Great leaders in healthcare | 2026

Great healthcare leaders are proactive changemakers, always looking ahead and striving for better.

The executives recognized here represent the best of the best in healthcare leadership. They are bold, courageous and deeply committed to their causes.

Whether pioneering new models of care delivery, engineering solutions to the industry’s most stubborn challenges, or reimagining the everyday experiences of those who give and receive care, these leaders are building the future rather than passively waiting for it to arrive.

Note: Becker’s Healthcare developed this list based on nominations and editorial research. Leaders do not pay and cannot pay for inclusion on this list. This list is not exhaustive, nor is it an endorsement of the leaders or organizations mentioned. We extend a special thank you to Rhoda Weiss for her contributions to this list. Leaders are presented in alphabetical order.

Contact Anna Falvey at afalvey@beckershealthcare.com with questions or comments.Hospital and health system

CEOs and presidents

Brian Adams. President and CEO of AdventHealth Central Florida Division (Orlando). Mr. Adams provides executive leadership for AdventHealth in Central Florida, overseeing strategy, operations and growth across hospitals, emergency departments and ambulatory services spanning diverse Central Florida communities. He oversees more than 37,000 team members delivering care across acute, outpatient and community-based settings. In 2025, he assumed senior executive oversight of AdventHealth’s physician enterprise, providing strategic direction for efforts to improve access, clinical integration, and consistency across physician and specialty care. His leadership emphasizes workforce development, quality and community access to care, with the division strengthening healthcare career pipelines through partnerships with local schools and academic institutions, and expanding collaboration with community organizations to improve access for underserved populations. Under his direction, the division has sustained strong performance in patient safety and clinical outcomes, earning consistent “A” safety grades from The Leapfrog Group. AdventHealth Orlando has been recognized as the top hospital in the metro area by U.S. News & World Report for more than a decade, and in 2025-26 became the first hospital in the Southeastern U.S. to achieve a ranking among the organization’s top 20 hospitals in the nation. Mr. Adams serves on the boards of Lift Orlando, the Orlando Economic Partnership governor’s council, and the American Hospital Association regional policy board. He was named one of Orlando Magazine’s “50 Most Powerful People” for 2025.

Gregory Adams. CEO of Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.). Mr. Adams serves as chairman and CEO for Kaiser Permanente, an integrated nonprofit healthcare system where 243,795 employees aid in the care and coverage of over 12.6 million members via 40 hospitals and 610 medical offices. Under his leadership, the organization launched Risant Health in 2023 to expand access to its value-based care model, which delivers superior health outcomes, lower costs and increased equity. Mr. Adams has advanced initiatives to address health disparities, promoting workforce diversity to reflect the communities served by Kaiser Permanente. With over 40 years of healthcare experience, including 25 years at Kaiser Permanente, Mr. Adams was named to Time’s “TIME100 Health” list for 2024 thanks to his influence in reshaping the industry. He also contributes to global health and equity efforts through leadership roles in organizations like the World Economic Forum and ELEVATE, a mentoring program for Black healthcare executives.

Robert Allen. President and CEO of Intermountain Health (Salt Lake City). As president and CEO of Intermountain Health, Mr. Allen leads one of the nation’s most innovative health systems, focused on improving affordability, access and health outcomes. With extensive leadership experience in urban and rural markets, he has successfully aligned Intermountain’s vast system under a high-performing operating model that fosters collaboration and growth. Under his leadership, the nonprofit health system contributed $746 million in community benefit in 2023. He also spearheaded a nation-leading daily huddle model that has connected teams across tiered-escalation huddles, generating over hundreds of thousands of employee-driven improvements. Additionally, Mr. Allen launched a systemwide initiative to simplify employee roles and enhance the patient experience, leading to thousands of ideas submitted. Under his leadership, the system is also prioritizing community health needs assessments, simplification and proactive care.

Richard A. Anderson. President and CEO of St. Luke’s University Health Network (Bethlehem, Pa.). Mr. Anderson has served as president and CEO of St. Luke’s University Health Network since 1985, making him the longest-tenured healthcare CEO in the nation. He oversaw the system’s evolution from an organization with a $63 million operating budget to one approaching $5 billion in 2025, operating 16 hospital campuses, more than 350 outpatient locations and 23,000 employees. Under his leadership, St. Luke’s has earned hundreds of national awards for safety and quality, including consistent Leapfrog safety “A” grades, CMS 5-star ratings, and Premier’s “100 Top Hospitals” recognition for 13 consecutive years. In 2025, the system was identified by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as the top-ranked health system in the country for safety and quality. The network includes the Lehigh Valley’s first and only regional medical school campus in partnership with the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, operates the nation’s oldest continuously operating school of nursing established in 1884, and maintains the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania. Mr. Anderson also played a major role in establishing The Bethlehem Partnership for a Healthy Community, a nationally recognized model of more than 200 community partners working to improve health across the greater Lehigh Valley. In recognition of his leadership and accomplishments, St. Luke’s board of trustees voted in 2010 to name a 500-acre tract of land, including a new hospital campus, The Richard A. Anderson Campus. He received the 2024 “Steven Schroeder Award for Outstanding Healthcare CEO” from Leapfrog and the 2025 “Frank Marcon Award” from the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce.

Barry Arbuckle, PhD. CEO of MemorialCare (Fountain Valley, Calif.). Dr. Arbuckle leads MemorialCare, a nonprofit integrated healthcare system with over 200 sites of care, where his tenure has been marked by unprecedented growth and financial performance. His leadership has earned him recognition on the covers of multiple regional and national business magazines, which have highlighted MemorialCare’s excellence in clinical information, evidence-based medicine, financial and management systems, and healthcare reform. A strong advocate for employers seeking high-value health benefit options, he secured an innovative, exclusive direct contract with The Boeing Company for the delivery of healthcare services to its employees in Southern California, and has driven excellence across multiple Accountable Care Organization contracts. Dr. Arbuckle is a widely recognized voice in healthcare strategy and innovation, speaking nationally and globally on topics including health system strategy, innovation, partnerships and value-based contracts. His board and governance leadership is extensive, with prior service as chair of the Integrated Healthcare Association, the California Hospital Association and the March of Dimes California. He currently serves as chair-elect of the Healthcare Leadership Council and as a member of the Health System Executive Council of the Bipartisan Policy Center. He also serves on the boards of the American Hospital Association National Healthcare Systems Council, the National Health Systems Advisory Council for CVS Health and the National Healthcare Advisory Council for Anthem. He also chairs the MemorialCare Innovation Fund, a healthcare innovation investment company dedicated to advancing emerging solutions in care delivery.

