
Jackie Guzie made a bold occupational change when she went from helping customers manage financial matters to helping people in a medical emergency.
Jackie Guzie is a paramedic with the Suffield Volunteer Ambulance. She is dedicated to providing the best possible emergency care in our community. Jackie has had a long and successful career, but she wasn’t always in emergency medicine. In 2021, Jackie was featured on the Hartford Business Journal’s List of 40-Under-Forty honorees. At that time, she was a Vice President and Regional Manager at Peoples Bank and managed $1 billion in assets at her branches.
Jackie took a substantial pay cut when she moved from helping people with their money to helping people in urgent need. What motivated her to make the change was the high value that she puts on family, community and her instinct to help others.
Originally from Enfield, Jackie became a bank teller after high school and learned the banking business from bottom to top, moving from teller to assistant manager, branch manager, area manager and vice president. While working, she completed a B.A. in Business Administration and Management at the New England College of Business and Finance.
Helping bank customers and work colleagues was very gratifying but Jackie felt a desire to be of greater service to the community. In 2015, while still working her day job, Jackie volunteered as an EMT at the SVAA and finished 200 more training hours plus 280 hours of clinical time to do so.
Over ten years of volunteering, Jackie found the SVAA work to be so personally rewarding she considered becoming a paramedic. A paramedic is a highly trained emergency responder who can use basic and advanced equipment on ambulances, including the starting of intravenous lines and management of compromised airways.
Paramedics are vital to providing emergency care. “Having a paramedic and a properly equipped ambulance represents about 85% of what an emergency room is”, according to Don Miner, Chairman of the SVAA’s Board of Trustees. “Almost any medication that can be given in an ER can be given by a paramedic.”
Jackie weighed the future and decided to apply for the SVAA’s paramedic scholarship. She was granted the scholarship and completed 2,000 hours of training over sixteen months, becoming a paramedic in 2023.
Jackie is a member of the SVAA’s Patient Advocacy Team, which provides support to the families and friends of patients and others that may witness or be part of an emergency situation. The support can take the form of keeping them informed, placing them in touch with organizations or professionals that can benefit them, and spending time with them in a difficult environment. Jackie is also a current member of the SVAA Board of Directors, which she has served previously as President. She is also a member of the Town of Suffield’s Parks and Recreation Commission.
“I don’t have any regrets,” said Guzie. “I left something I was familiar with, something I had 20 years of experience with. I don’t miss anything about what I left behind. I have been put here to help people. And that’s my passion.”