In general, women have been excelling in every field in leadership positions and roles for the past few decades. In recent years, it has become more common and apparent; the direction of thinking has changed for several people when conversing about a woman in a leadership role.
The other day, when I was scrolling passively on LinkedIn, I noticed an article that was talking about a new CEO being named for Memorial Hermann. When I looked deeper into the article, I found that not only a woman, but a young asian woman had been named the Senior Vice President and CEO of Memorial Hermann Southwest and Sugar Land Hospital locations. I was in shock that this happened and that there was an article about it to promote the news to everyone in the community. The reason I was so shocked was because you don’t see many articles about women in leadership roles or their success stories, they are usually about men who have been promoted or who have received an award. This really caught my attention because of the publicity this news article is getting not only just on LinkedIn but also other social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Her name is Malisha Patel and she earned her bachelors degree in biological sciences from UT Austin and her MHA from Trinity. Along with the education, she has been the recipient for many distinguished awards and has been recognized for leading many high stress operations and strategical planning for the Memorial Hermann system. The work she has done is incredible and definitely deserves to be a CEO. As a leader of healthcare, as a successful woman, as a fellow asian, and as a young and aspiring health citizen leader, she inspires me to go great lengths in my education and my drive to assist the healthcare community by applying my best self in this field of work. It makes me feel extremely proud of the community that I am a part of that allows women of my kind to excel and be the best they can be in their field. This also gives me hope and guidance on which direction to carve my career path in so that I too have the opportunity to one day become a Chief Executive Officer just like Ms. Patel.
The reason why I mention Ms. Patel’s promotion and achievement in this blog, this extensively, is because I want every woman out there to understand and accept that we are all capable of achieving this kind of success. I do not want any women to ever limit themselves or think that “enough is enough” or that they have pushed through far enough and will not be able to get ahead. This is not the right attitude and it definitely was not Ms. Patel’s attitude, otherwise she would not be where she is today.
As we can see, times are changing every day. Before it used to be the norm that a CEO would have to be a man and only men could give and order executive and final decisions on high-risk tasks. Since that is not the case anymore, people have started to understand that women can be managers, directors, and CEO’s as well because what they say also goes. Through this journey, we need to continue to support each other because as women, we are still growing. And we will continue to grow because of the ample amount of education, opportunities, and risks we are being provided and tested with.
Women will continue to always be leaders and it is my hope that we will show we can do even greater things than we’ve already done. But one day, we will reach the point where we will have a woman serve as the President of the United States of America.
Sources:
- http://www.fortbendstar.com/memorial-hermann-hospitals-name-new-ceo-patel-promoted-as-haralson-takes-med-center-post/
- https://twitter.com/the_nwc_tweets/status/900779827728453633 (picture)
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