A Mother's Day Story: Mom-Daughter Nurses Have Leadership Roles at Columbia’s U.S. Anesthesia Partners

When Laurie Meginnis was raising her children in Indiana in the 1990s, she juggled nursing classes one or two courses at a time while managing a household and watching her kids play volleyball — textbooks open on her lap in the bleachers. She wasn't just building a career. She was, without knowing it, showing her daughter exactly what was possible.

Nearly three decades later, both Laurie and her daughter Kelly Lock are Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists — CRNAs — working for U.S. Anesthesia Partners (USAP) in Columbia. They live 15 minutes apart. Their professional lives are woven together in ways neither fully planned.

Laurie today serves as Maryland Platform Chief CRNA for USAP, overseeing more than 130 CRNAs across the state's hospital sites — and still stepping into the operating room herself. Kelly is Site Chief CRNA for the Johns Hopkins Surgery Center series, managing three Hopkins ambulatory surgery centers and their clinical teams.

The story of how they got here is one of quiet determination, timing, and a daughter who paid close attention.

"I'd always had some type of interest in medicine for as long as I can remember," Kelly says. She originally planned on medical school. Then her father had surgery, and she saw ICU nurses working up close — the hands-on care, the presence, the human connection. And she watched her mother. "Seeing my mom become a CRNA, and being able to do shadow time in the ORs — that merged my desire to be an advanced practice provider with being able to have a family and be present for them."

The career path that Laurie pioneered, Kelly chose deliberately.

The connection runs both ways. It was Kelly, fresh out of CRNA school in 2020 and interviewing for her first job, who spotted a leadership opening at a USAP site and told her mother: You should look at this place. It's right up your alley. Laurie submitted her CV, joined USAP just before COVID hit, and hasn't looked back. "It's the best thing I ever did," she says.

At USAP, the pair found an organization that matched their values — one that supported its clinical staff through the pandemic rather than cutting pay or reassigning CRNAs out of their specialty. That culture of loyalty, Laurie says, is what makes USAP Maryland a place people want to stay.

But what makes this story linger past the professional details is what each of them says when asked, simply, what they would want to say to the other.

Kelly goes first, and doesn't hesitate. "She's probably always been my number one cheerleader," she says of her mother. "Her and my dad are the ones that really pushed me and always told me I could do whatever I want. Work hard, it pays off. Be dedicated no matter what. You're always going to have adversity, you're always going to have people that doubt you — but your family's always there for you."

Laurie — who cheerfully admits she cries at commercials — takes a breath. "Very, very proud of her," she says. "The hard work and everything has paid off. She's gone through a lot of adversity to get where she is, as does everybody. But she's handled it all very, very well."

Then, after a pause: "She was always kind of the quiet one. And now people ask me — Kelly does what? And she manages how many people? And I'm like — yeah. You'd be surprised."

This Mother's Day, Laurie Meginnis and Kelly Lock are proof that the most powerful career mentorship sometimes happens not in a classroom, but in the bleachers of a high school gym — with a textbook open and a mom who refused to stop.