March 16, 2021

Felix Nyangamoi never saw it coming.

“My boss said, ‘Hey, can you come to the office?’ I was training new staff on a different floor, and they asked me to come down,” said Nyangamoi, a learning and development specialist who helps with staff training.

When he came into a conference room, there was a person with a camera. Focused on him.

“So, Felix, what do you think this is?” his boss asked.

It was a suitcase.

“It looks like somebody’s going on a trip,” Nyangamoi said.

“Go ahead and open it,” his boss replied.

And Nyangamoi realized it was him.

“I started to get emotional,” he said.

A QR code connected him to a video from CEO Bill Gassen.

“This thing is real,” Nyangamoi concluded. “I came back right away to my office and said yes, I’m in, whatever it is.”

Carol Cressman’s reveal was similar.

When she came to a meeting – a rare in-person meeting – and saw a videographer, she assumed someone on her team was getting an award.

Then, a Sanford executive came in and announced “I have something for Carol Cressman.”

“And under the table rolled out a suitcase,” Cressman said. “My first thought was: Is this my last day? Should I pack my things?”

No to the first question; yes to the second.

In the suitcase, she found an eye pillow, earplugs, a power bank to charge her phone and a selfie stick.

“They asked that I read this note … congratulating me about my extraordinary commitment to Sanford Health and the work I do and the people I serve.”

Cressman and Nyangamoi would learn they were among 20 inaugural Sanford Health ambassadors. If they accepted, they were told they would be leaving the following week for a mystery destination.

Days later, they learned they would be heading to Nashville.

“I was excited,” said Cressman, who has worked at Sanford nearly 41 years and is director of pediatrics, PICU, pediatric outpatients and child life services.

“And I was kind of wondering what they had in store for us because there’s this whole suspense.”

That would soon find out, spending a whirlwind 60 hours in Music City on a tour designed by Sanford to show appreciation for what they’ve contributed.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” said chief marketing officer Kimber Severson, whose team put the adventure together in a matter of weeks.

“Many times, people were overtaken by emotion, for all the right reasons, but it was so cool to see 20 different people from across the organization come together and form an amazing bond in a matter of days.”

Everyone has endured something – or many things – in the past year.

But health care workers have had it harder than most.

“We started thinking about a way to honor everyone. We wanted to do something different,” Severson said. “But we’re in a pandemic. We’re not out of it yet. We couldn’t throw a concert. And we wanted something to feel new. We kept talking about a new day.”

That’s connected in part to Bill Gassen, who became CEO late last year and vowed to prioritize the organization’s people, patients and communities.

“We only exist at Sanford Health because of our people,” he said. “It’s our people who serve our patients and allow us to care for our communities, and given the year we’ve just had, it was the right time to be able to celebrate and to lift up our people in a really special way.”

So why Nashville? That part comes later.

But first, the group had to be chosen. Twenty people out of an organization of more than 48,000.

“We called on our leadership to recommend and said we want people who bleed blue (the Sanford color), who are passionate,” Severson said. “If you could have 100 of these people, that’s the person we want. And leadership had such difficulty. We got way more than 20. But it was a very diverse group in all areas and a proper representation of our workforce.”

The trip of a lifetime

The trip, which Sanford said was taken with full COVID-19 precautions in place, went from Feb. 23-25 and began with a rooftop reception where the newly chosen ambassadors and Sanford leadership could meet one another.

“Each of us had to fill out a form with our background and had to answer three questions,” Cressman said. “Some information about our mantra in 2020, what drives our passion for our work and what brought you joy and made you smile in 2020.”

For instance, one nurse from Fargo shared how she would put on bright pink lipstick each morning even though she wore a mask all day “because she knows she’s got that bright pink lipstick on, and it makes her happy,” Cressman said.

The entertainer that night read their information between songs, “and she’d say something about how much she loved each person,” Cressman said.

“She brought up how I’ve been working in health care over 40 years, and I got to go on stage with her, and she just honored us for so many things.”

