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Trustee Profile: Beverly White-Seals

(Marla Shaivitz) -- Horizon Foundation Board of Trustee Beverly White-Seals’ education and career have taken her to a number of different cities – both large and small. However, she landed in one place she didn’t quite expect– Howard County. Growing up in Washington DC, White-Seals’ perception of Howard County in the late 1960’s was a rural one – a place that, initially, she didn’t believe could support her goals and ambitions.  Yet, over 35 years later, with a long resume of prestigious positions (both professional and volunteer), she has become a champion of Howard County, particularly in the area of health care.

Drawn to the Vision of Howard County  

White-Seals’ work as an attorney originally brought her to Howard County.  After finding her calling in public interest and employment law with stints in New York City, Washington and Atlanta, she came across a job description for a position at The Rouse Company.   “Once I learned what Jim Rouse was doing in Columbia, and after interviewing with Dick McCauley (then the Rouse General Counsel and later the first Chair of The Horizon Foundation Board of Trustees), I was won over by the vision,” said White-Seals.

Her first apartment was in Columbia’s Village of Long Reach. She “raved” to her then-fiancé, Dr. Jerry Seals who was completing a fellowship at a hospital in the Bronx in New York City, about the beauty of Howard County. “After spending years lying in bed listening to the sounds of traffic and sirens, here I was living in an apartment that overlooked a horse farm, listening to the sound of crickets and driving on quaint, two lane roads with one lane bridges,” she laughingly recalls.

A Series of Firsts

At Rouse, White-Seals initially focused on real estate law but over the years, she transitioned into the area of employment law. This was not that unusual – what was unusual, at the time, was for a physician’s wife to be working outside the home in such a demanding position. It was also unusual for a female attorney to work part time. “The Rouse Company evolved as I did, and we learned together how to develop policies that would enable employees to more comfortably balance work and family life,” said White-Seals. “[Rouse] took diversity and affirmative action to a new level, keeping women in the workforce and on a career track.”

Through the years, White-Seals spent a lot of time at Howard County General Hospital. “I would take the kids there where we spent a lot of time in the lobby or in the Physician’s Lounge waiting for Jerry to finish his rounds.  The Hospital and the other physicians and their families became part of our social lives.”  It was then that her appreciation of the complexities of the Hospital as a community institution began, but at the time, her focus was on raising their two children, working in a challenging position at Rouse, and volunteering for numerous charitable organizations in the County.

White-Seals went on to open up her own private practice, then, years later, found herself back in the office building in which she originally worked , in a position with General Growth Properties (GGP).  White-Seals is currently on staff in the Legal Department at GGP, and now that her children have grown (her son lives and works in Howard County, and her daughter, also a GGP employee, lives and works in New York City ), she has become involved in Howard County General Hospital in a more direct way.

Focus On Community Health and Wellness

White-Seals began her service on the Hospital’s Board of Trustees in 2001. In 2005, she began a two year tenure as Chair – bringing a style all of her own. “My predecessors were truly remarkable leaders.  I needed to find what would move me to make a difference,” she says. New programs like the Community Relations Council, a diverse group of 20 community leaders who meet quarterly, is one of the many additions White-Seals has championed. “ “The members of the Council are essentially the eyes and ears of the community for the Hospital.  We share with them new hospital initiatives, challenges and existing programs and they give us feedback on how the Hospital is perceived and ways in which we might better address the community’s health needs.”

One member of the Hospital’s Community Relations Council is Dwayne Robinson, President and CEO of Vision Systems & Technology, Inc., a technology solutions provider to the federal government in the area of data analysis, early event detection, and informational alert capabilities. After one particular meeting, he says he became “enlightened to the threat of pandemic flu” after hearing White-Seals’ and Ann Mech’s (White-Seals’ colleague on both the Foundation and Hospital boards) passion for the topic of emergency preparedness. “I sat listening to this imminent threat that we can’t detect, and I saw this as a challenge,” says Robinson. “We can’t stop it – but if we can correlate the factors that suggest it is happening quickly enough, we can reduce mortality.”  Robinson took this concern and applied a technology his firm had put together for the Air Force to the area of community-based emergency communication. Robinson explains that while there are federal government protocols in place for detection, he felt a particular urgency to act since the federal government has stated that responsibilities for preparedness and response efforts reside at the local level. He remains committed to serving on this important committee. 

White-Seals’ advocated for the addition of a trilingual emergency room physician (Spanish, English and Korean), enhanced translations services throughout the Hospital, as well as formed a partnership with representatives of the Korean community that resulted in the first Korean Health Fair. Increased hospital outreach via the faith communities to Howard County’s foreign-born population is another, as well as strengthening other partnerships including, but not limited to, a partnership with the Horizon Foundation, and the Howard County Health Department and the hospital that led to the development of a pandemic flu preparedness guide that was distributed to every household in the County.

Her service at the Hospital has not gone unnoticed. In May, a scholarship for students majoring in a healthcare program was established in her name at Howard Community College by the physicians on the Hospital’s Medical Executive Committee.   

A Community Responsibility

You can hear the passion in White-Seals’ voice when she talks of her latest cause - the Hospital’s development plan – and the challenge of educating potential donors on the importance of the Hospital. “Howard County General is a community hospital; on any given day, anyone can end up in the hospital or in the emergency room,” she explains. “The Hospital is not like a government entity that gets continual funding from local tax dollars. Think of the growth in Howard County. if no new schools roads, parks, pools or fire houses had been built or expanded over the last 20 years, where would we be?”    
White-Seals adds, “The Hospital is important for the overall health of the community. We are all responsible for its success.”

For more information on Howard County General’s campus development plan and progress, click here.