Second acts

Very few people have the fortitude to leave home for a better life in a new country. Camille Alexander is one of them, having traveled a long road from her native Guyana to Wall Street to the Med-Surg Unit at Emory Hospital in Atlanta, where she has happily settled in.

At age 20, Alexander landed in New York City with an accounting degree, and after paying an employment agency $25 to get her a job, she became a clerk at Bankers Trust. Not for long, though. When she heard about a better opportunity at Mitsubishi Bank, off she went for the interview and mandatory written test, for which she was offered a calculator. She declined. “The guy was so impressed with my mental math that he offered me the job on the spot,” says Alexander. She soon moved all the way up to the trading floor. Two financial institutions, a burgeoning bank account and too many 14-hour days later, Alexander began thinking it was time for a change. Then came 9/11.

“From my office window, I watched the second plane go right into the World Trade Center. I had an appointment scheduled for 2:30 that afternoon on the 30th floor of that building,” Alexander says. “I left work, spent nine hours walking home and didn’t go back for three weeks.”

The following July, she moved to Georgia and was working as a financial advisor at American Express when she got the call that changed her life. Her father, left, had suffered a stroke and was in the ICU. Alexander, a single parent at the time, parked her kids with a neighbor, flew to New York and for 10 days never left her father’s bedside.

“I had no idea of the devastation illness could inflict. My dad couldn’t talk or move a piece of hair from his face or scratch an itch. I cleaned and shaved him, massaged his legs hoping he’d be able to feel it, talked to him and just tried to soothe him. Nothing has ever humbled me like taking care of my dad. What really got to me was that I used to pass this hospital every day on the way to work at a bank, where all I did was make money. But no amount of money could help my father, and as I kept trying to make him more comfortable and less afraid, I kept thinking, ‘This is what I want to do with my life.’”

Back in Atlanta, Alexander quit her job, took the prerequisite courses for nursing school at a local college and was accepted by Emory University School of Nursing. She graduated last May. “It was such a special moment because I’m no spring chicken at 47!” Alexander’s husband celebrated by throwing a party where she gave a tribute to her father, who had recovered: “Dad, you’re my hero, and it’s because of you that I’m here today. I don’t ever want to forget why I went into nursing: certainly not for the money—I left that on Wall Street—but to give people all the care, comfort and love I can.”

Next up: A teacher turned cardiothoracic ICU nurse. “Being in a hospital seems so much more exciting than being in a classroom”