Tad Worku’s Unconventional Path to Sharing Hope

What began as a promising career in the music industry—complete with a pop-soul album, an international tour, and the pursuit of fame—took a dramatic turn when Tad Worku felt a deeper calling. Now, with a thriving career that blends healthcare, leadership, and music, Tad’s pursuit lies in spreading hope and healing.

Tad, a Pacific Union College alum, graduated with a business degree in 2008. “I really enjoyed PUC—all the great friendships forged there,” he shared. “I loved studying business and had a really good experience the first time around.”

However, Tad’s true passion was for music. He spent the next several years pursuing a career in the industry, where he thrived, securing a tour spanning locations worldwide and nearly releasing an album. But Tad found himself searching for something more. That search led him back to PUC in 2012 in pursuit of a different career path.

He graduated in 2016 with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. “It was a very intentional decision to come back to school,” he explained. “I returned my tour funding and completely stepped away from the music industry. I asked myself, ‘What’s something I can do where my hands are directly connected to purpose?’ That’s how I decided on nursing.”

According to Tad, leaving behind the prospect of fame wasn’t easy. “It was humbling,” he recalled. “You go from preparing for an international tour to taking prerequisites. But it was a turning point. I had been chasing what you’d expect from a music career: fame, success, recognition. But this decision was about something deeper.”

Tad went on to work as a nurse in the emergency department for the next several years. There, he encountered the raw realities of life and death. But even through those years, music never left him—it transformed.

“Music became a way to process what I was experiencing,” he said. “You’re dealing with chaos and suffering. Music helped me make sense of it all. It was a processing tool; writing songs about hope in the midst of pain.”

In January 2020, Tad released a project that blended his musical talent with the stories he carried from healthcare. He even had a tour scheduled for later that year. But when COVID-19 hit, everything changed. Music interest ceased. His tour was canceled. The world shut down. Yet, during an unprecedented time across the globe and for frontline workers acutely, his music—and the hope within it—found a new platform.

“The media started highlighting stories of frontline healthcare workers,” Tad said. “When they found out I was a nurse who had just released an album about the very experiences people were struggling with, suddenly they wanted to talk about the connection between music and healthcare. I had always seen this deep link between the two. Music tells a story in a wide-angle way, but healthcare holds these profound, personal stories of life, love, loss, and hope. I was doing interviews almost weekly.”

Currently, Tad works as a mission coach for Inland Empire Health Plan in Southern California. In this role, he blends leadership coaching with purpose-driven culture work across the health plan and its partner hospitals.

Beyond his full-time job, Tad continues to spread messages of hope and healing to healthcare leaders, policymakers, and national audiences. What began as one talk for a leadership conference in Southern California led to more invitations, including keynotes for organizations like AARP in October 2023 and, most recently, the American Academy of Nursing Health Policy Conference in October 2024.

At that conference, Tad delivered a keynote about imagining the future with hope and the science of hope. “There are over 2,000 peer-reviewed articles on hope science,” Tad noted. “I wanted people to walk away asking themselves, ‘What does it look like to actively envision the future with hope? And if hope does appear, how am I showing up to ensure it remains—in leadership, in practice, in life?’ It’s almost like, ‘What does it mean to be a hope dealer?’”

Tad also incorporated three of his original songs in his talk, each rooted in real moments from his work in healthcare, including the loss of his first patient in the ED and the aftermath of the world shutting down on March 16, 2020.

It’s safe to assume that Tad’s future will be filled with music and impact, shaped by the countless lives he seeks to inspire through messages of hope. His story challenges us to consider what might be possible if we all follow a deeper, God-given calling, even when the path looks nothing like we expect.