For this issue of our new Change Makers in Washington Nursing series, WCN interviewed Rebeca Allen, MN, RN, and professor of nursing at Pierce College, in Puyallup WA.
Allen is a co-founder of WCN’s Nurses of Color Coalition. The group supports a brave environment for sharing experiences in the workplace and educational settings while offering validation and guidance from peers on navigating personal, interpersonal, institutional, and structural challenges that impact nurses of Color. To learn more about WCN’s Nurses of Color Coalition and get involved, contact WCN DEI Associate Fawzi Belal at FawziB@wcnursing.org.
WCN: Can you share a little about yourself?
Allen: I am from El Salvador and a first-generation immigrant. During the 80s, there was a civil war there, and my parents applied for and received refugee status in Canada. That is how my family immigrated to Canada. A year after I graduated with my BSN, I moved to the States and started as a travel nurse. And that is where my journey began.
I have been working as a nurse for 17 years now, but I have worked in healthcare longer than that. At 18, I began work as a caregiver for a non-profit organization that supported people with disabilities to live their lives in the community. It was an honor to have the opportunity to work with this population. And that is where my passion for caring for people came from.
From a young age, I knew I wanted to do something in healthcare. One day, I had a conversation with my mom’s friend, who was a CNA, which is why representation is important. One conversation can be life-changing. I asked about her work, and what she shared sounded interesting to me. I was like 11 or 12 at the time, and she said, “You can be a CNA. But you can also consider being a nurse.” She told me more about what nurses do, and from that one conversation, I decided to be a nurse.
And so, I started pursuing the idea of being a nurse at a young age. But my parents were immigrants. They cheered me on and supported my goal. But they didn’t know how to navigate the system. I had to figure that out for myself, which was challenging.
Adding to the difficulty, halfway through my junior year, we moved from Edmonton, AB, to Vancouver, BC. The move made planning for after high school more difficult. I wasn’t familiar with the colleges in our new area and I didn’t know the process of getting into college, and I missed every single application deadline for applying to college. My grades also took a hit while moving. I struggled with English the most. As a result, I didn’t have the grades I needed to apply to nursing school. I had to start the process over three times before being accepted into a nursing program. Because I had no guidance, it took me longer than normal to get into nursing school.
WCN: How did you find the strength to persevere through challenges and succeed in your goals?
Allen: My parents are big on education. In El Salvador, my grandmother had been pulled out of school when she was in the first grade and forced to work in the markets to support her family. My mom wanted a higher education, but that wasn’t available to her because of the war. Because of those experiences, when we moved to Canada, they had hope that my siblings and I would have better opportunities. They wanted more for us than what they had. But they didn’t know how to help us navigate the system.
It can be easy to get discouraged. But my parents believed in me and encouraged me to keep going. My faith was also a big part of it. As an immigrant in a new country, the church became our community. We understood each other’s struggles and supported each other. That is the power of spaces of belonging. When I felt discouraged because I had received another college rejection letter or something like that, my community was there. They continued to cheer me on and believe in me. That was everything.
WCN: Can you tell us about your journey into nursing leadership?
Allen: I didn’t think about nursing leadership until I had a Latina manager at a facility where I started out working as a travel nurse. That was the first time I had ever seen a Latina nurse manager. And she was amazing! After she had left the facility where we worked together, we became close friends. And we are still close friends today. She made it possible for me to see myself as a nurse leader. She is also the one who encouraged me to get my master’s degree.
When thinking about going back to school, I strongly considered becoming a nurse practitioner. But during this time, my grandmother got sick and passed away. She was a Spanish-speaking undocumented immigrant living in Southern California. And no matter how hard my family tried to support her, she kept slipping through the healthcare cracks. We never could get any good answers from providers about what was going on with her health. One day, she landed in the hospital. It was only then that we found out she had cancer. Her cancer had advanced so much that she was discharged to hospice, and a couple of weeks after she was discharged from the hospital, she passed away. And I’m not saying that if she had better support, she might not have died of cancer. But with better support, her quality of life while going through what she went through would have been better.
Around that time, I started teaching as an adjunct doing clinicals. That is how I got into teaching. I noticed there was little Latin representation in nursing education and decided instead of impacting one community as a nurse practitioner—I wanted to influence many communities by teaching students who would reach far more communities than I could on my own. And this is where my passion is. My focus in my master’s program was representation in healthcare. I conducted a focus group on addressing the challenges and barriers students of color face when pursuing nursing—because we need to know how to support them better.
WCN: How do you look to impact nursing and the advancement of health equity in Washington?
Allen: One important way is working to increase representation in nursing. In nursing education, I am a big advocate for holistic admissions. We must ask questions like: How are we doing better for our students? And what barriers are they facing? I also enjoy meeting with high school students to share my experience getting into nursing. Early exposure is so valuable. I mean, it impacted my life. It only takes that one person or conversation to plant the seed. And once students are in nursing education, how do we meet them where they are? Because each student comes with a variety of challenges. For example, the political climate around immigration right now and how we have mixed-status families who are struggling. I always ask myself, how can I support students where they are today? How can I help students navigate those situations from within the nursing program while inspiring and encouraging them?
I am also intentional about using inclusive pedagogy and creating a learning environment where my students feel seen and heard, that they belong, and that they will be successful. Because, too often, students are battling narratives in their heads that they will fail based on their lived experience. What I get to do is bring in hope. What I have the opportunity to do is to tell them, you can do this!
