Healthcare Changemaker: Cara Feldman-Hunt

What if a chance encounter changed the entire trajectory of your career and set you on an impassioned path to change the lives of others? For Cara Feldman Hunt, it did.

A conversation with a stranger building a nonprofit set Cara on a path she never could have planned and set her on a mission to change healthcare. Today she is the Director of the OSHER Center for Integrative Health at the University of Vermont, leading an initiative achieving reductions in ER visits, testifying at the state house, and working to make Vermont a living laboratory for what better healthcare can look like.

In this episode, Monica sits down with her dear friend to talk about her path to build something meaningful, why relationships and patience are the most underrated career tools, and what it really means to wake up every morning knowing your work matters. Cara also shares what she has learned after 18 years in the field and why she believes our healthcare system can and must change.

If you have ever felt called toward work that is bigger than a job title, this one is for you. 

Listen below, or via your favorite podcast player.

In This Episode, You'll Hear:

• What integrative health actually means, and why Cara calls our current system a "sick care system"

• The clinic that achieved a 67% reduction in ER visits in one year, and how it works

• The origin story: a waiting room, a stranger with stage four cancer, and a nonprofit that would change a state

• Why Cara walked into the dean's office and essentially said "you should hire me," and why it worked

• How her organizational development degree turned out to be the perfect unexpected training for healthcare transformation

• What she is currently researching for her doctorate in whole health leadership

• Why relationships and patience are the two most underrated tools in any career

• Her vision for Vermont as a living laboratory for a better healthcare model

• What she does to stay well herself, including skinning up mountains in Vermont winters

• Her advice for anyone wanting to break into integrative health or simply do work that feels meaningful

Key Takeaways

→ You do not always find your passion. Sometimes it finds you. Cara did not set out to transform healthcare. She had a conversation in a waiting room that gave language to what she had been searching for. Stay open.

→ We have a sick care system, not a healthcare system. The distinction matters. Integrative health asks what matters to the person, not just what is the matter with the person. That simple flip changes everything.

→ Be ready when the call comes. Years of pilots, networking, conferences, and building her skills meant that when the hospital called asking her to stand up a clinic, Cara had a Rolodex full of experts and a toolkit ready to go.

→ Relationships are everything. Cara's career was built almost entirely on deep, genuine connections. She credits staying power and meaningful relationships as the core of her success.

→ Patience is a strategy. Change in healthcare is slow and incremental. Cara's advice to the next generation is simple: stick with it. The incremental wins add up.

→ Every skill you have ever gained is still with you. Cara's organizational development degree, her stint in corporate marketing, and her nonprofit leadership all built the foundation for work she could not have imagined when she started.

About Cara Feldman-Hunt

Cara Feldman-Hunt is the Director of the OSHER Center for Integrative Health at the University of Vermont, where she leads clinical care, education, research, and policy work focused on whole health transformation. She holds a master's degree in organizational development from Teachers College at Columbia University and is currently completing her doctorate in whole health leadership at Southern California Health Sciences University. Her career began when she took over as executive director of a small Vermont nonprofit founded by a woman dying of cancer, and she spent nearly two decades building it into a nationally recognized integrative health program. She is a policy advocate, a relationship builder, a connector, and a firm believer that Vermont can show the rest of the country what better healthcare looks like.

About Mode To Joy

Mode to Joy is hosted by Monica Lyle, and explores the intersection of passion and profession. After 30 years as an executive coach, Monica is on a mission to help more people do what they love and love what they do. Each episode features a guest who has found a way to make their life's work feel like their life's calling. May their stories inspire you to find your own way to bring more life to your work and joy to your life.

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