A LUMNI PRO FIL E S
Stephen Wright
President/Board Chair of Coastal Connection Retired Senior Vice President, Group Operations CHRISTUS Health Louisiana & Southeast Texas
During his 37-year career, Stephen held a variety of leadership roles within CHRISTUS Health. Most recently, he served as the senior leader for more than 6,500 associates, 2,000 medical staff members and more than 10 facilities throughout Louisiana and Southeast Texas. Stephen has served as the chair of the Louisiana Hospital Association and as the vice chair of the Louisiana Quality Forum on Health. Stephen received the “Champion of Diversity” award in 2010 and the “National American Hospital Association Grass Roots Champion Award” in 2007. Now in retirement, Stephen is president/board chair of Coastal Connection, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization focused on addressing both domestic and international development goals. As I understand, being an Argonaut is a family tradition. Tell me more about your threegeneration Argo family. My father was a charter graduate in ’69. My wife graduated in ’79, I graduated in ’81 and my daughter graduated in ’18. Additionally, my nephew started working toward a theatre degree this fall. When I was a child and my dad was working toward his undergraduate degree in what was thencalled systems science, I would go to campus with him. Ten years later, I took a class and wrote programs in the same building he did. Pensacola and UWF felt like home for me, so it was a really easy decision to attend UWF. My wife, Mona, and I met at the wedding of a fraternity brother of mine. My daughter chose UWF because she wanted to get a master’s degree in political science and UWF allowed her to be a graduate assistant, conduct research and teach courses while she worked toward it.
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Spring 2020
What experiences at UWF helped jumpstart your career? I worked in public accounting before getting into the healthcare field. I co-oped after my first quarter at UWF in Fall ’79. I interviewed and took a nine-month co-op job with Ernst and Ernst, one of the top accounting firms at the time. As a student, I can’t tell you how much I benefited from seeing what I studied in action. The experiences I got from being exposed to multiple industries because of the auditing work we did, everything from manufacturing to banking to healthcare, allowed me to learn firsthand, see what I was studying and how it applied.
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ment and medications to our ministry partners in the U.S., Haiti and other international locations. I am also an adjunct faculty member at LSU Medical School in Shreveport, LA and am guest lecturing at several institutions as well, including at UWF. We have three children and one grandchild, so we stay busy!
What are you up to in retirement? Mona and I co-founded a new nonprofit association, Coastal Connection. We’re doing mission work in the U.S. and internationally. In July, we collected and sent thousands of pounds of medical supplies, medical equip-
STEPHEN AND MONA WRIGHT during their time at UWF.