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Shana Scales is innovating employee and community engagement through a servantship leadership style.
As vice president of human resources at Lake Charles Memorial Health System, Scales leads with a faith-driven, servant leadership approach, focusing on employee growth, engagement, and community impact. That passion has been a cornerstone of her career as she leads the People and Culture initiatives for Southwest Louisiana’s largest not-for-profit community healthcare system.
She has innovated recruitment and engagement through influencer marketing and creative campaigns to strengthen the hospital’s brand. Her 5 C’s of HR—community, compliance, culture, collaboration, and communication—have enhanced company culture, making it a Great Place to Work. By fostering partnerships and driving initiatives that inspire healthcare careers, Scales remains committed to improving both the workplace and the broader community.
“The notion that one person can achieve anything alone and you don’t have to serve is unacceptable.”
Shana Scales
Growing up in Helena, a small town in Arkansas, Scales knew she wanted to make her parents proud and improve people’s lives, but she wasn’t sure how.
In college, she majored in finance because she loved crunching numbers. She thought she’d pursue accounting roles after graduation. But then she “stumbled upon the profession of healthcare administration,” she recounts. “I had never heard about the business side of healthcare before or realized how important that was in delivering care.”
Working in a hospital administration office during college sparked her curiosity about healthcare operations from a business perspective.
Before attending graduate school, she got a call from International Paper about a finance recruit program for recent grads. The program offered strong career progression opportunities, mentorship, and tuition assistance to help pay for graduate school which attracted Scales to join this notable global organization.
“My exposure opportunities at International Paper allowed me to gain meaningful mentorship relationships that invigorated interest in human resources from the financial perspective.” The ability for a finance graduate to switch tracks was unconventional at the time, thus leading Scales to explore new opportunities at the headquarters of AutoZone.
This proved to be a rewarding time to join the benefits department, as it was at the dawn of the Affordable Care Act. In her role, Scales was the data analyst to “crunch” the numbers to provide the financial impact of the act to the organization. This was the true beginning of her understanding of how her love for numbers would guide her career in human resources.
Scales would leave AutoZone and matriculate into the healthcare sector with employment with the largest healthcare system in the Mid-South, Baptist Memorial Healthcare. She held several key roles while there that spanned several areas such as compensation, benefits, and HR technology.
“Many are afraid of two of my favorite things: numbers and spreadsheets,” she says. “The love of the two really propelled my career.”
After leaving Baptist Memorial, she would go on to leadership roles at Regional One and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Scales took a job with Lake Charles Memorial Health System in early 2023, bringing nearly twenty years of progressive human resource leadership and management experience to her position.
“Here I’m responsible for all aspects of human resources along with employee wellness, recruitment, organizational development, employee relations, HR technology, compensation, benefits, and an employee health clinic,” she explains. “I am responsible for the strategic vision of all those areas.”
Scales’s multifaceted role demands both a grasp of the big picture and a deep understanding of employee needs. Her passion for fostering inclusivity and equity in the workplace is rooted in personal experiences.
Community has a personal meaning for Scales. Early in her career, she experienced racial discrimination in a professional setting for the first time. Someone referred to her as “the help,” which shook her to the core.
“I stepped back into my faith and said, ‘God, what are you showing me from this?’” she says. “It was very hurtful, but there has to be something positive to come out of it.”
That something positive was Helping Everyone Learn Possibilities (H.E.L.P.), a mentorship group that exposes local students to both clinical and nonclinical healthcare careers in her hometown. She is a co-founder along with her sister, Dr. Kyeshia Ward-Jordan, a local pharmacist. The program name reclaims the racially charged term “the help.”
Scales also recently authored The Fairy Healthmother, the first book of her series that will highlight careers in healthcare.
“The notion that one person can achieve anything alone and you don’t have to serve is unacceptable,” Scales says. “I encourage all to not negate the simple law of life, do unto others as you would have done to you. Be kind.”
