Yana Berman Vinogradov '86
Of the more than 6,000 graduates of the School of Nursing, Yana Berman Vinogradov's '86 BSN journey to Holy Family University may have been the farthest on record and most definitely ranks among the most fascinating.
A native of Moscow, Vinogradov arrived in Philadelphia in 1981 as a 19-year-old Russian-Jewish immigrant speaking minimal English and carting big dreams of a career in nursing. Enrolling in the Community College of Philadelphia, where she met her Ukrainian husband in the line to collect her college ID, she found Holy Family and remembers her first day on campus vividly.
"I had been in America three years. I could communicate, but my English still wasn't that great, and I still had to look up a lot of words. I had a heavy accent," Vinogradov said. "I discovered Holy Family. It was Catholic. I'm Jewish. That was kind of interesting. But I liked the people, and everyone was very nice.
The biggest shock to me was that my classmates were one of five kids, one of eight kids, from big Irish Catholic families. I was an only child. I was always laughing that I was probably the only Jew at this Catholic college. I remember the first lecture in this big lecture hall. They gave us so much information on what we needed to do and how much work we would have."
Vinogradov's first job out of college was in intensive care, telemetry, open heart surgery and recovery at Pennsylvania Hospital. She called on kindness and humor to help her assimilate.
"Someone at Holy Family gave me a great recommendation in order for me to get that job," she said. "I never wanted to work on a med-surg floor, but critical care and recovery were my two favorites. If you gave me the sickest patient in the unit, with a gazillion problems and tubes, that was my kind of thing."
Along the way, Vinogradov found another calling, surprisingly, after briefly leaving nursing to take a job at Independence Blue Cross following the birth of her second daughter.
"That's when I realized that I was pretty good with computers, which I did not know before, and that I liked the whole idea of improving processes, finding a better way to get things done," she said.
Vinogradov took her newfound skills and returned to nursing at the University of Pennsylvania as a quality manager. Seven years later, she moved to New York City. She has spent the last eight years at Memorial Sloan Kettering, where she now serves as a senior manager of quality and safety.
"Enrolling at Holy Family University was the best thing I ever did in terms of my education," she said. "Every nurse that I know who finished Holy Family University is highly regarded."
That undeniable fact, as Vingradov can attest, is not lost in translation.