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Navy Nurse Corps officer Laura Rivera ’24 remembers the first time she heard a baby’s heartbeat. Just 16 years old, she was serving as a translator for a women’s clinic in Atlanta, Georgia.

“I started crying, because that moment hit me—I wasn’t just a translator. Many of the mothers were afraid or didn’t understand what was happening to their bodies. I understood for the first time that being bilingual not only opens doors, it bridges gaps.”

Yet Rivera’s career path to becoming a registered nurse specializing in labor and delivery and maternal-newborn acute care wasn’t linear. After earning a bachelor’s degree in sport management and navigating unfulfilling jobs, she enlisted in the Navy, trained as a medic, and applied for the Nurse Candidate Program. After a year of unexpected setbacks, she secured her scholarship and enrolled at ������Ƶ in 2022.

Rivera felt at home with ������Ƶ’s holistic approach to nurse training and appreciated how growing her faith shaped her sense of calling. “Nursing programs are designed to filter you out, but the first words I heard at ������Ƶ were, ‘How can we best support you?’ ” She did more than gain technical skills. “I had always said I wanted to live life wholeheartedly. I heard that message so clearly from day one.”

A Global Perspective

Rivera grew up internationally, and her mother—a Colombian-trained physician— played a defining role in shaping her view of care. Her mother’s medical license didn’t extend to every country, so she found other ways to serve. “She became a doula and helped local midwives and laboring mothers, but she also learned from them. She taught me that vocation lies at the point where personal passion and the world’s need meet.”

When Rivera graduated from ������Ƶ, she didn’t set out to become a labor and delivery nurse; she simply asked God to place her wherever the need was greatest. “But of course it was in the delivery room,” she says. “It has been a full circle experience. Women will always keep having babies, and, globally, there is a great need to improve maternal health care.”

Improving Patient Care

Rivera is currently stationed at the Navy Medicine Readiness Training Command in Jacksonville, Florida. She believes improving patient care begins with nurse well-being. “When you have a good balance, you show up differently for patients. Being able to step into that delivery room, put it all behind and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to be your nurse tonight,’ and then create a once-in-a-lifetime experience can only happen when you’re feeling seen, recognized, and rested,” she says.

In her short time at the Navy hospital, she has established a nurse recognition award, streamlined scheduling, and even designed and handmade “Born at Naval Hospital Jacksonville” keepsake onesies, a project that evolved into a fundraising partnership with the Nurses Association that supports staff programs throughout the year. These initiatives, and others like them, improve patient experiences.

Fix What's Broken

There was a time when Rivera didn’t think she was smart enough to enter the medical profession. Looking back, she sees how the Lord led her, and that long view gives her the strength and drive to serve her patients well day after day. “Faith is not what I do. It’s who I am. It’s my foundation.”

And though she never considered herself a natural leader, her experiences have reframed her understanding: 

“Leadership isn’t about the title; it’s about taking responsibility of the environment you’re in and choosing to make it better.”

That conviction led her to establish a nursing scholarship at ������Ƶ, an effort she hopes will bridge a critical gap in nursing care she recognized at 16 and continued research corroborates—the need for more bilingual nurses.

Rivera hopes her scholarship will lower financial barriers for future nurses; the inaugural award was given last fall. “I’m not only helping one student become a nurse,” she says. “I’m helping every patient they will ever touch, because that’s the type of nurses ������Ƶ builds—nurses who go out and see the patient as a whole.”