Meet Mary Anne, chief talent officer of Vermont Business Roundtable, a non-profit, public interest organization comprised of more than 100 CEOs of Vermont’s most active and committed businesses and employers. A 2017 TPM Academy graduate, Mary Anne brought TPM to Vermont to improve talent pipelines for healthcare, construction, and manufacturing.
Sheahan’s leadership for the VTPM Healthcare Collaborative has received significant attention for her integration of both TPM and Talent Finance solutions. Sheahan gathered 43 Vermont hospitals, residential care, and home health organizations to form their Healthcare Collaborative. The TPM framework provided the structure and flexibility needed to organize competing employers around a common goal: increase the nursing talent supply with qualified applicants.
Sheahan developed a talent financing solution based in apprenticeships to expand the talent pool. Targeting existing local talent, participating hospitals paid apprentices their full-time wages but reduced their working hours so they could have time to complete their nursing coursework. The hospitals also agreed to pay off any student debt incurred from nursing school costs, three years after the apprentices become registered nurses. Since its inception, the Collaborative has secured over $10M in funding for their work.
The impact of Sheahan’s work can be felt outside of Vermont as well. Sheahan fosters employer engagement by bringing employers like Betsy Hassan, Director of Nursing Education at UVM Medical Center, to present to prospective stakeholders an overview of the Healthcare Collaborative’s progress and recommendations for implementation. For example, Hassan and Sheahan traveled to Minnesota to help the Center for Nursing Equity and Excellence in Minnesota start a Pre-Licensure Nursing Apprenticeship model. Similarly to the Vermont employers, the demand for RNs and LPNs in Minnesota was higher than the supply. The solution: an apprenticeship model that eliminates financial barriers to continued education and keeps students employed with the appropriate time to finish their coursework.
Mary Anne is an active member of the National Learning Network, serving as a TPM Academy Faculty, Fellow, and Mentor. When asked about her favorite part of serving as an advisor to members of the NLN, she shared, “There’s always something to learn, no matter how much experience in TPM. To be continuously improving, means collaborating and listening - both to the employers and to peers. I’m grateful for the peers who I can learn from. I hope I can impart some lessons too.”
