I Didn’t Have a Career Map. I Had a Reason to Keep Going.
From Medical Assistant to CEO-in-Training: A Journey of Growth, Motherhood, and Becoming
There is something surreal about seeing the words CEO-in-Training next to my name.
Not because I never wanted more for myself.
I always did.
But because if you had asked the younger version of me what her career would look like someday, I don’t think she would have known how to answer.
I became a mother young. I started my healthcare career as a medical assistant. I was working, raising children, paying bills, and figuring out adulthood at the same time I was trying to figure out who I wanted to become professionally.
There was no perfectly designed career plan.
There was just the next step.
And then the next one.
I learned the clinical side of healthcare first. Eventually, I became curious about everything happening around it.
Why did one team thrive while another struggled?
Why did some leaders make people want to become better while others simply managed their work?
Why could two organizations serving similar patients produce completely different cultures and results?
Those questions pulled me toward leadership before I ever realized leadership was where I was headed.
As my responsibilities grew, so did my education.
Becoming a first-generation college graduate was a milestone I once wasn’t sure would belong to me. Earning my Master of Public Health while working and raising my family stretched that belief even further.
But my career was never happening separately from motherhood.
The two were growing up together.
My children experienced every version of me along the way.
They knew the mom studying after work.
The mom with another meeting.
The mom taking on the bigger opportunity.
The mom who didn’t always get it right.
And the mom who kept going anyway.
For years, I think many working mothers have carried an unspoken pressure to prove that motherhood hasn’t somehow diminished our professional capacity.
My experience has been the opposite.
Motherhood expanded mine.
It taught me how to make decisions when every option carries a consequence.
It taught me how to prioritize when everything feels important.
It taught me patience, advocacy, accountability, sacrifice, adaptability, and the uncomfortable truth that sometimes loving people means expecting more from them.
Those lessons followed me into every team I have led.
And then something else happened along the way.
Great leaders began investing in me.
They didn’t simply tell me I was doing a good job. They challenged me. They gave me responsibilities that made me uncomfortable. They expected me to think bigger than the position I occupied.
Some saw leadership potential in me before I had language for it myself.
That changed me.
Because once someone helps you see what you’re capable of becoming, you have a responsibility to do the same for someone else.
That belief has become one of the foundations of how I lead.
And now, almost two decades after I first entered healthcare, I have reached a milestone that deserves a moment of reflection.
I am a CEO-in-Training.
I am learning an entirely new side of healthcare leadership—one that requires me to think beyond departments and individual metrics and understand how people, clinical quality, operations, growth, culture, and financial stewardship all come together.
And I love being uncomfortable enough to have so much left to learn.
Because I’ve realized that every major transition in my career has started the same way:
Someone opened a door.
I walked through it.
And then I worked hard enough to be ready when the next one appeared.
This milestone means a great deal to me professionally.
But as a mother, it means something different.
My children have had a front-row seat to the entire journey.
They didn’t meet me at the finish line.
They watched the building.
They watched me work before I had the title.
They watched me go to school when it would have been easier not to.
They watched opportunities work out—and others not work out.
They watched me question myself and keep moving anyway.
And now they get to watch me become a student again, this time preparing for executive leadership.
One day, when they are standing in front of an opportunity that feels bigger than who they believe themselves to be, I hope they remember that.
You don’t have to see the entire road before you begin.
You don’t have to come from a family that has already done it.
And you certainly don’t have to have your life perfectly mapped out.
Sometimes you just have to be willing to take the next step, learn everything you can from it, and become ready for the one after that.
Nearly twenty years ago, my next step was becoming a medical assistant.
Today, it is becoming a CEO.
And I’m still becoming.
