Over 18 nursing strikes have happened this year, with seven more authorized before the end of 2026. In every single one, the nurses sound the same alarm, safe staffing. But you won’t hear about that part.
The nurses become the subject of the story; the hospitals get to tell it. It gets framed as a wage dispute, or simply two parties being unable to agree on a contract.
There’s a reason this happens. You will never see a floor nurse sitting on a hospital board, but you will find an investment banker. Researchers who examined the boards of top-ranked hospitals found that only about 1 in 7 board members — roughly 14.6% — were health professionals. Most hospitals — including nonprofit and for-profit hospitals — have boards of directors and trustees that are full of executives, bankers, and CEOs from private for-profit corporations. I’m not being figurative. The vast majority (80.2%) led financial corporations, including private equity firms, wealth management firms, and banks
These powerful people have powerful connections.
The very same people who have spent decades profiting off Americans are now sitting in the boardrooms deciding how many patients one nurse should be forced to manage in a shift; these are the same people who make the decision to charge you$500 for Tylenol while they take home salaries of over a hundred million a year.
These boards are full of for-profit executives with a for-profit mindset, even if they hide behind a non-profit label.
But talk is cheap; receipts are everything. Let’s talk about Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), since it’s in the headlines, and we can watch this play out in real time.
Nurses Strike in Massachusetts
Over 4,000 nurses and 500 home care staff from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Health System went on strike after months of the Mass achuetes Nurse Association trying to work with directly the hospital without success. They gave 12-days-notice, as legally required.
No one was left without care. They didn’t leave mid-shift, or abandon patients. The hospital was required to hire nurses to cover them for that 24 hours. And they did. In fact, they paid travel nurses up-to $120/HR and gave them $1,400 bonuses, leading to a $10 million dollar estimated cost for the health system.
The nurses' strike was set for 24 hours. The home care strike ran 7 days. When the nurses showed up the next morning ready to work, security blocked them at the door and told them to come back on July 15th.
So what happens next? The nurses are standing out on the street. They’ve been locked out of their own workplace. They have no choice but to set up picket lines outside the very doors they usually walk through to save lives.
“Brigham nurses are among the highest compensated in the market.”
What Jessica failed to mention is that these nurses work and live in Boston where everything is more expensive. Out of the 19,495 cities in America, Boston consistently ranks as the 5th most expensive one to live in.
These nurses make $49/hour on average. New graduate nurses only make around $38 an hour. Sounds like a lot until you find out one-bedroom apartments in Boston average $3,636 per month.
In Boston: the general cost of living is 48% higher than the national average. Utilities are 54% higher, housing costs 121% more, and even healthcare is 34% more expensive.
So yes, America, one of the things that they want is a cost of living wage increase so that they can feed their families in an economy where the cost of living increases every year. They also want to be able to afford health insurance, which the hospital increased the cost offor staff, but most importantly? They want safe staffing.
But they don’t talk about that. They want you to see that the nurses are not dedicated professionals trying to keep your family members from dying in a dangerously understaffed hallway. No, they’re the villains. They’re selfish radicals who are abandoning the community all in the pursuit of money.
The same executives who paid an estimated $10 million dollars on travel nurses instead of raising wages went on to launch a coordinated, smear campaign to paint these nurses as the bad guys.
The hospital posted an official letter apologizing to the public for the nurses behavior, and sent cease and desist notices to the union representing the nurses trying to flip the script completely.
They know that if they take a direct shot at the nurses, it’s not going to go well, so instead they try to appeal to the emotions of their consumers, er, I mean “neighbors.”
For almost a decade, corporate hospitals have actually ordered their staff to stop calling sick people “patients,” and instead call them “consumers.”
The author of this letter, Giles Boland, President of GWH, makes $1,509,981 a year. This averages to $4,137 a day, assuming a standard 365-day calendar year.
The major hospitals love to use manipulative platitudes when speaking with the general public. We care about you; patient-centered care is our focus. Patient-centered care used to mean something, holistic healthcare matters, but now it’s become a corporate buzzword.
Is it patient-centered care when every patient added to a nurse’s load beyond four raises your risk of dying by 8 percent? Is it patient-centered care when some hospitals put nine patients under a single nurse at once?
One day the patient is going to be you. Or your mother. Or the one person you can't picture the world without. When that day comes, you'll pray for a nurse who isn't split across eight other rooms.
The President and CEO of Mass General Brigham. — Anne Kilbanski — makes $8,407,816 a year. The corporation is so large that it’s the parent company that owns Brigham and Women’s Hospital. That is $23,035.11/day, or $16.00 a minute.
Anne makes more in 48 hours than some nurses at her hospital system make in an entire year. She is also a Harvard professor.
Anne Kilbanski, n.d.
