Reflecting on a Season of Joy, Gratitude and Bidding Farewell | A Message From CEO Dave Ressler

The holiday season is a very special time of year for me, with its prelude starting as soon as the leaves start to change. I find joy in our favorite traditions, spending time with family and reflecting on the past years while anticipating the next one. For some, the holidays can evoke very painful feelings of regret, loneliness and sometimes loss and tragedy, which we in healthcare know all too well and are prepared to help. During my 40-plus years in this business, I have experienced and witnessed hard life realities during the holidays but have always felt blessed when the joy prevails.

The holidays this year mark the end of one of my life’s symbolic seasons, and the beginning of a new one. Shortly after the holidays, in January, I will be leaving Aspen Valley Health and pursuing my new life as a retiree. The prospect is exciting and daunting at the same time. I have been working since I was 15, including through my college years, and my professional career has followed a continuous but non-linear line through the decades that, at times, resembled the flight path of a firefly. But I have always felt I was moving forward with my career. Now I feel like my life is moving forward with my wife and best friend of 35 years, Julie, and watching the adult lives of our two kids take flight.

Since 2004, AVH has been my longest work relationship, and leaving is hard. It’s always about the people and not about the place for me: the staff, the employees, the board members, many patients and the members of the community with whom I have partnered and worked. As I depart AVH, I am also stepping down from multiple boards on which I have served and where I have learned and grown as a person and a professional, just as I have learned from so many good and committed people at AVH. Few careers offer the opportunity to work with professionals in so many different disciplines as has mine.

At the same time, I am inspired by the certainty that AVH will continue to thrive and fulfill its mission of providing extraordinary healthcare long after I am gone, as it has for nearly 135 years since its creation as the Citizen’s Hospital in 1891. As much as I have felt a deep connection to the organization over the past two decades, I also have known my place in its long history that predates and will long surpass my tenure. The community has long supported AVH, the board has long served it and the staff and physicians have long provided the highest level of personalized care. And they will all continue to do so. That’s who AVH is, and what the community and our patients deserve.

Next month, you will meet our new CEO who the board, with strong community input through a search committee, carefully selected to carry the organization forward and to new heights in the continued pursuit of our vision to be the healthiest community in the nation. I am excited about that. Be assured I will continue to be a part of the growing AVH family of current and past employees, which brings me great joy as I enter my next season of life.