43
Determination key to success || 2015 ATHENA Award winner feels blessed
Photo
Genie Aubel, president of Mercy Health St. Elizabeth Boardman Hospital, is the 2015 recipient of the ATHENA Award. She was one of 16 nominated to receive the award, which celebrates the accomplishments of outstanding professional women from the Valley. ROBERT K. YOSAY | THE VINDICATOR
By JoAnn Jones
When Genie Aubel, president of Mercy Health St. Elizabeth Boardman Hospital attended the 23rd ATHENA Award Dinner on May 28 at Mr. Anthony’s in Boardman, she walked away with the prestigious ATHENA Statue.
The award, presented by the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce and The Vindicator/vindy.com, celebrates an exceptional woman who makes an impact in her career, demonstrates leadership in the community and mentors other professional women — all qualities you’ll find in the 2015 recipient.
When Aubel was a new graduate of Miami (Ohio) University, she was seeking an internship in health care that would give her some experience before she began her master’s degree in hospital and health services at Ohio State University.
Persistent and determined, she had visited Jamestown General Hospital in her hometown of Jamestown, N.Y., over her Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, but she wasn’t granted an interview.
“You know how a secretary guards the administrative offices,” she said with a smile. “Time after time, I went to HR [human resources] to try to get an interview. I was even willing to work for free.”
“Then when I graduated, I learned that the hospital’s chairman of the board was the town’s mayor,” she said. “I went to see him, and the next day, the hospital called me.”
She got the internship, she said, and didn’t even have to work for free.
“I think I made $3.25 an hour,” she said.
That was in 1987, and since 2006, Aubel has been president of St. Elizabeth Boardman Hospital, the first new hospital built in the Mahoning Valley since 1958.
To get to where she is today, she began at St. Elizabeth’s downtown with Sister Susan Schorsten, H.M., who was the CEO at the time, and completed both a residency and a fellowship there.
“I thought the broad exposure of working directly with the CEO would make me more marketable in the long run,” she said.
After finishing her fellowship in 1990, Aubel became the administrative director for medical affairs until 1995. During this time, she was responsible for 11 medical staff departments as well as seven residency programs.
Becoming a director in a Youngstown hospital really wasn’t part of her plan.
“At one point, my plan was to go to England to work,” she said. “But then they offered me a director’s position. I’ve stayed my whole life.”
“This is a wonderful town,” she added, “and the hospital staff is phenomenal.”
From 1995, Aubel served the Humility of Mary Health Partners hospital, now known as Mercy Health Youngstown, in a variety of capacities, but by 2004 she had developed the strategic plan of much of the Boardman campus – the cancer center, emergency center and emergency and diagnostic centers. When she became senior vice president in 2004, however, she was in charge of spearheading St. Elizabeth Boardman Hospital from the ground up.
“It all started in a grassy field in the ’90s,” she said as she gazed at the campus from the parking lot.
The 132-bed hospital that covered 340,000 square feet opened Aug. 1, 2007. By then, she was serving as the president of St. Elizabeth Boardman, and her family was almost ready for an addition.
“I was pregnant with my second daughter, Ashley, when we opened it,” Aubel said. “She was born a week later.”
However, Ashley wasn’t the only addition planned for Aubel’s life.
The planning of a second patient tower – a $100 million expansion that would provide 92 additional patient beds and four additional operating rooms – began shortly thereafter.
“We were expecting it to take 15-20 years for the expansion,” Aubel said. “But right now, the men are working on completing the sixth floor of the tower, which will be a 24-bed intermediate floor.”
Aubel sees the Boardman hospital as a safety net for the community.
“We treat anyone, regardless of their ability to pay,” she said. “Our service to the poor and underserved is phenomenal. How can we not feel good about meeting the needs of the community and helping to make health care better?”
Aubel compared the mission of the hospital to the 11 nuns who immigrated to the United States from France in 1864 and began the Congregation of the Humility of Mary.
“The nuns brought four orphans with them, and with the approval of the bishop in Cleveland, settled in what is now Villa Maria,” she explained. “When the nuns sought advice, the bishop told them to ‘take one more orphan.’”
