Medicine man
He’s a new CEO, a new dad and an Oreo aficionado By Khary McGhee
I
t wasn’t long after moving to Fayetteville that Mike Nagowski figured out that he was a long way from home. In his first week as Cape Fear Valley Medical
Center's new CEO, Nagowski got his first taste of a North Carolina winter “storm." "I'm sitting in front of the TV,
working on the computer, and there's a weatherman on," he said. "He starts talking about this big snow storm coming our way." Nagowski, having spent almost his
entire life in western New York, was ready for what was to come. In Buffalo, where six inches of snow might be considered a light dusting, he regularly cleared his driveway and walkway before work. "I got my shovel in my car," Nagowski
said. "I got my hat, my gloves. I got my boots. I set my alarm 15 minutes early because, you know, you might have to dig out." The following morning, he headed
out the door ready to battle the inevitable mess this menace of a storm surely left in its wake. There wasn't one. "The ground was just wet," he said. Not that Nagowski was longing for
Buffalo's brutal weather. In the eight months that he's been on his new job, the weather has been one of the benefits. Then again, very little has gone wrong for the CEO since taking over for Richard Parks at Cape Fear Valley in early January. Nagowski, who had been the president of his hometown’s largest hospital, Buffalo General, jumped head first into his work, continuing to improve the
