Healthcare
manager and USF School of Management Alum, Anna Dapelo-Garcia (MPA 2011).
Healthcare manager and USF School of Management Alum, Anna
Dapelo-Garcia (MPA 2011), has been honored with the prestigious Future Financial Leader Award. Awarded
by the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), the nation’s leading
membership organization for healthcare financial management executives and
leaders, Dapelo-Garcia was recognized for her innovative and exceptional
performance in leading and managing change, communicating vision, and fostering
a strong collegial climate and culture.
As the Administrative Director for Patient Access Services
and Patient Financial Services at Stanford Hospital and Clinics (SHC),
Dapelo-Garcia is responsible for a $2 billion revenue cycle operation. This includes management of 200+ staff,
hospital registration functions across 25+ locations, and billing/collections
activities. Dapelo-Garcia says her progression to upper management started in
the conventional way; from a clerk to a lead, supervisor, manager, director to
an administrative director. Although her
career was initially shaped by valuable hands-on experience in a number of
staff-level jobs, she says it was her formal education that allowed her to
advance her career to the executive level.
“Attending USF has certainly helped my career by teaching me
advanced leadership skills and higher levels of analytical and critical
thinking abilities”, says Dapelo-Garcia. “The [MPA] program not only exposed me
to courses such as leadership ethics, and strategic management for public
communication but to courses specific to my field such as health care issues
and law.”
In line with the HFMA’s mission for its members to promote
diversity and tolerance in the workplace, Dapelo-Garcia acknowledges the
socio-cultural obstacles she faced in her life, and how she overcame them
through the quest for a formal education.
“[Graduating with an MPA from USF] seemed surreal given my
meager beginnings in a crime-ridden neighborhood in East San Jose, 
California
in the 1970’s … Little did I realize that my street-smarts and burning desire
to be different and break free from the stereotype I was
destined for was
actually possible. Sitting in my first class at USF several years ago, I told
myself that I can really do this no matter what others think or say!”
Dapelo-Garcia describes the moment she graduated at St.
Ignatius Church as one of the highlights of her life, and said that being
recognized as a Future Financial Leader has been a key milestone in her career.
Adding to her pride in calling herself a mother, wife and Hispanic woman,
Dapelo-Garcia hopes that others whose odds seem against them can follow in her
footsteps. “I look forward, in the years
to come, to hearing about more Hispanics graduating from college and more
Hispanics in the C-Suite.”