Steve Arner. President and CEO of Carilion Clinic (Roanoke, Va.). Mr. Arner leads Carilion Clinic, a $2.4 billion nonprofit integrated health system that serves more than a million people through seven hospitals, a large physician group of more than 1,000 employed physicians, and complementary business lines including home health, imaging services, pharmacies and freestanding surgical clinics. He assumed the CEO role in 2024, supported by a nearly three-decade career at Carilion. He first joined the system in 1996 as a financial analyst, and progressed through roles including budget manager, human resources compensation and analytics director, hospital administrator at Carilion Rockbridge Community Hospital in Lexington, Va., senior vice president of cardiothoracic and vascular services, and 12 years as COO managing the operations and physician practices at Carilion Medical Center in Roanoke. His background affords him deep institutional knowledge across finance, operations, human resources and clinical service line leadership at the organization. Beyond Carilion, Mr. Arner has been an active contributor to healthcare leadership at the state and national levels, having served as past chair of the board of directors for the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association and as past state delegate of the American Hospital Association regional policy board. He currently serves on the strategic planning committee for America’s Essential Hospitals and on the board of directors for Feeding America Southwest Virginia.

Peter D. Banko. President and CEO of Baystate Health (Springfield, Mass.). Mr. Banko has led a comprehensive transformation of Baystate Health, driving more than $225 million in operational improvements within two years while restoring financial stability and maintaining high-quality, accessible care across Western Massachusetts. A hallmark of his tenure has been the redesign of Baystate’s operating model and organizational structure, which streamlined leadership roles, centralized operations and clarified service line responsibilities to enable faster, more coordinated decision-making. He and his senior leadership team developed the Baystate Health 2030 strategic plan, refreshing the organization’s mission, vision and values while establishing a clear strategic direction that prioritizes clinical excellence, expanded geographic reach and sustainable financial performance. His financial stewardship has produced improved operating margins, a revised “stable” outlook from S&P Global Ratings, and a maintained “A+” Fitch rating, with structural improvements spanning labor management, supply chain, pharmacy, revenue cycle and care management. Mr. Banko has also launched systemwide transformation efforts centered on culture, engagement and high-reliability organization principles, championing the values of courage, accountability, respect, agility and teamwork across the enterprise. He serves on the boards of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, the Massachusetts Hospital Association and the Massachusetts Health Policy Forum, and chairs the Baystate Health Insurance Captive.

David Banks. President and CEO of AdventHealth (Altamonte Springs, Fla.). Mr. Banks assumed the presidency and the CEO role at AdventHealth in April 2025, taking the helm of a faith-based health care system encompassing 55 hospital campuses, more than 2,000 care sites and 100,000 team members. He stepped into the position after more than three decades of progressive leadership within the organization. Most recently, he served as group CEO for AdventHealth’s primary health division and multi-state division, overseeing 22 campuses across eight states and three regional partnerships. He was instrumental in the visionary architecture and leadership of the primary health division, which was designed to provide longitudinal, whole-person primary care across the full clinical and age continuum. For eight years prior, Mr. Banks served as AdventHealth’s chief strategy officer, providing executive oversight of the development and ongoing execution of “Vision 2030,” the organization’s strategic 10-year business plan. His involvement as chief strategy officer provided him with a uniquely comprehensive understanding of the organization’s strategic direction upon stepping into the CEO role. His deep operational expertise is further rooted in earlier roles as an administrator for several facilities in the Central Florida division, providing firsthand experience with the communities and care settings at the core of AdventHealth’s mission. Beyond AdventHealth, Mr. Banks has been an active participant in the community, having served as co-chair of the executive board for the American Heart Association of Central Florida, chairman for Community Vision, and on the board of the YMCA of Central Florida.

Nick Barto. President and CEO of BJC Health (St. Louis). Mr. Barto became president and CEO of BJC Health in October 2025, taking the helm of one of the largest nonprofit healthcare organizations in the U.S. The system encompasses 24 hospitals, hundreds of clinics and service organizations, and $13 billion in net revenue, with 48,000 employees serving urban, suburban and rural communities across Missouri, southern Illinois, eastern Kansas and the greater Midwest. Systemwide in 2025, the system treated patients through nearly 4 million provider visits, more than 700,000 emergency department visits and over 170,000 surgeries, and welcomed almost 16,000 newborns, earning repeated recognition for clinical excellence and a culture of collaboration, community and belonging. Prior to becoming CEO, Mr. Barto served as system president and was instrumental in the 2024 merger of BJC and Saint Luke’s Health System of Kansas City, combining two organizations with more than a century of legacy each into a single integrated, academic and patient-centric health system. He led the renewal and expansion of BJC Health’s long-standing affiliation with Washington University Medicine for an additional 45 years, played a key role in launching the joint Center for Health AI, and spearheaded an agreement to expand pediatric care in southwest Missouri between St. Louis Children’s Hospital and CoxHealth in Springfield. He also advanced a joint venture with nonprofit KVC Missouri to address the region’s urgent pediatric mental health crisis via a new freestanding children’s behavioral health hospital, residential program and outpatient treatment center. He serves on the boards of the Missouri Hospital Association, Greater St. Louis, Cortex and BioSTL, and as a member of the Washington University board of trustees. He was named to the St. Louis Magazine “St. Louis Business 500” in 2026.

