To meet Ninfa Saunders in a professional environment – to read her extraordinary credentials – to hear her views on leadership—and to know her as a wife and mother, perhaps the last thing one would suspect is that her name was once "notorious" in her homeland.

Ninfa was born in the Philippines in a family of eight children to parents who were both professional administrators in academia with an emphasis in mathematics. She grew up a child of privilege and high achievement standards. Four of her siblings have become M.D.’s or Ph.D.’s and Ninfa herself is working on a Ph.D. in mathematics at Georgia Tech "in her spare time." She would like to share this accomplishment with her mother as a part of the family tradition - not that she needs more degrees.

Among Ninfa’s already impressive credentials are a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Summa Cum Laude from Condcordia College, Manila, Philippines (1972); Masters of Science in Nursing, With High Honors from Rutgers University, Newark, NJ (1979); Fellow – International School of Business, London School of Business, London, England (1984); Masters in Business Administration / EMBA, With Distinguished Honors from Emory University School of Business, Atlanta, GA (1984); and Fellow – Executive Program, Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia, PA (1986).

Before coming to the USA and beginning her remarkable journey of learning and performing, she had a very different kind of experience in Manila. After graduating from a Catholic high school at the age of 14, and while she was pursuing her undergraduate degree which she received at 18, Ninfa said, "I became a big disappointment and embarrassment to my parents."

This happened when Ninfa became a leader of a radical student protest group that demonstrated against the Marcos regime from 1969 until 1972. During that time, Ninfa said she wrote their manifesto, demonstrated regularly in the streets, and even took her protests before the nuns at her former boarding school. "Even though I was very young, an idealist, and clearly inexperienced in matters of the world," Ninfa said, "it’s still difficult to believe I did what I did."

In 1989, seventeen years after leaving the Philippines and having established an entirely different kind of reputation, Ninfa’s alma mater invited her to return to Manila to be the commencement speaker. Upon her arrival, she was asked to do a TV interview and much to her surprise, the reporter resurrected her past. He showed her graphic pictures of her former student activism days and asked her to "explain herself." The now mature Ninfa handled this unexpected request with diplomacy and apologies. "But it rattled me," she said. Oh, to be able to turn back the clock!

Today, a thoroughly Americanized Ninfa Saunders has no need to dwell on the past. However, there’s one more very interesting and unique chapter from her past. While attending college in the U.S., she worked for a short time in Meridian, MS. It was there she met the man who would become her first fiancée. His name is Buford Pusser. For those who don’t know, Buford Pusser was the sheriff and lawman whose courageous life of fighting corruption was chronicled and popularized in the best selling book and film, "Walking Tall." Ninfa didn’t know his celebrity until after they were dating and practically engaged. They planned to marry in 1974, when tragically, he was killed in an automobile accident only a few miles from his home in Tennessee. Many did not believe his death was an accident. But for Ninfa, the loss was a devastating blow. It was a defining moment in her life as she closed the door forever on innocence and youth.

With renewed focus on continued learning and performance, Ninfa rose rapidly in the field of nursing and healthcare administration. Her path led her to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta in 1980 where she was Director of Nursing Resources and Management Systems. In 1993, she was offered the position of Chief Operating Officer and Administrator of Patient Care Services at DeKalb Medical Center in Decatur, Georgia. During her eight year tenure there, Ninfa set and achieved many significant goals. She left this position in 2001 to pursue other interests. Currently she is consulting with the Georgia Cancer Coalition.

More important that her professional success in healthcare, Ninfa has attained an even higher level of success and satisfaction in her personal life. She is happily married to Jim Saunders, an investment executive, and they have two children - a 17 year old daughter and 12 year old son. Both are academically gifted children and are the source of their parents’ greatest pride and joy.

"Family is my first priority," Ninfa says, "and that hasn’t changed throughout my career. I have had to stand my ground from time to time, to get the kind of flexibility that I needed, and yet I never compromised my employer’s needs or expectations. I try to use the same philosophy with my staff and all the personnel at the hospital, both male and female. I find that doing so makes for strong relationships, increased loyalty, and a better place to work for everyone. In turn, people perform better and our service and bottom-line results go up. It’s clearly a win-win situation."

Ninfa has strong beliefs about how women lead. She sees women as "architects of process" – i.e., they see infinite details, not just the big picture or the end result. She thinks women also have special antenna for reading others’ vulnerabilities and helping them with specific needs. As a leader herself, Ninfa draws on personal experience to deal with problems and to resolve conflict. She relishes the opportunity to interact with people with diverse viewpoints and to lead by example. To her staff, for example, she’s "Ninfa, not Mrs. Saunders" and she tries hard to put people on equal footing.

When she’s not directing healthcare operations – or attending her kids’ sports events – or working with the homeless – or supporting her church - or writing and presenting papers on critical healthcare strategies – or serving as Vice Chair of the Decatur Hospital Board, Ninfa teaches hospital administration finance at Emory. She’s also working on a special mission: developing strategies for leadership success. Wherever she works, she tried to prepare the next generation of leaders within the organization. And what Ninfa sets her mind to accomplish always seems to get done.

October 2001
By Susan B. Hitchcock (Creator of the Age of SHEroes)
VP - Client Services -Turknett Leadership Group