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Sometimes, if you don’t see it, you can’t become it. 

As the only child of Yvonne Carter, growing up in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, Chaudron Carter Short '00 BSN, NEA-BC, RN, ED.D., PH.D, often would accompany her single mother to work at what was then Saint Agnes Medical Center in South Philadelphia where Yvonne worked as a nursing unit secretary. 

“I would see the nurses, and I would pretend like I was a nurse,” Carter Short said. “I saw people doing the role and helping, and it inspired me to pursue nursing. I enrolled in nursing school as the first college graduate in my family because that’s what I wanted to do. I know it sounds cliché, but I wanted to help.” 

Carter Short is forever grateful to her mother for that exposure to what was to become her passion, her identity and her life’s work. 

“I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am without my mother,” she said. 

Enrolling at �Թ�tv, after successfully transferring credits from her start at community college, Carter Short didn’t necessarily see many nursing students or faculty who looked like her. But she did find people there who wanted to help. 

“I’ll be very honest,” she said. “�Թ�tv at the time was not very culturally diverse. But I wasn’t made to feel like an outcast. I became friends with all of the students in my cohort, and we were a great support system for each other, a family. It was important to have a student support system and to have people understanding what you were going through. We fed off one another and succeeded together.” 

All these years later, Chaudron Short has succeeded like few others, rising through the ranks with stops at Temple, where she started, then Penn and Cooper hospitals. On March 20, 2023, she was elevated to the role of Chief Nursing Executive (CNE) for Temple University Health System (TUHS) and Temple University Hospital, Inc. She is responsible for the oversight of nursing services over seven campuses. 

“I was always willing to take on projects and train and orient people,” Carter Short said. “Every step of the way, I created goals for myself. I wanted to be a nurse manager. Then I wanted to be a director of nursing. Then the goal was to become a chief nursing officer. After two and a half years as a CNO, I was asked to step into this role. It is not what I had ever imagined becoming. When my boss said he was leaving, I said, ‘No, that wasn’t the plan!’ It wasn’t something that I ever imagined, but maybe that was a good thing, because it would have scared the heck out of me. There has always been a nurse leader that I could go to and now I am that nurse leader.”

How can you lead if you don’t know who you are leading? 

Carter Short makes it her mission to get to know the people under her charge. 

“Every other Wednesday, I go to orientation and meet all the new employees,” she said. “Then I host open forums called ‘Brief with the Nursing Chief,’ where I provide a state of nursing. I also open it up to questions. A lot of CNEs don’t like to do this, because you don’t know what’s going to come, what people are going to ask, and it can very intimidating if you are not prepared. I think it is important to know your organization and to know what is going on in your organization, and not just being the figure behind the door.” 

Truly, Carter Short could never be the figure behind the door because she has broken so many of those doors down.

“I know I can be very tough because my expectations are very high,” Carter Short said. “I also understand that we are put in these roles for a reason. Nursing is challenging. Healthcare is challenging. I am geared toward servant leadership. I am hard on the work, but not on the people. For anyone who sits in my seat, I would want their main responsibility to be to ensure that my family member gets the care that is deserved. I expect people to do what we are asking them to do as it relates to taking care of patients in an excellent way. 

“I have always desired to be in areas where I can make a difference,” she continued. “Temple is not an easy place to work because we take care of a very sick population. They may come in with diabetes, but they have so many other co-morbidities. And there’ poverty, so you have to take care of that population differently. Working at Temple, you have to think about those things.

To have a seat at the table to make a difference for that community is what drives me to do what I do every day. It has not been easy, and I did not just snap my fingers and get here, but you really don’t see a black CNE, so from a minority standpoint, I tell people it’s a heavy weight. It’s not just you being the face of Temple nursing over seven hospitals. It is the face of nursing from a minority standpoint.” 

This is why she embraces her responsibility to be that minority leader – so others can see it and become it.

“Every piece of your life and every destination is meaningful,” she said. “Everything that happens is for a purpose. I applied for roles along the way, and I wasn’t chosen. I didn’t get, but it wasn’t meant. Everything that happens is for a purpose. You have to learn to put things in your toolbox as you go. Many times, you will be like, ‘Well, what was that for? Why did I choose to do this?’ Every piece of your life is meaningful to get you to your next destination. And everybody’s going to get to their destination when they are meant to, no slower or no faster. It is nothing more, nothing less than hard work. I put my head down, and I grinded it out. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. I hope I hold a positive image in people’s framework. I’m not going to do everything perfectly. I am not a perfect being. You are not going to agree with everything that I do, and I don’t know everything, which is why I have fantastic AVPs around me because they help guide my decisions. But there are times where you have to be the one to make the choice. You hope and pray you make the right one.

“I want you to be better than me,” she said. “If I have gotten here, you can get here too. You can move above me. I want people to say, ‘If Chaudron has done it, I can do it too.’ I am humbled and I am thankful that I am in this role. I don’t take it for granted, and I really want to make a difference.”