November 6, 2025: From loading backup tapes in a Phoenix data center to becoming a sought-after disaster recovery expert, Melissa Muñiz, Principal Consultant at Zion Resiliency, proves that curiosity and preparation trump luck every time. In this episode, she reveals how rigorous DR testing at HCA created teams so well-prepared that major outages were handled without her even knowing. Melissa shares hard-won lessons from manufacturing, retail, and healthcare about building true organizational resilience, plus the networking strategies that landed her consistent consulting contracts through a single LinkedIn message. Whether you're leading operations or considering entrepreneurship, Melissa's insights on staying hungry, building reputation, and embracing calculated risks offer a refreshing perspective on career growth.

Key Points:

• 03:52 Lessons from Full-Scale Recovery 
• 08:40 Transitioning Across Industries
• 13:03 Building a Resilient Career and Network
• 17:15 Speed Round and Final Thoughts

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Flourish Sound Bytes: Recovery Made Easy and Rolling with the Opportunities with Melissa Muñiz

Sarah Richardson: I'm Sarah Richardson, a principal here at this week Health where our mission is healthcare transformation, powered by community. This is Flourish Soundbites, unfiltered Conversations with healthcare leaders. Let's get real,

Welcome back to Flourish Sound Bites. I'm Sarah Richardson, and today's episode features a leader whose career path is as inspiring as it is unexpected from loading tapes in an. C, a data center in Phoenix to become one of the foremost expert in business continuity and disaster recovery.

Melissa Muni has built a career rooted in resilience, adaptability, and humility. Melissa is now co-founder of Zion Resiliency and mc for the Disaster Recovery Journal Conference, and a trusted advisor across industries. She's also a brand new grandmother who can balance swaddling a baby as effortlessly as managing A-B-C-D-R strategy.

Things I would actually know nothing about. So I'll leave that to you, but I love your origin story. I'm gonna start with the early days you advanced from operator to manager in just four years, and at the time you thought it was luck, but looking back, what do you now see as the keys to that growth?

Melissa Muniz: So growing up I was taught to be a very humble female, and not that there's anything wrong with being humble.

I refer back to Andrew Kerr's book, the Humility Imperative. We Should be Humble Leaders, but. At the same time, I think it's okay to take credit for what it is that we did For a long time, I did see my career growth as just luck, but over time, with others' help and them pointing things out, I realized that it was a very intentional process that I put into each opportunity.

So I think while it's hard to take credit for that, even just saying that now, I think I would say that to someone else. So I need to give myself that same credit.

Sarah Richardson: Well you do because being hungry and curious are actually a form of humility because you're putting the onus still on yourself and not at the expectation of others.

Melissa Muniz: So if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. The best parts of being in this [00:03:00] industry, in this field is that I get to learn a little bit about a lot of different parts of the company.

So in my early days at HCA, those DR tests showed me that the systems weren't just technologies. They supported business processes, patient care processes that directly impacted patient care. And that really was eye-opening. Because in the data center, yes, I understood what those servers did, but they were separated out by servers and networks and alerts and tickets.

But in Dr. Those servers, those systems became patients and beds and data flowing from one patient system to another billing and payment processes. So suddenly it became something that really touched people's lives.

Sarah Richardson: And you've described how recovery testing at HCA gave you a crash course in the business side of healthcare.

Melissa Muniz: when we used to do those exercises, we would have it in one room and they were recovering all the servers. And then the business and the patient care testers would come in towards the end of the week and they would be in a different room.

And I would go to the business, I would check on them, how are things going? And they would tell me. Okay, this process isn't working. And I would take that back to the IT room and say, this process isn't working. And they would just look at me and say, but what server, what application? I don't this, this doesn't help me.

And I realized quickly that I had to be the one that translated between IT and the business and make the two of them talk and communicate that it was my responsibility to bridge that gap.

And that's an important aspect of making sure all those aspects work. But then you fast forward that into, and where is this impact hitting the business, hitting the patient, hitting the clinician. Those were a lot of those dots you continued to connect because guess what? Real outages actually happened and they happened when you were there.

But your preparation, I mean, it was so strong that the alerts were often handled before you knew about them. And I love your comment one time you said, nobody called me and told me, but they didn't need to. So what does that teach us about the importance of planning and cadence?

Melissa Muniz: I really appreciate that question because there is a reason why we practice, right?

