Sometimes the people who influence our lives don’t even realize they did. And sometimes, nearly twenty years later, the universe puts them in the seat next to your friend on an airplane just to remind you how connected this whole crazy journey really is.
A week ago Sunday, I got a phone call from a dear friend almost as soon as she stepped off a flight into El Paso. She had spent the flight from North Carolina sitting next to a woman she was convinced I needed to meet. Apparently, somewhere between takeoff and landing, the two of them had gotten to talking—as people sometimes do when the stranger beside you turns out to be far more interesting than whatever you downloaded to watch on the flight.
My friend told me the woman was a nurse. She owned a healthcare consulting practice and worked with hospitals and other healthcare facilities across the country. She was in her eighties, sharp as a tack, witty as all get out, and still traveling for work. My friend immediately thought of me. So, naturally, she started telling this complete stranger my life story.
She told her about my career in healthcare, about the climb from bedside nurse to executive leadership and eventually CEO. She told her that I had written a book, and that the decision to tell my story very publicly had played no small part in the ending of that corporate chapter. She told her I was now building my own coaching and consulting business while simultaneously figuring out what the next chapter of my professional life might look like.
Then the woman asked the obvious question.
“What’s the name of her book?”
Now, if you are familiar with my book, you can probably appreciate my friend’s hesitation. She was sitting next to an 86-year-old woman she had only just met, and there is no particularly delicate way to ease into the title Airing Out Your Vagina: Being a Real Woman in an Unreal World.
Apparently, she paused for a second and then decided, well, what the hell. She told her. The woman died laughing. Then she said something along the lines of, “Well, if that isn’t the perfect name for a book, I don’t know what is.” At that point, my friend knew she had found my people.
Before they parted ways, the woman handed over all of her contact information and told my friend to put the two of us in touch. My friend called me immediately, told me the entire story, and said she thought we would get along brilliantly. I laughed, thanked her for thinking of me, and told her absolutely—I would reach out. This woman was going to be in El Paso for several days, and I would love the opportunity to meet her.
Then the contact information came through.
I stared at the name.
Betty Baxter. BBRN
I knew Betty Baxter.
Not because we had crossed paths at an executive conference. Not because we had sat together in some boardroom. Not because she knew me as a CEO, consultant, author, speaker, coach, or any of the other titles that have been attached to my name over the years.
Betty knew me when I was an interventional radiology nurse. Almost twenty years earlier, I had become the first nurse in El Paso to obtain my certification in radiology nursing, something I was incredibly proud of. At the time, Betty had come into the hospital where I worked to help prepare us for accreditation surveys and ensure we were meeting the standards and expectations required of us.
I remember sharing a challenge with her that I was having in my department. New requirements around procedural timeouts were being implemented, and getting everyone on board with changing long-established practices was proving difficult.
Anyone who has ever worked in healthcare knows exactly what I mean. There is policy. There is best practice. There is, “This is what the evidence says we should do.” And then there is, “But we’ve always done it this way.” Those are rarely the same thing.
I was trying to figure out how to navigate the resistance. Betty listened. She gave me advice about how to approach it, how to communicate it, and how to move people toward a standard they weren’t necessarily thrilled about adopting. And then she did something even more important.
She led the way.
That interaction stayed tucked somewhere in my memory while life did what life does. Careers unfold. Titles change. People move. Organizations merge and acquire and restructure. Nurses become directors. Directors become regional leaders. Regional leaders become CEOs. CEOs get knocked on their asses and start over. Books get written. Businesses get built. Kids grow up. Nearly twenty years disappear somehow while simultaneously containing entire lifetimes.
And then one Sunday afternoon, your friend gets assigned a seat next to someone on an airplane.
Think about all the things that had to line up for that to happen.
Of all the flights Betty could have taken, she took that one. Of all the seats on that plane, she sat next to my friend. Of all the conversations two strangers could have had, they talked about healthcare. My friend thought of me. She decided to tell Betty about my career. Betty asked about my book. My friend decided to say the title out loud to an 86-year-old woman she had just met—which, frankly, may have been the greatest leap of faith in this entire story—and Betty thought it was hysterical.
And then she gave her contact information to my friend. Nearly twenty years after our paths first crossed, they crossed again.