“We’re all doing this mission work,” she continued. “I think he was telling them to stay true to their mission, that they would be provided for. We figure out what is best to provide care to the residents of the community. The staff here is so committed; they really care about the patients. If we can make a hospital stay less intimidating for the patients and their families while we also deliver good, sound, quality health care, that’s our primary focus.”
Aubel attributes her success in the health care field to the tremendous work ethic she inherited from her father.
“I was the first one in my family to go to college,” she said. “My father had to drop out of school at 13 when his father died. He worked to support his family. He was an apprentice bricklayer and then formed his own construction company, building nursing homes and hospitals. He had the third- largest construction company in town.”
Aubel’s family is important to her, and she spends as much time as she can with her parents, now in their 80s, who live 21/2 hours away in Bemus Point, N.Y.
“I’m very close to my family, and I have one sister who lives on the East Coast, in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.,” she said. “We visited Bemus Point 16 weeks in a row. My father rebuilt a stable into a duplex so that my family and my sister’s family could stay there.”
Aubel, whose nickname “Genie” comes from her name, “Eugenia,” also had a brother who was born with brain trauma and died when he was 6 months old.
“I was actually named after the nun Eugenia who took care of him,” she said.
Aubel’s family – her husband, Steve, a radiologist, and daughters, Dylan, 10, and Ashley, 7, – loves to visit the bucolic area near Bemus Point that Aubel says “has a wonderful atmosphere, a small-town feeling and the oldest ferry east of the Mississippi.”
“I love nature,” she continued. “If I could do anything, I would be out with plants, with horses. I just love Bemus Point. Just being around the water is kind of spiritual. I always get up at 7 and take a power walk. I don’t have a lot of time for that here.”
Aubel always has loved to travel, she said, and visited several countries before she married at age 36. Her mother was often her travel companion, and both of them, Aubel said, loved India and also Africa.
She talked, however, of a trip to the Tiger Tops in Chitwan National Park in Nepal.
“Our plane landed in a grass field,” Aubel said. “There was a snake charmer, and the natives came to see us. They had tree-top lodges, where you got out of the lodge by boarding an elephant. We never saw a tiger, but we did see tracks. We saw hippos, rhinoceroses and other cats, though.”
When she married Steve, she said, they went gorilla trekking in Uganda.
“When the plane landed, two men with machine guns stayed with us until the van came,” Aubel said. “It was a grass air strip with baboons everywhere. When we got up in the morning, we had to trek eight hours into the mountains with our guide. Two men with machetes went ahead, chopping vines. Four men with guns were protecting us against terrorists.”
“There is a lot of fighting in Uganda,” she continued, “but it was a fascinating trip.”
Aubel said her “wings were clipped” when she had her first child, Dylan, at age 40 and couldn’t travel as much.
Yet, the Aubel family still travels, though not to different continents.
“We went to Harry Potter World [in Florida] this year in February,” Aubel said. “Dylan loves Harry Potter. When she was 9, we had a Harry Potter birthday. I made wands out of Chinese chopsticks and spell books. There was even a sorting hat.”
She also takes her daughters to Naples, Fla., every year to visit their “Aunt Evonne” a friend of hers.
“It’s a girls’ trip,” she said. “We sit on the beach, and the kids get sand dollars and starfish. But we’re so careful about nature. We’re big-time animal lovers.”
When the girls go to Bemus Point in August, Aubel said, they will attend Vacation Bible School.
“I have a strong faith,” Aubel emphasized. “We go to church in New York when we’re there.”
The Aubel family, who lives in Canfield, attends the Old North Church on Herbert Road.
“They have a phenomenal program on Wednesdays,” said Aubel, who was raised in the Methodist Church. “The girls have learned all the books of the Bible and many Bible verses.”
Aubel said she is blessed for all the opportunities she has had in her life.
“It was such a privilege just to be nominated for the ATHENA Award,” she said. “I was very surprised. If you look at all the other women, they are all wonderful and have contributed to the community.”
“I also feel very blessed to have this job,” she said, continuing. “People here are very passionate about caring for patients and putting the patients’ needs first. We’re big on human dignity, regardless of the patients’ circumstances. We want to give them the best possible patient experience.”
“That’s the privilege of faith-based health care,” Aubel said. “It’s more than a job. It’s passion, commitment and caring.”