Faith Adole is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of United Vessels of Love Foundation (U-VOL Foundation Inc), a registered international non-profit healthcare foundation with focus on providing medical assistance to unreached communities, is passionate about medical outreach, health education, WASH and other healthcare sustainability initiatives, especially at the grassroots level. She speaks to YEJIDE GBENGA-OGUNDARE on care for all humanity through global partnerships and efforts at advocacy among other issues.
Passion for empowerment
During my undergraduate and graduate nursing studies, I don’t recall having a professor that looked like me. Once I got involved with Global Health at a young age, I ran into the same issue within my profession. I knew that a few existed but truthfully, I never saw them. I believe that representation matters. Representation is a form of empowerment. Once others see those similar to them in various leadership roles, it can serve as a source of inspiration. Beyond that, representation can help break negative stereotypes and misconceptions of people groups and furthermore, a diversified global leadership workforce can help bring guidance and solutions to global issues; it just makes sense. Simply put, I wanted to become what I thought was missing and wanted to inspire others to join me. Whether in health institutions, humanitarian fieldwork, research, academia, advocacy and beyond, we need more nurses and midwives leading the charge in global health; especially diversified women of color.
Challenges as a woman trying to break frontiers
Although there have been notable strides among women leaders that have come before me, within my own African culture, I still encounter much surprise and sometimes skepticism about my leadership capabilities in global health, specifically because I am a relatively young woman and have a background in nursing instead of medicine. However, I have been able to overcome such challenges through persistence, open-mindedness, patience and continued dialogue.
Nursing Practice
I am a trained family nurse practitioner, healthcare executive, and entrepreneur. Like many of my nursing colleagues, I started out my nursing career in the acute care setting hospital after my baccalaureate program. Although I felt deeply connected to direct patient care, I returned to further my studies and became an advanced practice nurse because I cared deeply about patient advocacy and wanted to provide patients with a greater voice in healthcare. I soon developed my love for healthcare leadership once I understood the power and great influence nurses have on the advancement of the profession and on the actual healthcare treatment and delivery within our communities.
After several years of volunteering in local and international communities as a nurse, I realised I could no longer remain silent about the inequities surrounding global healthcare delivery, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. While serving as a nurse volunteer in Africa, I saw firsthand, like many others, the poor health/hygiene practices, preventable health illnesses and even deaths in many disadvantaged and rural societies; however, it was the lack of global health leadership by those who looked like me that motivated me to be a founder.
Setting up an NGO
In 2015, I founded U-VOL Foundation, a non-profit healthcare foundation with a vision to build dynamic relationships and partnerships with people, communities, and organisations to create global healthcare and wellness initiatives to lessen existing healthcare disparities worldwide. As a Nigerian-American, I understood the unique position I was in to leverage my knowledge, skills and network to make a difference in the African continent. I’m passionate about empowering African nurses and midwives to lead in global health settings.
Interest
I find everything I do interesting and I find every aspect enjoyable. The fact that I get to act upon an impactful vision and help others never feels like work.
How to create a balance
Number one, flexibility and not taking yourself too seriously is key. As startup founders, some have the tendency to micromanage or overdo tasks without asking for help in desperation for their businesses to get off the ground. This can be detrimental and is not sustainable. Teamwork, communication and delegation are essential skills to master when leading any team. Through my work with U-VOL, managing teams remotely in different geographical locations, time zones and cultures has been challenging for me at times. However, I strive to build team members to utilise their full potentials in roles that they feel they are best suited for and provide opportunities for the team to grow and improve collectively. In addition, I find that the development and/or adoption of a practical organisational system within our teams helps to streamline functions so that neither myself nor my team members get overworked. Lastly, it’s important that I have fun, rest and spend time doing activities that I enjoy.
How will you describe yourself?
I would describe myself as a global healthcare advocate and a lifelong student that thrives in the promotion of others. As a social entrepreneur, I believe that there is always something or someone to learn from. No matter our walks of life, we can always learn from our history and from one another. Whatever business we do, we must do it with humanity in mind. Within the nursing profession, I’ve been given the opportunity to both serve and lead at the bedside and beyond as well as to contribute to the global health sector in more ways than I could have imagined.
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