Twenty-five years of institutional governance. A birthday party for a kid nobody else remembered.

25 years at a major academic health center

Pam McFadden spent more than 25 years leading continuing-education initiatives at the University of North Texas Health Science Center — the kind of long institutional tenure that means she has seen governance done well, and done poorly, at real scale, over decades rather than a single project cycle.

National governance leadership

Her governance credentials extend beyond one institution. Pam served as past president of the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions (ACEHP) and former president of the Society for Academic Continuing Medical Education (SACME) — two of the field's most established professional governance bodies. Leading national organizations like these requires exactly the discipline a growing nonprofit board needs: real financial oversight, real accountability structures, and the judgment to tell the difference between good intentions and sound governance.

Co-founding the DFW Birthday Brigade

Alongside her institutional career, Pam co-founded the DFW Birthday Brigade, an organization built around a simple, specific idea: foster children deserve a real birthday celebration, not just another day that passes unmarked in a system already short on things that feel normal. Co-founding an organization — not just volunteering for one — means Pam has personally done the work Mercy Manor is doing now: building something from an idea into a functioning, ongoing effort.

Why Mercy Manor, and why now

Pam joined Mercy Manor's board in April 2026, bringing a rare combination for a ministry at this stage: national-level institutional governance experience, paired with firsthand knowledge of what it takes to build something from nothing for a population — foster children, in her case, women in crisis in Mercy Manor's — that the broader system too often overlooks.