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Bryan University Employee Spotlight: HIM Program Director Mechel McKinney  

Emily Bradshaw

Published: | Last Updated:

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A smiling woman

HIM Program Director Mechel McKinney didn’t take a straight path to Bryan University. Her career spans hospital systems, community colleges, a beef startup, and even the halls of Congress. But no matter where she’s landed, her drive to keep learning never changed. 

Roots and a Running Start

Mechel grew up on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico, a member of the Bitter Water clan. She carries that identity with her everywhere, opening every professional introduction with a greeting in Navajo, sharing her name, her clan, and where she comes from. 

When it came time for college, she enrolled in UNM-Gallup, New Mexico’s first-ever Health Information Technology program. She graduated in May (as a first-generation college graduate!) and the program received full accreditation in June. She knew she was taking a risk, but she landed her first job as a medical coder and never looked back. 

Rising Through the Ranks

After five years coding at a local hospital, Mechel made a move that would change everything. She joined St. Joseph’s Healthcare System. She got married, bought a house, and started a new job all in the same month. 

She quickly moved from coder to manager, taking charge of one department within a five-hospital system. Within a year and a half, she was promoted to System-wide Operations Director overseeing all five care centers. She was in her late twenties. 

“That got crazy real fast,” she laughs. That experience gave her a foundation to be able to pivot quickly, lead through chaos, and keep people moving in the same direction. 

A Calling in the Classroom

Ready to slow down and start a family, Mechel made the leap into higher education. She took over the Health Information Management program at a community college in Albuquerque and transformed it from a face-to-face program to a fully online one. Within three years, enrollment had grown to over 200 students. 

She would go on to lead that program twice, earn her MBA while raising two young daughters (studying from 8:30 PM to 1 AM, Monday through Thursday, after the kids went to bed) and eventually move into a bachelor’s-level role at Missouri Western State University before finding her way to Bryan. 

“I got my master’s degree while we were raising two girls,” she says. “I studied during the week and had my family on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.” 

An Unlikely Detour

Between stints in higher ed, Mechel spent about a year and a half as the office manager for Kiva Sun, an all-natural beef startup founded by PGA golfer and fellow Native American Notah Begay. The job took her outside every comfort zone she had. 

“I’m a rule follower,” she admits. “So to jump into something that entrepreneurial was something so outside of my comfort zone. But it taught me a lot.” 

She learned to hold her own in rooms full of big personalities, to speak up and be heard, and to understand that even the most high-profile people are, at the end of the day, just people. It’s a lesson she carried back into the classroom. 

A Historic Moment in Washington

One of the most remarkable entries in her career happened back in 1991. Mechel was one of the first Native American Congressional pages in U.S. history, serving in the 102nd Congress. 

“I was 16 and had never been away from home, had never been in an airplane, coming off the reservation into the hollows of DC,” she recalled.  

She attended high school, U.S. House Page School, in the attic of the Library of Congress, where they peered down at the stacks below. She said the friendships she made there are still going strong today.  

Building the Future of HIM at Bryan

Mechel joined Bryan University as a subject matter expert, helping build out courses before signing on as an adjunct. She loved that BU was a school genuinely committed to students from every zip code and every walk of life. When a full-time position opened, she took it. She stepped into the Program Director role about a year and a half ago. 

Now she’s focused on the future. The HIM program is evolving, and Mechel is making sure students are ready for it. That means weaving AI literacy into every course, not as a gimmick, but as a practical skill. 

“AI is not just a tool you hand someone and say go use it,” she explained. “It’s augmented decision making. And in health information, where we are the caretakers of every piece of data generated by every patient encounter, that human check matters.” 

She’s especially excited about an upcoming course, AI and Health IT, where she plans to pour everything she learned from a recent 36-hour Applied AI in Health Information certification into the curriculum. 

HIM Faculty at Bryan

When asked about her team at BU, Mechel says: “Oh, I hit a home run. They are spectacular. They embody every BU value that I can think of in every way. They work so hard. They want to see students succeed in every way. They are tireless.”  

She recognized one faculty member, Amy Higgins, who was recently recognized with the Arizona Private School Association (APSA) Teacher of the Year Award.  

More Than Medical Coding

One of Mechel’s biggest missions is expanding what people think health information actually is. 

“When people hear health information, they still use the old verbiage medical records,” she said. “When they hear HIM, people look at me and ask, what is that? I say medical coding, and they say oh, okay. So they infer that that’s what health information is. But there are so many different areas you can go into.” 

The field is wide open, and Mechel wants every student who comes through the program to realize the options available to them. “There are many opportunities in the health information industry, more than medical coding.” 

Recommended: Medical Billing and Coding Credentials 2026: CCA, CCS, RHIT & More 

Life Outside the Office

When she’s not building curriculum or connecting with colleagues in the industry, Mechel is taking walks with her husband and family dog, reading, or making the trip to Lubbock to visit her two daughters at Texas Tech. She serves on the board of trustees at her church, where she’s been a member for over 23 years, and volunteers on the worship team. 

She proudly calls herself a “retired volleyball mom,” a title earned after years of solo tournament road trips while her CPA husband was buried in tax season. The measure of a successful trip, she joked, was how many U-turns she made in the rental car. 

Why Bryan

For Mechel, Bryan’s value isn’t just in what it teaches; it’s in who it reaches. 

“It doesn’t matter what background they’re coming from, where they are in their learning, or what their availability,” she said. “I think Bryan University is the perfect place to offer them that opportunity.” 

Each month, we shine a light on one of our amazing team members through the Bryan University Employee Spotlight. Every employee is eligible. Want to join our team? Explore Careers at Bryan University! 

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