Rachel Gilbreath (then Rachel Del Mauro) was 13, enjoying the sticky days of a 1980s summer in Brookfield, Wisconsin, when her teenage adventures came to an abrupt, if temporary, halt. Her father, Jim Del Mauro, was grounding her for two weeks. “Go up to your room — and don’t slam the door,” he instructed.
Rachel ran upstairs and slammed the bedroom door as hard as she could. Then she did it again for good measure. Jim appeared minutes later, toolbox in hand, and calmly proceeded to remove the door from its hinges. It would be gone for the duration of Rachel’s punishment. “I never slammed my door again, I can tell you that!” she recalls, laughing. “That was my dad — always finding ways to teach us lessons without losing his cool.”
Jim was living by one of his many mantras: “You have to get their attention before learning can take place.” It served him well as a parent and during his 29-year career at GE, where he was corporate vice president of GE Medical Systems. Jim passed away in January, after a 25-year battle with Parkinson’s disease, but his leadership lessons live on in Rachel, who is president of GE HealthCare in the Northeast Region.
“My dad was my hero, my best friend, and my mentor,” Rachel says. “I wouldn’t be the person I am today, as a mom or a professional, if I hadn’t been his daughter.”
Family Man
Jim grew up in Newark, New Jersey, part of a close-knit Italian family. His father was a band leader who played with Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra, but Jim was attracted to sales, starting out by selling earplugs door to door. When he joined General Electric, in 1970, Jim’s charisma and authentic approach to team building led him to leadership roles at GE Medical Systems. From East District sales manager, he went on to head the national sales and services teams, becoming corporate vice president in 1997. When the company introduced some of the first CT and MRI technologies, in the 1980s, Jim worked closely with then CEO Jack Welch, who became a close friend.
Jim and his wife, Susan, raised their three children — David, Lisa, and Rachel — in Wisconsin. “Despite his work responsibilities, which were significant, he always made time for his kids,” Rachel says. She and her father shared a special bond in their love for running marathons, and she fondly remembers their long conversations, and the counseling he would offer, on weekend training outings. “He guided us through life, allowing us our independence and being there when we stumbled or needed advice. Which was often.”
By the late 1990s, Jim was living in Waukesha, still enjoying his career. Rachel, a recent graduate of New York’s St. Lawrence University, was happy with her job in account management at a Boston-based marketing agency. But when Jim began experiencing weakness in his right hand, she grew concerned. Her grandfather, Jim’s dad, had died of Parkinson’s. She tried hard to stay positive as what began as “a few tests” for Jim turned into a year of visits to multiple medical centers for additional scans and opinions. Finally, in 1998, he called her from Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic to share his life-altering diagnosis: Jim, too, had Parkinson’s. “I’m going to fight this!” he said.
And fight he did, relying on his Catholic faith, a positive attitude, and regular exercise to stay strong. “He never gave up or felt sorry for himself,” Rachel says. “He liked to say, quoting Mark Twain, ‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.’”
Throughout his illness, Jim remained fiercely loyal to the company he’d helped build. If he went in for a brain scan, he’d make sure the facility used GE HealthCare technologies. “If it wasn’t GE, he’d literally refuse — he’d say, ‘You’re not scanning me on that,’” says Rachel. “This was before they had anything like DAT-SPECT imaging.”
Her Father’s Daughter
While Jim’s Parkinson’s journey was just beginning, Rachel decided to make a career move, joining GE HealthCare’s technical sales leadership program in 2001. Her father was thrilled, and Rachel was proud to be following in his footsteps. At first, though, she was overwhelmed by the reactions of her new colleagues.
“You’re Jim Del Mauro’s daughter!” people kept saying. She worried she’d be lost in the shadow of his legacy and hoped to correct any perception that she’d been hired out of favoritism. Jim’s advice was helpful and no-nonsense, as always. “You’re going to have to prove yourself the same way that other people prove themselves, Rachel,” he said. “Just do your thing.”
Eventually she began to cherish comparisons to her father, who was respected not only as a manager and mentor but as a jovial and kind friend. “Yes, he was successful, but people wanted to tell me how he made them laugh, or made them feel, or helped them at what felt like their darkest time,” she says. “He had such an impact on so many people. He was an icon in his days at GE.”
Rachel has been making her own mark at the company. “Be the kind of leader you’d want to follow,” Jim would say, and she’s taken the message to heart, striving to inspire through strength, compassion, and a commitment to inclusiveness and empowerment. Rachel held several sales and management positions at GEHC before her 2014 promotion to general manager. She left the company briefly in 2019 but returned to become Northeast Region president in April 2022.
Support from family, friends, and the GE HealthCare community has helped get Rachel through the difficulties of losing her dad, and she notes that Jim would be honored that people are sharing stories about him. “He loved making an impact and being in the spotlight, but he always used it to teach or share a message,” she says. Just days before his death, he was still sending inspiring words to his loved ones, including Rachel’s two young children. He also reached out to the GEHC community, recording a poignant video message for the Pharmaceutical Diagnostics sales team.
Now that her first Father’s Day without Jim has come and gone, Rachel continues to celebrate his life, and she’s determined to keep sharing — and living by — the important lessons he taught her. Along with missing her dad, she feels overwhelmingly grateful to have known him. “In the simplest terms,” she says, “I feel like the luckiest daughter on the planet.”
