Dr. Marylou Mercado has spent her career building opportunities for others, but her own story explains a lot about why.
By Dawnette Polland
Dr. Marylou Mercado remembers what it feels like when the future isn’t entirely clear.
She was the first person in her family to earn a college degree, beginning at a community college because it was what her family could afford. Her father believed strongly in education and encouraged her to keep going, including when she struggled academically. She married young, and there were times when money was tight enough that food and having enough gas to get where she needed to go were real concerns.
Her path didn’t suddenly become easy as she continued her education. There were academic setbacks, the death of her father, an unexpected surgery, and moments when continuing might have seemed harder than stopping.
But there were also people.
Advisors, professors and other women helped her find resources. Someone provided extra tutoring. When she struggled academically during graduate school, a professor helped her develop a plan to continue. During another difficult period, a professor worked with her so she could keep up with coursework and exams.
One of the people Marylou still thinks about is Dr. Anne Brett.
“Dr. Anne Brett has been a mentor and inspiration to me, and her willingness to invest in my growth has had a lasting impact on the leader I have become. Her commitment to mentoring others, strengthening nursing education, and helping faculty grow into confident leaders has influenced how I approach leadership. Developing others, creating opportunities for them to succeed, and investing in the next generation of educators and healthcare professionals are values I came to understand more deeply and now carry forward in the way I lead and mentor others.”
Marylou remembers the people who helped her.
Today, she is Interim Provost and Vice President of Workforce Development, Health Sciences & Public Services at Yavapai College, responsible for 86 degree and certificate programs spanning healthcare, public safety, skilled trades, aviation, manufacturing, engineering and emerging industries.
But when Marylou talks about the work, she doesn’t begin with 86 programs.
She begins with people.
“It starts with caring about the people in our community as individuals,” she said. “Every person in Yavapai County matters. Workforce gives us a chance to meet people where they are. Someone may be looking for a job, trying to learn a trade, building new skills, or simply trying to make a better life for themselves and their family. And when something changes for that person, their family can feel it, too.”
“That person may become a Yavapai College student someday, but that isn’t where it starts. It starts with seeing the person in front of us, listening to them, caring about who they are, and taking the time to understand what they need.”
Listening Beyond the Campus
For Marylou, understanding what people need means getting outside of an office.
Her work regularly puts her in conversation with hospitals and healthcare providers, businesses and employers, law enforcement and emergency services, workforce organizations and community leaders throughout Yavapai County.
Some of those conversations have had a lasting influence on how she approaches her work. Marylou points to conversations with Tracey McCollum, Chief Nursing Executive Officer at Yavapai Regional Medical Center Dignity Health; Tiffany Laurano, Chief Nursing Officer with Northern Arizona Healthcare; Rita Hess, Associate Director for Patient Care Services; and Sandy Griffis, Executive Director of the Yavapai County Contractors Association.
“Their perspectives have reinforced for me the importance of listening to those closest to the needs of our communities and workforce,” Marylou said. “They have shaped the way I lead by building relationships, bringing the right people together, and ensuring the College remains responsive to the people and communities we serve.”
Those conversations matter because the needs of a community don’t arrive neatly organized by institution or program.
A shortage of nurses affects patients and families. A shortage of skilled workers affects employers. A person who can’t find a pathway into a living-wage career may be dealing at the same time with housing, transportation, food or family concerns.
Marylou knows some of those pressures personally.
That perspective has followed her from nursing into education and, eventually, into increasingly broad leadership roles.
She began at Yavapai College in 2018 as Director of Nursing. In 2021, the Associate Degree Nursing program received continuing accreditation for the maximum eight-year cycle. In 2023, the College launched Arizona’s first community college-based, fully online Registered Nurse to Bachelor of Science in Nursing (RN-to-BSN) program, creating a way for working registered nurses to continue their education without leaving their jobs or communities.
She and her team later secured more than $1.1 million in federal funding to expand the nursing pipeline, including a fast-track pathway for experienced Certified Nursing Assistants, Licensed Nursing Assistants and military medical personnel.
Her responsibilities have since expanded far beyond healthcare to include programs in commercial driving, welding, construction, manufacturing, aviation, engineering, public safety and emerging industries.
The Person in Front of Her
Not everything about Marylou can be found on an organizational chart.
Her husband can recall at least five occasions during their eight years in Prescott when an ordinary day suddenly became a medical emergency.
On three different airline flights, flight attendants asked whether there was a medical professional aboard because a passenger was in distress.
Marylou volunteered.
On two other occasions at church, there wasn’t an announcement asking for a medical professional. Marylou noticed that someone was in distress and stepped in to provide assistance.
She is a nurse and nurse practitioner by training. Long before her work involved workforce systems, partnerships or dozens of educational programs, her work centered on caring directly for people.
For her husband, those moments reflect something he has seen repeatedly: when someone needs help, Marylou uses what she knows.
Remembering Where You Started
Marylou’s connection to emergency services is personal in another way.
When her father died in 2000, emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and paramedics were there to care for him. She has spoken about the lasting appreciation that experience gave her for the people who choose professions that put them beside individuals and families during some of life’s most difficult moments.
Today, Paramedicine and public safety are among the areas within her leadership responsibilities.
But Marylou’s story is not simply about how far she has traveled from the young woman who struggled through community college.
It is also about remembering what helped her travel that distance.
She has spoken openly about the people who saw something in her, offered help and sometimes helped her find a way forward when circumstances could have ended her education.
That experience informs what she tells people now.
“Your starting point is not your destination.”
It is an idea that can mean something very different depending on who hears it.
For one person, it may mean earning a first credential. For someone else, learning a trade. It may mean returning to school years later, changing careers, recovering after a setback, supporting a family or simply deciding that where life is today doesn’t have to be where it remains.
Still Marylou
For all the scope of her work, Marylou still likes walking around Yavapai College campuses and talking informally with faculty, staff and students. Those conversations give her a sense of what people are actually doing and experiencing that can’t always be found in a meeting or report.
Away from work, Marylou enjoys a little competition. Pickleball tournaments and marksmanship competitions are among her hobbies, along with taking on challenging off-road trails in her ATV. She and her husband live in Prescott with Honey, their golden retriever.
Her faith has been part of her life since she was young and continues to influence how she thinks about kindness, service and responsibility toward other people. She has served on security, guest services and medical teams at churches in Prescott and in partnership with her daughter, the family Shetland Sheepdog was trained to become a service dog to visit staff and residents in assisted living and nursing care facilities.
When asked what message she would put on a campus billboard, Marylou’s thoughts weren’t about achievement.
Be thankful. Be kind. Be an encourager.
Because, she noted, you may not know what another person is going through.
Marylou does know something about that.
There was a time when someone looking at her would not necessarily have known she was worried about money for food or gas. They wouldn’t have known about the academic struggle, the setback, the grief or the people quietly helping her continue.
Today, she encounters people throughout Yavapai County at very different places in their own lives.
Some will become college students.
Some won’t.
For Marylou, that isn’t where their value begins.
“It starts with seeing the person in front of us, listening to them, caring about who they are, and taking the time to understand what they need.”