Value-based healthcare provider Cityblock Health was founded in 2017 as a spinoff of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. In the last eight years, it’s grown to serve more than 100,000 members, employs 1,100 and now partners with leading health systems and most of the top Medicaid health plans. Nearly a decade in, start-up culture is still activated, enabling HR to make its strategic mark companywide.
“I love leading teams to achieve ambitious goals,” says Jordan Furbee Vroblesky, chief people officer, who joined Cityblock in late 2023. Since that time, the HR team has worked to drive efficiencies, add value to the work of “Cityfolks” and connect employees to the company purpose—meeting those objectives through Cityblock’s people-first lens.
“I get chills I’m so inspired by our mission and by the dedication and passion of our teams,” she says. “Being able to wrap our arms around this mission is so inspiring.”
Furbee Vroblesky—formerly a global people operations leader at Amazon, where she spent more than a decade—recently shared with HR Executive how start-up culture and a mission-oriented mindset are allowing HR to unleash innovation at Cityblock Health.
HR Executive: What are the inherent culture challenges at a start-up like Cityblock, and how are you navigating them?
Furbee Vroblesky: We are eight years old, and we’ve grown and scaled. But we’ve stayed anchored to our core values, which are so important to us. At this stage, we’re focused on maturity, operations effectiveness, leveraging analytics and insights, building structures—all of which come with growth. Fundamentally, setting up culture at a start-up is about thinking ahead, being visionary and forward-focused—nurturing a human-centered approach while leveraging analytics and insights.
Another key fundamental is talent resiliency and agility, which involves every employee feeling valued and able to contribute ideas—all while staying anchored to values and purpose.
HR Executive: Similarly, what are the opportunities to drive innovation through start-up culture?
Furbee Vroblesky: The thing I love about a start-up—whether you join from the beginning or six years in, like I did—there’s an opportunity to shape culture. Whether you’re starting from the ground up, or as the organization matures, you have the ability to directly align culture with mission and innovate in real time. You have to ensure everything you do anchors to the mission and the value and then scaffold around that.
Having that opportunity gives me so much flexibility—we have to adapt quickly to allow collaboration across the organization. And then keep refining the approach as you learn, grow and evolve. I have the ability to adjust based on what we learn. It’s so much fun to be at the center of helping us be agile and innovate.
When we foster culture, as we’re leveraging AI and automation, we’re equipping our teams from the ground up with this culture—that growth-oriented mindset. As we tackle different challenges, that can empower our teams to directly take ownership, to create impact, to deliver value to our members, our providers, our employers.
HR Executive: What role do you see culture playing in Cityblock’s recruitment and retention strategy in the coming months and years?
Furbee Vroblesky: Culture is the core of Cityblock’s recruiting and retention strategy, and core to the employer brand as well. As we scale and grow, it’s playing a central role in all pieces—our holistic people strategy, how we attract and retain top talent; it all aligns not just to the mission and values but to our core culture.
We emphasize that purpose-driven culture throughout the entire employee lifecycle. During the recruitment process, we ensure candidates have a deep understanding of the impact they can have on underserved communities. That culture helps us attract the right talent and ensure they’re motivated and engaged before day one. And then it engages them in an inclusive, positive employee experience. As they grow and develop, we want them to feel supported, valued and connected—and that’s how we do it, through our culture and mission.
HR Executive: How has your approach to HR leadership shifted to mesh with the start-up culture at Cityblock, compared to previous employers like Amazon?
Furbee Vroblesky: What’s so interesting and wonderful is that throughout my career, I’ve adapted my leadership style based on where the team and company are. I’ve been so fortunate to be part of all different stages of a business. Before Amazon, I had the opportunity to develop my career by building a tech start-up and at a very mature food services distribution organization. As I think about how I flexed, my core strength lies in driving high-performance, agile and strategically innovative teams. Moving from Amazon to Cityblock, I shifted the focus to scaling and innovating in different, new ways. Across roles and industries, I learned to be resilient, agile and embrace different leadership styles. I lean more toward the coaching, servant leadership model, while being an effective partner to the CEO and executive team.
HR Executive: Where is your team focusing to enhance HR’s role as a strategic business partner to the organization in the coming months?
Furbee Vroblesky: Looking back, 2024 was the first full year I was focused on designing and building the organization, building trust and credibility with the business. I brought in new players, new expertise and was able to spend time listening deeply to the needs of the business. Then, it was about focusing on designing the critical needle to move the foundational work; I called 2024 the foundational framework year.
As we look ahead, the strategic priorities of our team are focused on aligning to further enhance our roles as that strategic partner to the business. A key focus for us is leveraging AI and automation to streamline the people strategy and processes. We’re delivering actionable insights and making more data-driven decisions. We’re focusing on strategic workforce planning as a priority, which will help align people strategically to holistic enterprise-wide goals.
We’re also focused on our EVP—refining the approach to attract and retain critical top talent. We’re looking at more of a consultative partnership approach, building things like career frameworks, providing clear career pathways, helping employees thrive as they advance their careers. We’re also collaborating shoulder to shoulder with leadership to make sure all of our work aligns to our organizational priorities to drive operational effectiveness and enable business success.
HR Executive: Access to quality healthcare is core to the mission of Cityblock. How does the organization’s mission influence how it approaches the wellbeing of its internal workforce?
Furbee Vroblesky: It’s core. We have a member care model where we wrap our arms around all of our members—their physical and mental wellbeing—and we’ve taken that model and focused it on our employee population. We call it our employee care model, and it’s one of my strategic priorities in my three-year plan. We believe taking care of our employees is foundational to achieving our mission.
It’s an important part of the EVP: We offer comprehensive healthcare benefits, and we align our benefits to the core of what matters most to our employees—flexible work, resources to support mental health, programs for holistic care. We’re focusing on what our teams need to be the best so they can serve others most effectively. We want them to feel seen, heard and healthy.
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