Celebrating Our People – Meet Mashonda Smalley

Mashonda Smalley, Supply Chain Manager at Flaget Memorial Hospital in Bardstown, refuses to see the challenges in her detail-heavy job as roadblocks.

“I try to bring positives into negatives,” Smalley said. “I can’t really pinpoint a challenge because I don’t allow myself to. I focus on bringing out the positive in every negative.”

Smalley describes herself as a people person. “I’m bubbly,” she said with a laugh. Her “remarkable ability to bring people together for shared goals” was cited when she was honored as the 2024 Flaget Leader of the Year.

In her job, Smalley leads a four-person team responsible for ordering, distributing and replenishing needed supplies for every department in the hospital. She believes in leading by example and pitches in to help whenever it’s needed. “Whatever my employees do, I should be able to do,” she said. “We work together, not just in our department, but throughout the ministry.”

Before joining CommonSpirit, Smalley worked in billing and coding for a primary care physician. She later served as a third-party contractor supporting Flaget, first as a scheduler and then as a scheduling supervisor for the Kentucky market. In that role, she supervised 25 employees and helped lead the transition to the Epic electronic health record system. But Smalley said she always wanted to work directly for CommonSpirit. When the supply chain manager job opened, Flaget President Jennifer Nolan encouraged her to apply. 

“This job right now is a breath of fresh air,” she said. “I am blessed to be a part of the CommonSpirit family. I love coming to work every day.”

While there is no daily patient contact in her work, Smalley enjoys the patient interaction she gets as part of the rounds that hospital leaders regularly make to assess patient satisfaction.She said the visits remind her of why she’s there. “We wear many hats here at Flaget. As leaders, patient care is part of everything we do. At Flaget, we are small in numbers, but we are so mighty,” she said.

Smalley contributes to Flaget in other ways, as part of the Safety Coach Team, ensuring patient and caregiver safety; and the Spirit Team that lifts morale. “I try to keep my smiling face throughout the hospital — for patients and caregivers,” she said.

Smalley is also a committee member for the inaugural Future Healers program, which is supported by Flaget and other community partners. Future Healers is a mentorship initiative connecting children to health science education and trauma-informed healing. “Our kids are our future. If I can help with that — even a little — I’m all in.” she said. “I wish we’d had a program like this growing up.”

A Bardstown native, Smalley spent part of her childhood in Frankfort before returning home, where today she lives with her husband of 27 years, Joseph, a press operator at a local company. She is the mother of four adult children and has nine grandchildren.

Smalley said she lives by Saint Joseph’s humankindness principle: “The key word in humankindness is kindness. Kindness from the heart. If you see a patient in the hospital, help them. Smile, say ‘Good morning.’ It all starts with kindness.” 

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