Susan E. Dawson walked into Swedish Covenant Hospital in 1980 as a bench technologist. She retired forty-four years later as Laboratory Administrative Director of Swedish and Skokie Hospitals, and the core lab at Evanston Hospital in the Endeavor Health System. In addition to technically leading, being a pioneer in automation and autovalidation, she mentored a new generation of laboratory leaders along the way.
After Susan's first promotion, she quickly realized that technical knowledge wasn't the only skill she needed. She began building relationships, sharing knowledge, asking questions, engaging staff in problem-solving and building trust. Working at an inner city hospital in one of the most culturally diverse communities in the U.S., Susan embraced the many learning and growth opportunities the environment provided to cultivate a dynamic, transformative, participative management style of leadership. Susan's leadership goal evolved to not only creating a working environment for operational and service excellence but to do so in a way that, at the end of their shift, the staff still had enough energy to go enjoy activities with family and friends outside of work.
Chemistry, immunoassay, hematology, coagulation, microbiology — Susan worked in all of them, when specimens were manually handled, analyzed, and reported. A Clinical Laboratory Science degree from Augustana College got her in the door; what kept her there was the realization that a laboratory is a system of people first and instruments second. She dedicated herself to the coordination and optimization of laboratory resources to deliver the timely, high-quality information healthcare workers needed to take care of their patients.
In 2003 — years before it became standard practice — Susan implemented automation and autovalidation of four disciplines at once: chemistry, immunoassay, hematology, and coagulation. She has spent more than two decades optimizing middleware, its functionality, and the rules that quietly decide how much of your staff's day is freed up for highly technical tasks.
That project taught her the lesson her consulting is built on: the technology is easy. The harder part is bringing talented but skeptical, overworked professionals through the change process with you — and she did.
The lab that stays ahead is the one that is open to new ideas.
As Laboratory Administrative Director from 2019, Susan was responsible for day-to-day operations, business and financial reporting, inter-departmental coordination and collaboration, quality, and customer service across hospital laboratories at Swedish and Skokie Hospitals and the core lab at Evanston Hospital, part of Endeavor Health. Budgets tightened, staffing pools shrank, test menus grew — and her answer stayed consistent: optimize the process, invest in the people, and be openly willing to change. Her approach to leading through change is the subject of her SelectScience feature included on this website.
Ask the technologists she trained and they will not mention a curriculum. Susan's method is worked examples, honest feedback, and trusting people with new challenges that help grow their skill set. She filled her lab's leadership roles from within for decades — and it is the impetus behind her book, Growing Into Leadership: Lessons Learned Along the Way.
In late 2024 Susan founded Accomplish More Consulting Services. The name is the promise: labs she works with accomplish more with the people and instruments they already have. She consults, speaks nationally and internationally, and writes — because forty-plus years of lessons are worth sharing.