Madeline Bell. CEO of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Ms. Bell leads one of the nation’s top-ranked children’s hospitals, ranked No. 1 on Forbes‘ 2022 list of “America’s Best Large Employers.” A bold and visionary leader, she champions change with empathy and integrity, inspiring more than 31,000 employees and other workforce members in the hospital’s $5-billion-a-year health system and research institute to create breakthroughs that have worldwide impact. She has made numerous contributions to the system, including the development of one of the largest pediatric ambulatory care networks in the country, the expansion of the Philadelphia campus, the creation of an inpatient hospital called Middleman Family Pavilion, and the development of the Center for Advanced Behavioral Healthcare and Behavioral Health & Crisis Center and Roberts Children’s Health, a new inpatient complex opening in 2028. She also led the development of many nationally recognized clinical care programs and secured numerous philanthropic gifts to help further the organization’s mission. Ms. Bell has received many awards and accolades, including the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia’s “William Penn Award,” Press Ganey’s “CEO of the Year Award,” The Philadelphia Inquirer industry “Icon Award,” and Philadelphia Business Journal‘s “Most Admired CEO Award.” She was included on Forbes‘ ”50 Over 50: Vision” list, Philadelphia Business Journal‘s “Power” list, Metro Philadelphia‘s list of “Power Players in Health Care” and  Philadelphia Magazine‘s list of “150 Most Influential Philadelphians.”

Barclay Berdan. CEO of Texas Health Resources (Arlington). Mr. Berdan has led Texas Health Resources as CEO since 2014, making him one of the longest-serving CEOs of a major health system in North Texas. He served as senior executive vice president and COO before ascending to his current role at the system’s helm. A nationally recognized and respected healthcare leader, he has led the system’s transformation from a traditional health system to one laser-focused on consumers and its mission of improving the health of the people in the communities it serves. Under his leadership, the system puts consumer needs and preferences at the forefront by offering high-quality, affordable and personalized experiences while addressing barriers to good health. Under his leadership, the system has grown into one of the largest employers in North Texas, boasting more than 30,000 employees and a culture of respect for consumers, employees and physicians that has earned the system repeated national recognition as one of the best workplaces in the industry. Most recently, the system appeared for the twelfth consecutive time on Fortune‘s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list, alongside consistent recognition on its “Best Workplaces in Texas” and “Best Workplaces in Health Care” lists. Mr. Berdan has also championed collaborative partnerships to address emerging healthcare issues and has remained deeply committed to giving back to the community. He is set to retire in September 2026.

Kavitha Bhatia, MD. President and Chair of Prime Healthcare Foundation (Ontario, Calif.). Dr. Bhatia serves in dual roles as president and chair of the Prime Healthcare Foundation and chief medical officer of strategy for Prime Healthcare, playing a central role in aligning nonprofit governance, clinical excellence and systemwide strategy across one of the largest physician-led health systems in the nation. In 2025, she helped lead Prime Healthcare’s expansion into Illinois through the completed acquisition of eight hospitals, including two added to the nonprofit portfolio. This move preserved access to care and more than 8,300 jobs, while contributing to a Fitch Ratings upgrade to “A-” during a year of approximately 36% revenue growth to $7.8 billion. Under her leadership, the Prime Healthcare Foundation now oversees 18 nonprofit hospitals and manages approximately $1.8 billion in assets, with Prime Healthcare and the Foundation having delivered more than $16 billion in charity care nationwide. The organizations have earned repeated recognition from the Lown Institute, along with designations for social responsibility, health equity and quality outcomes. She also leads Prime Healthcare’s employee health plan, evolving the organization’s self-funded model to expand the provider network and improve clinical, operational and financial outcomes. A pediatrician by training and a nationally recognized advocate for children, women and families, Dr. Bhatia advances gender equity through mentorship, sponsorship and national leadership. She serves as founding vice chair of the board of trustees at the California University of Science and Medicine, where she is also an associate professor of medical education. She serves on the boards of the California Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals, and Los Angeles Business Journal named her to the “LA500” list of the most influential leaders in Los Angeles for 2023 and as a “Healthcare Executive of the Year” for 2025. She is also a recipient of the “Miraculous Medallion” from Mother Teresa for service to women and children.

Damond W. Boatwright. President and CEO of Hospital Sisters Health System (Springfield, Ill.). Mr. Boatwright leads Hospital Sisters Health System, a healthcare ministry with 13 hospitals and a network of community-based health centers and clinics serving nearly 2.6 million people across Illinois and Wisconsin. Since becoming CEO of the $2.9 billion system in 2021, he has successfully tackled substantial operational and financial challenges while building a culture of transparency, trust and shared accountability. A servant leader known for his visibility and approachability, he frequently travels to hospitals and clinics throughout Central and Southern Illinois and Northeastern Wisconsin, speaking at town halls and rounding with caregivers at the bedside to maintain a direct connection to his colleagues and the communities he serves. Mr. Boatwright has been a vocal national advocate for rural hospitals and vulnerable populations, authoring op-eds in national publications to appeal to legislators to maintain federal Medicaid funding commitments and prevent coverage losses for those most in need. His commitment to colleague safety has led to a $1.5 million investment in a discreet personal alert technology system for staff, alongside a comprehensive de-escalation training program targeting all colleagues in medium- to high-risk areas. He is also overseeing approximately $476 million in investments across system hospitals in Wisconsin and Illinois to expand services, reimagine care delivery models and reinvest in local economies. Mr. Boatwright currently serves as chair of the Illinois Hospital Association, and has previously served as chair of both the Catholic Health Association board of trustees and the Wisconsin Hospital Association. He was honored as In Business magazine’s 2021 “Executive of the Year” for Madison, Wis.

Bo Boulenger. President and CEO for Baptist Health South Florida (Coral Gables). Mr. Boulenger serves as president and CEO of Baptist Health South Florida, one of the nation’s most respected nonprofit healthcare systems, overseeing more than 29,000 employees, 4,500 affiliated physicians, 12 hospitals, and more than 200 outpatient facilities across four counties. He provides strategic leadership with a focus on innovation, research and the recruitment of world-renowned experts who deliver exceptional, patient-centered care. Under his leadership, Baptist Health has expanded its renowned institutes specializing in cancer, heart and vascular, brain and spine, and orthopedic care, all programs that are consistently recognized among the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Mr. Boulenger has also championed a transformative clinical and academic collaboration between Baptist Health and Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, aimed at reshaping healthcare delivery across the region. Leading a faith-based, mission-driven organization, he ensures that a strong connection to purpose remains central to everything Baptist Health undertakes. His leadership has helped Baptist Health become the most awarded healthcare system in South Florida according to U.S. News & World Report, one of Fortune‘s “America’s Most Innovative Companies,” and one of Fortune‘s “100 Best Companies to Work For in America.” Beyond the health system, he serves on the Florida Council of 100 and the FIFA 2026 Miami Host Committee’s board of directors. He also chairs the American Hospital Association Health Systems Committee.

