These St. Luke's Sisters are a Picture of Pride

The photo on Cathy Ortolani’s LinkedIn page says it all. She and her sister, Danielle Godfrey, are St. Luke’s proud, as evidenced by their branded baseball caps and sweatshirts and their winning smiles.

They took the selfie just before Godfrey joined the Network as a program specialist for the Rural Psychiatry Residency and Addiction Medicine Fellowship programs at the St. Luke’s Miners and Anderson Campuses.

“I stopped at the gift shop and got us matching swag, and we did the photo shoot at our sister Tori’s house on Easter Sunday,” recalled Ortolani who, at 33, is the older sibling.

A talent acquisition specialist at St. Luke’s Monroe Campus, Ortolani had been trying for several years to convince Godfrey to switch to St. Luke’s from the large New Jersey health system where she worked as a fellowship coordinator and assistant physician recruiter. Finally, after the residency program specialist vacancy was posted, her sister applied and was chosen for it.

Though she has been with St. Luke’s only a short time, Godfrey says she already feels pride in working for the Network, which is the Lehigh Valley’s only locally-based, independent health care system, serving the community for over 150 years.

“I knew immediately that I had made the right decision coming here,” says the 28-year-old, who lives in Allentown with her husband.

Hailing from Long Island, where their brother still lives and works, the sisters launched their careers in health care at Northwell Health.

The siblings graduated from King's College in Wilkes-Barre, and Ortolani moved back to Pennsylvania in 2020, settling with her husband and daughter in East Stroudsburg. From 2020 to 2021 she worked on her house, traveling back and forth from Long Island to Pennsylvania. She wasn’t very familiar with St. Luke’s until a few years ago when a fall by her young daughter led to a pivotal trip to the St. Luke’s Monroe ER.

The staff there showed them the kind of expert and compassionate care the Network is famous for and also shared tips with them on nearby restaurants, schools and shopping. That convinced Ortolani and her husband that this would be a great place for her to work.

“I thought if the care here is that good, and the people are this nice, this organization must also be a good place to work,” she explained. In 2022, Ortolani again experienced St. Luke’s award-winning care during the birth of her second child, Lucas, at St. Luke’s Anderson Campus.

The sisters talk shop when they’re together with family, citing the benefits of working for St. Luke’s and living in the lovely Pocono Mountains. With two of four siblings at the Network, Godfrey and Ortolani are planning to convince their brother and sister to join them at some point.“We travel in a pack,” Ortolani said with a chuckle.

Meanwhile, these two sisters are all in, embracing their daily duties passionately to build the organization’s workforce as they bring in qualified professionals to fill vacancies.

“At St. Luke’s we provide excellent care to our patients and their families, and it is an honor to work alongside my sister to play a role in that care,” said Ortolani. “I’m hiring and onboarding our new employees, and Danielle helps ensure her residents and fellows have everything they need to complete their St Luke’s training and become fully practicing physicians.”

Adds her younger sister, “I’m just getting started here, but I already feel like St. Luke’s is home.”