From Early Coding to CIO: Jason Frame’s Tech Leadership Journey | Ep035

Episode Information Show Notes Episode Summary In this enlightening conversation, Manuel Martinez sits down with Jason Frame, Chief Information Officer at Southern Nevada Health District, to explore his remarkable journey from typing code from magazines as a child to leading critical technology initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jason shares candid insights about career progression in technology, developing leadership skills, and building successful teams. About Our Guest Jason Frame serves as the CIO at Southern Nevada Health District, overseeing IT operations for public health services across the Las Vegas area. His organization provides essential health services including restaurant inspections, EMT registrations, and primary care for underserved communities. During COVID-19, Jason’s team led technology efforts for contact tracing, testing, and vaccination management, demonstrating how IT leadership directly impacts critical public services. What You’ll Learn – How Jason’s early experiences with an Apple IIe and Commodore 64 sparked his interest in technology – The transition from programming to leadership roles and the skills needed for each – Why being a continuous learner is crucial for long-term success in technology careers – Practical approaches to communicating your achievements to management – Jason’s hiring philosophy: “I hire for fit and train for skill” – Strategies for stepping outside your comfort zone to accelerate career growth – Practical advice for job interviews and salary negotiations – Why networking and community involvement matter in technology careers Key Insights “If you never ask, the answer is always no.” – Jason shares why taking initiative and seeking opportunities is essential for career advancement. “Don’t reject yourself.” – Jason discusses why you should apply for positions even when you only meet some of the qualifications, noting that men often apply when they meet just 30% of requirements while others might wait until they meet 100%. “Be prepared to show that you’re a learner.” – Jason explains how continuous learning is the most important quality he looks for when hiring technology professionals. Episode Highlights – Jason’s journey from coding games on an Apple IIe to managing complex IT systems – The evolution of IT roles from specialists to versatile technology professionals – How to build relationships that advance your career – Practical strategies for developing both technical and soft skills – The importance of creating a culture where team members are recognized for their contributions – Resources for professional development and continuous learning Connect With Jason Frame Find Jason on LinkedIn to continue the conversation about technology leadership and career development. https://www.linkedin.com/in/framejason/ Join the Conversation What career challenge are you currently facing? Share your questions and experiences in the comments section. We’d love to hear how you’re applying Jason’s advice to your own career journey! #CareerDownloads #TechLeadership #CIOInsights #CareerAdvice #TechnologyCareers #ITLeadership #ProfessionalDevelopment Transcription Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads. Where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to really learn more about their experiences and their career with the goal to really understand how they’ve managed it and try and uncover any tips or strategies that they’ve used that you can go ahead and implement as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me Jason Frame. So he is a CIO for the Southern Nevada Health District and I’ll let him go ahead and explain a little bit more of kind of what some of the roles and responsibilities that he has, you know, and exactly what they cover. I met him a couple of years back. So we had interacted probably at different networking events when I had attended, when I used to work in the public sector and then eventually I became an SE for VMware, called on his account. So really got to know him a little bit, you know, a more intimate level, understand kind of what he’s done, what he’s been into. He does a lot of public speaking. So I thought he’d be a great person to kind of come in and share his experiences. So with that, I’ll introduce Jason Frame. Jason: Thanks, Manny. Manuel: No problem. Appreciate you coming on and, you know, again, we’ve connected and the fact that you were willing to kind of share your experiences. Jason: Yeah, I’ve been looking forward to that ever since I’ve seen a couple of these podcasts before. Manuel: So if you don’t mind, just so that people can, who don’t know you, if you just mind telling us, you know, kind of what your role is, I already mentioned your CIO, but again, what are some of the responsibilities for there and then what do you do for the Southern Nevada Health District? Jason: Perfect. So again, I’m Jason Frame. I’m the Chief Information Officer at Southern Nevada Health District. For those of you who don’t know what Southern Nevada Health District is, we’re the local public health agency in the Las Vegas area. And we also do, besides the public health things that we do, like the restaurant inspections and, you know, we register all of the EMTs in the valley. We make sure all the ambulances are inspected. That’s some of the public health activities that we do. We’re also a primary care provider. So we’re around those communities that are underserved and we’ve opened up multiple clinics to really serve that, the population that’s not getting the healthcare services they need. Another thing that we did, if you remember that couple of years ago, the small thing that happened called COVID, that we were the lead agency on all of that. So everything from the initial contact tracing, testing, doing the vaccinations. We have a public health lab that actually did the tests. And that was all pretty much what we did. Manuel: I know we’ll get into it, but I’m assuming you have to really support all of that and understand the infrastructure and how you support, especially because it’s remote and diverse. Like for people that don’t know Southern Nevada, you know, it’s Vegas, Vegas is why, but I’m assuming you also cover kind of some of the surrounding areas. Jason: We do. I mean, we’re mainly in the Las Vegas area, but we also get down to Laughlin. We have an office in Laughlin. We have a Laughlin office in Mesquite. We go out to Pahrump sometimes. We’ve gone out to, you know, as far as up to Ely and some of those other smaller towns, we’ve sent mobile clinics up there to help them out. We sent one with a dentist just to do checkups. So we do help pretty much all of the Southern Nevada area. Our state is so geographically diverse and there’s only a few different health districts in the state. Most of the time when you’re in a, you know, a lot of the states, basically the health department is part of the city or the county. In Nevada, we’re a little bit different because we’re our own jurisdiction. We’re not part of the county. We’re not part of any of the cities. They all have representatives on our board, but we are independent. There’s a couple other independent ones in the state, ones up in Northern Nevada and then Carson City. They’re kind of independent, but they’re also kind of part of the city county of there. And Washoe County has their own health department. Other than that, for the other 13, I guess counties, it’s all just the state that does it. And they’re very limited in what they can do. So we try to help out where we can. Manuel: So if you don’t mind now, so we know what you currently do, just kind of give us back, you know, kind of go back a little bit to kind of, you know, where you grew up and eventually, you know, at what point in stage you kind of got into technology. Everybody’s different, so. Jason: So I grew up in Carson City, Nevada. Moved there when I was about four and just, you know, pretty much grew up there until high school. Started playing with technology with the Apple IIe way back in the day. You know, that and then my Atari 2600, that was my introduction to technology. And then we had Commodore 64 and we played around with that. Got into, you know, just being in the computer. I really enjoyed it. I had an uncle that was in IT for the Air Force. And even though I didn’t see him very often, when I did, it just interested me in what he was talking about. I remember going back out as a kid and you buy magazines and I’m just dating myself, right? Or you buy a magazine and you take it home because there was a computer program in that magazine. But this is back before the days of putting a CD or a floppy disk in. No, it was on paper, you had to type it in. And so you’d type in the game and then you get to play it. And, you know, you got to think back, you know, with the Atari 2600 being an eight bit game, this is probably another step back from that. It was more like text-based games or stuff like that. But I loved it so much that I go in there and test it. And, you know, I played around and then I’d see it. Oh, how can I tweak this a little bit? And, you know, just playing around with that code to make it either do something different or do something better for me. So I started off doing that. Got my own, my first computer when I was 10 years old, I guess, back in like 83. Manuel: And then just kind of, I’m assuming at that point, you just kind of continued on, you know, messing around with it. And, you know, as a 10 years old, I remember something similar. So my dad had his own business. And I remember like the first, my first experience was they had one, they did their accounting and it was the big fiv...