Joe Cacchione, MD. CEO of Jefferson (Philadelphia). Dr. Cacchione has served as CEO of Jefferson since 2022, providing strategic leadership for a comprehensive system that includes Jefferson Health, Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health Plans, which collectively serve millions of patients, 8,300 students and more than 350,000 insurance members annually. His tenure has been marked by significant advances in technology integration, patient care quality and innovative solutions that expand access to care, firmly positioning Jefferson as a leader in modern healthcare delivery. Among his most notable technology initiatives is Jefferson’s “Virtual Checkout” system, a national first that streamlines the patient experience by allowing remote staff to schedule follow-ups and address questions before patients leave the exam room. He is also leading the charge for an ambitious AI strategy aimed at reclaiming over 10 million hours of clinician time by 2028. Under his leadership, Jefferson has earned 12 “A” hospital safety grades from The Leapfrog Group, achieved Magnet redesignation across multiple hospitals in 2025, and received top rankings from U.S. News & World Report in eight distinct specialties. Dr. Cacchione has also deepened Jefferson’s community impact through his bicentennial service initiative, which generated 212,000 volunteer hours across 4,000 community projects, alongside expanded mobile health, telehealth and language access services that reach underserved populations across 33 hospitals and 700-plus outpatient sites. He serves on the board of the University City Science Center, and as policy committee chair and executive committee member of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia. His leadership has earned him recognition as a “Trailblazer in Healthcare” by City & State PA, and The CEO Forum Group named him one of the “Top 10 CEOs Transforming Healthcare in America” for three consecutive years.

David L. Callender, MD. President and CEO of Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston). Dr. Callender leads Memorial Hermann Health System, where he has spearheaded a multiyear transformation strategy to create greater value for the patients and populations it serves. Under his leadership in 2025, the system registered 1.8 million patient encounters, successfully launched Epic with a “good install” recognition, deployed AI tools to enhance clinical workflows, completed more than 50 strategic investments and 20 strategic partnerships, and provided $486 million in community contributions and charity care. His focus on organizational culture has yielded striking results since 2021, including a 37% decrease in total turnover, a 43% decrease in first-year turnover. In addition, the system has seen a 95% reduction in contract labor since 2022. One notable culture initiative that has grown under his leadership is the employee recognition platform, through which 88% of employees received recognition. Dr. Callender has also been a prominent voice on healthcare policy, participating in a CEO working group convened by U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy to evaluate healthcare legislation, advocating alongside Houston healthcare leaders to extend Affordable Care Act enhanced premium tax credits, and successfully advocating to expand state funding for healthcare apprenticeships. He also serves on the boards of the United Way of Greater Houston, the Houston division of the American Heart Association and the Greater Houston Partnership. He serves as a founding member of the board of directors of Longitude Health.

Brendan G. Carr, MD. CEO of Mount Sinai Health System (New York City). Dr. Carr leads Mount Sinai Health System as CEO and holder of the Kenneth L. Davis, MD Distinguished Chair. He guides one of the nation’s premier academic health systems, comprising the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing, nationally and regionally ranked hospitals, and more than 400 ambulatory locations and physician practices. A nationally recognized leader in academic medicine and health policy, his leadership is grounded in driving innovation, developing cutting-edge cures and data-driven treatments, and delivering compassionate care for all New Yorkers. He aims to advance Mount Sinai’s capacity to conduct groundbreaking research, pioneer innovative care, and provide world-leading education to future healthcare leaders. Dr. Carr leads as a physician-scientist with more than 20 years of emergency medicine experience, having completed his residency in emergency medicine and fellowships in trauma and surgical critical care and in health policy research, and he remains clinically active in Mount Sinai’s emergency department. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, he served in multiple policy roles within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he strengthened the U.S. healthcare system’s ability to respond to large-scale public health threats and improve health outcomes. He has also held faculty roles at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Thomas Jefferson University’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College.

Howard Chrisman, MD. CEO of Northwestern Medicine (Chicago). Dr. Chrisman became CEO of Northwestern Medicine’s academic medical enterprise in January 2023, bringing to the role 26 years of dedicated service to the Chicago-based health system. He is also a vascular and interventional radiologist who continues to treat patients alongside his executive responsibilities. His ascent to the top leadership role followed a series of progressively senior positions including president and COO of the system, executive vice president of clinical operations, president of Northwestern Medical Group, and interim chair of multiple departments including radiology, anesthesia, pathology and surgery. Dr. Chrisman’s strategic vision is anchored in “NM 2035,” a 10-year plan that envisions Northwestern Medicine as a recognized pioneer in advancing medical care, delivering consistent and exceptional patient experiences, and leading innovations including the integration of AI in care delivery, with a focus on performing efficiently at the highest level to reinvest in the organization and the communities it serves. Workforce development remains a central priority of his leadership, and the system has seen meaningful progress in net promoter scores and lower burnout rates since he took the helm. Northwestern Medicine is among the few elite academic medical centers in the country excelling in translating discoveries into clinical practice, a reputation Dr. Chrisman is committed to further cementing and elevating.

Kevin B. Churchwell, MD. CEO at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Churchwell leads Boston Children’s Hospital, one of the world’s foremost pediatric institutions, guiding its mission to advance child health through excellence in clinical care, research, education and community engagement. He joined the organization in 2013 as executive vice president of health affairs and COO. Since becoming CEO, he championed transformation into a high-reliability organization. A national leader in pediatric health care and health equity, Dr. Churchwell founded Boston Children’s health equity and inclusion office in 2016, one of three such offices he established across North America. He also authored the hospital’s 2020 declaration for equity, diversity and inclusivity. His leadership has reinforced Boston Children’s standing as both a global innovator in pediatric medicine and a model for equitable, compassionate care. Boston Children’s is home to the world’s largest pediatric research enterprise, serves as a primary pediatric teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School, and treats more children with rare diseases and complex conditions than any other hospital. It is ranked among the best pediatric hospitals in the world by Newsweek and among best in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. Dr. Churchwell is a professor of pediatric anesthesia and is the Robert and Dana Smith Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School. His board service includes the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, Boston Chamber of Commerce, Massachusetts Hospital Association and Whitehead Institute.

