Cary grace grew up living in a planned community engineered to be equitable and diverse. Her mother worked as an operating room nurse, her father was a dentist, and her early career days were spent in finance and healthcare. Although she didn’t realize it at the time, all these experiences were building blocks for her current role leading Dallas-based AMN Healthcare.
When Grace was named CEO of the company in late 2022, the pandemic had drastically reshaped the industry. Healthcare staffing shortages created a vast need for temporary workers, and Covid surged nationwide, creating demand spikes in concentrated areas. Travel nursing grew 35 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year. Wages spiked 25 percent, with some travel nurses earning $5,000 to $10,000 per week at the pandemic’s height.
It was in this environment that AMN announced Grace as its new chief executive, succeeding Susan Salka, who had been in the role for 17 years and with the company for 32. Grace was ready for the challenge. She previously served as a divisional CEO at Aon, overseeing a $2 billion group that provided management and HR consulting to more than 10,000 clients. “We were doing a lot around the future of the workforce and human capital and how we help organizations build a high quality, sustainable workforce,” Grace says.
She knew the world of staffing and how to run a massive organization—AMN is on pace to do about $3.3 billion in revenue in 2024—but the company’s unique culture, focused on healthcare, service, diversity, and equity, presented an opportunity to call upon lessons from her upbringing.
Grace was raised in Columbia, Maryland, a community developed by shopping mall pioneer Jim Rouse. Subsidized housing, walkability, and a religious center—where all faiths enter through the same doors and head into respective worship areas—were part of Grace’s formative years. “When you grow up there, you don’t know anything is different,” she says. “I didn’t know I didn’t grow up in a normal place.” It prepared her to lead an organization that embraces diversity and has a long-running medical and infrastructure service project in Guatemala.
Grace also grew up gaining an understanding of and empathy for healthcare professionals. Her first job was in her father’s dental clinic. A veteran of the United States Navy, he would go on to get a PhD in psychology. “The most formative boss I had was my dad,” Grace says. “He taught me a lot about service to the community and about humanity in business.”
As the healthcare staffing industry evolves, shortages and challenges brought forth by the pandemic are still circulating. AMN’s various businesses (see sidebar) are focused on leveraging technology and finding innovative ways to build a workforce and provide quality care. For example, AMN is using AI to predict shift needs 60 days in advance, and its research division provides labor market analytics so providers can make informed decisions about their staffing needs.
The company has come a long way since it was founded as American Mobile Nurses in 1985. AMN has around 3,500 employees supporting more than 10,000 clients annually and more than two million since its founding. This past August, it launched a mental health teletherapy platform for students.
“We’re focused on how we support our clients and be their partner in the mission of care,” Grace says, “[how we] help them find more innovative, sustainable, high-quality, and affordable ways to be able to build their workforce.”
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