Her Story
About suzan
I started my healthcare journey after dropping out of high school at a young age when I got pregnant with my oldest daughter. When she was about a year old, I was watching TV and saw a program about take your kid to work day, and I realized I would never be able to take my daughter to work with me. That motivated me to go back, take my GED, and I passed on the first try. When my daughter was sick and needed to go to the hospital for something called laryngomalacia, they did a modified barium swallow exam on her, and I thought being in radiology and imaging was so cool. I went to the library, researched it, applied to school, and became an x-ray tech, then a CT tech, and just kept going. I got a bachelor's with two majors, then decided to do an MBA and MHA together, completing both master's degrees in 2016. During COVID, I realized there was such a shortage for nursing, and I only had one nurse left out of four, and I couldn't help her because I was bound by licensure. So I went back to Baylor and found a one-year program for nursing. It was the toughest 11 months of my life because I continued working full-time while going to nursing school full-time. I graduated with a 3.76 GPA in August 2025 and became a nurse. My daughter is now an adult and works in my department, so I was still able to take my daughter to work with me. One of my proudest achievements was during COVID when I aligned with case management and radiologists on my team to help non-resourced patients who were coming to the emergency room and extending their length of stay for over 3 days for procedures like paracentesis. We did these patients for free, gave them comfort, and eliminated the length of stay by having them come in on an outpatient basis. I won the Healthcare Excellence Award for saving the hospital over $3 million in one year.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with suzan
01What do you attribute your success to?
When someone tells me I can't, I want to prove that I can. I'm stubborn in that way. I'm always in a constant competition with myself - not a race, but I want to compete with myself to be a better version tomorrow than I am today. That drive to prove myself and continuously improve is what has pushed me forward throughout my career.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
You will make mistakes. You will fail. But the best part of failing is redoing it over and doing it better than you ever could have if you had not failed. This advice taught me that failure isn't the end - it's an opportunity to come back stronger and do things even better the second time around.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
The best advice I can give anybody, not just young women, is don't ever say 'I can't' without trying. Because we always surprise ourselves. We are so strong-willed, and we're so resilient that when we want to put our minds to something, we truly do it. I found that women in particular can achieve anything that they put their minds to. We're incredibly capable - we can put on mascara and drive at the same time, so don't mess with us!
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenges are always people challenges. Working in my field, it's knowing all the personalities and how to deal with them, and you have to be pretty diplomatic. You have to adjust your management style to how to manage people, to maintain the best out of everybody, because you definitely want your team to be engaged - an engaged team is going to do better for your patients in return. Another major hurdle is that insurance is so expensive that sometimes it pains me that we can't provide patients the treatment that they want because they're refusing it because they can't afford it.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Loyalty and respect are the most important values to me. They come hand-in-hand, whether it's personal or work. These two values guide everything I do in both my professional and personal relationships.
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