Raquel Perez, BSN, RN, is the chief nursing officer of Gales, crafters of foot apparel specifically designed with nurses in mind. It’s a shoe company supporting nurses from the ground up, quite literally.
“We immediately synced,” Perez told the Ask Nurse Alice podcast about meeting the Gales team for the first time, as reported by Nurse.org. “I just felt their energy was so incredible in terms of what they wanted to do, how they wanted to grow the brand, their team. And we just saw very much eye to eye creatively.”
Perez has worked in a number of nursing fields over the years: med-surg cardiac, oncology, women’s health and the NICU. Being the CNO of a nursing foot apparel company, however, offered the registered nurse a new kind of challenge.
“I wear a lot of hats and I dabble in a lot of areas,” she said. “A lot of what I do in my job is just connection.”
According to Perez, it’s all about bringing real-world experience to the table of business.
“We are people who are adaptable, have incredible skills and communication — why wouldn’t we be at the table of every type of sector profession possible?” she explained. “The sky’s the limit and so in wanting to make this happen, I had to remind myself that I deserve a seat here too.”
For any nurses that may feel like working bedside is not for them, Perez and Nurse Alice said that there is still hope.
“Everyone has a little bit of a different journey,” Nurse Alice said. “Sometimes we have to exit the bedside and do something differently—sometimes it’s temporary, sometimes it’s permanent. But it’s good to know that there are other opportunities and I like to tell people whatever there’s a problem, there’s always going to be a need for a nurse because we are natural born problem solvers and we are caregivers.”
Perez agreed.
“It’s been a journey, a beautiful journey, and I’m just grateful for all of it, to be honest,” she said.
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