“Super” Volunteer Sets Records

When the St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital Auxiliary presidency changed hands this summer, incoming president Edgar Vesga, 36, established several “firsts” for this position: the first Hispanic president the auxiliary has ever had in its 48-year existence; the first president to concurrently hold a full-time job while taking on the task of the auxiliary presidency; the first president (in the last decade) to be under age 40; the first to have a license to sell life and health and investment securities; and, the first president to speak four languages – English, Spanish, Italian and German.

Pam Lemp, director of the hospital’s volunteer services, is the first to tell you that Vesga is eminently well qualified for the position.

“Edgar’s been involved in all aspects of the auxiliary from service to fundraising to special events, and his enthusiasm for the services provided by our auxiliary is contagious,” she says.

Vesga, who has just accepted a new full-time position as an international attaché with Texas Children’s Hospital, hopes to accomplish several objectives during his St. Luke’s auxiliary presidency.

“Now that we have the Cooley Building open and will have the Community Medical Center opening in the Woodlands, there is and will continue to be a greater need for volunteers,” he says. “Therefore, it’s part of my plans to recruit volunteers using the Internet. I also hope to increase the frequency and quality of communication between the auxiliary and the hospital’s administration, and I’m also hopeful that we’ll be able to raise funds to help the St. Luke’s Blood Center replace their aging mobile blood unit.”

Vesga appears to have the background to win people over to his ideas for the auxiliary. While working for MetLife Insurance Co., he increased sales revenues for the company’s Memorial-area branch and developed the Hispanic market for the organization’s Houston and San Antonio offices.

It obviously doesn’t hurt that he can communicate in four languages. He learned English and Spanish while growing up in Columbia. He mastered Italian because of a desire to communicate with Italian volunteers in their native tongue. And he learned German for a chemistry course.

Vesga, who has also worked as a data management consultant at St. Luke’s, first became familiar with the hospital in 1985 when he was taking a psychology class at the University of Houston that required volunteer work.

“They wanted us to experience what people do and how they behave in a health care environment,” recalls Vesga. “My first volunteer task, however, almost caused me to change my mind about volunteering here. I was assigned to the emergency department where I witnessed a very stressful trauma case, and I wasn’t sure I was cut out for hospital work. Fortunately, my professor convinced me to give it some more time, and I’m grateful I did.”

During his six-year stint as a consultant at St. Luke’s, Vesga assisted on all facets of international business development, including creation of the Spanish Internet site for the International Patient Center, serving as a liaison between the hospital and some of the international insurance providers, and creating a database management system to service prospective patients.

Vesga’s hospital-based international marketing and business background has not, however, been limited to St. Luke’s. For the past three years, he has been commuting to Manhattan to serve as a consultant for New York-Presbyterian Hospital – The University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell. This consulting opportunity gave him a chance to identify that organization’s international patient markets and train patient liaisons in various computer programs that positively impacted revenues and patient satisfaction.

“I’ve had the opportunity to see how auxiliaries function in hospitals in California, Florida, Texas and New York, and I honestly believe this is the best auxiliary in the country,” explains Vesga. “We’re so organized, we do such diverse work for so many different departments. People just don’t realize how crucial we are to the hospital, and yet I still feel strongly that there is much more work that can be done. I’m very excited about the opportunity this next year will bring.”

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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