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"Your strategic thinking, strong leadership, respect for colleagues & great sense of humor—all building @NationalNurses into an incredible union—are just a few reasons that you are an inspiration! —Jane Sanders, tweeting to RoseAnn I t was 1986. Registered nurses at the University of California medical centers had just two years earlier won the right to join the California Nurses Associa- tion—a soft landing at a time when there was little distinction between the monarchial culture of the UC administration and the governance of the CNA, which included many UC nurse managers and edu- cators. Then those CNA administrators inadvertently made what proved to be an auspicious, if ill conceived, for them, deci- sion. They hired a highly skilled, accomplished labor organizer named RoseAnn DeMoro to be an assistant director of its collective bargain- ing program, a barely tolerated stepchild of the CNA hierarchy. Directing negotiations for UC nurses was a key part of RoseAnn's early assignment. An elitist nurse management culture that pervad- ed the governance of CNA "was embedded in the UC," with conse- quences for the nurses' standards, recalls RoseAnn. UC RNs were "at the bottom of the pay scale" compared to other Bay Area hospitals, notes UC RN Maureen Dugan. "UC manage- ment felt that if you worked for us, that was enough reward for you, you're lucky enough to be here at UC," says Gerard Brogan, RN then a UC RN activist, now a nursing practice specialist at CNA. RoseAnn's leadership, says Brogan, immediately changed the direction for the UC nurses, "by shifting the paradigm of the culture of the working nurses from prestige to power"—a phrase RoseAnn introduced to CNA that would come to symbolize how she trans- formed the union. She encouraged nurses to take on the corporate power structure in their workplaces, and ultimately in their union, a fighting "collec- tive spirit," as Bonnie Castillo, RN, who succeeds RoseAnn as execu- tive director, puts it. She also hired professional labor staff who would share and carry out her mission. It was especially critical at a moment of sweeping 14 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G J A N U A R Y | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 8 Great Leaders Never Retire, They Just Go "On Call" After 32 years building the nation's most powerful, dynamic, and influential nursing union, RoseAnn DeMoro is passing the baton to the next generation of nurse leaders. By Charles Idelson