From Wall Street To Hospital President Without An MBA: The Nurse Who Kept Saying Yes | Kelly Nierstedt

Kelly Nierstedt never planned to lead a hospital. She is a first-generation college graduate who worked on Wall Street out of high school, went to nursing school as a second career, and wanted nothing more than to be the best labor and delivery nurse she could be.

Then the taps on the shoulder started. Take on this project. Take on this unit. Take on another.

Today, Kelly is the president of Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center, one of the largest and most complex hospitals in Florida and home to the region's Level 1 Trauma Center — and senior vice president of the Orlando Region. She got there without an MBA, without a finance background, and without ever checking all the boxes first.

In this episode of Inspiring Women, Laurie McGraw sits down with Kelly to trace the path from the bedside at Hackensack University Medical Center, to leading OSF Healthcare Children's Hospital of Illinois in Peoria — where she built a care-closer-to-home model so families no longer had to drive four hours to Chicago — to becoming the inaugural president of Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies, one of the busiest delivery hospitals in the nation.

Then came the second yes: leading the adult flagship hospital, where the one thing they don't do is the one thing she was trained in.

Laurie and Kelly met at the Women Business Leaders Conference, where Kelly spoke about complexity in healthcare today.

Topics Covered:

- From Wall Street in the late 80s to nursing school on loans — a second career with no roadmap

- Why Kelly said yes to every tap on the shoulder, and the Plan B mindset that made her fearless

- Why women wait to check every box before saying yes — and why she never did

- The move from New Jersey to Peoria, Illinois, and convincing a resistant leadership team with data

- Recruiting physicians to middle America — and why they stayed