Johnny Gayden, DNP, MS ’14, BSN ’10, CRNA, assistant professor, is featured in a Wilmington University "News at WilmU" blog post, "'Dream and Achieve': Trailblazing WilmU Nursing Grad Inspires Others," about his path to becoming a certified registered nurse anesthetist. Gayden earned his DNP at Wilmington University in Delaware after earning his MS and BSN degrees at UMSON.
"The youngest of 13 children, Dr. Gayden grew up in rural Louisiana, losing his mother when he was just 6 years old and then his father, who was a sharecropper, at age 13," the article states. "His oldest sister raised him with help from other family members.
“'There are a lot of reasons I could have stopped. There were a lot of times I wanted to stop, but I wanted to be a nurse anesthetist,' says Dr. Gayden, remembering his parents who were 'born in the ’20s and ’30s' and didn’t have access to much education. 'I think I am achieving many of the dreams they probably wished they could have.'"