RIT alumni are shaping new careers: Concierge nursing executive

Leaving behind oncology nursing for longevity medicine, Olivia Svrchek has followed a career path outside of traditional healthcare. She is reframing her profession in an era of unprecedented health technology, remote nursing opportunities, and personalized healthcare options for aging well.

Svrchek ’11 (biomedical sciences) is the chief nursing executive at Prenuvo, a full-body MRI scanning and preventive health screening company based in Redwood, Calif. Direct consumers are turning to MRI scans and biomarker tracking to detect early-stage cancers and other conditions before symptoms show up.

In one year since joining Prenuvo, Svrchek has grown her staff from three to 80 registered nurses and nurse practitioners. They consult remotely with customers about their results.

“It’s a different type of nursing practice and relationship with a patient,” she said. “It’s proactive healthcare.”

After RIT, Svrchek earned multiple degrees in nursing and healthcare leadership from Johns Hopkins University, Mount Sinai Health System, and Samuel Merritt University. She enjoyed her oncology patients but saw entrenched problems within the healthcare system.

“Startups are the opposite of hospitals and the healthcare system—they move fast,” said Svrchek. “They see a problem, propose a solution, and test it immediately. They get to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ fast, and that was more my style.”

From the beginning of her education, RIT introduced Svrchek to systems thinking and cross-disciplinary problem solving. It prepared her to leave bedside nursing in 2015 and to rethink her profession in terms of health-tech innovation, AI in medicine, and the future of clinical care in which nurses are part of the conversation about the technology they use.

“What I experienced at RIT opened my mind to know that I could approach nursing in a different way,” said Svrchek, this year’s recipient of the RIT Emerging Leader Award. “I didn’t have to stay at the bedside or stay in a hospital system or live my career in a traditional sense.”