There's a reason why we train when we're gonna run a marathon or going to go hiking, or when we're gonna give a presentation. That practice builds up our confidence. And I think at the time when I kept bringing these folks into a room for three days to a week, it felt like maybe sometimes we were just checking the box.

But I got to just be there for supports because they didn't need me to lead that they knew exactly what to do. They had hit the ground running. Things were working so well, and it was just great to see what a well-oiled machine we had become after. After so many DR tests and exercises and all that time.

Melissa Muniz: So we started off, when we did tape recoveries, we were in the room for five days just pulling in all the tapes, doing those recoveries.

When we got to a point of replication, that definitely, that obviously closed the gap quite a bit. And we got down to, for our critical applications, they were four to eight hours. And then you, we were able to get to a point where we were able to start recovering. Some of our lesser criticality ones to check those and make sure that we were rotating those in, but it was still with business testing.

We were still there for a week because we wanted to work everything out and make sure that everyone had the opportunity to come in and test that we had recovered the right systems. These were the times when you find out, you bring in, you bring in someone that hadn't tested before and they say, yeah, my data's not there.

By all means, come in, let us know how we're doing, what we're missing. Let's check all that out.

Sarah Richardson: I feel like you probably consumed a lot of pizza during those events.

Melissa Muniz: So much pizza. I knew the numbers to all the places within that area that would deliver, especially after hours. So yeah, so much terrible food.

Sarah Richardson: Yeah, an important piece of like all your disaster planning and make sure you know the local pizza chain. It's true. It, it's true. But then after years in healthcare, you made a leap into other industries. I mean, you've gone into manufacturing retail beyond what motivated the shift?

COVID layoffs and, uh, furloughs and layoffs had pushed me into contract work where I did some work in grocery supply chain, which was really interesting during COVID because as we know, we were getting our groceries delivered in very different ways. So got to see how all of that was working. And then it was funny because during that time, I just can't stay away from my Nashville healthcare roots, and I started doing some contract work with another healthcare company in that area.

But it was essentially that. Curiosity that I have. I want to learn more about these industries and this field gives me an opportunity to just pick off a little bit, learn about how all this works together, and it continued to motivate me to go into different areas.

Melissa Muniz: in manufacturing there's a relentless focus on, Finding those single points of dependency on making sure that there's efficiency. So I think for healthcare leaders, you think about that, finding those single points of dependency in staffing and processes and technologies. in retail, I learned about agility.

Products change season to season or delivery methods change. So you think resiliency planning goes into that for healthcare in adapting in new treatments or patient surges? We've gotta remain agile. Supply chain taught me that operations emphasized on the need. Supply chain emphasized the need to understand that end-to-end, and that's what we need to do often in healthcare.

Sarah Richardson: Well, and I love having that multifaceted perspective because there are gonna be nuggets of each, which brings you into what you now do for a living.

I mean, you run Zion resiliency with your husband. Yes. You also serve with an mc for DRJ, and you do the additional contract work in myriad fields. And so what does a day in the life look like for you now?

Melissa Muniz: I don't know about a day in the life, but I know a week in the life could definitely shift. I mean, I'm shifting between industries.

I might be working in healthcare, I might be working right now, one of my big contracts is with a large retailer where I'm working through business continuity, life cycle with them doing impact and risk, uh, concentration risk assessments with them. I do spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, as I'm sure a lot of your audience does.

And then, as you mentioned, twice a year, I am the mc. I'm up on the stage at DRJ, which is the largest and the longest running conference in our field. And I'm just up there trying to keep the audience engaged and energized in between sessions. So it could depend on the week where I am or what I'm doing.

Sarah Richardson: Do you tell that audience like, Hey, if you're on your phone, I hope you're taking notes, and if not, I hope you're taking my picture and posting it on LinkedIn, talking about how amazing this conference is because I too came back from a conference about a week ago and the amount of people on heads down in their phones during the speakers, and I'm like.

So for someone who's thinking about stepping out on their own, what advice do you have about building the right network and finding consistent opportunities? And I'll also preface this, Melissa by saying the amount of inbound conversations we all have about helping people find new roles, new opportunities, new jobs, especially in a really awkward employment climate right now.

What can people do to be an advocate for themselves?

Melissa Muniz: You know, I'm helping a very good friend through this right now, and she has built a reputation for consistent quality work and trusted relationships. So that's step one. Ask those folks around you. Check on your reputation, what you're known for, and then at some point you have to just take that leap and get out there.

