Jennifer Mccarthy

I would say that my 37 years as a paramedic interacting with patients in an uncontrolled environment has given me a wealth of experience to meet students and faculty wherever they are in their transformational practice. I meet them in that moment and help them individually. That paramedic experience really allows me for a personalized approach, because that was the only way that you could be successful in such an uncontrolled environment. You couldn't have one way to do everything, because no single house doesn't look the same, a highway doesn't look the same, a chest pain patient doesn't look and present the same. So that 37 years definitely infuses in my daily work to meet people individually and not write a prescription of what I think something should look like, but yet meeting them and helping them get to the next level.

The best advice would have been to see in myself what others see in me, to believe that.

Trailblazing is not for the faint heart. Respectful disruption can often be misinterpreted when you're female and be labeled as something that it's not. And none of that matters, because if you're driving purposeful change and trailblazing for a better society, a better organization, a better person-centered program, it will always prevail. You can't take the reaction to that personally. Transformation and change is very personalized in who's going through it, so that reaction or a senior leader's reaction to my ideas, it's not about me, it's actually more about their reaction to change and growth, development. And if you don't remember that, you can get stuck in a rip current very quickly. Yet none of that matters if you are driven to make change that is purposeful for people or globally for our society.

Providing a psychologically safe environment for people to trust the idea to transform and to use the engagement to become the best that they can be. Without that psychological safety, they can never transform to become the best they're capable of becoming, because our neurology works against actual change and transformation when you actually sit down and think about it. It's not comfortable to transform and change, so the psychological safety is the largest underpinning.

Making a difference, leaving something better than I received it or started it. I've been the founder of many programs, and leaving it better and handing it off in a better position. And then being the, that whatever I'm designing or implementing, figuring out how to make it a value add to the organization, to people in general, to the culture, has always been important to me.