“I will never forget when the nursing unit I was managing was to receive the first patient diagnosed with COVID in the entire hospital,” MSOE alumna Casey DeLao ’16, ’21 recalls.

A physician approached Casey with the news. As a brand-new second-shift manager, she met it with a look that could only be described as “a deer in headlights.”

“The kind doctor must’ve realized this and offered, ‘Would you like me to stay and speak to the staff with you?’ I quickly nodded.”

After the physician left, Casey was met with the hard-hitting questions and concerns from her staff: Can I stop and get gas on the way home? Will I be able to visit my grandma? Casey, I’m scared.

“All I could do was reply honestly with my staff: ‘I’m scared too.’ It was in this moment I realized the power of honesty and vulnerability in being a leader.”

That moment reflects a value that has guided Casey throughout her life: helping others. Long before she became a nurse, nurse manager and nurse practitioner, Casey found purpose in caring for animals.

She grew up in Milwaukee and earned her Bachelor of Science in Zoo Science from Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. For seven years, she worked as a zookeeper and environmental educator, caring for animals while educating visitors about the species in her care. 

“It was a wonderfully unique experience, and I gained so many cool stories to put my kids to bed with when they were little.”

One of her most memorable roles was at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Casey cared for cranes in the mornings and led visitor tours in the afternoons. She also managed the organization’s children’s art program, which featured artwork from schoolchildren in seven countries. Under her leadership, the program expanded and toured throughout Milwaukee.

But over time, Casey realized that the part of her work she loved most was not simply caring for animals, it was helping people.

“I remember teaching a group of visitors at the Milwaukee County Zoo about reptiles while holding a bull snake and thinking: ‘This is the part I love, helping people and inspiring them.’” She shared that revelation with her husband, Richard, who encouraged her to consider nursing.

Richard had already been exploring an electrical engineering degree at MSOE when he came across the university’s new accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. Casey applied and enrolled in 2015.

At MSOE, Casey discovered that nursing could combine her passion for helping others with opportunities to lead and create change. She developed skills in healthcare, change management and servant leadership, and during her senior year, a mock interview led to her first nursing position at Aurora Sinai Hospital in Milwaukee.

But Casey wasn’t done learning yet. She returned to MSOE to pursue a dual master’s degree, earning both her MSN and MBA in 2021.

One of her favorite student experiences took her far beyond Milwaukee, during the “Doing Business in China” program for her MBA. Led by Dr. Kelly Ottman, the experience gave Casey an opportunity to put servant leadership into practice while working with children and families in a local village.

“We visited a local school where we’d built a new library. We sponsored several children with new school supplies, and I will never forget the look on their faces when I handed them backpacks full of goodies.”

The group also visited a healthcare clinic, an experience that would influence Casey’s holistic approach to patient care. “It was such a wonderful experience as a nurse, to see the similarities and differences in healthcare and the art of Chinese medicine.”

While completing her education, Casey’s nursing career continued to grow. She became interested in leadership and joined Froedtert Hospital as an assistant nurse manager, overseeing several units, including psych-mental health, emergency and medical-surgical.

When the pandemic struck, the medical-surgical unit was converted into a COVID-19 unit, putting Casey in the middle of one of the most challenging moments in modern healthcare.

Her experience leading her team through that uncertainty became a defining moment in her leadership journey. In 2021, she was awarded the MSOE Essential Frontline Worker Alumni Award for her efforts during the pandemic. “It was such an honor to receive and a very touching award, representing the work frontline workers had done.”

In 2022, Casey became a nurse manager. In this role, she helped double the size of a nursing unit and facilitated its relocation to a new space. As she navigated the change, she turned to a lesson from her time at MSOE. “I remember staring at the change management visual from Professor Gene Wright’s class I had taped to my office wall and using it to analyze where we were along the change process. It helped ground me and put my staff’s perspective as to what they were experiencing into it as well.”

For Casey, the lessons she learned at MSOE weren’t simply academic. They became tools she could carry into the most challenging moments of her career.

After the pandemic, Casey wanted to explore a specialty and skill set she had not experienced before. She joined Pentec Health, where she was trained in intrathecal therapy to help patients experiencing extensive chronic pain. Today, she is one of just two nurses in her organization managing these patients across the entire state of Wisconsin and parts of northern Michigan.

“Meeting and working with the patients, their families and hearing the stories of their healthcare journey, has truly been an amazing experience.”

Those patient stories inspired Casey to take another step in her education. She returned to MSOE to earn her Psych-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner post-graduate certificate. Casey has also stayed connected to MSOE serving as the first nursing alumna on the Alumni Association Board since 2022. “It’s such a special organization to be a part of. It’s my hope to inspire and get even more nursing alumni interested in participating in the Alumni Board.”

From caring for cranes and educating zoo visitors to leading nurses through a global pandemic and caring for patients with complex health needs, Casey’s career has taken her down an unexpected path. Whether she is supporting a patient and their family, guiding a team through change, inspiring a student or connecting alumni back to MSOE, Casey leads with empathy, honesty and a commitment to service. Her journey is a testament to the power of discovering what you love, finding new ways to serve others and continuing to learn along the way, a proud reflection of her MSOE roots.