Chair
Tristan Twohig, RN
ED- Days
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Your officer team
Posted Jun 5, 2025
Meet our new officer team
Pictured above are WSNA Chair Tristan Twohig, Co-chair Emily Troyer, Secretary Ashley Villelli, Member-at-large Mackenzie Balzer, and Grievance officer Maddie Ritter. Not pictured is your treasurer Eric Holden who will be returning for a second term. Stay tuned for next week’s updates with our individual bios so nurses can get to know us!
Before we can say hello to our new team, we must give a goodbye and tremendous THANK YOU to our long-standing Chair Martha Goodall and Co-Chair Peggy Smith. We spent some time with each of them and asked them to reflect on their lifetime of service to our union work. You can read their stories below!
From Martha Goodall (pictured above)
I was hired in August 1989 as an aid and worked while I was in school. I received my RN in 1990. I started out supplemental on the surgical unit, then took an 8 hour per pay period job on ACU (PCU). That’s all there was! Every time people would drop hours, I would pick them up and eventually I transferred to ICU.
I joined WSNA the first day I had my RN license. I come from a Union family; my dad was a shop steward for electrical engineers. We always knew about negotiations and steward meetings. It was always the right thing to do. I was previously a shop steward at Safeway. I worked there for 13 years. Thanks to my UFCW union (still a member), I receive a union pension. I witnessed a store closure, and how a union makes a difference even during a really bad experience.
My whole reason for being involved is so that I can have a say. Our union is one of the ways to get things fixed. As an example, I was on the Employee and Patient Safety Committee for a long time, and I was involved when we wrote a grant to bring in lift equipment.
There have been times when I was the only officer and nurses wouldn’t get involved. I think as generations of nurses have come up, the importance of having a union had gotten lost. I am glad to see this trend turning around.
I have served our regional nurses association, IENA, most recently in the member at large and treasurer role for at least 20 years. I have also served on the WSNA Labor Executive Council and Board in member at large and treasurer roles for nearly a decade. In my time serving as treasurer I learned about working with Washington State Nurses Foundation (WSNF). WSNF is all volunteer based and dedicated to raising money to support nurses.
Being a part of our union, I have seen policy change at the state level for nurses, and it’s reinforced that if you want change, you must be involved.
In all my time, I think my top highlight was winning contract language that stated no mandatory overtime BEFORE it was state mandated. Alongside WSNA’s negotiating team, Peggy Smith and I were able to negotiate that with Holy Family before the state mandate.
Nurses are our union- nurses need to know that! It doesn’t always mean being an officer or being in the front. It means showing up for meetings and staying informed. Our union is nurses for nurses, we all know what we experience on a day-to-day basis.
Peggy Smith (pictured in the middle above with 2 colleagues from Med/Onc), started out as an aide at Holy Family and has worked as a nurse in medical oncology for 35 years. She has floated everywhere but OR and ICU! Holy Family was closest to where Peggy lived and so she started there and stayed. Medical gives any nurse a good base to learn all the basics and from there, “they can fly” she says.
For 25 years, Peggy has been in our Union’s negotiations and for the last 10 years, she has been our co-chair. The hardest negotiations we had were when we pushed to close the shop, meaning all nurses had to become a member of good standing. In a separate negotiation, a member of management called Holy Family a “quaint little community hospital” and she took personal offense to that. Peggy has been proud to work for Holy Family and told them “Not to ever call us that again, we can do anything any other hospital can but do it better”.
While Peggy is looking forward to her next steps helping train CNAs, she expressed a deep love for her colleagues and that her coworkers are like family. Holy Family recently had a retirement party for her and a few hundred nurses showed up! There isn’t hardly anyone she doesn’t know. She expressed gratitude and hopefulness for our next group of officers as they pay attention to detail and will be skilled for negotiations later.
We asked Peggy why being a member of our union matters, and she said the following; "The union is where our voice is. That's where we can stand up to administration without getting in trouble. And our voices can be heard."
Thank you, Martha and Peggy, for your years of dedication to our community, our nurses and our labor movement. We love you.
Martha and Peggy pictured above with Holy Family WSNA nurses after ratifying the most recent contract!
In Solidarity,
Tristan Twohig WSNA Chair
Emily Troyer WSNA Co Chair
Eric Holden WSNA Treasurer
Ashley Villelli- WSNA Secretary
Maddie Ritter- WSNA Grievance officer
Mackenzie Balzer- WSNA Member at Large
Alle Machorro WSNA Nurse Representative
WSNA staff contact
Allesondra Machorro, BSN, RN, CCRN
Nurse Representative
Previous updates
All the latest updates
May 16, 2025
Join us for a WSNA member reception on Thursday, June 5, from 6 - 8 pm
May 09, 2025
Nurses Week Celebrations
May 08, 2025
Officer election notice
Mar 31, 2025
Our Union’s Nurses Voted YES!
Mar 14, 2025
WSNA at Holy Family MOU Vote
Feb 28, 2025
WSNA union news
Resources and tools
Document unsafe conditions
If you find yourself in a situation that you believe creates unsafe conditions for patients or for you, you should complete a Staffing Complaint / ADO Form as soon as possible.
By completing the form, you will help make the problem known to management, creating an opportunity for the problem to be addressed. Additionally, you will be documenting the facts, which may be helpful to you later if there is a negative outcome.
WSNA also uses your ADO forms to track the problems occurring in your facility. When you and your coworkers take the important step of filling out an ADO form, you are helping to identify whether there is a pattern of unsafe conditions for you or your patients at your facilities. This information is used by your conference committee, staffing committee, and WSNA labor staff to improve your working conditions.
Representation rights
As a union member, you have the right to have a representative present in any meetings with management that could potentially lead to disciplinary action against you.
If called into a meeting with management, read the following to management when the meeting begins:
If this discussion could in any way lead to my being disciplined or terminated, I respectfully request that my union representative be present at this meeting. Without representation present, I choose not to participate in this discussion.
Find out more about this crucial right and how to exercise it to ensure your fair treatment and protection.
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