When Danielle (Eichinger) Weber graduated from Neumann with a BS in nursing in 1995, a friend told her that ChristianaCare was hiring. Weber applied and soon started as an entry-level RN.

Thirty years later, she is the Chief Nurse Executive for the entire healthcare system, leading a contingent of 5,000 nurse caregivers. In her role, she sets strategic priorities, advises leadership on nursing best practices, establishes policies and procedures, and oversees nursing education and research.

Weber explains her role more personally: “My responsibility is to support ChristianaCare’s nursing caregivers so they can do their best work every day. My job is to remove barriers, to be strategic in building our nursing practice, and create an environment where our nurses want to come to work every day.”

Over three decades, she has been a Registered Nurse, Nurse Manager, Vice President for Patient Care Services, Chief Nursing Officer of the Wilmington Campus, and now Chief Nurse Executive for thousands of nurses in acute care, ambulatory, and home health settings.

“We’re a great team, and I’ve built great relationships,” she says. “That’s what brings me joy.”

She describes ChristianaCare as “a great place to grow” and credits her professional success to organizational support (scholarships and leadership opportunities) and to her own willingness to learn. “I said yes a lot,” she explains. “I said yes to opportunities, and I said yes to learning.”

Those opportunities included a dual master’s degree in nursing leadership and health care administration from Wilmington University and a Doctor of Nursing Practice at Drexel University. Weber is also board certified in medical-surgical nursing and has an advanced nurse executive certification through the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

She recently completed a prestigious Johnson & Johnson Nurse Innovation Fellowship with a ChristianaCare colleague.

“The fellowship gave us the opportunity to use human-centered design thinking to analyze a problem that we wanted to address,” Weber says. “We focused on nurse well-being and created a wellness app — an at-the-fingertips contact for wellness resources like mindful meditation, our Care for the Caregiver program, or texting a peer. We’re piloting it now.” She believes that nursing is a calling. “It’s special because you touch the lives of so many people every single day. Nurses make an impact.”

Her experience at Neumann influenced her approach to the profession. “The clinical instructors and professors at Neumann really set the standard that they expected from their nursing students. Every school has its own culture, and Neumann’s Franciscan RISES values spoke to me. For instance, Service speaks to me as a nurse and in my role as CNE. It flows from compassion, love and respect, and leads to identification with and understanding of those whom we serve. Neumann’s values set the stage for me as a nursing student.”