May 2, 2025 •Anya Wells
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hi, I'm Bonnie Bishop. We are Mazí Health Consultants. We're based out of Missoula, and we primarily operate out of Montana, and we offer a variety of services. So we're a health and wellbeing consulting company that serves organizations, particularly employers. We have a lens towards employers because we are also public and community health professionals, and we know that a huge way to impact the health and wellbeing of a community is by impacting the human experience at work. So we provide a variety of services for organizations to get a better understanding of their organizational health and support them in transforming their business practices by humanizing the work experience and also leadership, et cetera, et cetera. We do a lot of storytelling work with organizations across Montana. In starting this business, it came out of a lot of spirited dinner conversations because we saw so many well-intentioned leaders and organizations trying to meet the needs of their employees and their communities, but not having the mechanisms to do that and making a lot of well-intentioned assumptions about what those needs are and how to meet them.
(01:44):
We also saw a gap in the consulting realm around this work in our region. So we decided that why not us and why not now, and that we could just figure out the business side of it that wouldn't be too hard, which was a sweet, sweet, naive little thought that we had back then. But yeah, we were inspired and passionate and the gap between what organizations intend to do and the opportunity that they have to make an impact on the health of their communities, the gap between that and the experience on the receiving end of the communities and of the employees. That gap really inspired us because we have the skills and the passion and the relational drive to close that gap. We are skilled in evidence-based and human-centered ways of collecting people's voices and experiences that is associated with health and wellbeing outcomes. So we're trained in public and community health in community-based participatory research and doing needs assessments that will center worker voice and equity.
(03:10):
And those can be workplace assessments. We know how to run focus groups well, to be able to capture lived experiences. Storytelling is a mechanism that we've used. I've been a storytelling coach, I've been a paid storyteller. I've done research in storytelling in graduate school. So we bring a lot of skills of how to accurately assess the needs of a community. And community can look like a lot of different things. And we do that in a really equity centered and human centered way. And what we're able to do is by collecting all of that, we're able to provide data and stories and human experiences to the interested parties that are influencing those health and wellbeing outcomes. So they get excellent, timely data to inform their decisions, and they also get the heart and the spirit of the issue, which they oftentimes have no capacity to capture or don't really have those technical skills.
(04:17):
And the other skills that I carry with me is I am a big believer that communities and people are the experts in their own experience. And I operate from a place of that intuitive knowing is not something that needs to be questioned. It's something that needs to be heard. And I'm a very curious person. I love meeting people who are different than me who see the world different than me, who believe different things who move through the world differently. So I have this fascination and curiosity of all the stories that we carry and for a variety of people. And I think the other pieces, I am growing in this way, but I don't really hesitate to speak truth to power when it is affecting people's health and wellbeing. And so I think from an organizational perspective, people often trust us because they know that we're going to honor the experiences of the people that we're trying to serve.
(05:36):
And we also know that we're not afraid to bring them the truest truth and support them in navigating that. And when they hire us, they're going to get honest, compassionate people with a clear eyed sensitivity to their issues, and we're also going to bring that evidence base. So yeah, I like to swirl all of that together. Challenges that we faced in our business. So we have a few, we're not short on challenges, but thankfully they are equal to our strengths in a lot of ways. So we take them, them on. Our work is really transformation work and culture work and the amount of buy-in that employers and organizations have to have. There's really this dynamic that's so tender when you enter into an organization as a consultant because you can only work at the speed of trust. And so building trust in a relatively short amount of time with folks so that we're able to be in conversation with them in the most transparent way, and having to build that psychological safety so that our organizations and our clients really see us as a partner, a trusted partner, what that relationship building looks like and that trust building looks like has looked different for all of our clients.
(07:12):
So that is a challenge in that we don't show up in the same way and do our work in the exact same way every single time. The quality of our work is high and our values don't change, but we have to really co-create a lot of this work, especially if this work is going to lead to sustainable change, which is hard work and identity work. And yeah, isn't work that a lot of organizations have the capacity, for a variety of reasons, to delve into. So that's one kind of assessing how ready is this organization, how hungry are they?
(08:00):
Do they take that learner stance? Are they open and are we able to build trust ? And sometimes there's very good reasons that organizations don't have the capacity to build the kind of trust that's required for our work. So yeah, we've had really beautiful transformational experiences and every time we go into those, we are also changed, which is just the beauty of being a consultant is that you guide and facilitate, but they guide and facilitate you right back. One that is a current client. We're working with a startup nonprofit in Big Sky Montana, and the network that we're working with or the organization we're working with is building a peer support network so that community members in Big Sky are trained in suicide alertness. They know how to speak to someone in crisis. They're trained in holistic emotional first aid, and they know how to refer a person to an expedited path where they can get professional supports and resources, which as most people are aware, we are pretty resource deprived in that area for the state of Montana, for the size and rural nature of our state.
