There's a particular story from Mary Jo Haddad's childhood that her husband, Jim Forster, tells with fond amusement.
It takes place in Windsor, Ont., in the 1960s, on an evening when the Beatles were scheduled to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.
"Mary Jo was responsible for putting her youngest brother to bed, so that evening she was trying her best to get him to sleep early enough so she could come downstairs and watch the show," says Mr. Forster, her husband of almost 20 years. "I think she just managed to catch the last part of the Beatles' act."
Today, Mary Jo Haddad is 51 and no longer needs to look after her kid brother. Instead, as president and chief executive officer of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, she is responsible for the care of the roughly 313,000 young patients who come to the hospital each year.
Ms. Haddad - now starting her fourth year as the top executive of one of the world's leading children's hospitals - is also in charge of a $600-million annual budget and a 6,000-plus work force that includes doctors, nurses, technicians, researchers and administrative staff.
And then there are her three children - aged 17, 15 and 11 - whom Ms. Haddad and her husband have raised in Oakville, an upscale community west of Toronto.
Yet on a Friday afternoon, Ms. Haddad is positively calm and cheerful. She appears to be in no hurry to pack up her desk for the weekend.
"For me, this hospital is the place to be - I have this place in my bones," she says. "I'm very engaged in children's health and we have the most talented and focused people here who are very committed to children's health."
Ms. Haddad's accomplishments are being recognized today by the Women's Executive Network, which honours her in the Public Sector Leaders category of its annual list of Canada's top 100 women.
A love of children, combined with a facility for science, was what drew Ms. Haddad to the health care profession in the first place. In 1974, hoping to land a job taking care of children, she enrolled in the nursing diploma program at St. Clair College in Windsor.
Mr. Forster says Ms. Haddad's father, a Lebanese-born owner of a butcher shop, wasn't too keen at first on his daughter's career choice.
"He had the old-school vision of a nurse being someone who just emptied bed pans and changed bed sheets - he didn't realize the modern role of the nurse as a critical partner in care-giving," he says.
Ms. Haddad's first nursing job was in the neonatal intensive care unit of the Children's Hospital of Michigan. During the eight years she spent in Michigan, Ms. Haddad earned a Bachelor of Nursing degree from the University of Windsor and started a private practice where she did home visits to families whose children had nearly died as infants.
"I loved it - loved being able to teach families how to take care of children in their homes and give them the skills to support kids who had been very, very ill in their newborn lives," she says.
A mentor in her early years helped Ms. Haddad hone her leadership skills, she recalls.
"I had a great mentor - a nun who was my boss at the time - and she saw leadership in me and challenged me to work as hard as I could and be a critical thinker and problem solver," says Ms. Haddad, who moved up the ladder to become charge nurse of night shifts at the Michigan hospital.
Then Sick Kids Hospital came calling in 1984, offering her a job as an assistant nurse manager in its neonatal intensive care unit. She packed her bags and moved to Toronto.
Except for a two-year stint with Halton Healthcare Services near Toronto, Ms. Haddad has spent the past two decades at Sick Kids. From assistant nurse manager, she moved up to unit manager, then to chief nurse executive and vice-president of pediatrics.
The doors to the C-suite flew open for Ms. Haddad in June, 2003, when she assumed the role of chief operating officer. A year later, following the unexpected resignation of Alan Gayer, Sick Kids' president and CEO at the time, Ms. Haddad moved into the top post as a temporary replacement.
Sick Kids invited her to apply for the job; in November, 2004, she became its first female president and CEO.
"She's a compelling leader - principled, down-to-earth and extroverted," says Dr. James Wright, Sick Kids' surgeon in chief. "But apart from being extremely likeable, she also has a significant legitimacy because she is a health care professional, being a nurse herself who worked her way up the ranks."
Another thing about Ms. Haddad: "She can be tough," says Dr. Wright. "People tend to see her as being so open and friendly but when something needs to be done, she makes sure it's done."
Ms. Haddad certainly has a lot of items on her to-do list. Children's health is a complex business, she says, and the hospital continues to redefine its role in the community.
"We're not just health care providers, we're advocates for children," she says. "But we need to examine what kind of role a hospital can take in advocating for the needs of children and making sure they continue to have the support they need after they walk out our doors."
Last December, Ms. Haddad became the chair of the newly formed Provincial Council for Children's Health (PCCH), a non-profit group made up of children's hospitals across the province and whose committee members include officials from the provincial health and youth services ministries.
Marilyn Booth, the council's executive director, says Ms. Haddad was instrumental in forming the PCCH, whose mandate is to improve children's health services.
"She is really good at building relationships with external stakeholders," says Ms. Booth. "And I think that's important because there are so many things we can do collectively to make the children's health system better."
More than 30 years after she earned her nursing diploma, Ms. Haddad has come a long way. But she has stayed true to her original plan: to take care of little ones.
"I want children's health to be a priority for all of us," she says. "We have a real opportunity to really embrace children's health and understand what the issues are, and I think that institutionally, provincially, and nationally, we're going in the right direction."
Special to The Globe and Mail