Her Campus: What is your position? How long have you held it?
Nora Wheeler: My current position is a general counsel for Healthcare Risk Assessment, Inc. (HRA) healthcare company; I’ve had it for six months. It’s a small company doing reviews of healthcare facilities that are being looked at by investors and what they do is they conduct what would be the equivalent of a government audit of their operation and certify for an insurance company the risk and potential financial implication or noncompliant implications of the client. What this does is allow the insurance company to have a policy. Anyone who takes gov money is subject to a three year look back on their company. The government can go back three years in the records and the current owner is reliable for any overpayments that were made and that’s made investments in facilities in healthcare facilities very unattractive in the business world by getting an insurance policy it protects the buyer from any claim the gov makes for three years. This promotes business growth. They call it a review because it’s not as potentially aggravating as an audit, but it does that same thing. it determines the policy they get and the premiums they get. I work for them but it’s a small company so it’s a much loftier title than my daytoday input would suggest. At the moment it’s a growth company, hopefully as time goes on, I’ll be much more busy and involved. The president is also a lawyer and manages that part of it. Compliance is a complex and evolving field that is a growth field and it changes all the time. Healthcare has a lot of compliance .
HC: How did you end up in the position?
NW: I got into this through a long-term friend of mine. It’s all about contacts.
HC: Where are you from originally?
NW: I am from New York City. I grew up here and when to nursing school in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, I worked in a major medical center for seven years, and then I left my position there and moved back home and went to school and got a marketing degree and then I married and travelled around with my military spouse and worked a lot as a nurse because it was easy to get job and then did a lot of various things over the years. I teaching childbirth, worked at H&R block doing taxes, worked at weight watchers, doing all kinds of jobs while the kids were little. My spouse retired from the marine corps and get an MBA, but then he didn’t retire so I didn’t get to use that, and then when he finally did retire he wanted to go to school in Wyoming for Archeology. I thought I should go to law school because that seemed to be the best thing to do while I was in Wyoming. Then I worked in Laramie for a year at a firm then moved back to Manhattan and took the NY bar. Although I am not doing litigation, I am transactional. I have a background in medicine business and law based on all my educational endeavors. I have had a lot of opportunities and I have been so lucky. I was able to take advantage of good schools. It was a desire to be current when I thought I was going to need some sort of current credential to start a career.
I was in law school in my 50s while all my peers were in their 20s with people who were still in the groove of school. My standards for myself were to graduate in 3 years, and never fail a class, and never get a D. I was no star academically, and it was a challenge. It was mentally exhausting and it took me longer to recover and get it into my long-term memory. It was a greater challenge than anything I had done because I was older and it was that much more intense.
HC: What degree did you obtain from UW, and what years did you graduate?
NW: I went to law school when I was 56 and graduated when I was 59 and graduated with a degree in law in 2012.
HC: If a current UW student in your field had more questions about your journey to success, would you be open to talking with them? If so, what is the best way for them to reach you?
NW: I’d be happy to talk to anyone. I don’t want to misrepresent. I think general council, while accurate with the company I work for, implies I have this wealth of knowledge. i am not the technical aspect of that, so I don’t want to give the impression I know anything about how to be a compliance lawyer. i work from home. I don’t want to give a misimpression. i can’t hook up with internships or a network because I don’t have a network to share. I don’t want to look like I am being uncooperative if someone does contact me.
HC: Is there anything else you would like to share?
NW: I would love to convey that there is no reason not to go back and give another academic course a shot. It makes me sad when people say they’re too old to go back to school. I think it’s doable and we don’t realize the passion they have to learn. As I said, I was a very good student, so I didn’t have the fear that some people have, but I knew as I was aging that I was competing against other people. I did very well in my master’s program, but in my law school, I was very near the bottom ranking which was a hard adjustment for me because I had never faced that efre. I did my class and did my readings and had to adjust my expectations. Being older, my life experiences gave me an advantage, my experiences gave me an advantage, your life experiences can make your academic experience better.
I wish more people were convinced that you can do things that are really really hard. That doesn’t mean it will be easy, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. When I went back for my marketing degree at 26, I was older than my peers. I had been a nurse for 6-7 years, and I was a grown up – they were all still college kids. They were dealing with drama but I was working part time and I didn’t have that distraction and interference. I did really well because I had only school to focus on. As you age, you are less burdened by the things you are when you’re a high schooler and undergrad. Just because you didn’t do well in school doesn’t mean you won’t do well – some students do better when they’re older.
Being a parent, I would have a really hard time if my children didn’t go to school right after high school. Once you didn’t go to school, it’s hard to go back. If you feel unworthy or unprepared, it becomes a real stumbling block. I was very successful, so that’s why I went back to get various degrees and certifications. I had really successful experiences, so that’s what made me want to go back. What I feel is an issue that both side to a coin is that if you’re struggling in high school, that doesn’t mean you’ll struggle in college. I think some kids who don’t do well in high school do really well in college. Having said that, kids who go to college and are struggling, some kids would be good to take a break.