Would love to help you out. I stayed visible. I stayed consistent with that messaging, and then that's one of my repeat contracts that I get.

Sarah Richardson: Which is such a beacon for others who wonder like, oh my gosh, I've been posting, I've been connecting, and I'm not getting any of these returns. And there's always that one.

Heck, what? What are the odds that that was the call that came in at the time that you and I had been talking about recording this? So you never know where something like that will land. Mm-hmm. So, great advice. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What now though, is the most fulfilling part of this chapter in your career? Looking back

Melissa Muniz: at 20. Almost over 20 years since that first, uh, part-time job loading tapes into machines. It is surreal to see that journey and it, it's not as if it hasn't been without setbacks, right? You make bad job moves there, as I mentioned, layoffs during COVID, but. I just always go back to that curiosity.

You know, in my grownup job for over 20 years, but it's resulted in a career that keeps me engaged and inspired every day. I just really love what I do.

Sarah Richardson: Well, and you love doing something that most people don't know that much about or don't want to be excited about because BCDR in and of itself, it's like, ugh.

However, you're the first person that gets called when something goes wrong. So you're a bit of an insurance policy on top of, it's true. Here's what I love though, about your first real IT job being loading tapes for backup in a data center part-time. Do you realize when you tell your granddaughter that story, once upon a time, I loaded tapes and she's gonna stare at you and be like.

What's a tape? What's a tape?

Sarah Richardson: there's not DVDs. Now, Melissa, just FYI.

Melissa Muniz: I have been working for over 20 years. I might be a little bit older than I'm let on,

Sarah Richardson: but you're not older than me. So if you go back to the VHS tapes then, then you got something going for sure.

Okay. Are you ready for speed round? Oh, yes. Okay. What is one resiliency lesson you think applies just as much to everyday life as it does to it?

Melissa Muniz: Don't give up. If needed, you can always recover from scratch. Just start over. It's okay.

Sarah Richardson: Okay. I love that one. What's your proudest grandma moment so far?

So I'm really looking forward to those.

Sarah Richardson: Otherwise, I bet you can be help be a bit of the, I will be the antagonist protagonist in that role. And I have to ask you one more. I know you love podcasts. If you were to recommend one right now, which one is it?

Melissa Muniz: Oh my gosh. So, uh, it's actually the one you recently introduced me to.

I have been binging acquired. Yeah. And I loved the epic one. we shared. You shared that one with me. You said that one was wonderful. I love that Because of my healthcare background and then I was digging into more, the Costco one was amazing. I just started the IKEA one, the Nike one was super great. So I just, I love those.

They remained hungry and curious, and they just kept taking that next step and pushing, and then they turned something out of nothing. So it's really incredible to see.

Sarah Richardson: If we're to give accolades to, uh, people who have shaped our lives, thank you to Bill Russell, our CEO of this week Health for introducing us all to acquired.

Very nice. I wasn't obsessed with Costco before. I'm even more obsessed now, but I still don't have much go by yourself. Privileges, rein. Reinstated in my much if I go, but I'll tell you the curiosity piece. What I love so much, the person that taught me to be curious in my career was Terry Schmidt from HCA Go figure.

What would you say to them?

Melissa Muniz: You know, I don't know. if this saying that we grew up with is as pc, I think this generation doesn't love this saying as much as I did, but sometimes you've just gotta fake it till you make it. How many times have I sat at a table and just said, look confident, act confident, reply, listen, say something in the meeting.

And, and after you do that, so many times you'll figure it out. Just keep listening. But I, I just, I've done that so many times in my life and so far so good. It continues to work, but I mean, I think it's how we show up that I am willing to listen and be curious, but we don't all know what we're doing.

Sometimes you just gotta take that leap and try something new.

Mm-hmm. Melissa, your story is such a powerful reminder that resiliency isn't just about systems. It's about people adaptability and staying grounded through every transition. For our listeners, whether you're charting a new career path, leading through crisis, or considering a leap into entrepreneurship, Melissa's journey shows that with preparation and strong relationships, you can thrive in any environment.

Melissa, thank you for joining us today.

Melissa Muniz: Thank you,

Sarah Richardson: that's flourish soundbites, find your community at this week, health.com/subscribe. Every healthcare leader needs a community to learn from and lean on. Share the wisdom.

That's all for now.