Marie Payne, MSOD ‘18 is Director of Talent Management and Innovation and leads a team of Organizational Development Practitioners at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. She is a certified Change Management Practitioner and holds two leadership coaching certifications from UC Berkeley and the Kansas Leadership Center, as well as an ACC credential from the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Payne earned her Master of Science in Organizational Development from Avila in 2018.
Would you please share your career journey?
“I’m a senior Organizational Development practitioner at Children’s Mercy, and I’m also an executive coach there. My colleague and I currently work for medical administration. We are the first two individuals in our organization who are trialing a decentralized approach to OD work. We support our physician-in-chief, physicians’ enterprise, and our ambulatory practices. It’s an experiment, we’re learning a lot, and it’s been successful so far.
Before that, I was a Respiratory Therapist for 10 years. I told myself that as soon as my youngest child started sleeping through the night, I was going to go back to school. My career in respiratory grew, but I learned early on that I had a love for caring for patients and families and a passion for serving our employees.
I found organizational development, and it turns out my company had a department to do that. I was able to connect with some mentors, do career shadowing, and I decided it was for me. One thing that was awesome about Avila’s MSOD program was that I could enroll in two weeks and get started. I wasn’t 100% certain what I was going to do with it. Here I am now with a profession. I’ve been in this position for about four years, and I’m loving every minute of it.”
“Be proud of your accomplishments and celebrate them. No one’s going to celebrate you more than you celebrate yourself. “
What would you say to people who are either considering the degree or are in the program working on the degree and they are wanting to get into the field of OD?
“There are various networking groups. If you’re in the KC metro area, there’s the Kansas City OD Network where there are great opportunities to connect with other people in the area. Since I’m a coach, I connect with various networks in the coaching realm, some that are international and some local. We have a heartland ICF chapter. A networking group is a great opportunity to hear about possibilities.
Be proud of your accomplishments and celebrate them. No one’s going to celebrate you more than you celebrate yourself. You have to be out there selling yourself with confidence. What you’re learning in this program and what you’ll do in the workplace is not highly specialized in any one area. It’s the understanding of people and how we go through transitions that you can apply anywhere. Have some confidence, because you’re more capable than you probably give yourself credit.”