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Margaret Gordon Williams, or Maggie as she’s better known, was born a third generation New Mexican. At a very young age she was encouraged to become a nurse. From the time she was 14 her father would tell her that nursing was a “fine profession.” No one in her family was in the healthcare industry. Maggie believes that her father’s encouragement came from his respect of a good family friend who was a nurse and whom they both describe as “professional and talented.”

After graduating from Alamogordo High School, Maggie attended UNM and was accepted into the College of Nursing. It is here that she would meet one of her most influential nurses, Marion Fleck. “Just having her for one year as our Dean was an inspiring and a mentor-like experience. She was professional, gracious, academic, charming and interesting. When you listened to her, you wanted to be an excellent nurse and healthcare professional,” she stated.

During the last semester of her senior year, Maggie was going to be one credit hour short of graduating. In order to take that additional credit hour she had to petition the Dean. Dean Fleck asked two obvious questions of Maggie: Did she think she could manage a workload with that many credits? Why did she think she could manage it? Maggie had to share her plan with Dean Fleck on how she was going to accomplish her goals. Maggie says it was a good experience and she was able to finish her BSN that semester. She later went on to obtain her MBA at UNM as well.

Currently Maggie works for the Heart Hospital of New Mexico as their Performance Improvement Coordinator. In this role she supervises quality management, case management, risk management and education for the hospital. She works with all hospital departments to design processes to identify important cardiovascular indicators of care, develop the databases to collect the data, supervise the data collection and finally, produce reports. Heart Hospital’s goal is to continuously improve their processes for providing cost-effective patient care while considering all stakeholder outcomes. They participate in the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) national comparative databases.

She is also the current President of New Mexico Organization of Nurse Executives. This year the organization is focusing on nursing staffing issues and how healthcare providers can address the nursing shortage while continuing to provide quality patient care in an environment that is also professionally and personally satisfying to nurses. Maggie finds that being a nurse is always interesting, stimulating and satisfying. She would like to continue to work in healthcare until the age of 70 or beyond.

When asked to give advice to nursing students or those considering a nursing career, she responded, “This is a great profession that provides you with varied and stimulating career opportunities. It can also be a career that guides one in the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle.”