Josephine Goode knows that if a person believes in herself, she can do anything. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Josephine can't remember a time when she didn't want to be a nurse. As a child, she never asked for dolls or other "little girl" things for Christmas. She wanted doctor and nurse kits so she could care for the Animals she rescued. So it was natural for her to enter nursing school after high school. Yet she found it more difficult than she had ever expected. Just before the last semester, her energy reached a low point. She had no idea how she was going to pay for the remainder of her schooling, as there was just no money for it at that time.
One day, as she was walking along wondering what to do, she spotted a flyer for the school magazine writing contest with a first prize reward of a semester's tuition. She picked up the flyer, went home, wrote four poems, prayed, and sent them to the magazine the next day. She used the money she received from winning the poetry contest to finish her final semester of nursing school. That's sort of how her whole life has gone. She completed her two-year degree, worked for a couple of years as an emergency room nurse, and became interested in policy. "I thought if learned about policy, I could help a lot of people all at once," she recalls with a smile. So she went to school at night to complete her bachelor's degree in mental health administration. At the tender age of 25, she met with a senior vice president at Bon Secours Health System in Maryland, where she worked as a charge nurse in the emergency department. She told him, "I've earned my bachelor's degree, and now I need a job in administration." Today she looks back on her bravado with amazement. "Can you believe how naive I was?" she asks.
The administrator told her he admired her spunk, but he was moving to a job with a new organization. However, he promised that if anything came up at his new job, he'd call her. "And I believed him," she smiles. "My friends told me I was crazy." She went back to the emergency department and put the experience out of her head. Sure enough, six months later, the exec called. He asked Josephine if she'd ever heard of the job of "risk manager." She hadn't, but agreed to interview with him. "He took me to lunch," she remembers, "along with the president of the company. We just sat and talked and ate. When we finished, the president told him, 'You've made a good choice.' I remember thinking, I didn't even have an interview." Such was the difference between the world of nursing and the world of business. Josephine accepted the job as risk manager for Chesapeake Physicians Professional Associates, the largest physicians practice at the time in Maryland.
Risk management was a brand new field in health care. Over the next several years, she became an authority on health care risk management, which looks at ways to minimize risks to patients, visitors, and institutions. Among her achievements was founding the Maryland Society for Health Care Risk Managers. In her "spare time," she managed to get her master's in public administration with a specialty in health care administration. In 1986, the University of Maryland beckoned, and Josephine moved on to a new position and a new risk management challenge. Within four years of accepting the position, Josephine and her team had developed the program to such an extent that they won 1st runner up in the Business Insurance Magazine Risk Manager of the Year Award, an international competition. At the same time, she decided to go back to school for a PhD in public administration. In the meantime, her reputation continued to grow. By the end of 1997, she decided to leave the University of Maryland and take a year off to complete her doctoral dissertation. However, she had gained such a reputation as a leader in her field that demand for her consulting services gave her little time for the dissertation. She soon started her own company, InnoVisions International, Inc., to provide strategic risk management solutions to health care clients. Finally in November 2000, "SSM Health Care made me an offer I couldn't refuse." And so the life-long Baltimore native packed up her belongings and moved to St. Louis to become Corporate Vice President of Risk Services for SSM Health Care. Still, she says, she probably wouldn't have come to SSM if it hadn't been for the organization's mission and values. "To me, the driving force in health care should be mission, rather than focus solely on the financial aspects," she observes. Of course, she admits freely, "I am the daughter of a Baptist minister!" She becomes pensive. "You know, when I was considering getting my doctorate, I thought about the Brown vs., the Board of Education Supreme Court Decision of 1954 [the decision called for integration of schools in the south]. It's been almost 40 years since then, and I thought, 'I'm doing this for every last one of my relatives . . .for every one of them who ever had to clean a floor or accept a subservient job because they lacked education." "When I was younger and I'd get depressed because school was difficult or whatever reason, my father would say to me, 'You must have forgotten who you are.' I think I've been able to do everything I've done in my life because people believed in me. And I know there's nothing you can't do if you believe in yourself."
