STARTING OVER PROVES SUCCESSFUL FOR MEDICAL CEO
BY ZERLINE HUGHES SPRUILL
E very successful leader didn’t matriculate through high school with a 4.0 grade-point average, nor breeze through college in four consecutive years. Just ask Dr. Ernest “Stan” Wardlaw. As a high school student in Anderson, South Carolina, Wardlaw didn’t pay attention in his classes. When he arrived at Tuskegee University, he realized he was ill prepared. The first- generation college student said he didn’t even know what a GPA was and struggled through his first semester, almost flunking out. While he was able to complete his first year, he made the decision not to return as a Golden Tiger. “I stayed out a half year to pay my bill off, reset and found myself in social work at Howard,” said Wardlaw who graduated from the Mecca in June 1990. “I majored in social work solely because someone told me I was a good listener. I didn’t have any plans of furthering my education but a professor at Howard in the School of Social Work really encouraged me to further my education.” Despite a challenging start and having no plans to attend graduate school, Wardlaw went on to earn his Master of Social Work in the Advance Standing Program in 1991 from the University of South Carolina School of Social Work. Then he earned a certificate in public
health management from the University of North Carolina’s School of Public Health/ Business Management, followed by earning a Ph.D. in public health, in addition to a master of science in public health from Walden University’s School of Health and Human Services. To top it all off, he added one more HBCU degree to his portfolio: a Doctor of Healthcare Administration from Virginia State University. “He is a very humble person and never really talked about degrees,” said LaVonda Johnson, who worked with Wardlaw when he was Chief Operations Officer of Sandhills Medical. “I saw him as a mentor. I left the organization and came back when he came on board. He is a very humble person and he also wants the best for you. There’s always a teachable moment and he pushes others to do their best. Before he left our organization, he was in an upcoming supervisors program. That was something the staff appreciated.” Once Wardlaw got bitten by the academia bug, he couldn’t stop. As the oldest sibling, his continuing education efforts inspired his siblings to start their own education journey, but he said his real motivation was his children.
“It wasn’t about trying to get more
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