Work

For me it's really important to note that as a woman being in a position of leadership twenty, twenty five, thirty years you attract all kinds of attention and not all of it obviously good. So there were a lot of opportunities, but there was also a lot of notice that you got and navigating that is difficult and is still difficult. I have all women who work for me, and it’s still difficult for young women I think to navigate any world where it's dominated by men and especially men at the top. And for me, as I read though some of your questions like, ‘What would you advise women today,’ my take on it even from a young age was, I'm not going to be afraid to be out front, I'm not going to be afraid to fail, and I'm not going be afraid to speak up. And so you know what, I really always wanted to move forward, and the only way to move forward was to be out front sometimes, so I would get on boards, and every board I got on I went through what they call the chairs. So I would become secretary and treasurer then vice chair, then chair, because I wanted to do it and I wanted other women to see a women in that position. And I always show—so that's a picture of me [pointing at photo with Karen and about 15 men, all in suits] and all guys.  That's the state trade association board. And it's me with, now there was another woman but she wasn't in the picture but it's like okay, you know what,  we cannot be afraid to be out from like that. And I always thought of myself as an equal.  Whether anybody else did or not was not really my problem. That’s how I looked at it. I looked at myself as an equal so when I went into that boardroom and sat down with all those guys I spoke up, I said what I thought. And they didn't always treat me as an equal, but that doesn't mean I didn't behave as if I expected them to.

Know that you can do whatever you want to do, and don’t let anyone else define that for you. And when you’re scared, it’s actually good…So, you do it, and it’s the only way to make it go away, because you have the experience, and you’re not afraid of that thing anymore.

Worcester is a welcoming city, it’s the city of inventors. Just went to the Harvey Ball last night, to the Worcester Historical Museum. And I think that’s a good place where all the inventions are well-kept, and you can see what Worcester was and is still! Worcester, I think, follows that tradition because now it’s more, less the industry. But I love, I love, a lot of new entrepreneurs are starting in Worcester.

I think I always knew that I would work. I never thought about not working. But my parents also gave back to the community, and my grandmother did too. I feel that kind of inspired me to…work in the nonprofit world. My dad worked in human services, my mother worked in education. I think we were just raised to give back and be there for people.

It was in 2003 when we started the war, when [President George W.]  Bush declared war [on Iraq] near St. Patrick’s Day, I think around the 19th [of March], and we were in country on the 23rd.  We had been at Fort Drum a couple of months.  I was with the 804th Medical Center which is the command and control of all medical units and we were in Kuwait.  The 804th Hospital Command.  They changed the name since I first started.  So my unit in country was in charge of all the medical aspects to the equipment, the professional staff, doctors, nurses, and the cleaning operations.  When I was deployed I was asked to be the medical regulating officer.  The regulating officer’s job is to coordinate all evacuation so I had myself and about seven other people [laughs] and some of those people were 19 and 20 years old and myself, and a major, and my enlisted group.  We coordinated all the ground ambulances in the area and the connection with the Air Force to evacuate and it was very stimulating and it was very rewarding.  It was tough because we were dealing with casualties.  We were dealing with all the amputations and we were dealing with at that time—I’m digressing a bit from your question, but at that time, the military was just implementing what they called “the golden hour” where it was believed that if you could get someone with severe trauma from the place of injury to level three care within an hour that you had a better chance of saving the life.  That was our mission and we did it.  We did it.  The only time we couldn’t is when people couldn’t tell us where they were.  [Laughs]  You might find that pretty amazing, but a lot of times people couldn’t tell us where they were even if they were on a road.  They didn’t have—GPS is pretty common now, but GPS was just beginning to come into use in 2003 so maybe one person in the convoy would have GPS and convoys get separated and spread out.  And these were young kids, 18, 19 years old.  We wanted to get to them obviously as fast as we could.   If you couldn’t give us a grid coordinate at least tell us what road you are on and the nearest town and the helicopter could follow that.  Convoys are pretty big so they could find a convoy.  We really implemented the golden hour rule and, of course, part of our job is letting the hospitals know they are coming and having the ambulances at the landing site to get them into the hospitals.  The golden hour included the telephone call, the launching of the helicopter, contacting the hospital, the ambulance to the landing field, and getting them to the emergency room.