And she isn’t the only well-paid person in leadership. Here’s a list of some of the others:
$3,536,715 is what’s made by John R Barker, Former Chief Investment Officer, $3,210,922 by Ron Walls, COO, $2,844,616 by Gregg S. Meyer, President, Community Division, $2,349,621 by Elizabeth L Baldwin, Portfolio Manager, $2,323,582 by Niyum Gandhi, CFO and Treasurer, and 988,790: Yolanda Lorig Colson, PHD Director
And remember, this is just a smidge of the vast amount of leadership under is the parent company. This isn't Brigham and Women's. This is the corporation that owns Brigham and Women's among others.
I've worked in healthcare for years and I've never once met a "PhD director" or a "digital officer" at a bedside. I'm no businesswoman, but that's a staggering amount of money for people who never lay hands on a patient.
Now look one level down at who actually governs BWH:
Giles W.L. Boland, MD
Giles is a radiologist from London, UK. He has been the president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital since March 2024. He’s also the vice president of the parent company, Mass General Brigham. He makes $1,509,981 a year, or $4,137 a day.
And the Board of Trustees is not to be trusted.
John Fish, Chair of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Board of Trustees.
John is also the chairman and CEO of Suffolk Construction, the largest building company in New England, with $6 billion in revenue in 2024. Being the chair of the board of trustees, John holds considerable power over the hospital. He was named the number one most powerful person in Boston by Boston Magazine twice. His own construction company built a facility at Brigham.
And it’s not just the hospital he holds power over. He has significant influence over local media and events due to his prominence in the community. He’s also the chair of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, the chairman of the Boston College Board of Trustees. And he’s donated both to Obama and the Republican National Committee.
Anne Finucane, Vice Chair
This is a different — and arguably somehow more powerful Anne than above.
In 1995, Anne Finucane Joined Fleet Financial as the head of corporate affairs and marketing. Fleet Financial Group was a New England banking company If Fleet Financial doesn’t sound familiar, maybe Bank of America will. See, Fleet merged with Bank Boston, and was eventually merged with Bank of America.
And that’s not even all of it. You can view a lot more on her Wikipedia and LinkedIn pages.
If there’s anyone that can discredit these nurses and influence the media with such precision that you don’t realize you’ve been fooled, it’s Anne Finucane.
PR and marketing is like speaking English to her; it’s what has gotten her to where she is. In 2013, she was ranked in PR Week’s Power List. She received the Matrix Award from the Association for Women in Communications.
She oversaw Bank of America’s entire marketing, advertising, and communications functioning. She’s one of Forbes’ 50 most influential CMOs globally, and she was also on Forbes and Fortune’s most powerful women lists between 2016 and 2020.
Dissent in Bloom is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
John Connaughton, Trustee
John Connaughton graduated with an MBA from Harvard in 1994. He used that to become an investment banker with Bain Capital in 1989. By 2016, he was the Co-Managing Partner, and now he is the Chair of the Board of Directors for Bain Capital.
He is an investment banker. He is also the Global Head of Bain Capital Private Equity. But that’s not all.
He is on the board of IQVIA Holdings. He is on the board of the Boston Celtics Investor Group. He was on the board of trustees for the Berkley College of Music and The Roxbury Latin School. According to his Linkedin, he is also on the board of Directors for The Green Life Fund, and the board of Dean’s Advisors for Harvard.
And he has a heavy media influence, given his significant history in working for the media he was on the board of IHeartMedia. He was on the board of the largest private TV broadcaster in Germany. He’s also been on the board of AMC Theaters, Cumulus Media Partners, HCA Healthcare, Warner Chilcot, Air Medical Group Holdings, Bio Products Laboratory Holdings, and Stericycle Inc.
If you’re a nurse, or if you work in healthcare, I know you recognize a few of those names.
Mark Nunnelly, Trustee
Mark Nunneley also graduated from Harvard with an MBA. He was a product manager at Proctor and Gamble, the people who make Pampers Diapers (I wonder what BWH keeps stocked in their nursery?) Nunnelly is chairman of Toolbox Holdings and Foundation
And just like John, he is connected to Bain Capital. He was managing director until 2014 when he retired.
In 2005, Harvard University offered Mark Nunnelly the position of Chief Executive Officer of the Harvard Management Company (HMC). This role meant managing the university’s massive investment portfolio, known as its endowment. He declined.
It’s really weird how, from the president to the governments of cities, every government official has a corporate special advisor.
Nunnley is also on the board of New Profit, Center College, and Harvard Business School, where he holds the position as Chair of the Board. He’s a trustee for ‘children’s education sitting on the board for KIPP Schools Foundation and Jump Start. He is a trustee of BridgeSpan.
He also used to be the director of Blumenbrands, Apple Leisure Group, BMC Software, Duncan Brands, GenPact, Turnitin LLC, and Travel Click.
