When Santy Sajan left a leading private hospital in the city in 2006 where she served for more than two years as a nurse, she vowed to own a hospital someday. It was a tall order, especially for someone who had lost her father at a very young age and for whom a struggle for finance was a deeply-ingrained part of life.

Santy was born and grew up in Calicut, Kerala and studied in a Malayalam medium school. She had set her sights on being a doctor and although she sat for the entrance exam, she couldn’t make it largely due to a lack of finances. Santy is the eldest of four children and with her father having passed away, she had to support herself and contribute to the family pool. With medicine ruled out, nursing was her next best bet. Santy believed it was her passport to see the world — precisely as it turned out.

Santy, who had spent two-and-a-half years as a nurse in Columbia Asia, was appointed general manager of the hospital’s newest branch in Whitefield in December 2013. For Santy it was another peak on a graph that included years of slogging in hospitals in the Middle East and studies — a doctorate and an MBA in Medicine — in the US. She has worked as a nurse for 15 years.

She began putting her dream into action. After leaving Columbia Asia, Santy moved to the US to do a PhD in nursing. She also completed an MBA in Medicine from Johns Hopkins University. No part of the journey was easy though. Her husband, who is in the business of health and fitness clubs, was a major driving force, while her son Ryan, now 13, also had to make sacrifices. But Santy, now in her mid-40s, always believed that with hard work she could be master rather than victim of fate. Today, after years of working under doctors, Santy is the general manager of the super-speciality hospital — a branch of the same one she left in 2006. She has 220 employees and 80 doctors under her charge and takes care of recruitments , accounts and assessments. Her strong belief in her capabilities paid off.