Leading with Gratitude: How Natasha Lee is Building a Best Place to Work in the Staffing Industry

If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to build a standout company in the healthcare staffing industry—or how women can rise to the highest levels of leadership in recruitment—you’ll find inspiration in this Q&A with Natasha Lee, founder and CEO of Floyd Lee Locums. Natasha sat down with Leslie Vickery, CEO of Clear Edge, for a candid conversation about leading with gratitude, her journey from “accidental” staffing professional to industry-impacting entrepreneur, and women in leadership. Natasha shares how she launched her business, the values and culture driving Floyd Lee Locums’ success, and what she’s learned about resilience and building a legacy that matters.

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Listen to the full episode here:

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Could you tell us about Floyd Lee Locums and the work you do in the healthcare staffing industry?

Floyd Lee is a healthcare staffing company. We place doctors and clinicians in facilities across the country where they’re critically needed. So we get to have a chance every day to show up and make healthcare a little better.

You stumbled into staffing by accident. Can you tell us what drew you to the staffing industry?

Funny story—so a friend of a friend introduced me to a man named Leonard Jenkins, who owned a commercial staffing company in Atlanta. I interviewed with him and he asked me, “Why should I hire you?” I said, “I don’t know, but I’m good at whatever I do.” So he hired me as a straight commission outside salesperson. I’d never sold anything before. It was my first corporate job. I remember walking into the office; I had this big, beautiful office over at the perimeter with a beautiful view, and I was like, “I’ve arrived.” Then the general manager gave me a 20-minute talk about staffing, how you can price the business, and then handed me the Atlanta White Pages and said, “Good luck.” I remember being terrified, like literally terrified. I had to cold call through the White Pages. But I learned quickly that if I was willing to do the work, the rest would work itself out. I applied myself, I learned, and I sold more that year than anyone in the company’s ten-year history. I realized, wow, I work really hard, I make a lot of money, I get to help people connect to purposeful work—I love this business. That propelled me into leadership, and that’s what served me my entire career.

Throughout your career, who shaped the way you lead and work today? Do you have any mentors or specific advice that stuck with you?

With the example I just shared, it was necessity, right? I was in a new job and I had a chance to either go for it or shrink back, and I stepped forward. That’s always my advice to people: always have your hand raised, always do things that are highly uncomfortable, things that you don’t feel prepared for, because you’ll surprise yourself in so many ways. I’ve had several female leaders at critical times in my career that weren’t threatened by me. In fact, the opposite—they saw the capacity I had and really helped me find that and step into it. They advocated for me and helped me stretch up and do things beyond where I was at that time.

There was another CEO I had who was really tough on me. I was successful at this organization—like 97% of budget—and the first thing he told me was, “You’re failing.” And I’m like, what do you mean I’m failing? I’ve got a big region. I’m contributing revenue and bottom line. He’s like, yeah, but you’re not hitting your budget. And that was a big lesson. So, you know, having people that have advocated for me so often and having someone tell me that I was failing was a real ego check. And it really helped me take a step back and go, okay, I can’t take credit for the work that I haven’t done. If I’m not hitting budget, then I’m not hitting my goal. That really helped me develop more humility around understanding the impact I was required to have…what was required of me. That was a big lesson. I just saw that leader at a Staffing Industry Analysts event last week and I gave him a big hug. He taught me a lot about personal accountability that I carry forward with me today.

You worked alongside Matt Floyd, and the two of you founded Floyd Lee Locums in 2017. What was the catalyst for deciding to go out on your own?

I joined Matt when he was with Trinity Healthcare. He founded that company and was looking for a Chief Operating Officer. We grew Trinity from $20 to $90 million in about four and a half years. During that process, he said, “You could get a big job in the new company once I sell it, or we could do something together.” At that time, I’d never considered entrepreneurship for myself, I’d always done it for others. I called my friend Kristen, who had founded an accounting staffing company, and asked her if all the hard work was worth it. She said, “Absolutely.” That was the nudge I needed. Matt and I saw a gap in the marketplace for a different kind of locums company, one that really positioned physicians that played to their career and helped facilities, too. It’s been the most incredible experience, taking a brand from concept into reality and seeing the company take shape. We’re going to land the year around $45 million, and seven years in, I’m so proud of what we’ve created. It’s just so much fun to be a relevant player in our business, in our industry, and to have this impact on healthcare every day.

Floyd Lee Locums has won numerous best place to work awards. How have you worked to craft a company culture that has such a positive impact on your team? And why is that piece of it so important to you?

I get so incredibly excited and fired up about the work we do. We’re connecting physicians to meaningful work where they’re critically needed. That’s impacting patients every day. So we get so fired up about our mission and vision and the outcomes that we’re creating. Internally, we’ve won SIA’s Best Staffing Firm to Work For five times and Modern Healthcare’s Best Places to Work two years in a row as the #1 supplier in the nation. We show up every day knowing that we have a chance to make healthcare better with our efforts. We have a chance to impact patients, and we don’t take that lightly. We spend time celebrating our culture, talking about why we love the work, and giving each other props for even the small wins. Sure, everyone has problems, but we focus on the wins and duplicating our successes. And what happens is people really get so excited about the fact that we are creating wins for our clients and our facilities and our doctors every single day.

