REP CORNER
Selling is Learning for Lisa Render With knowledge and sharing come confidence Lisa Render distinctly remembers one morning as a child when her dad’s pager kept going off. It was the director
of the burn unit at a local hospital. “He had his finger inside a patient to stop bleeding because his resident had dropped the only triple lumen catheter on the floor,” she recalls. “I remember hearing him screaming through the phone, asking my dad if he should wait with his hand inside the patient until Cardinal Health delivered a replacement, or pick the catheter up off the floor, use it, and give the patient antibiotics.
“My dad was implementing ValueLink [stockless purchasing] at this facility and trusted the program and his people, so he told the doctor to wait. He was sure it would be there in time. The physician agreed, but refused to let my dad off the phone until the catheter arrived. They sat in silence until he heard the door open and footsteps. The physician just slammed the phone down and hung up, and my dad went about his day. 54
August 2021
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“It seemed like there was always a 911 call like this or a hospital in need, and it actually made me terrified of hospitals and doctor’s offices as a child.” She got over it. Today, she is a territory sales consultant in central Tennessee for Cardinal Health, calling primarily on ambulatory surgery centers. Lisa Render was born outside Atlanta, but moved to the Houston area before she was 2. The family moved to Memphis when she was five, and then again to Mansfield, Texas (Dallas-Fort Worth area) at age 13. Her father, Dave Render, grew up as a farm kid in a small Indiana town, and after serving in the military and graduating from Purdue, got a job as an inventory analyst for American Hospital Supply Corp. It was the beginning of a 45-year career with the company, which evolved from American, to Baxter Healthcare, to Allegiance Healthcare and finally, to Cardinal Health. He retired as a director of operations in October 2019. “I was always proud of him,” she says. “He was truly healthcare’s wings before Cardinal Health was Cardinal Health, and before becoming the ‘wings of healthcare’ was part of our mission.” Her mom, Lynda Render, had an early career in politics, working on political campaigns for Jimmy Carter. “She met my dad on a job interview,” her daughter recalls. Lynda turned down the job and decided to sell insurance instead, but the two stayed in touch. Lisa was an active student at Sam Houston State University, holding leadership positions in her sorority, her favorite being service chair; serving as vice president of the American Sign Language Club; and participating in Project Sunshine, an international, non-profit organization that benefits kids and adults with special needs, medical challenges and disabilities. She graduated in 2012 with a degree