Elizabeth B. Concordia. President and CEO of UCHealth (Aurora, Colo.). Ms. Concordia leads UCHealth, where her tenure has produced transformative, measurable advancements across clinical quality, operational performance and financial stewardship, with UCHealth hospitals ranking in the 81st percentile for overall quality in fiscal year 2025 and contributing to more than 1,300 lives saved systemwide. She has championed the deployment of innovative technology to improve patient outcomes, including a Virtual Health Center that now supports over 2,000 patients, a virtual sepsis monitoring program that prevented 1,000 deaths in 2025 through earlier detection and intervention, and a systemwide ambient generative AI tool that has significantly reduced documentation burdens for physicians and advanced practice providers. Under her leadership, UCHealth has expanded behavioral health services by over 400% across inpatient, outpatient and virtual settings, and has improved affordability and access across Colorado by growing lower-cost, high-value care options spanning primary care, urgent care and community-based services. Ms. Concordia has also prioritized workforce safety and development, implementing a systemwide safety campaign that trained nearly 30,000 employees following rising post-pandemic violence against healthcare workers, resulting in a 41% increase in staff confidence in managing physical aggression. Meanwhile, the “Ascend” career program she supported has engaged more than 6,600 employees since its 2022 launch, helping fill high-need clinical roles and reduce staff turnover by nearly 20% over three years. Ms. Concordia was named Denver Business Journal‘s “Most Admired CEO” in 2021 and an “Outstanding Woman in Business” in 2018.

Stephanie Conners. President and CEO of BayCare Health System (Clearwater, Fla.). Ms. Conners leads BayCare Health System, West Central Florida’s largest academic health system with nearly 34,000 team members and an operating revenue of $6.27 billion. In less than four years, she has driven a transformative restructuring that unified the system under a single nonprofit corporate entity and positioned the organization for long-term resilience. As part of a committed $2.8 billion investment in new facilities and technologies, BayCare opened a new 424,000-square-foot hospital in Plant City, Fla., completed a $110 million expansion of Bartow (Fla.) Regional Medical Center, broke ground on the only nonprofit hospital in the state’s Manatee County, launched the first proton therapy center in Florida’s Tampa Bay, and secured a $50 million donation to support the development of a new children’s hospital. Ms. Conners also forged a strategic collaboration with Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine to expand access to advanced treatments, enhance research and improve physician training. She’s also guiding an ambitious expansion of BayCare’s graduate medical education program, with a goal to double residency slots to 650 by 2029. A nurse by background, Ms. Conners has prioritized workforce wellbeing through nurse-led initiatives, expanded mental health resources, leadership development programs and the launch of “Earn as You Learn,”  a paid training and education pathway for aspiring healthcare professionals. These efforts have earned BayCare recognition as a “Top Workplace” by USA Today, Fortune and Newsweek. She serves as a board member of the Florida Hospital Association and Tampa Bay Thrives, and is a national advocate for hospital-at-home legislation, health equity and the integration of behavioral health into primary care.

Eduardo Conrado. President and CEO of Ascension (St. Louis). Mr. Conrado leads Ascension, serving more than 5 million patients annually as one of the nation’s largest nonprofit Catholic health systems. He brings to the role a distinctive leadership journey shaped by his own experience as an immigrant, an engineer and a lifelong learner, coupled with a clear vision of strengthened access to care, modernized care delivery and deepened commitment to those most in need. Under his leadership, Ascension has achieved one of the most significant turnarounds in nonprofit healthcare, delivering a $1.4 billion year-over-year improvement in operating results and reporting a net income of $918 million in fiscal year 2025. Ascension hospitals now perform above federal quality benchmarks for patient safety and achieved a Net Promoter Score above 80 in 2025, reflecting record levels of patient confidence and satisfaction. Mr. Conrado’s background in technology and engineering drives him to solve the industry’s most pressing challenges, which he’s tackling via the launch of Ascension’s Clinical Innovation Institute and investments in digital platforms, analytics and automation. His mission-driven growth strategy has extended care beyond traditional hospital settings through the expansion of ambulatory services, Ascension Rx, the Dispensary of Hope for free and affordable medications, and Community Health Ministries for essential health services outside traditional care settings. Prior to becoming CEO in January 2026, Mr. Conrado served as president of Ascension. Previously, he was executive vice president and chief strategy and innovation officer, bringing experience from earlier corporate leadership roles at Motorola Solutions. He serves on the boards of Ascension and the Catholic Health Association of the United States, and is independent lead director of the freight and logistics provider ArcBest.

Joanne M. Conroy, MD. President and CEO at Dartmouth Health (Lebanon, N.H.). Dr. Conroy leads Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s largest private employer and only academic health system, overseeing its flagship and a growing network of member hospitals and clinics across northern New England. She leads with a philosophy rooted in trust, innovation and mentorship. Since becoming CEO in 2017, she has driven a remarkable financial turnaround, guided the system’s expansion, and advanced major infrastructure projects that enhance access and clinical innovation. Under her leadership, Dartmouth Health completed a $150 million inpatient pavilion expansion that increased capacity to 460 beds, and opened a state-of-the-art ambulatory surgical center that extends specialized care and technology to more patients. A nationally recognized advocate for gender equity in healthcare leadership, Dr. Conroy is a founding member of the “Women of Impact” leadership group and actively mentors the next generation of professionals. In 2016, she was recognized among Boston Business Journal’s “Women of Influence” honorees. She received the Leapfrog Group’s 2021 “Steven Schroeder Award for Outstanding Healthcare CEO” and was named the New Hampshire Union Leader’s “Citizen of the Year” for 2022. In 2024, Dr. Conroy served as chair of the American Hospital Association board of trustees, where she continues to shape national policy on academic medicine and healthcare delivery.

