When Meredith Bjorck left Tuesday Morning to be the chief legal officer at HMS Holdings in April 2016, she knew it was the “next logical step” in her career.
Bjorck found herself leading a legal team of 20. Her CEO had “assembled a world-class team and viewed legal as a strategic member of the executive leadership team.” And she “always had a seat at the table.”
“I loved that HMS was a mission-driven company that was focused on making healthcare better for everyone by reducing costs and improving health outcomes,” Bjorck told The Texas Lawbook. “HMS had been around for 40-plus years and was looking to ignite high growth and create more of a startup-like environment where innovation and agility were a priority.”
Almost five years to the day she started, Bjorck led the HMS deal team in the company’s $3.4 billion sale to Veritas Capital-owned Gainwell Technologies – a deal that closed April 1.
But what an amazing five years Bjorck had.
She resolved all significant existing litigation within the first two years on the job. During her tenure, HMS’ revenue increased more than 30%, net income climbed more than 300% and the company’s stock price climbed more than 200%.
“Meredith also reduced the legal spend by 75%, while providing the business with a higher level of service and better results in a highly regulated industry with federal and state government clients, as well as commercial clients.,” said Sidley Austin chair-elect Yvette Ostolaza.
And, of course, she led the legal team’s role in the $3.4 billion sale of HMS, which was announced in December.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook cited Bjorck’s successes in naming her a finalist for the 2020 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department. The ceremony honoring the finalists and announcing the winners will be held June 3 at the George W. Bush Institute.
“For her exceptional leadership and legal skills, her significant contributions to the health and growth of HMS, and her outstanding commitment to community service, we think Meredith is highly deserving of being named general counsel of the year,” said Ostolaza, who nominated Bjorck for the award.
“Meredith has also been keenly focused on diversity and inclusion efforts over the last four years, and approximately 60% of Meredith’s team is diverse,’ she said. “Meredith has led HMS’ growth strategy and has been instrumental in the acquisition and integration of five companies in the last four years (two of which have international operations) and an investment in MedAdvisors, a medical adherence solution, with operations in Australia.”
Bjorck said many of the biggest successes she and her team achieved are private.
“Most of those are confidential matters that I am not at liberty to discuss,” she said. “Like most lawyers, many of the real victories are the matters that may never be known to the public or even internally at the company. I am perfectly satisfied having those behind-the-scenes victories.
“If I do my job right, then those matters often times go unknown,” she said. “I have my own private celebrations and I am happy being an unsung hero.”
Bjorck said she is proud of her efforts to keep her company’s legal spend down.
“That is definitely one of my superpowers, and I can’t give away my secrets,” she said. “What I will say is that I have done it multiple times at various companies, so I know it works. What I will also say is it is a multipronged approach, and we never sacrifice quality for cost savings.
“My goal is always to provide a higher level of service and value to the business in the most cost-efficient manner,” she said. “I never set a goal of what the savings will be. I just do what is right from a business and legal standpoint and watch the results roll in.”
Bjorck was born and raised in a small rural town in the Piney Woods of Northeast Texas.
“Most people in the legal community think of it as plaintiffs’ country,” she said.
Bjorck’s father was a millwright at a factory, and he had perfect attendance at his work for almost 35 years.
“He taught me the value of hard work, determination, doing what you say you are going to do, common sense and perseverance,” she said. “My mother was a housewife, and she poured into me throughout my childhood. She was focused on providing me with lots of unique and difference experiences you wouldn’t ordinarily expect in a small Texas town.”
“In the healthcare industry everything has accelerated in terms of change and innovation, and while that has created challenges it has also created immense opportunities.”
Bjorck said her mother “immersed me in music and the cultural arts growing up.” She played the piano since she was three years old and also took violin lessons from the concertmaster of the Shreveport Symphony when she was growing up.
Her parents have been married for more than 50 years.
Bjorck had no lawyers in her family, though she later married into a family full of lawyers.
“We all have different practice areas and could probably start a full-service law firm with our various specializations,” she said. “I have wanted to be a lawyer since I was a little girl. School came easy for me. I always loved to talk. I enjoyed reading mysteries growing up. I was always academically inclined, loved problem-solving, negotiating and advocating for what I believed in.”
Bjorck graduated from high school when she was 16 years old and moved to Dallas to go to SMU, which she describes as “definitely a pivotal moment for me.”
“Coming from such a small, rural town, it was an education,” she said. “My mom had always wanted me to go to college, and it truly changed the trajectory of my life. My goal was to get the best grades I could so that I could practice law at one of the best law firms in the country.”
Bjorck originally planned to be a litigator but after summer clerking at several large law firms, she knew she wanted to do corporate securities and M&A work.
During her years practicing at Fulbright & Jaworski – now Norton Rose Fulbright – and Vinson & Elkins, she worked on some major M&A deals, including:
- The sale of Dal-Tile International to Mohawk Industries for $1.4 billion in 2002 (“This was my first M&A deal and we signed that deal in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.”);
- The sale of Kaneb Services and Kaneb Pipe Line Partners to Valero for $2.8 billion in 2004 (“We signed the deal on Halloween night.”); and
- The sale of Crow Holdings Industrial Trust to Clarion Partners, a subsidiary of ING Real Estate, for $1.5 billion in 2002.
But the world of in-house counsel beckoned.
“I thrive in an environment where there is a lot of variety, and I found the practice of M&A/corporate securities to be a bit repetitive,” she said.
Bjorck first went to CEC Entertainment, the parent of Chuck E. Cheese, which she described as “a wonderful job.” Then came Tuesday Morning.
“I had an insatiable desire to become a public company GC, build a team and become the ultimate decision maker,” she said. “I had also been a loyal customer of the Tuesday Morning brand since I moved to Dallas in the 1990s, so I felt like I had a good understanding of the brand and could really contribute to the significant strategic turnaround that was being undertaken at the time.”
Bjorck’s final year at HMS focused on two issues: dealing with Covid-19 and the sale to Gainwell Technologies.
She served on the HMS “Emergency Response Team” that successfully transitioned 100% of HMS’s workforce to “work from home with no business interruption.”
“In the healthcare industry everything has accelerated in terms of change and innovation, and while that has created challenges it has also created immense opportunities,” she said. “I have been extremely encouraged by the collaboration that is happening in healthcare today to beat the pandemic and help people lead healthier lives.”
Bjorck said the entire transaction with Gainwell, which was a competitive bid process, was “done during the pandemic without any face-to-face meetings or handshakes.
“While I didn’t sit across any large boardroom tables from the bankers or lawyers on the deal, I did get a window into their home life – and oftentimes their pets – through the countless video conferences we participated in,” she said.
Bjorck and HMS’s CFO led the negotiations and the deal team through the entire transaction.