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Chris Sisler was working the night shift on an assembly line when he saw an auspicious posting for training that could lead to a role with management. “I wasn’t 100% sure what it really meant,” acknowledges Sisler, “but it said, ‘day shift’ and ‘work laptop,’ and I liked the sound of that.” That training would open the gates for Sisler to become not just a manager, but, with time and education, a leader and vice president. 

This wasn’t Sisler’s first time pursuing education to enhance his career: He’d previously studied to become a nurse. But as an athlete, he found he didn’t have the time he needed to study, and when he started a family with his wife Elizabeth, financial reality meant that education would have to take a backseat— literally, because Sisler found himself working in a plant manufacturing seats for the automotive industry.

It was there that he saw the opportunity for a management training course that would turn him and his fellow trainees into what he calls “a small army of problem solvers.” Equipped with a new set of critical-thinking skills, Sisler and his cohort were dispersed throughout the manufacturing plant to improve quality and efficiency.

It was a revelatory experience for Sisler, who began to appreciate just how much education could help him find new opportunities. “I started to think future-looking,” says Sisler. “I [felt I] needed a degree to get out of the hourly ranks, to become salaried and find other chances to move up.”

Sisler put his new problem-solving skills to work, starting with research. “This was the late ’90s,” he says, “and I was really intrigued by the new connectivity of the Internet. So, I decided to pursue IT to become a network administrator.”

Returning to school while working full time and raising two daughters would not be easy. But when Sisler discovered �鶹��ý’s course structure, which allows students to take just one class at a time, he knew it would be the right fit. “Being able to finish a course in weeks was what drew me in,” he says. “I knew I wouldn’t get bored. There was a lot of material to absorb, but that pace made it the right fit for me.”

Moreover, says Sisler, his employer was able to provide him with tuition benefits, which meant minimal out-of-pocket expenses for him.

Almost immediately, Sisler was making the most of that work laptop he had earned. “My classes showed me what was going on behind the scenes of the network I was connecting to every day,” he says.

This provided him with newfound appreciation for the effort that goes into keeping work systems going and growing. Aside from gaining more knowledge of network security or VPNs, Sisler found he was especially proud of honing the critical thinking skills he had developed during his management training. “I was asking better questions, smarter questions,” he says. He was also making connections between his education, his work and his future goals, which kept him engaged in the coursework.

Of course, making those connections took time, and Sisler committed himself to the process. “We had a basement room where I would go down to study,” says Sisler, “and my wife would do everything she could to keep the kids from coming down and distracting me.” Some days, when a big assessment was coming up, Sisler would take vacation days from work just to study.

Sisler also found support among his classmates. “We were all there for similar reasons,” Sisler says, “and we were able to take courses together to develop continuity and community.”

This is another hallmark of Sisler’s personality and work style, says Daughtry: “Chris’ work requires more than technical knowledge. It requires the ability to build relationships, listen, understand different perspectives and earn trust.” Sisler “does all of those things very naturally,” Daughtry adds.

Thanks to transfer credits, Sisler was able to complete his bachelor’s degree in just two years. Leveraging that momentum — and tuition benefits too — Sisler continued at another university to pursue his master’s degree.

Similarly, his career progressed as well, taking him from one company to another, and from Michigan to Tennessee. There, a burgeoning manufacturing sector gave him room to grow and revisit his first passion: healthcare.

“I had wanted to be a nurse,” says Sisler, recounting his earlier college experience. But the program hadn’t been the right fit, and Sisler had entered the automotive industry instead. Now, years later, Sisler started to consider another employer right there in his backyard in Nashville: a Fortune 500 organization that operates hospitals and clinics throughout the region.

It was a homecoming as well as a revelation. “I wasn’t clinically trained,” says Sisler, “but I could speak the lingo, and I could translate the work there into what I know how to do operationally.” Having left nursing to work in manufacturing operations, Sisler found that his unique blend of skills was exactly what he needed to seize this opportunity. “It was really incredibly fortuitous, because manufacturing is what brought me to Tennessee, not healthcare. But Tennessee is a healthcare hub, and now I had the experience as well as the education to begin applying there.”

Of course, it wasn’t just luck. It was Sisler’s skills and practice put to work. “Enterprise transformation in healthcare is an extraordinarily complex responsibility,” Schultz emphasizes. “It requires systems thinking, analytical capability, innovation, relationship building and the ability to work across traditional organizational boundaries. From my experience supervising Chris, those responsibilities make excellent use of the capabilities he has been developing throughout his career.”

Today, Sisler serves as the vice president of enterprise transformation at his company in Franklin. His work includes project management, digital project management, process improvement and strategic advisory services — quite a leap from assembling seats on a factory floor.

“I have had the privilege of seeing Chris transition from a healthcare leader who was once my client into a highly capable consultant, trusted colleague and friend,” says Daughtry.

The transformation of his career, along with the serendipity of opportunity, continues to amaze Sisler. “When I was in Michigan, I wanted to become a nurse, but I had to go to manufacturing instead,” he says, “and I never would have considered Tennessee when I was working in manufacturing. But then manufacturing came to Tennessee, so I did too, only to find out Tennessee was a healthcare hub.”

It might sound like luck — the same kind of luck that comes with spotting an opportune job posting. But as Sisler shows, it’s about a lot more than that: It’s about confidence and effort, and the persistence to continue to grow.