The Straight Line I Never Took

When I graduated from high school, I thought I had a plan.

I started college as a business major and was fascinated by economics. I loved the way it explained behavior, incentives, the relationship between supply and demand, and the decisions people make. At the time, it felt like a clear direction.

Then life interrupted the plan.

A serious car accident changed the trajectory I thought I was on. Suddenly, the future felt much less certain. I wasn't just deciding what I wanted to do anymore. I was trying to figure out what I was capable of doing.

Looking back, I don't think I was choosing between business and healthcare.

I was choosing between what felt familiar and what felt unknown.

During the months I spent in the hospital and rehabilitation settings, healthcare became a world I understood. I knew the language. I knew the routines. I knew the people. It was one of the few environments that no longer felt uncertain.

So I moved toward it.

At the time, I thought I was choosing a career. What I didn't realize was that I was gaining a perspective.

I experienced healthcare from the other side. I saw how many people, processes, decisions, and systems had to come together for care to happen well. I didn't have the language for it then. I only knew that some experiences felt seamless while others felt confusing, frustrating, or difficult.

For years, I viewed business and healthcare as completely different worlds. After working as a clinician, then as a leader, and eventually in compliance, I connected the dots between the two.

Both were trying to answer some of the same questions.

Why do people make the decisions they do?

What happens when demand exceeds supply?

Why do some systems work while others create friction?

I've spent much of my career exploring those questions from different angles.

As a clinician, I saw how systems affected patient care. As a leader, I saw how culture shaped behavior. In compliance, I saw how policies, processes, and human decision-making intersect in ways that can either support quality care or unintentionally create barriers to it.

For a long time, I viewed my career as a series of unexpected turns. Now I see something different.

The path wasn't straight, but the questions were surprisingly consistent.

I've always been curious about why things work, why they don't, and what happens when people are asked to operate inside systems that weren't designed with reality in mind.

I just didn't know that's what I was studying.

Not as a business student.

Not as a patient.

And certainly not when I was trying to figure out what came next.

Looking back, I am not where I expected to be.

But I think I finally understand something.

Many of the perspectives that guide my work today were taking shape long before I had language for them.

The path hasn't been straight.

But maybe the path isn't the point.

Maybe the perspective is.

Maybe that's the thing about unexpected paths.

We spend years focusing on where they take us.

Only later do we recognize what they forged in us along the way.

What part of your path makes more sense now than it did at the time?

Thanks for reading.

I write about compliance, leadership, organizational culture, and the human stories that shape the systems we work within.

Through the Compliance as Culture™ Framework, I help healthcare organizations translate regulations into daily practice.