Cathy embodies every aspect of the DAISY Nurse Leader Award. She has been a hardworking, dedicated nurse leader since taking on her role as the Minneapolis PICU Patient Care Manager. Her transformational leadership style and gentle demeanor have created an open, welcoming, and warm workplace environment with shared values. She has led with compassion and care during both a worldwide pandemic and fundamental organizational change. Despite these difficulties, Cathy’s leadership shines through.

Cathy has consistently fostered community between nurses and members of the interdisciplinary teams who visit or work in the Minneapolis PICU. She maintains transparency in decision-making, especially when those decisions impact virtually every aspect of the PICU workplace experience. Cathy routinely empowers and trusts charge nurses as leaders and champions them to make critical, real-time decisions that have a positive impact on PICU patients.

Cathy also has a strong interest in diversity and inclusion initiatives at Children’s Minnesota; she shares opportunities for growth that are available to Children’s employees, advocates for them to join employee resource groups, and has even provided copies of books featured in the health equity book club in our break room. She frequently listens to others’ concerns, offering a listening ear or providing resources for problem-solving that improve inclusion on the unit.

Overall, Cathy’s professionalism and kind demeanor have created a more cohesive, less stressful atmosphere within the PICU. While some may be able to create a feeling of unity among employees in a stressful workplace, Cathy has accomplished this in a short amount of time, and during an unprecedented worldwide pandemic. Cathy’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has likely been difficult, but her dedication to the profession, the nurses she oversees, and the patients who are cared for in the PICU remains a driving force in her work. Cathy has routinely shifted resources based on need and has kept an open mind when considering nurse input as a new leader on the unit. Cathy has routinely been at the ready when needed by charge nurses, bedside nurses, and professional staff when difficulties arose.

Again, these strengths may be characteristic of many different nurse leaders, but Cathy has achieved these outcomes while simultaneously imagining and re-designing an additional space for PICU on the sixth floor. She has worked tirelessly with an inter-professional team to design and execute architectural changes born from various focus groups that span both campuses. She has problem solved in various settings to understand the needs and wants of a very large and diverse group of nurses. Not only has she created a new PICU space on the sixth floor, but she has also refreshed much of the fifth floor PICU spaces as well, making them more welcoming spaces for nurses, patients, and families alike.

Cathy has clearly proven to be a strong and courageous nurse leader who keeps patients and nurses at the center of her vision to enhance the unit in ways that ultimately improve care for Children’s PICU patients and families. Her steadfast dedication to the nursing profession inspires others to lead with conviction and morality while her kindhearted demeanor sustains an openness that is welcoming and collaborative in nature. It is for these reasons that Cathy’s PICU family believes she is a true DAISY Nurse Leader.