The next day, the group visited Nashville Boot Co., where they saw how the footwear is made and were invited to pick out a pair on Sanford.

“I was like, are you kidding me? They’re telling us we can have whatever we want? It was an amazing experience,” Cressman said.

Nyangamoi nodded.

“I wore mine yesterday,” he added.

“The organizers did a brilliant thing coming up with all these ways to keep us engaged. The boot company … was a great experience.”

The main event

Nashville’s signature Grand Ole Opry was closed to audiences for much of last year. It slowly has started to resume performances but was closed when the Sanford group was there.

“We got a backstage tour,” Cressman said. “And then all of a sudden, we were in the first three rows, and there’s a big red curtain closed and a couple cameras floating around. Something was going to happen next.”

The curtain opened, revealing country trio Lady A.

“We were all very emotional,” Nyangamoi said. “They were amazing.”

Lady A is the newest member of the Grand Ole Opry, invited to join earlier this year. The group also is appearing in promotions for Profile by Sanford.

Remember how Sanford leaders had wanted to find a way to thank all their employees? And couldn’t hold a concert? Instead, they decided to write a song.

“We had found Lady A, they were going to do the song, and they wanted to meet some of our people for inspiration,” Severson said.

“And I had been talking about getting an ambassador group together, and we thought, OK, these things can marry up. We can have a group of ambassadors go meet Lady A and give them the trip of a lifetime, show our gratitude and wrap our arms around them with experience, and that’s what we were able to do.”

But even they didn’t realize just how meaningful this would be.

Cressman lost her son, Ryan, then 22, on Jan. 28, 2012 – the same day she had been planning to go see Lady A in concert.

“I absolutely think it was a God moment,” she said. “There I was smack in front of Lady A. I could barely get my name out.”

No one at Sanford knew her story.

“She sent an email after the fact. I cried like a baby,” Severson said. “I’m like, God at work here. For sure. And I asked for permission to send her note to Lady A because I’m positive they’re going to want to know that story.”

If they were looking for inspiration, they got it.

And not just in that powerful moment. During the concert, Sanford read what others in the organization had to say about the ambassadors.

“It was beautiful,” Nyangamoi said. “And to have the corporate leadership team there with us made us feel like this is real and they really care about each one of us.”

He walked out of the Grand Ole Opry alongside Gassen and remembers turning to his CEO saying:

“Wow. Look at all that. We were just in the first row. Who else sat there? Rich people? Famous people? And he turned around said, ‘Felix, you are very important. I want to thank you because what you do is wonderful. You make a difference in people’s lives. You make a difference.’ And it made me think, whoa. He just turned that thing around.”

Gassen added that he meant what he said. “What I shared with him was that incredibly well-known and talented individuals have set foot in and performed at the Grand Ole Opry and have done incredible things in their industry, but they can’t hold a candle to what Felix and the other individuals there do every single day. It’s not just this year because of the pandemic, but this is what these people do every day of the year.”

The Sanford leaders who were part of called the trip a career highlight too, Severson added.

“Even for the executives, it was an experience of a lifetime,” she said.

The lasting effect

Back home, the ambassadors are living up to their new roles. Cressman reminded her teammates she is part of the inaugural team, which “means first, and with first comes second and third and fourth, so I truly believe we were able to experience the first, but there’s so much more to come,” she said.

It even has had an effect on Nyangamoi’s five sons, he said.

“They’ve been asking me a lot of questions,” he said. “I’m honored and humbled.”

And there will be more ambassadors named in future years, Sanford leaders said. They will help represent the organization and provide feedback on a range of topics.

“It’s incredibly important. I don’t know how you can be effective leading an organization like this unless you’re intentional about hearing from, learning from and witnessing the real work that happens every single day by our caregivers,” Gassen said.

“It’s humbling and challenging when you go back to work and realize it’s your responsibility to bring the same level of passion and commitment and integrity to the work you do that lives up to what they’re doing every single day.”

Enjoy this video recap of the trip and the Lady A song for Sanford below.