LIJ Valley Stream manager is Business Person of the Year

Valley Stream’s sister business organization, the Franklin Square Chamber of Commerce, nominated chamber member Patricia McColley for Business Person of the Year for her work with Long Island Jewish Valley Stream Hospital.

A five-person committee of chamber president Lisa DelliPizzi, previous honorees, and chamber members selected McColley as the 2022 honoree.

“We felt that Patricia McColley was the most qualified member of the Franklin Square Chamber of Commerce to receive this honor,” DelliPizzi said. “The integrity of this award is very important to me.”

McColley’s career began at Northwell Health in 2012 as the patient experience manager for South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore. In 2016, she accepted a position as the program manager on the Northwell corporate community relations team in Islip.

In 2019, as a program manager for the central region, McColley was asked to help build relationships for LIJ Valley Stream and the communities it serves while also assisting the corporate team in leading larger corporate events. 

“She is LIJVS’s ear and ambassador to the community,” said Jason Tan, executive director of LIJ Valley Stream Hospital. “She is responsible for informing us of any new ways it can help meet the community’s changing needs, while also advocating and sharing all of the great work that’s occurring within our walls. Patty has a genuine love for the Franklin Square community and is deserving of this award.”

“What we do at Northwell is work in the communities that we serve by looking out for their wellness, improving their ability to find food, and doing screenings that help with improving their overall health,” McColley said. “We focus on communities near and dear to LIJ Valley Stream that really can use some support through health screenings and education.”

One of her first projects in her new role at LIJ Valley Stream was to build a relationship with Baldwin High School. McColley is the program manager for the community and population health team and has spent the last three years at LIJ Valley Stream assisting in and helping create community contacts and connections.

“My role during that time was to help them get the word out through a lot of community interaction, community involvement, and community health screenings but with Covid that was impossible,” McColley said. “We had to take LIJ Valley Stream hospital into the community and sort of describe what was happening there during the transition.”

McColley has been on the front line of the pandemic for the Valley Stream and neighboring communities, testing and vaccinating for both Covid and monkeypox for the past two and a half years while maintaining essential community-focused programs for the hospital.

“For me to go out into communities like Franklin Square, Elmont and Inwood, which are all within our catchment area for LIJ Valley Stream, and to provide health screenings, including diabetic glucose screenings, out in the community this year was a big deal,” McColley said.

The data gathered from the glucose testing showed some  communities had a higher rate of diabetes.

“Now we’re creating programs in the central region, which includes Franklin Square, that helps focus on that, including working with supermarkets and other programs to create a healthier environment for these communities,” she said.”

McColley, who lives in Bay Shore, not only had to learn her way around Franklin Square, Valley Stream, and Elmont but much of Nassau County and is grateful to the chamber for recognizing the work that she has done at LIJ Valley Stream.

“I think it’s amazing to me because it’s a job that I love to do, and then to be honored for it, it’s just, it’s mind-blowing to me,” McColley said. “Being a board member in a chamber is a responsible position. To support the town in a way that makes you go out and meet people, and they know who you are and they know how to reach you, you can effect change.”

Have an opinon Patricia McColley? Please send an email to jlasso@liherald.com.