(09:27):
So they do incredible work and they hold so much space for other people and their stories and their lived experience. And as you can imagine, the people who are drawn to that work are caregivers and caretakers, and they have that innate desire to serve. And so what's been really stunning is that we're working on a community storytelling initiative. We're going to host a storytelling event where these peer supporters get to tell their stories, and I'm coaching them on how to tell their stories and how to even explore their own story and to hold it with the same tenderness that they hold other people's. That has been absolutely beautiful because now they're centered, their experience is centered, and they have space, and they have someone who's eager to hear their story and believes in them that they have a story worth telling. And to see them move from being very uncomfortable with the idea that they have a story that could change somebody's life, to really embracing that and then letting me come in and work with them on not only embracing their story, but to how to tell it in such a way that lands with who they're telling it to.
(10:54):
It's just such an honor to see that arc of the experience. And so that's just one example of many of an organization that lives so closely to their values and really embraces, if we're going to talk about mental health, if we're going to talk about crisis experience, if we're going to talk about hard things, we're going to talk about them honestly, and we're going to be as thoughtful as possible in the way in which we talk about them. And so for them to have that openness and then invite me in to support them and to help guide them and way find with them is just such an honor. And so we're excited where we're at with that project and that client, and it has already just been an incredible experience all around. And we're having fun too, to be able to talk about hard vulnerable things and to be faced with cultures and narratives that have negative impacts on our health and wellbeing, and then to be able to be inside of community and work with each other to turn those around has just been a truly nourishing experience.
(12:16):
So we're having a lot of fun with that one. One community really is the focal point. We are community-minded driven people, and that's what called us to our public and community health program at the university, our graduate degree in that. And I think inside of a community like Missoula where there is this sense of connectedness that is unique. I've lived in several places, and that's not always how you feel in a place that you live and work and play and struggle and are human in. So I think this sense of connectedness and this sense of responsibility that people have, not only in Missoula but across our state too, because there are so many resource gaps. I think that people in Montana understand that where there's a lack of resources we need each other. That can be a very, and there's also seasonal realities that I think reinforce that if you don't have a snowplow in certain parts of the state, you're honestly not going to be able to go anywhere without working with your neighbors.
(13:37):
And in areas of our state that don't, organizations aren't able to get the support that they need, they have to collaborate in these really robust ways. So community and the willingness that people, leaders, and organizations have to have in order to be able to properly serve either their employee base or their community or both, I think that's really alive for people. And so we found that in Montana when we're talking about this sense of community, there's a deep understanding that when we're isolated and when we function in an isolated way in these small under-resourced towns in these rural communities, people suffer because of that. And I think we have enough data from a population health perspective to also show that. And that just see how incredibly powerful that concept and that lived experience has been in the state. And when we talk with business owners or folks from larger cities, different areas, they have a different experience of that.
(15:02):
I think there's more work in having to build a sense of community where people don't necessarily rely on a sense of community to get their needs met like they do here. I mean, I am a hungry, hungry learner, and so when I found out that we could get coaching services for free with taxpayer dollars, I was immediately sold. And also I was like, how have I not known that? Or how was I not aware of that? I wish I would've been in conversations with you all when we were starting our business and thought that we could just get to the things that we really love. And then all the stuff, would happened. It actually is way more work than that. Obviously. It would've been so helpful to get some support with business strategy and to have someone with so many more years of experience of what it takes to build and sustain and grow a business, that would've been so helpful.
(16:12):
So we're just happy that we found you all now and have attended a couple of your all's workshops and also had a coaching session, which was incredible and such value in an hour, and gave us a lot to think about and a lot to move forward with. And so I think I'm really excited to know that you all are collaborative and energized and you're looking for people who are ready to move and shake. And also to normalize, I think some parts of being a business owner that can be shame producing or can be so frustrating or tiresome. And I just really appreciate how you all create an environment that doesn't assume that we all need to be experts on everything that you help us fill in the gaps with that. So yeah, I'm excited to continue to be a very active member of your center, so thank you.
(17:21):
I think the only thing that I would add as, we have continued to witness the tremendous pressures that organizations are under and how quickly those pressures and stressors are evolving and how many pain points employers and organizations have to navigate on a daily basis to meet the mission of their organization and also take care of people, I think that it's so valuable to partner with someone who can come in and immediately act as an ally for you, for your business, for your employee base, and to be able to deliver really high quality information that folks can act on and implement and embrace together. And I think there's so much that's being asked of employers and there's so much misinformation or so many assumptions baked into the ways that we interact as humans all the time.
(18:44):
And so I just think that it's been interesting to witness the journey of organizational leaders across our state and our region, and to see how we can best be of service to them in embracing an ever evolving landscape of being a business owner, of being an organization, of being a mission-driven organization too, and being in the human business. If you're working with people, centering humanity in the workplace and protecting that is a really worthy, really challenging cause. So I would just say it's been incredible to witness what is on people's plate, and it's been a real honor to help carry the plate, change the plate out, take some things off the plate.
If you are interested in hearing more of Bonnie's story, you can read the blog here. You can connect with Bonnie via email at bonnie.bishop@mazihealth.org or check out her website.
Professional photos were taken by KC Lostetter Photography. Follow her on Instagram @kclostetter.
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Interview by Anya Wells, RMWBC Marketing Assistant and Storytelling Extraordinaire