John Couris. President and CEO of Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital. Mr. Couris serves as president and CEO of the Florida Health Sciences Center, which includes Tampa General Hospital, the primary teaching hospital for the University of South Florida Health Morsani College of Medicine. During his tenure, he has grown the organization into one of the nation’s top integrated academic health systems, powered by 15,000 team members and partnerships with leading institutions including Boston-based Mass General Brigham. Under his leadership, Tampa General has expanded access to academic medicine statewide through strategic acquisitions, innovative partnerships and a comprehensive network of hospitals, outpatient centers, urgent care clinics, virtual health services and a hospital-at-home program developed in partnership with Shields Health Innovations. He has simultaneously helped elevate quality and safety performance to rank among the top 20% of academic medical centers nationally as measured by Vizient. Mr. Couris has championed a culture of innovation through an AI and predictive analytics care coordination command center built in partnership with Palantir, the launch of venture capital fund TGH Ventures, and the development of the Tampa Medical & Research District in collaboration with Tampa-based USF Health. His commitment to authentic leadership earned the organization a 92nd-percentile employee engagement index in 2025, placing it in the top 8% of all academic health systems nationally. Mr. Couris has contributed peer-reviewed work to publications including Management in Healthcare and the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst. Additionally, Mr. Couris has been appointed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ advisory council on Alzheimer’s research, care and services, serves as a trustee of Boston University, and is a member of the Florida Health Care Innovation Council.

John D’Angelo, MD. CEO of Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.). Dr. D’Angelo, an emergency physician by training, serves as the new CEO of Northwell Health, the largest nonprofit healthcare provider in New York State and one of the most comprehensive in the nation. With more than 25 years of leadership experience at the health system, Dr. D’Angelo has been instrumental in transforming clinical operations, driving innovation and advancing large-scale integration across the system’s 21 hospitals and 900 outpatient facilities. He previously served as chief of integrated operations, where he co-led the creation of real-time actionable data, a groundbreaking operational visibility platform, and spearheaded nationally studied initiatives in sepsis prevention. He played a central role in Northwell’s merger with Danbury, Conn.-based NuVance Health, expanding the system’s reach to serve more than 13 million people across New York and Connecticut. A decisive and compassionate leader shaped by his emergency medicine background, Dr. D’Angelo was also pivotal in Northwell’s pandemic response, rapidly deploying remote care, automated results management and telehealth innovations still in use today. Dr. D’Angelo is a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians and board member of the Healthcare Association of New York State.

Steve Davis, MD. President and CEO of Cincinnati Children’s. Dr. Davis leads Cincinnati Children’s, a nonprofit comprehensive pediatric health system ranked No. 1 in U.S. News & World Report‘s 2025-26 list of best children’s hospitals in the nation. He previously served six years as the health system’s COO before ascending to the top role, and was the driving force behind Cincinnati Children’s largest expansion ever, a $600 million critical care building that opened in 2021 for patients with cancer, heart ailments and other complex conditions, featuring a state-of-the-art emergency department. Under his leadership, Cincinnati Children’s launched HealthVine, a network of pediatric care providers and organizations that coordinates care and support services for approximately 120,000 children and their families across Southwest Ohio, and has expanded its geographic reach with specialty clinics at a primary care location in Batesville, Ind. and a specialty care medical building in Centerville, Ohio. Before joining Cincinnati Children’s, Dr. Davis served the Cleveland Clinic system from 1996 to 2015 in a variety of key positions, including COO of Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. Beyond Cincinnati Children’s, he serves as vice chair of Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety, which is an international network of more than 140 pediatric hospitals dedicated to eliminating serious harm across all children’s hospitals.

Rob Deininger. President and CEO of AdventHealth East Florida Division. Mr. Deininger leads strategy, growth and operational oversight for AdventHealth’s East Florida Division, encompassing seven hospitals, two freestanding emergency departments, and more than 75 practice locations across Florida’s Flagler, Lake and Volusia counties. He oversees more than 11,000 team members who deliver nearly 1.3 million patient visits each year. Since assuming the role in 2025, he has guided the division through sustained growth while strengthening access to care, advancing clinical quality and ensuring disciplined stewardship across a rapidly growing region. Under his leadership, multiple East Florida Division hospitals have earned consecutive “A” safety grades from The Leapfrog Group and national recognition from U.S. News & World Report. AdventHealth Fish Memorial in Orange City, Fla. has also earned a 5-star quality rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the only hospital in its county to do so.

Eric Dickson, MD. President and CEO, UMass Memorial Health (Worcester). Dr. Dickson leads UMass Memorial Health, the largest nonprofit health system in Central Massachusetts, overseeing more than 20,000 employees, 2,400 physicians, four owned hospitals on eight campuses, 135 community practices, five urgent care centers, a behavioral health services agency, and an ACO. A practicing emergency medicine physician for more than 30 years, Dr. Dickson has continued to work emergency department shifts throughout his tenure as CEO in order to maintain a direct connection to patients and caregivers. He also serves as a professor of emergency medicine at UMass Chan Medical School. His leadership is grounded in a culture of frontline innovation, allowing the system to implement more than 200,000 employee-generated ideas since 2013 via team huddles and collaborative problem-solving. Dr. Dickson has formalized this commitment to creativity through an annual “Innovator of the Year” award. He has led major access-preservation initiatives in response to regional hospital closures, including the construction of a satellite emergency facility in Groton, Mass. He also secured Department of Public Health approval to integrate Marlborough (Mass.) Hospital under the UMass Memorial Medical Center license to strengthen quality and specialty care. Dr. Dickson is establishing a governance structure within the system, aiming to guide the responsible use of AI in reducing administrative burden and supporting clinical decision-making. He was an inaugural recipient of the Boston Business Journal‘s “Innovators in Healthcare Award” for chief executive leadership in 2023, and received the Massachusetts Health Council “Health Care Star Award” in 2024.

David M. Dill. Chairman and CEO at Lifepoint Health (Brentwood, Tenn.). Mr. Dill leads Lifepoint Health, a network of 60 community-based acute hospitals, over 70 rehabilitation and behavioral health hospitals, and 300-plus additional sites of care across 34 states. He has driven the system’s transformation into a diversified healthcare enterprise, growing revenue from $3 billion to over $10 billion while strengthening quality, safety and operational excellence, as well as strengthening the culture among nearly 55,000 employees. The system has expanded its reach through partnerships with more than 45 leading health systems nationwide, extending access to community healthcare in both rural and urban markets. This includes the 14-year Duke Lifepoint Healthcare joint venture with Durham, N.C.-based Duke Health that brings high quality healthcare to communities across North Carolina and beyond. Throughout his career, Mr. Dill has served as an influential voice for community health nationwide and is passionate about keeping high-quality care close to home. Growing up in Kentucky, his unique understanding of healthcare providers in non-urban areas, along with the vital roles they play in community health and economic development, help him to educate the industry on shaping policies that ensure the needs of all patients are met. He joined Lifepoint in 2007 and held various leadership positions including executive vice president, CFO, and president and COO. Mr. Dill is currently chair of the board of the Federation of American Hospitals, and serves on the American Hospital Association Health Systems Committee and on Murray State University Foundation’s board of trustees.