Additionally, at my former community college, I had the opportunity to initiate and co-lead a Latin caucus. The caucus was composed of Latin staff and faculty who intentionally worked to build community while creating a collaborative environment to help better support students across different disciplines. To be able to collaborate with others interested in building those more expansive support systems is such important work.
At a statewide level, I love being part of the WCN Nurses of Color Coalition and working alongside Fawzi (WCN’s DEI Associate). It has been fun starting that group with him. And I am excited about where it is going. Our work to create spaces of belonging and educate others is exciting! I am eager to see what this group of very talented and committed nurses will accomplish.
Being present in the community, advocating for holistic admissions, and influencing the nursing education classroom are all ways I work to impact health equity in Washington.
WCN: What are some of the overall challenges in your work? And how do you work to overcome those challenges?
Allen: Choosing to stand up for social justice can be difficult and even discouraging at times. Of course, I lean on my community. But, I have also become more intentional about seeking out resources that empower me while helping me feel like I have a voice. Unfortunately, nursing does not have the resources to help empower nurses when they face injustices. Or when they need to address systemic racism or biases in the workplace. We aren’t there yet. For support, I intentionally collaborate with people from different disciplines and lean on them for knowledge. I also read books and policies to better understand the tools I need to stand up to injustice. This work can be very taxing and burdensome because it takes away from other areas. I have certainly had to make sacrifices to do this work. But I don’t regret it. It sounds cliché, but knowledge is power. And too often, people don’t take the time to learn and do the deep dive to get the tools they need to empower themselves.
The other motivation for this work is thinking of those who are coming behind me. I must always lean in on my “why.” I have my community. I have my knowledge. But why do I want to do this work? One of the biggest motivators for me is my kids. I don’t want them to have to face the same challenges I had to face. It is like a relay race. I’m running my race right now and will only get so far. I must have realistic expectations about that. But who will I pass my baton to so that they can take it even further? I want my ceiling to be someone else’s floor. That is how change happens. Without the work of our ancestors, we wouldn’t be where we are now. We are standing on the shoulders of a lot of people. And they are expecting us to continue the work so that others can stand on our shoulders someday. That’s what motivates me. That’s what inspires me in this work.
WCN: What progress towards supporting a diverse and highly skilled nursing workforce in Washington do you find encouraging? And, where do you see we still have work to do?
Allen: Years ago, when I started as a nurse, I don’t remember people really talking about diversity in nursing or discussing the barriers that historically marginalized communities face in getting into nursing school. But now, there is more education and awareness around the issue. There is more awareness and acknowledgment that it takes more than “just hard work” to get into nursing school and that some of our students, specifically black and brown students, face the challenges of a system that was not designed for them to succeed in. I’m starting to see more representation in nursing, especially in the classroom. It is so much more diverse now, and it is so exciting. It means strategies like holistic admissions are working, and students from more diverse backgrounds are getting into nursing programs.
Where I think there is an opportunity for growth is in allyship. The diversity of the WA nursing workforce does not yet represent the populations it serves, and the disparity in nursing leadership is even more underrepresented. We need allies to stand alongside us for meaningful change in addressing systemic racism in WA state. It is a heavy lift. As nurses of Color, we are not able to do it by ourselves without getting burnt out. A lot of leaders are already burnt out. I also admit that I have had moments where I feel burnt out. This work is emotionally and mentally taxing. We need allies in this work who are willing and want to do the work in addressing systemic problems that our healthcare systems face. It goes beyond just saying that one is not racist. To actually do the work to help create a system that is ANTI-racist, we need people willing to stand in the trenches with us and fight beside us because, unfortunately, there are still many environments where nurses of Color do not feel safe doing this work.
I have had conversations with people who want to be allies but who don’t know how to help because they feel they don’t have the lived experience. But, they do have the privilege and influence to speak up and help educate their peers. They can reach an audience that nurses of Color might not be able to and help bring others along in this work. Allies in this work are needed and valued.
There is one person who has truly been an ally for me, even in just giving me language and vocabulary to identify and validate my lived experiences, which that alone can be so empowering. One thing I admire about them is that they have already done so much of the work themselves. They took the time to work on educating themselves on systemic racism and call it out. They can call out things that I couldn’t call out, and when they have done that, I feel validated, heard, and seen. People who want to be allies in this work naturally want to learn more. They want to educate themselves. I encourage those who want to be sensitive in burdening their peers of Color in educating them, to take initiative in investing and being proactive in seeking out resources to build their knowledge. However, that is the reality of this work—it is a community effort, and we are all in this together.
The other important piece I take to heart is to choose to see the best in people. In my mind, I have decided that I’m not going to be the one who is easily offended. Resiliency is important because sometimes we get into our feelings, and that can shut us down, making it difficult to do this work. It’s about intent and impact. Someone’s intent might have been in the right place, but their impact hit wrong. Now, some people just want to be in your face. But if somebody is intentionally trying to do the work, then showing grace towards each other is really important. It is how we truly practice cultural humility, come from a place of curiosity, and seek understanding. We’re all going to make mistakes. But when we make sure we have respect and are gracious towards each other, we can further engage in this work. We can choose to fail forward, be OK with the uncomfortable, trust that we can recover from our mistakes, learn from each other, and grow.
