the tools to source, interview, hire, and onboard people efficiently sets you apart in candidate experience, which unlocks your ability to scale quickly.