Back to School - Haskayne School of Business - University of Calgary

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clinics has translated into some of the world’s
lowest indicators for health. Brooks’ story
touched her heart and it didn’t take long before
plans were in place for her to take a sabbatical
from the Calgary Regional Health Authority and
assume the medical directorship for Lifeline
Malawi.
In July 2006, the family arrived in Lilongwe,
the country’s capital, and set up what would be
their home for the next six months. The work
was intense and days were long. “I got up at
5 a.m. and I finished my day around 10 p.m.,”
she says. “The bright side was that I was off on
weekends for the first time in my career. We
went on some incredible weekend holidays and
safaris.”
While she expected her clinical skills to
be tested to their limits in Malawi, she didn’t
anticipate that her business skills would be in
such high demand. “When I arrived, Lifeline
Malawi was on the verge of a spectacular growth
curve and we went from serving one region to
trying to meet the needs of four. It was a huge
leap in terms of staff, resources, and scope – a
real-time case study in the organizational
dynamics of rapid growth,” explains Nijssen-
Jordan. “It was intellectually and physically
rigorous in ways I hadn’t anticipated.”
“Consider the numbers from an operations
perspective: In Canada, a very busy day on an
emergency ward would involve each physician
seeing 50 to 60 patients. In Malawi, it was
common to see 300
patients a day and
to have to turn away
300 more – people
suffering from
serious illnesses like
AIDS, malaria, and
tuberculosis. I often
think about the people
I met and wonder how
they’re doing, whether
they’re still alive.”
Nijssen-Jordan
lives life through a
split screen of reality.
On one side: The
privilege and excess of
the first world, on the other side: The despair
and suffering of the third world. “Sure, it’s a
shock coming back here especially since there’s
no time for a gradual readjustment – I can be
seeing patients in a remote sub-Saharan village
at the start of a week and seeing patients at the
Alberta Children’s Hospital by the weekend. I
remind myself that parents here care about
their children as much as parents there and I
try to treat everyone with the same degree of
compassion and respect,” she says.
In Africa or in Alberta, as a parent of a sick
child you’d be lucky to have Nijssen-Jordan by
your side. What if you ended up by her side
along the militarized border between Thailand
and Burma?
“The year before
I went to Malawi, a
friend and fellow
doctor convinced
me – quite easily – to
join her on a medical
mission to Thailand
that was being
organized by Clinical
Service Partners
International. We
were in an isolated
camp in the jungle where neither the Thai
government nor the Myanmar Army wished to
have outside assistance. There are few places
on the planet as packed with landmines and
the paramedics with whom I worked dealt with
more extreme trauma cases in ten days than I’ve
seen in ten years in Canada.”
After about a week of being holed up in such
conditions, Nijssen-Jordan proposed a stroll in
the countryside, perhaps even a trip to a nearby
village to meet the locals. “Our hosts were
shocked and said it was
out of the question.
We negotiated until we
reached a compromise,”
she says.
The compromise
turned out to be a
brief hike – at a quick
clip – chaperoned by
armed guards. “I was
more worried about
one of our guards
tripping and setting off
his machine gun than I
was about the snipers
said to be hiding in the
bushes.”
Let there be no doubt that Nijssen-Jordan is a
woman with moxie to spare.
With all she had on the go – on both hospital
and home fronts – why did she choose to go
after an Executive MBA from the Haskayne
School of Business? “That’s a good question,”
she laughs. “I started thinking about it in
the1990s during the restructuring of Alberta’s
health care system. I felt that, as doctors, we
needed a better understanding of the operational
and financial drivers of our health care system.”
Nijssen-Jordan’s decision to enter the
Executive MBA program in the fall of 2002
triggered the professional equivalent of a major
spring cleaning. “I took a hard look at all the
things I had on my
plate and figured
out what I needed to
While she expected her
keep and what could
clinical skills to be tested be put on hold for a
to their limits in Malawi,
couple of years. It
took a significant
she didn’t anticipate that reprioritizing but in
her business skills would the end things fell into
place,” she says.
be in such high demand.
She scaled back her
weekly hospital hours
from 100-plus to 50,
working 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Thursday
and directing the extra 30 hours to classes and
study. “An unexpected benefit was that I was
home more often – doing my homework as the
kids did theirs. We learned a lot together.”
The example that Nijssen-Jordan and her
husband Peter Nijssen, a planner with a
specialty in infrastructure for refugee camps,
have set is definitely paying off. Their children
are bright, confident and compassionate – with
definite opinions about the world that lies
beyond Calgary’s city limits.
After years of heading south for her medical
work, Nijssen-Jordan has recently been
frequenting Alberta’s north. Starting September
2007, she’s been splitting her time between
Calgary where she’s maintaining her hat-trick
role as professor, clinician and researcher and
Fort McMurray where she’s serving as the vicepresident
of Medical Affairs.
With all she’s got on the go, balancing
priorities and passions, Nijssen-Jordan could
be forgiven for only thinking about what comes
next. But she’s got a knack for making the
most of moments. “If I’m not present in the
moment – if I’m thinking about what happened
this morning or what I’ve got to do tomorrow –
then I’ve missed it. The best way I’ve found to
prepare for life is to live it.”
Alumni Connections 13