The very next evening, I joined Betty and the team traveling with her for dinner.
There was something surreal about sitting across the table from a woman who had known me during such an early chapter of my career. The first time we met, I was a frontline nurse trying to figure out how to influence change inside my department. This time, I sat across from her having spent the years in between leading teams, opening facilities, running healthcare organizations, navigating corporate politics, writing a book, losing a career I had spent decades building, and beginning the work of creating something entirely different.
And Betty? She was still doing the work. Still traveling. Still consulting. Still asking questions. Still sharp as a tack. Still funny. Still contributing. Still giving a damn about healthcare and the people working inside it. There was something incredibly grounding about that.
We talked about leadership and healthcare and the challenges organizations face today. Some of the problems Betty encountered during her years in executive leadership have evolved. Technology has changed. Regulations have changed. The business of healthcare has certainly changed.
And some things, remarkably, have not changed nearly enough. Organizations still struggle with communication. Leaders still wrestle with resistance to change. Frontline employees still know things executives desperately need to hear. People still confuse compliance with commitment. Ego still gets in the way of progress. And leadership still comes down, in so many ways, to whether you are willing to tell the truth, listen when the truth is uncomfortable, and do what you said you were going to do.
Maybe that is what struck me most about seeing Betty again. I have spent a lot of time over the last couple of years wondering what the hell all of this has been for.
When a career you spent decades building changes abruptly, it is easy to look backward and question everything. You wonder whether you should have been quieter. More agreeable. Less outspoken. Less willing to challenge something that didn’t make sense. You wonder whether being easier to manage might have made the road easier to travel.
And then an 86-year-old nurse consultant walks back into your life almost twenty years after she first taught you how to navigate resistance to change. You have to laugh at the timing. Because perhaps the lesson was never to become easier to manage. Perhaps it was to become better at understanding what was worth challenging—and brave enough to keep challenging it.
The young interventional radiology nurse Betty met all those years ago cared deeply about doing things the right way. She wanted patients protected. She wanted standards followed. She wanted people to understand why change mattered instead of simply being told what to do.
That nurse became a leader. That leader eventually became an executive. And somewhere along the way, the very willingness to question things that helped build my career also made parts of that career incredibly difficult.
I don’t regret it.
There are certainly things I would do differently with the benefit of hindsight and experience. Age has a funny way of teaching you that being right and being effective are not always the same thing. I have learned to pick my battles better. I have learned the power of timing. I have learned that sometimes the pause is every bit as important as the push.
But I never want to become someone who sees something wrong and convinces herself not to see it. I never want a title badly enough to surrender the woman underneath it. I never want belonging so desperately that I am willing to buy it with my own voice. And I never want to become so polished, professional, or concerned with what someone might think that my friend can’t tell an 86-year-old stranger on an airplane the name of my book.
Because, as Betty so beautifully demonstrated, the right people will laugh and ask for your phone number.
I don’t know exactly what the next twenty years of my career will look like. If the last two have taught me anything, it is that trying to predict the route is probably a waste of perfectly good anxiety. I know I will continue writing. I know I will continue speaking. I know I will continue coaching leaders and consulting with organizations. I also know that healthcare is in my blood, and I am not convinced that chapter of my executive career is finished yet.
But I do know what kind of woman I want to be while it unfolds. I want to be the kind of woman who is still sharp as a tack and witty as all get out at 86. I want to still be curious. Still contributing. Still willing to tell the truth. Still willing to laugh at something wildly inappropriate on an airplane. Still helping the next nurse who is trying to convince a room full of people that “we’ve always done it this way” is not actually a compelling reason to keep doing it that way.
And I hope that somewhere along the way, I can do for another woman what Betty unknowingly did for me all those years ago: show her that leadership isn’t about the title printed underneath your name. It is about having the courage to stand behind what you believe, the wisdom to bring people along with you, and the integrity to put your money where your mouth is.
There are mentors we choose deliberately, and then there are people who walk through our lives briefly and leave something behind without either of us realizing how long we’ll carry it.
Sometimes, if we’re incredibly lucky, life brings them back around. I’m grateful mine brought back Miss Betty Baxter. And I hope I make her proud.