James Downing, MD. President and CEO of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis, Tenn.). Dr. Downing leads St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where he is overseeing a $12.9 billion commitment to accelerate progress in the research and treatment of pediatric cancer and other catastrophic diseases. A renowned physician-scientist, Dr. Downing achieved a succession of seminal findings on the molecular pathology of pediatric leukemia and was instrumental in launching the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, which led to groundbreaking discoveries in cancer research and earned recognition on TIME magazine’s 2012 list of top 10 medical advances. Under his leadership, St. Jude has championed St. Jude Global, an expansive program to raise survival rates for children with cancer and blood disorders in low- and middle-income countries, while consistently earning recognition for its organizational culture and as a top workplace. He holds the Donald Pinkel Chair of Childhood Cancer Treatment and has been elected to both the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, both among the highest honors in science and medicine. His many additional distinctions include the “E. Donnall Thomas Lecture and Prize” from the American Society of Hematology, the “Pediatric Oncology Award and Lecture” from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the “Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer Research Award” from the AACR-St. Baldrick’s Foundation, and his 2016 appointment to the Blue Ribbon Panel for Vice President Joe Biden’s National Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Dr. Downing was named a finalist for TIME magazine’s list of the “World’s 100 Most Influential People” in 2013 and elected a fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research in 2022.

Christopher J. Durovich. President and CEO of Children’s Health (Dallas). Mr. Durovich has led Children’s Health as president and CEO for more than two decades, guiding the organization through extraordinary growth and transformation that has cemented it as a premier pediatric health system serving North Texas and beyond. Children’s Health Dallas has been recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation’s top pediatric hospitals for eight consecutive years across all 11 pediatric specialties, making it the only hospital in North Texas and one of only a few nationwide to achieve this distinction. In anticipation of the region’s projected population growth of nearly 700,000 children by 2050, Mr. Durovich and academic partner UT Southwestern in Dallas announced plans in 2024 for a new $5 billion pediatric campus, which will span more than 33 acres and nearly 5 million square feet to become one of the largest and most innovative pediatric health campuses in the nation. His commitment to the whole child is further demonstrated by a $261 million donation from Children’s Health to the State of Texas to support construction of an inpatient pediatric wing at the new Texas Behavioral Health Center, which will become the first state-accredited acute-care behavioral health hospital in the region. Under his leadership, Children’s Health has become one of the earliest pediatric systems to integrate generative AI into clinical care at scale, ranking in the 90th percentile of Gallup’s Inclusion Index for employee engagement, and has maintained Magnet nursing designation since 2009. Mr. Durovich has served as chairman of the Texas Hospital Association’s board of trustees and remains active with the Dallas Citizens Council, Dallas Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Children’s Hospital Association of Texas. He was honored with the Texas Hospital Association’s “Earl M. Collier Award for Distinguished Health Care Administration” in 2023 and named a “Dallas 500” recipient by D Magazine in both 2025 and 2026.

Benjamin L. Ebert, MD, PhD. President and CEO of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston). Dr. Ebert leads the only hospital ranked in the top three nationally by U.S. News & World Report for both adult and pediatric cancer care. Since becoming president and CEO, he has guided the institute through a period of accelerating change in cancer medicine, developing a strategic plan that builds on Dana-Farber’s historic strengths while charting bold new directions in areas like education and AI. He is spearheading a clinical collaboration with Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center that will soon break ground on a $1.8 billion 300-bed cancer hospital, making it the only freestanding cancer hospital in New England and expanding access to Dana-Farber’s unique model of care at a time when cancer incidence is on the rise. He leads 500 faculty, 1,000 nurses and 13,000 employees who provide care for  100,000 patients each year. He leads a research enterprise that boasts the highest scientific output per researcher of any institution in the world, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Additionally, Dr. Ebert serves as director for the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and is the Richard and Susan Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is an elected member of National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and other distinguished societies. In addition, he is the recipient of many of the most prestigious awards in cancer research, including the “William Dameshek Prize,” “Meyenburg Prize,” the “Sjöberg Prize” and the “Korsmeyer Award.”

Saad Ehtisham, DHA. President and CEO of Atlantic Health (Morristown, N.J.). Dr. Ehtisham serves as president and CEO of Atlantic Health, one of New Jersey’s largest health systems. There, he is advancing the organization’s mission to build healthier communities through a focus on the highest level of clinical performance and extraordinary patient experiences. He brings vast experience across nonprofit and for-profit healthcare organizations encompassing acute care operations, strategic planning and market growth, physician engagement, nursing, graduate medical education, financial performance and philanthropy. Prior to joining Atlantic Health, Dr. Ehtisham served as senior vice president and president of acute care operations for Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Novant Health, a $10 billion integrated care delivery network, where he achieved significant growth and earned the system multiple recognitions for clinical excellence from U.S. News & World Report and The Leapfrog Group. He previously served as senior vice president and system COO at Winter Haven-based Central Florida Health, where his strategic planning and operations expertise resulted in bond rating upgrades and substantial cost savings. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, he has received multiple honors from the organization, including the “Exemplary Service Award” and “Distinguished Service Award.” He also serves on the American Hospital Association Health Systems Committee. Dr. Ehtisham was recognized as the 2023 “Healthcare Administrator of the Year” by Northwest University of Charlotte and has appeared on both the NJBIZ “Power 100” and BINJE‘s “Best Power Players” lists in 2026.

