Donna Hyland

When Donna Hyland was growing up in Bowling Green, she never dreamed she would later become the chief executive officer of a major children’s health system in Atlanta.

Accounting was her passion.

“I thought I wanted to get an accounting degree and go to law school,” she said Wednesday in a phone interview with the Daily News. “I worked at a law firm and decided I didn’t want to go to law school.”

Instead, she worked her way up to become president and CEO of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, one of the largest children’s health systems in the country. 

“There’s about four of us neck-in-neck,” she said. “Children’s hospitals are special. (Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta treats) 400,000 kids a year.”

When Hyland was a youngster and teen in Bowling Green, she concentrated on hanging out with her friends. Kids didn’t have all the technology they have today, she said.

“Bowling Green was a lot smaller when I grew up there. I had a lot of good friends. My daughter always laughs because when I went to (the University of Kentucky), we didn’t even have cellphones,” she said. “My parents would be a nervous wreck because we’d be driving back on Sunday night, and we didn’t have cellphones.”

She graduated from Warren Central High School. Thomas Westbrook, Hyland’s father, said his daughter has always been “pretty smart.”

“She made good grades. She always had her head set when she was young that she was going to school and make something of herself,” the Alvaton man said.

“She was always a good kid. She never gave us any trouble. We’re blessed.”

Hyland went to UK, but got a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting in 1982 from Western Kentucky University. 

“They had such a good accounting department. I was at UK, but took summer classes at Western,” she said.

“When I got closer to the end, I thought I’d just finish up there, so that’s what I did.”

While she was a student at WKU, she worked at Holland and Associates to get more accounting experience.

After she graduated, she worked at Camping World’s accounting department for a couple of years. Still, she wanted to live somewhere other than Bowling Green.

“I wanted to be in the South – Atlanta, Nashville or Dallas. I had a lot of friends from UK who had gone to Atlanta,” she said. “I had gone down there to visit. At that time, it was very easy to get jobs. I went to Atlanta and worked for Home Depot in their accounting and finance area.”

That was 33 years ago. The metropolitan city has grown from a population of 2 million to 6 million, Hyland said. 

She became a certified public accountant in 1984 and sometime afterward got into health care with American Medical International, which owned hospitals.

“I wanted to try something different,” she said.

“I worked in their accounting and finance areas.”

The company offered her a job in Boca Raton, Fla.

A former boss who recruited her had left American Medical International and had become the chief financial officer at Scottish Rite Children’s Medical Center in Atlanta.

Hyland became a controller, who produces financial statements, at Scottish Rite.

“When I was 28, the woman who recruited me died. When she died they were going to do a search for a CFO,” she said.

“They asked if I wanted to throw my hat in the ring. I became CFO at (age) 29.”

Hyland’s career continued to move upward after 1989. In 1998, she became CFO of the merged entities of Scottish Rite and Egleston Children’s Health Care System to form Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. In 2005, she became the chief operating officer. In 2006, Hughes Spalding was added to the system. In 2008, she became the CEO.

The Marcus Autism Center also came on board in 2008. It is the largest autism treatment center in the country.

“It was started by Bernie Marcus (the first CEO) of Home Depot, so it came full circle (for me),” she said.

Once the entities merged, they were able to do so much more to help kids.

“We do all the teaching for Emory School of Medicine as well as Morehouse School of Medicine. We do research in pediatrics with Emory and Georgia Tech,” Hyland said.

“Cutting edge research brings doctors with engineers. By bringing them all together they’re doing novel innovations in the diagnosis and treatment of kids.”

The system recruits world renowned researchers, she said.

“We want to find cures for these diseases that have such a negative impact on kids,” she said.

No child in Georgia is turned away because of their inability to pay, Hyland said.

“I have a financial background. I understand the business side of it,” she said. “Last year our charity care was $80 million.

“The nurses and doctors are phenomenal,” she said. “They may have the richest kid in Atlanta next to the poorest kid in Atlanta and they don’t differentiate.”

She and her husband, Paul, have two children – John, 22, and Brooke, 19, both of whom go to the University of Georgia.

“As a mom with two kids of my own, I can’t imagine having one of them be sick and not be able to get the care they need,” she said.

Visiting the hospitals helps Hyland keep life in perspective.

“If I think I’m having a bad day, I’ll walk through one of those hospitals and think I’m not having a bad day,” she said. “People who want to go into health care need to have a passion for helping other people. It’s a great field to go into, but there are challenges.”

— Follow features reporter Alyssa Harvey on Twitter at twitter.com/bgdailynews or visit bgdailynews.com.