ALTON - Dr. Jerrica Ampadu knows the importance of helping young nursing students; after all, someone helped her.
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Ampadu, one of the YWCA’s ten 2025 Women of Distinction, will be honored at the Y’s annual gala for her commitment to the community. She serves as the Interim Assistant Dean of Graduate Programs at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), where she also teaches. After a lifetime of helping young nurses get their start, she’s proud of the work she has done to advocate for others.
“For 30 years, I have been mentoring and advocating for people who look like me who want to become nurses,” she said. “I firmly believe it is my purpose. It’s very humbling and it’s also very rewarding to know that humanity begets humanity. Someone helped me, so I help other students, and then they help other students.”
After graduating from college, Ampadu immediately started mentoring other nursing students through various pathway programs. She volunteered at summer nursing camps for underrepresented students, and she was proud to be many people’s first call as they navigated college applications and the nursing profession.
Ampadu enjoys being a mentor, but she started reframing her work. She said she helped people “navigate spaces,” until she realized that “the goal should be changing spaces so that everyone can feel comfortable.”
This is when she got involved in advocacy work. These days, Ampadu works hard to change policies and promote conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion so everyone has a seat at the table.
“How do we become more inclusive as a nursing profession?” she asked. “I am very strong in the advocacy realm. How can that translate into higher education? Because of my lived experiences, I understand the barriers that are there, and so I try to very intentionally and strategically help to eliminate those barriers so that we can increase the number of underrepresented students in the profession.”
Ampadu said she was “in tears” when she learned about the YWCA Women of Distinction nomination. She noted that her colleagues, 19-year-old son and “great, huge family” help her recharge and take care of herself. She is proud of the work she has done and the life she has built.
For others who want to follow in her footsteps, she has important advice about becoming a mentor and advocating for others. She urges community members to acknowledge their privilege and notice when others don’t have the same advantages. She believes this is the first step to advocacy, and everyone can do their part to help.
“First, be very vulnerable,” she said. “In order to mentor someone, you have to understand that their journey may not be your journey, but your goal is to help them along their journey and utilize the things that you have learned in your journey that may widen the path for them. So you have to be very vulnerable. You have to acknowledge your mistakes in that process. And also, not everyone is meant to mentor. If you are not meant to mentor someone, then how do you advocate for other people other than yourself? How do you ensure that the tables that you sit in, that diverse voices are heard, and when they’re not there, what do you do?”
This is the fourth in a series of articles about the ten 2025 Women of Distinction. For more information about the YWCA’s Women of Distinction Gala, visit the official YWCA Facebook page.
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