2015 Most Influential Women Honoree: Shallina Goodnight

Shallina Goodnight is a leader who credits the people who choose to follow her with much of her success.

“I am thankful to have many proud moments, both in my volunteerism personally as well as professionally,” says Goodnight, executive director of health care services for Oxford HealthCare. “I would not consider any of those accomplishments my own, (but) rather something that is a shared accomplishment, the result of the important contributions of those who are working with me.”

Goodnight joined Oxford in 2004 and oversees four offices with a service area of 58 counties, about 2,000 clients, 300 employees and an annual operating budget of $7 million.

“Of all the responsibilities I have, the most important and the most personally fulfilling is working with my team to develop, engage, empower and encourage personal growth and professional experience,” she says.

Goodnight has spent the better part of her career in health care, an industry that has faced increasingly complex problems with solutions that require ingenuity. Goodnight says she depends on the ability of her team to execute at a high level every day.

“By investing so much in the ongoing development of my team, they are fully equipped to consistently provide excellence in service to our client today as well as think critically about the future and prepare for it,” she says.

Goodnight encourages employees to challenge the status quo and search for new ways of doing things, saying she believes she has earned the trust of her team, so challenges are welcome.

Goodnight is responsible for Oxford’s locally managed Lifeline program, which provides 24-hour emergency service at the press of a button through much of Missouri.

In addition to running the nationally recognized Lifeline, Goodnight created the Memory Care Program to aid people with various form of dementia and their caregivers.

“I talk to families every day who are struggling emotionally and often physically with the demands of caring for their loved one. Both of my grandmothers have dementia, and as their health declined with the disease, I watched what my family went through as they navigated the demands of caring for my grandparents,” Goodnight says. “I began to research national options and found an innovative approach to caregiving widely in practice (on the coasts).

“We wanted to bring it to our community with a goal of making the education and approach available to our caregivers as well as any person in our area who was caring for a loved one with the disease.”

In four years, the program has served more than 1,000 clients and their families. Goodnight says the effort took the collaboration of many and the expert execution of her team to bring the program to life.

Outside the office, she focuses her community involvement on organizations that work with women and children. Goodnight is a member of the Junior League of Springfield, works with the Don’t Meth With Us program as a board member and classroom educator, and sits on the board of The Hamels Foundation.