It was 'Typhoid Mary'—an Irish-born American cook believed to have infected between 51 and 122 people with typhoid fever—who gave us the idea.

I was in a rooftop restaurant in Richmond saying goodbye to my friend, Kathy Baker (p. 20), then at VCU Health, just before my departure to a new faculty opportunity at UNC Chapel Hill School of Nursing. The year was 2019, before COVID had become a household name, and we got to talking about our “professional joy club,” an interprofessional group of five clinicians who met each month. 

More than a career center, it is a hub for workforce development, recruitment, and retention that offers wraparound educational, well-being, and professional services for nurses to tap if they need support, or change, or development—and so they don’t first hit the exit door.

Marianne Baernholdt, the Pew Charitable Trusts Dean and Professor

On more than one occasion, the group discussed how practitioners’ burnout and dissatisfaction were contagious, and, like asymptomatic typhoid carrier Mary Mallon, who “spread disease and other misfortune” in the early 1900s, one needed to get to an “infection’s” source to halt and prevent its further spread.¹ 

How, we asked one another, could we flip the crippling narratives within nursing, and find ways to spread positivity? Like Typhoid Mary, but in reverse? 

It’s what Kathy and I talked about that night on the roof—how to empower the nurses around us—and in our conversations since. By 2022, Kathy had become chief nursing officer at UVA Health University Medical Center, and I had returned to UVA as dean in what I anticipated would be a true embrace of the practice and educational missions of Virginia’s flagship institution.  

Today, these conversations continue. Each week, when we get together, Kathy and I discuss how we can improve nursing, ensure that nurses feel their impact, and occupy well-paying, expansive roles that enable them to use all of their skills while also leading, growing, and being effective, engaged members of healthcare teams. The new Synergy Center gives a home to these efforts and will become the intellectual, advisory, and career development “hub” that will propel future nurses and nurses toward, into, through, and within the profession. More than a career center, it is a hub for workforce development, recruitment, and retention that offers wraparound educational, well-being, and professional services for nurses to tap if they need support, or change, or development—and so they don’t first hit the exit door.  

As I write this letter during National Nurses Week 2025, I’m struck by its theme: the Power of Nurses. Just as Kathy and I discussed years ago on that rooftop, “positive contagion” can be a force for good. I’m proud to say that the Synergy Center is positioned to do just that. 

As always, thank you for reading VNL.  

Be well, 

Marianne Baernholdt, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN
The Pew Charitable Trusts Dean and Professor
Dean of Professional Nursing, UVA Health
she/her

1. Dow, W. A., Baernholdt, M., Santen, A. S., Baker, K., & Sessler, C. N. (2019). Practitioner wellbeing as an interprofessional outcome. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 33(6), 603-607.