Riding the Executive Roller Coaster: Medical Staffing Cases by Kellie Christina
It was the middle of the night. She was homeless at the time. She was at a Greyhound station in Kansas City, had no ticket for her next trip and was thrown out of the warm terminal and into a January blizzard. Below-zero temperatures. No hat, gloves or scarf.
It was the low point in Katheryn’s up and down journey from professional success to survival to putting her life back together, detailed meticulously in Kelli Christina’s “novel,” Riding the Executive Roller Coaster: Medical Staffing Cases.
The word “novel” is in quotes because the book traces the exploits of a fictional character, Katheryn. But this book is the story of the author in every detail — her ambitions, her victories, challenges, defeats and determination to make a difference.
THE UPS AND DOWNS OF CAREER GROWTH
The work perhaps is not so much about the medical staffing cases noted in the book’s subtitle as it is a memoir of the long and difficult road traveled by Christina. She is a bubbly, charismatic career woman with medical recruiting and business management experience and a dream to start her own medical recruiting staffing company.
The book, says the author, “covers the trials and tribulations of professional offices at their highest and lowest moments. The consequences of handling business and professional issues in the wrong manner or even illegally can escalate and destroy many lives along the way.”
But to get there is to understand the author’s personal story.
Katheryn did actually start her own recruitment company, but shortly thereafter a recession hit, leading her to join forces with another existing recruitment organization. She experienced sales success, but her time there was clouded by office politics and trying to play the caring employee to so many needy staff members.
In fact, one of the managers took her in as her “best friend” and used Katheryn to help advance her social life and find her dates. Eventually, an affair between that office manager and a short-term staff member blew up the office, making it more of an ugly soap opera than a respectable business. Katheryn blew the whistle on the matter, and as a result, was forced to quit. Lawsuits ensued and her hefty commission check was withheld.
THE STRUGGLES THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS
Katheryn had to struggle for years. Her past experience in restaurant management gained her some employment, but this proud woman hit the depths of despair and scrambled at times for a roof over her head or a means of transportation.
Eventually, she committed to a greater goal — exposing fraud and corruption in recruiting practices in the medical and healthcare fields, sending letters to thousands of hospitals and traveling to Washington, D.C., to make her case to top government officials.
Follow this incredible roller coaster journey of a woman who never gave up and against all odds was able to reconstruct her life.
The author believed in the philosophy, “When you wake up in the morning until late at night, whomever you meet along the way can always be your friends, and you will never be lonely in life.” Christina’s protagonist Katheryn had her share of friends, but as she realized, she had to decipher the integrity and intent of a lot of shady characters along the way — people whom she can only regard today as bumps in the road to her ultimate destination.
