Wednesday, July 18, 2001

Peachtree City CEO living her dream

Cecelia Vaughn worked in the industrial nursing field behind a desk in the corporate sector -- for Keebler and Sherwin-Williams.

Now, she is the owner, CEO, President and Case Manager of Occumed Management Associates, Inc. of Peachtree City, Ga.

"I got the idea to start Occumed while I was an undergraduate student at Clayton State," she said. "I got the courage to do it with the degree behind my name."

A new member of the Clayton State Alumni Association Board of Directors, Vaughn has been involved with occupational health nursing since graduating with an Associate of Science in Nursing from Clayton State in 1974.

In fact, she was recently named Nurse of the Year at Nurses Honors Night for the Atlanta Georgia Association of Occupational Health Nurses.

After first graduating in 1974, she went back to school and enrolled in the first baccalaureate nursing class at Clayton State and earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1990.

Occumed is a nurse consultant firm that focuses on occupational health nursing with clients all over the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. They handle everything from health fairs, flu shots, case management, and certifications to ergonomic studies.

"If it's occupational health-related, we do it," Vaughn says.

Besides starting and running a successful business, Vaughn has been very involved in legislative and governmental affairs. She served in the Drug Free Workplace program for Governor Zell Miller as the committee's nurse representative and helped to author the Drug Free Workplace bill.

A resident of Fayetteville, Ga., Vaughn is also on the advisory board of the Clayton State Nursing program and is also one of the few nurses asked to be on the Collegiate Nursing Evaluations accrediting program.

"If you don't have a bachelors in nursing, you're just going to do clinical nursing, you won't climb the ladder. I did it so I could broaden my scope of practice," she says. "I came back and loved every minute of it. I learned so much."

Clayton College & State University, a state university of the University System of Georgia, is located in Morrow, in south metro Atlanta.

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