Michele Sutton, a 1984 and 1988 Southeastern graduate and the president and chief executive officer of North Oaks Health System, has been selected as the Alumni Association’s 2019 Alumna of the Year.

Sutton earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing and master’s degree in business administration from Southeastern. She began at North Oaks Health System in 1988 as community resources officer and was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer in 2006. In 2012, she took on the additional responsibility of administrator and chief executive officer for North Oaks Medical Center. The North Oaks Board of Commissioners appointed her president and chief executive officer of the health system in January 2017.

She is a previous president and vice president of the American College of Healthcare Executives’ Southeast Louisiana chapter and led the merger of both state chapters. She also serves on the American Hospital Association’s Foster G. McGaw Committee and is a longstanding member of the Louisiana Hospital Association, where she is currently a member-at-large for the association’s board of trustees and its political action committee board of directors, as well as its trust fund’s board of directors.

Sutton gives back to her alma mater through the Alumni Association, for which she is a lifetime member; the Lions Athletic Association, for which she is a board member; and Southeastern’s FeLions, of which she has been a member since 2003.

Through its Annie Awards endeavor, the Greater Hammond Chamber of Commerce bestowed upon Sutton both an Outstanding Woman in Business Annie Award (1999) and a Legacy Annie Award (2018). Other honors include recognition in 2007 as a Woman of the Year by New Orleans CityBusiness and as one of the Most Influential Women in Tangipahoa Parish by The Daily Star. She was also the recipient of the 2007 Golden Pelican Marketer of the Year Award from the Louisiana Society for Hospital Public Relations and Marketing.