Natasha Beyde

I attribute my success to just observing my mother being a strong individual and a single mom, and what she had to do to take care of her one child, making it seem effortless. I think me doing the same thing, and then I have my children - I have three daughters, two of them are still home - and I want them to see how I stand up and handle my day-to-day. It's about how I want them to see me and how I want them to represent themselves as they grow up. That's what drives me.

The best career advice I've ever received, which applies to both career and personal life, is not letting people or individuals take your power. People can have an opinion, but don't give them that power that's going to affect you so that you can't do what you want to do. I take that everywhere I go and share it a lot with people who report to me now. When they're struggling with things and don't know how to handle it, I tell them, listen, this is what it is - don't give somebody that power that you're going to respond or react in a way that's what they want. Don't let that be you. You control it. Of course, I'm not going to say you're not human - you can go behind a closed door and do whatever you have to do, but don't let anyone take your power. I still deliberately do this for myself all the time because I still go through it. Nothing is easy.

For women coming into my industry of healthcare, I think it depends on the track - whether they're going operationally or taking a technical route like I did first. If they're not doing nursing or going the MD route, I think having a technical background is paramount. One, whenever you go to a different department, you know the foundation. No one can take that knowledge away from you, and then you can work in that field, that industry, and be able to really walk the walk and talk the talk. Sometimes I see that it's challenging for people to come into a very specialized department like radiology when they don't necessarily have the technical background - it's a little harder. I would recommend that anybody looking to get into the industry, if they feel they don't want to get into any kind of specialty, the technical route is always good. You can always fall back on it. You don't lose it, and you can always do a little side hustle. It's always good to have a little change on the side, but also it helps with the foundation and it helps with the knowledge. That's what I would recommend.

Definitely the challenges are the workforce shortage in technologists as well as radiologists. It's extremely short right now, and a lot of hospital organizations are facing the same challenges. A lot of technologists are actually doing that travel where they're going to different states to find the money, which you can't blame them, but it's putting a damper on the hospitals that really rely on permanent workers. So that's a big challenge for us, as well as radiologists - the doctors who read the exams. I think it's a national issue across the country.

The values most important to me are honesty, being trustworthy, and transparency. I feel like if you lead in that way, you can't go wrong. The minute you start doing the opposite, it's going to be a constant battle trying to keep up between everything. So I believe in being honest and transparent.