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When you think of a nurse, what comes to mind? Someone wearing scrubs and juggling life-or-death circumstances in an ER? Someone knowledgeably assisting a patient through chemotherapy? Someone taking patient vitals at a physician’s office?

What about someone in an office?

The fact is nursing encompasses more roles and duties than you might expect. Some nurses pursue educating others. Some pursue roles with pharmaceutical companies. Some, like Jason Wright (BSN, 2021; MHA, 2023), find themselves on the administrative side of things, overseeing operations for an international organization — and shaping the patient-care experience along the way.

When Wright graduated high school more than 20 years ago, he planned to go into computer engineering. He loved gadgets (and still loves technology), but as he was working part time in a nursing home, he began to rethink his goals. He noticed and appreciated the way the staff cared for the patients and built relationships.

Then, he switched facilities and met the woman who would become his wife. She was a nurse, and she recognized the same aptitude in Wright.

“I have to give her credit,” Wright says. “She has been the kick in the pants that really has progressed me through my career.”

That might’ve gone badly for Wright had his wife not also soon landed a job there. As it was, the couple eventually moved their family of five to Pensacola. This was the first of several moves Wright would make in service of his career, and it was a seminal moment. For it was in Pensacola that his director encouraged him to get his RN license.

Wright didn’t know it at the time, but this advice and his desire to reach the corporate level at GEO set in motion a series of decisions that would take him on a parallel path with this career. That path was his education.

As Wright looks back on his career, he appreciates how his managers offered opportunity to advance but left the decision to pursue it up to him.

“People will present [options],” Wright explains, “but they’re going to see, ‘Is this something you want to do or not?’ You have to make that decision to take that first step on the ladder.”

In Wright’s case, that meant going back to school to earn his associate degree in nursing (ADN) while climbing the corporate ladder. With two small kids and a tween at home, he wasn’t sure how he’d accomplish that since his wife worked night shifts. The leadership at his workplace encouraged him to make the investment in himself.

Wright heeded the suggestion. After earning his ADN in 2013 from a community college and working his way up the ranks, Wright began to eye a new role with the company. The only problem? It was in Oklahoma.

“My wife was really encouraging,” Wright recalls. “She said, ‘You always told me that your goal one day is to be in the corporate office. We need to do what we need to do so you can make that happen.’”

In Oklahoma, Wright met Dr. Juan D. Castillo, who is currently the vice president of health services at GEO. Castillo became a mentor to Wright, encouraging him to grow his career and develop his natural strengths, which Castillo says are a commitment to operational excellence, problem-solving and patient care.

Wright’s dedication to patient care may have blossomed during the days after high school, but they were cemented while he was working in prisons. He recalls attending to one patient in a state prison who had “13½” tattooed on his body. Wright asked him what it meant, and the man replied, “12 jurors, one judge and a half-assed chance,” according to Wright.

“That struck a chord with me,” he says. “I can be that chance that he has to at least be medically taken care of as he goes through his process.”

In 2017, Castillo encouraged him to apply for the regional manager position that opened in San Antonio. This role, which he ultimately got, allowed him to develop relationships with other company leaders across the country. It also prepared him for his next career step in 2019, which was as the chief nursing officer within the organization. Along with the job came a move back to Florida — and a closer look at his education.  

“I made it to the corporate office, which was my goal,” Wright says. “My wife was like, ‘We did it!’ So I began my challenge to myself. I said, ‘I’m going to get my bachelor’s degree in nursing.’”

Wright enrolled in the RN to BSN program at SM������ and completed his degree in August 2021.

The thing about Wright is that he’s not content to rest on his laurels. Despite his success, he knew he could do more, that there was more to learn. So, with his sights set on a vice presidency role, he enrolled in the competency-based Master of Health Administration program in 2022.

Wright wanted to lay the right foundation that such a promotion might require. He wanted to learn more about staffing and budgets in healthcare, and the competency-based program, which lets students demonstrate what they already know so they can focus on learning what they don’t, offered an expedited pathway to acquiring those skills.

Wright completed the program in June 2023. “I learned a lot of valuable lessons through that,” he says. There were no guarantees, but he ultimately received the promotion to vice president of health services in November 2023. Wright wasn’t done. Knowing he could learn more on the finance side of the house, he enrolled in the competency-based Master of Business Administration and is due to graduate in May 2025.

“My boss was like, ‘You don’t need to do this,’” Wright says. “And I’m like, ‘But I want to know, and I want to understand it.’”

Today, Wright has come a long way from his days as an LPN working in state prisons. He oversees day-to-day operations and compliance with their accrediting body, and he has grown into the role’s responsibilities.

“His ongoing growth in leadership, strategic planning, operational efficiency and ethical leadership make him a great asset,” Castillo says. He points to Wright’s legacy of streamlining workflows and resource allocation as just two examples.

One other example of which Wright is especially proud is his partnership with a local university where he routinely speaks to nursing students about working in corrections. “They’re intrigued,” he says of the students. “They’re like, ‘We’ve never heard of this,’ because they don’t teach that in the nursing program.”

Similarly, he appreciated the opportunity to share his perspective during class discussions and coursework in his degree programs. “There were a lot of papers I would write related to the experience I had working on the corrections side of things. Most people don’t know anything about it,” he says. “All they know is what they see on TV or in the movies, and I’ll tell you, it’s nothing like any of that.”

In some ways, Wright has built a career on surprises. He opted for nursing over IT. He found his calling in the prison system. He came to education later but threw himself wholeheartedly into learning.

To his mind, it all makes sense. His name, he says, means “healer.” He researched his ancestry and found a 17th-century physician forebear who came to the American colonies from Sweden to study health patterns. Destiny, he suggests, is laid out. It’s up to you to make it into something you’re proud of.

“I found the good Lord gives you certain talents and skills,” he says, “and you learn to use them for what they are.”

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