She spent more than fourteen years at WellMed Medical Group/ Optum in progressive medical director roles, where she founded the Office of Clinician Excellence, launched a peer coaching program, and co-founded the Clinical Health and Safety team. Those years in system leadership shaped how she thinks about medical practice, clinician workforce, and organizational design.
She received her MD from McGovern Medical School in Houston, completed her family medicine residency at Christus Spohn Memorial in Corpus Christi, and earned her MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas. She holds the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential from the International Coaching Federation.
Outside of her consulting work, Dr. Suttin serves as Chair of the South Central Texas Regional Board of Trustees for Blood Cancer United, an organization for which she has volunteered since 2020. She lives in San Antonio with her husband and their four children, and she’ll take any excuse to travel somewhere new. When she’s not on the road, she’s training for her next half marathon or camping with her husband and rescue dog in their travel trailer.
There is a particular kind of confusion that many women experience but rarely talk about.
It doesn’t happen when life falls apart. It happens when life appears to be working.
The career is successful. The family is doing well. The responsibilities are being managed. The bills are paid. The calendar is full. The life that once felt like a dream may now be the life you’re living.
From the outside, everything looks right. Which is why the feeling can be so difficult to explain. Because despite all of that, something doesn’t feel quite right. Not wrong. Not broken. Just… off.
There comes a point in many women’s lives when they realize they have spent decades earning.
Earning opportunities. Earning promotions. Earning trust. Earning respect. Earning financial security. Earning the right to take up space. Earning the confidence of others. Earning the title, the role, the seat at the table.
For many women, achievement begins early. Work hard. Be responsible. Be prepared. Be dependable. Prove yourself. Add value. Contribute. Carry your share.
There area few words women use more often, and reveal less through, than this one:
“Fine.”
How are you? Fine
How’s work? Fine
How are things at home? Fine
How are you holding up? Fine
It’s become such an automatic response that most of us don’t even think about it anymore. We say it in passing, with a smile, while juggling schedules, answering emails, managing responsibilities, and moving on to the next thing on the list.
One of the most confusing things about growth is that other people often become attached to versions of us that no longer exist. Not because they are trying to hold us back, and not because they want something bad for us. But because those versions worked.
You know…the dependable one, the strong one, the achiever, the caretaker, the woman who always said yes, the woman who could handle anything…and the woman everyone counted on.
There is a kind of grief that rarely gets talked about. Not because it is uncommon, but because it can be difficult to explain. Most people understand grief when something ends. A relationship ends. A career ends. A chapter closes. There is a clear event, a visible transition, and people recognize that something has been lost.
People trust you. They rely on you. They know you can handle complicated moments without falling apart. You become the steady one, the capable one, the person who can absorb pressure and still keep moving.
She currently serves as the Assistant Vice President of System Effectiveness at Cook Children’s Healthcare System (CCHCS) in Fort Worth, TX and is tasked with establishing operational excellence and process improvement strategies for the system and also charged with providing operational leadership for the Innovation program. She enjoys mentoring employees and coaching leaders on their journey to excellence.
Since 2013, she has served as an Adjunct Professor in the Industrial, Manufacturing & Systems Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), in Arlington, TX.
She is from the beautiful island of St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands and enjoys spending time with her family and supporting her church community.
There is a particular kind of loneliness that doesn’t look like loneliness from the outside.
It looks like competence.
It looks like being prepared, responsive, calm, and available. It looks like being the person others trust when the room gets tense or the plan starts to wobble. It looks like knowing how to keep things moving, how to steady the conversation, and how to listen without making the moment about yourself.
From the outside, it can look like success. But inside, many women who lead know there is something else happening too.
She was the flexible one, the reliable one, the one who could step into difficult situations without creating more tension around them.
If something needed to get done, she figured it out. If personalities became difficult, she adjusted. If deadlines tightened, she absorbed the pressure quietly and kept moving.
People appreciate her for it.
They trusted her. They depended on her. They described her as collaborative, supportive, professional, and calm. And for a long time, those qualities felt like strengths…because they were.
But over time, something else started happening too.
For a long time, leadership was viewed as something deeply individual. You worked hard. You proved yourself. You climbed. And if you succeeded, the story often focused on personal resilience, determination, and the ability to overcome barriers along the way.
That narrative still exists, and parts of it are true. Many women did have to navigate systems that were difficult, competitive, or isolating. Many learned how to lead in environments where support was inconsistent and visibility had to be earned repeatedly.
For a long time, leadership was described as a climb.
You worked your way up. You proved yourself. You took on more responsibility, more visibility, more pressure…until eventually you reached a level that reflected everything you had built.
And for many women, that climb required more than just capability. It required persistence, resilience, and finding ways forward in environments that were not always designed with them in mind.
So when women reached leadership roles, the assumption was simple…they made it.
But something has been quietly changing. Reaching the top is no longer the only measure that matters.