Just now I was on our Teams chat and Tessa had an emergency need for a surgeon and literally put it out on the chat. Ryan jumped in with a doctor that he knew might be a good fit. We turned around a doctor in like a week and put them on the ground where they had a critical gap. There’s nothing more exhilarating than knowing that you were able to cover a gap that was that critical to a hospital. So we just love the work that we do, and this attitude of culture, this attitude of winning, this attitude of celebrating, is infectious.

Could you share more about how you see the industry impacting everyone from candidates to communities and even the broader healthcare system?

So in one situation, we had an oncologist willing to leave his permanent job. He needed more flexibility for his family. He felt he needed to show up for his girls, who were now teenagers. We had a client in the Outer Banks of North Carolina—rural, where most locums are needed. We got him an interview, and what was initially supposed to be one week a month turned into a schedule of one week in-person, two weeks telehealth, and one week off. He then helped them build an oncology program for a four-county area that otherwise had to drive three hours for cancer care. It was a win for the community, the doctor, and the client. That’s where locums becomes a solution—it’s a creative way for facility coverage but also for patient access. We see this across the country, and it benefits everyone, especially as the healthcare shortage grows and rural facilities can’t attract clinicians.

I have a story of a surgeon who was classically trained so he was used to doing all kinds of surgeries. The amount of caseloads he was able to carry because of his training and his expertise was absolutely incredible. Like he was literally three surgeons in one. To see him be excited about being relevant at work and having a chance to then again flex his schedule a little bit and have more time with his family was such a win. He served a rural Native American facility in Oklahoma for us.

So locums creates so many byproducts that it’s easy to get excited about it because we’re telling doctors that you don’t have to be burned out. You can do things differently. We’re telling clients that you can have flexibility in your staffing schedules and get additional coverage when you need it. So, it’s creating these wins that benefit everybody. And it’s going help our healthcare system, especially when you think about the physician shortage over the long haul.

As a founder of a staffing firm, how have you worked to support and prioritize women in the workforce, especially on your executive team?

We’ve been very intentional about building a senior team with female representation. Obviously, as a female CEO, there’s not as many of us in our industry. It was an opportunity for me to shape that intention for our culture and I love the fact that I brought so many people into our industry. I love bringing in women and giving them chances to step into larger roles. We just had an executive who I met at a prior company who’d never been a VP before. I tapped her on the shoulder to open up a new service line for us. Seeing her step into a VP role is so cool. And she’s thrilled, learning new things and bringing her acumen to the table. So there’s intentionality around picking people to come in and play these key roles. Our senior leadership is more than 60% female and we plan to continue that.

Is there a piece of advice or principle that guides you as a leader? What helps you show up at your best every day?

I like to say, “It’s Tuesday.” Every day it’s Tuesday for me. You get to choose how you show up for yourself, your family, your colleagues. I have mentors who taught me the incredible power of gratitude. And so, every day, I don’t care what’s going on, I choose to do this work with an attitude of gratitude. Every day I choose to set that intention for my team and help them model that behavior because we can always look at challenges. But when we focus on the things that we’re getting right for each other, it’s a powerful thing. I really like to focus on every day. It’s Tuesday. You get to decide what that looks like. For me, a heart full of gratitude is infectious and it’s a great place to be.

What personal achievements are you most proud of and why?

Honestly, it’s the legacy I lead in this industry—the people I’ve brought to the staffing industry. I could sit here and rattle off the names, titles, cities, companies. I’ve brought so many neat people, talented people into this incredibly rewarding industry and given them not just jobs, but career paths. And when you can give someone a career path where they not only find success but can do things financially for their family, it changes their life trajectory. For me that has been such an honor. I feel like God has used me to find people, impact them, lead them, and be led by them. I have lifelong friends from this journey that I value and cherish, and I just think you can’t underestimate the impact you have on people.

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What are you currently reading, listening to, or watching?

I read a lot—probably 50 books last year. I love Malcolm Gladwell, Simon Sinek, and Jim Collins. I like the MasterClass series and listen to a lot of podcasts. The central theme is that I’m constantly reading and love to dig into things that make me smarter and offer new perspectives.

If someone would like to get in touch with you, what’s the best way?

You can find me on LinkedIn, email me at nlee@floydleelocums.com, or call me at 843-693-3279. I’m always available, especially to support another female leader or anyone who wants to connect.

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Who is Floyd Lee Locums?

At Floyd Lee Locums, we offer a unique approach to locum tenens staffing. We prioritize taking care of real people. Our work is personal because physicians and clinicians take care of us every day.

We take the time to understand the skills, interests, and career goals of a provider to match them with opportunities that truly align with their aspirations. We provide comprehensive support, handling time-consuming processes of credentialing, licensing, and travel arrangements. We even help manage our clinicians’ personal lives, from identifying a church or daycare at a new assignment to ordering their spouse a gift for an anniversary. We aim to be a partner, supporting physicians’ and clinicians’ personal and professional lives and helping them navigate the evolving healthcare landscape.

For facilities, we take the time to understand your challenges, budget, staffing plan, and goals, ensuring that we match you with physicians and advanced practice providers who truly align with your culture and expectations. Our specialty-specific Consultants are your trusted partners, helping you navigate every step of the hiring process including negotiations, credentialing, interviews, and more. Our award-winning culture empowers our team to deliver concierge-level service, ensuring you feel supported, valued, and understood. We handle all the time-consuming logistics so you can stay focused on what matters most: patient care.