• I hold an MBA from Yale and a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. Managing a pediatric surgical nursing program across 365 days taught me that fiscal discipline is not a spreadsheet exercise. Every budget decision has a direct consequence for the people depending on the system to work. I make hard resource decisions, find efficiencies without sacrificing quality, and stay accountable when the numbers do not add up. I will bring that same rigor to Milton's budget, town contracts, and long-term financial planning.

  • I hold an MSN in Nurse Executive Leadership from Benedictine University. I lead a nursing team while collaborating daily with surgeons, anesthesiologists, and hospital executives in one of the most demanding clinical environments in medicine. I am trained to identify why systems fail and redesign them from the ground up. I know how to align people with competing priorities around a shared outcome and move them forward. When something in Milton is not working, I will not accept it as fixed.

  • I have testified before the Massachusetts legislature on health care funding, workforce safety, and insurance reform. At the state level, I introduced two bills currently before the Massachusetts Senate. S.1482 requires hospitals and surgical facilities to protect patients and health care workers from surgical smoke. S.2599 requires insurers to cover medically necessary treatment of port-wine birthmarks in children, a condition routinely denied as cosmetic despite serious medical consequences.

    I have lobbied federal legislators in Washington on some of the most consequential health care issues facing working families. I have advocated for preserving Medicaid funding, reauthorizing Title VIII nursing workforce programs, protecting nurses from workplace violence, and expanding patients' access to care through advanced practice nurses. I know how government works from the inside. I know how to move it.

  • I am raising my boys here and I already serve Milton as an elected Town Meeting Member. I understand the tensions and tradeoffs this town faces every year. I know what is at stake for families, for schools, and for the neighborhoods that make Milton worth fighting for.

ABOUT

Megan Nolan Graduation

Some people know from a young age exactly what they are meant to do. I was one of them.

I became a nurse because I believed that the most important thing one person can do for another is show up in their hardest moment and make them feel less alone. That belief took me into the operating room of a pediatric hospital where I still work today, caring for children facing surgery and the families who love them. A scared five year old going into the operating room does not need a clinician. They need someone who sees them, steadies them, and makes them feel safe. That is what I show up to do. And that instinct, to see people, to steady them, to make them feel like they matter, has shaped every decision I have made since.

As the years passed I began to see that caring for people at the bedside and caring for the systems that support them were not separate callings. They were the same calling at different scales. So when I was asked to step into leadership I said yes. I went back to school, earning my MSN in Nurse Executive Leadership and my MBA from Yale. I became a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. I took on more responsibility, more complexity, more pressure. Today I serve as Senior Director of Nursing and Patient Care Operations, leading a team of nurses while collaborating daily with surgeons and anesthesiologists in a world class pediatric operating room. I manage quality, safety, staffing, and budgets all at once, every day, in an environment where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in the lives of children. That is the weight I carry to work every morning. And I would not trade it for anything.

But I did not stop there. I have spent years advocating for nurses and healthcare workers far beyond my hospital. I serve as Secretary of the American Nurses Association of Massachusetts and have previously served on the boards of national nursing organizations. I have testified on Beacon Hill and in Washington on health insurance reform, workforce safety, and the funding that nurses and patients depend on. I have sat across the table from legislators and made the case for the people who could not be in that room. I know how to build coalitions. I know how systems change. And I know that change does not happen by waiting for someone else to speak up.

Then, in 2024, my life stopped in a way I never expected. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And for the first time in my career I was not the one providing the care. I was the one receiving it. I know now what it feels like to be frightened and uncertain and completely dependent on the goodness of the people around you. And what I found in those months humbled me completely.

Sitting in that treatment chair, I had a lot of time to think. I thought about my boys and the town I want them to grow up in. I thought about the families in every corner of Milton who do not yet feel seen, the neighbors who wonder if anyone is fighting for their street, their school, their community. I thought about everything I had learned, every skill I had built, every moment I had spent fighting for people who needed someone in their corner. And I thought, if not now, when? If not me, who?

That is why I am running. Not because politics called me. Because people did. Caring for people is not what I do. It is who I am. And now I want to bring that same care to every neighbor in every corner of Milton.