Ashley Cummings, 35

Ashley Cummings was a senior in college preparing for a career as a pharmacist. But after her dad had a stroke and less-than-stellar experience in rehab, she changed course.

“It really fired me up to help in a different way,” Cummings says. “So I went back to school, changed my major to health sciences, and I did an additional year to gain more knowledge into the nursing home side of things.”

Photo by Mark Wemple

She wanted to ensure others had better experiences than her father did, and since then, she has elevated the level of care wherever she has worked. Cummings started out as a certified nursing assistant working in home health care and moved into nursing homes. At the Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center of Tampa, she helped bring the organization from two to four stars with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in part by bringing staffing in-house.

Now Cummings is the vice president of health services at Plymouth Harbor in Sarasota, which received a deficiency-free rating from its residents earlier this year. Plymouth Harbor has about 285 independent living residents, 60 assisted living residents, and 33 nursing home residents.

“You have people that are independent and don't need help. You have those that may be battling with a disease or cancer or new diagnosis,” Cummings says. “It’s all about being in the moment and being what that person needs you to be at that moment.”

Cummings, who has a master's in health care administration with a concentration in gerontology, is currently working on her doctorate in health care administration. She is inspired in part by her father, who was a schoolteacher and encouraged her to pass on her knowledge to others. “I want to help grow that next generation of leaders,” Cummings says, by teaching after she retires from the field.

Someone who helped her grow along the way is her mentor, Francisco Gonzalez, who was executive director of Life Care Center of Winter Haven while she was doing her administrator-in-training program in 2016. He “leads by example and serves from the heart,” Cummings says. “He doesn't ask his team to do anything he wouldn't do himself." During her year of training under him, she recalls he would often help out maintenance or check in with different departments and see if they had any work that could be taken off their plates.

“If I see someone looking overwhelmed or stressed, I reach out,” says Cummings. “Like him, I really try to support my teams in that way.” 

Any success, she says, is all credited to her team.

"I jokingly tell people, all I do is is be a cheerleader all day," Cummings says. "Happy team members will take care of residents very well."