And he also has media connections, just like his friend John. He was a board member of Warner Music Group. He held a seat on the WMG Acquisition Court Board. He’s also a board member of the Halcote Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, which is a major educational publisher.
His former company — Bain Capital — invested in Houghton Mifflin for $1.28B alongside Thomas H. Lee Partners and Blackstone, late 2002. Along with Connaughton, both Bain figures governed Warner Music Group simultaneously
Martin J. Walsh, Trustee
Martin Walsh was born and raised in Massachusetts to Irish immigrant parents. He survived lymphedema as a child. He survived alcohol addiction. He’s a member of the laborers’ union, and he rose to the head of the Boston Building and Construction and Trades Council. He sounds like a true working-class, relatable person.
Which is how he became the 53rd mayor of Boston from 2014 to 2021. He was the 29th United States Secretary of Labor from 2021 to 2023, and now he’s the executive director of the NHL Players Association.
That’s a pretty significant person to have on your Board of Trustees. And my mama always told me, “You’re only as good as the company you keep.”
Look at who he’s surrounded by.
There are more — there always are — but for the sake of time I’ve only included the top five I found.
As you see, the trustees who govern Brigham and Women’s Hospital — one of the most powerful academic medical centers in the country — represent a remarkable concentration of political, financial, and corporate reach that extends well beyond healthcare. Mass General Brigham’s own tax filings, available through the IRS and their non-profit portal, flag documented conflict-of-interest transactions every year on record.
And if that’s still not enough for you, if you’re still saying:
“Well, I think if the nurses are not in it to care for people, they shouldn’t be nurses in the first place, right?”
The for-profit media make it seem like nurses are just asking for bigger paychecks. Although wages may be part of it, the number one line that follows through every single strike is safe staffing.
The moment nurses started asking difficult questions about staffing, patient safety, and working conditions, much of the praise disappeared. The public was told were fighting over paychecks. What many nurses were actually describing was a system under strain.
Nurses are human, and you should never expect perfection. And nurses are also advocates, so you should never expect compliance in situations that put their patients at risk.
Every year since, the media and the public have made one thing perfectly clear — they expect our absolute dedication, but they don't give a damn about our survival.
The moment nurses began speaking openly about staffing shortages, burnout, unsafe conditions, and a healthcare system stretched to its limits, the conversation shifted. Their warnings were often reframed as complaints. Their demands were reduced to questions of pay.
The public loved calling us "heroes" during the 2020 COVID pandemic when nurses came face to face with death daily and the CEOS & Boards of Directors/Trustees sipped wine in their houses we can never afford.
They want to make nurses a martyr for the abuse patients receive from the healthcare system. Don’t let them. We are fighting for you.
Historically, female-dominated, care-based professions have been the easiest to manipulate through guilt. Just as union-busters tell teachers, "If you really cared about the kids, you wouldn't strike," hospital administrators and the media tell nurses, "If you cared about patients, you wouldn't demand better ratios."
When you frame the job as a moral calling rather than a profession, it makes it socially unacceptable to ask for better money, safety, or labor rights, because if you want anything more, you’re heartless and greedy.
I’m a nurse. You’ll never learn my name. You’ll forget Anne Klibanski’s too. But I’m the one who’ll be in the room when it counts, and I’m telling you now, while I still can, that they’re cutting us to the bone. Believe me before you need me. Believe the other nurses before you need them, too.
And remember, nurses are not the reason you paid $500 for Tylenol. Anne made $16 while you read that sentence. And the nurse who actually kept you breathing is the one they taught you to call greedy. Do the math. Then ask yourself who wanted you angry at her instead of them.
Nurses are the mist least paid workers for the work that we do to keep patients alive and comfortably during the patients hours of need. We find and report mistakes that doctors have made we known the patients better than the doctors treating them yet the hospitals look down on us and give us more patients that causes unsafe working conditions not just for the nurse but for the Patient. They make Pennie’s on the dollar while the suits, who make millions and have NO medical background make the decisions on how much we can handle. It’s insane
I and so many others are alive today because of the dedicated nurses and doctors at MGB. There should be medical practitioners on all boards of medical institutions to provide the practical, human, humane guidance for the organization. The practitioners should get the financial rewards of their dedication, not investment bankers and wealth advisors.
Nurses are the mist least paid workers for the work that we do to keep patients alive and comfortably during the patients hours of need. We find and report mistakes that doctors have made we known the patients better than the doctors treating them yet the hospitals look down on us and give us more patients that causes unsafe working conditions not just for the nurse but for the Patient. They make Pennie’s on the dollar while the suits, who make millions and have NO medical background make the decisions on how much we can handle. It’s insane
I and so many others are alive today because of the dedicated nurses and doctors at MGB. There should be medical practitioners on all boards of medical institutions to provide the practical, human, humane guidance for the organization. The practitioners should get the financial rewards of their dedication, not investment bankers and wealth advisors.