Gianrico Farrugia, MD. President and CEO at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.). Dr. Farrugia leads Mayo Clinic, the world’s No. 1 ranked hospital according to Newsweek, guiding an 85,000-person global workforce that provides care to patients from all 50 states and more than 135 countries each year. A visionary in healthcare transformation, Dr. Farrugia is pioneering the shift from traditional linear care delivery to a platform-based model that leverages data, technology and collaboration to redefine the future of medicine. Under his leadership, Mayo Clinic launched the “Mayo Clinic Platform,” one of the world’s most advanced ecosystems for applying AI and analytics to clinical care, and embarked on a $9 billion strategic investment to reinvent the patient experience through integrated digital and physical innovation. He has overseen major advancements, including the introduction of over 300 AI algorithms into practice and the establishment of the first carbon ion therapy program in the Americas. A Mayo physician for more than 35 years, Dr. Farrugia previously served as CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida, headquartered in Jacksonville, and co-founded the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation. A practicing gastroenterologist and National Institutes of Health-funded researcher with more than 390 publications, he also shapes the global healthcare agenda through leadership roles with the National Academy of Medicine and the World Economic Forum.

Gregory C. Feirn. CEO of LCMC Health (New Orleans). Mr. Feirn spearheaded the formation of LCMC Health in 2009, building it from the ground up into a locally governed, community-focused health system that today includes eight hospitals, more than 100 clinical and urgent care centers, and nearly 18,000 employees across Southeast Louisiana. His bold strategic vision has driven several pivotal milestones for the system, including serving as lead negotiator in the acquisition of Touro to preserve an essential community hospital in New Orleans. He also successfully guided the acquisition of New Orleans-based Tulane Health System in 2023, a landmark that united community-based care and academic medicine, expanded access to specialized services, and advanced medical education and research across the region. Under his leadership, LCMC Health has grown into a comprehensive integrated system that includes major academic medical centers such as Children’s Hospital New Orleans, University Medical Center New Orleans and Tulane Medical Center, alongside vital community hospitals. Mr. Feirn’s leadership approach emphasizes collaboration, physician engagement and workforce development, grounded in a belief that a strong, supported healthcare workforce is essential to quality patient outcomes. Beyond the health system, he serves on the boards of Greater New Orleans, Inc., the Business Council of New Orleans and the River Region, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and Metairie Park Country Day School/ He previously served as chairman of the Louisiana Hospital Association. He has been recognized as a “Hall of Fame Laureate” by Junior Achievement of Greater New Orleans, a “Healthcare Hero” by New Orleans CityBusiness and “Executive of the Year” by Biz New Orleans, among other honors.

Jeffrey Flaks. President and CEO of Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare. Mr. Flaks has spent three decades transforming care delivery, leading an $8 billion integrated enterprise that cares for more than 28,000 people every day across a network of more than 500 locations and 48,000 colleagues, including a medical staff of 8,000. Under his leadership, Hartford HealthCare has significantly improved quality and safety, with every one of its seven hospitals earning Leapfrog “A” safety grades, the system ranking highest in the nation for mitral valve surgery, achieving the best one-year kidney graft survival rate in the country, and being named the sole recipient of the American Hospital Association’s “Quest for Quality Prize” for 2025. His development of Hartford HealthCare’s Institute Model, which offers integrated care across seven specialties, has streamlined statewide access and enabled landmark achievements. Chief among them was Hartford HealthCare’s Cancer Institute at St. Vincent’s Medical Center becoming the nation’s first care partner of the New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Mr. Flaks has championed an entrepreneurial spirit and pioneering innovation, earning Hartford HealthCare the 2025 “Press Ganey Innovator Award” and a place on Fortune‘s list of “Most Innovative Companies in the U.S.,” driven by partnerships with Google, Amazon and a unique collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has also led the system’s value-based care strategy, including the establishment of Advantage Plus Network-Connecticut in partnership with Optum Care. He’s also helping to grow a skilled statewide healthcare workforce through deepened academic partnerships with the University of Connecticut, Quinnipiac University and the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system. Mr. Flaks serves as vice chair of the Connecticut Hospital Association and board secretary of The George Washington University, and in 2025 received the Leapfrog Group and Costs of Care “Steven Schroeder Award” for courageous and ethical leadership in addressing healthcare quality and affordability.

Gerald “J.P.” Gallagher. President and CEO of Endeavor Health (Evanston, Ill.). Mr. Gallagher leads Endeavor Health, Illinois’ third-largest health system, in serving 1.4 million patients across greater Chicagoland. He oversees 28,000 team members delivering personalized, world-class care across more than 300 sites and nine award-winning hospitals, which have earned national recognition from U.S. News & World Report, Leapfrog, CMS, the Magnet recognition program and Planetree. He assumed his current role in 2022 following the merger of NorthShore University Health System and Edward-Elmhurst Health, having previously served as president and CEO of NorthShore since 2017. There, he grew the system through new hospital partnerships, aggressive ambulatory expansion, the creation of Chicagoland’s only freestanding orthopaedic and spine hospital, a transformation of specialty services to a sub-specialty model anchored around key clinical institutes, and the establishment of the nation’s largest primary care-embedded clinical genomics program. Under his leadership, Endeavor Health’s community investment fund has awarded $38.5 million to 59 local partnerships dedicated to enhancing community health and wellbeing, advancing health equity, and supporting local economic growth. Prior to leading NorthShore, Mr. Gallagher served as its COO and as president of Evanston Hospital, and earlier held hospital leadership roles at other health systems. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, he serves on the board of trustees of the American Hospital Association and is past chair of the Illinois Health and Hospital Association. He is a member of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Northwell CEO Council, which focuses on gun violence prevention. He also serves as board chair of the Gallagher Foundation, founded by his parents in 2001, which invests in talented young leaders in developing countries through college scholarships and a community of scholars and alumni.

Roxanna Gapstur, PhD, RN. President and CEO of WellSpan Health (York, Pa.). Dr. Gapstur leads WellSpan Health, a $4.7 billion integrated health system with 23,000 team members. She brings more than 25 years of executive leadership experience and a nursing background that informs her approach to both clinical innovation and workforce wellbeing. She has positioned the health system as a national model for AI integration in healthcare, championing solutions that have shifted approximately 9,000 hours monthly from administrative work back to caregiving, with potential to reach 20,000 hours. She has also deployed the AI care assistant “Ana,” which has conducted over 2 million multilingual conversations and helped increase colorectal cancer screening rates among Spanish-speaking populations. Her partnerships with leading technology companies, including General Catalyst, AWS and Aidoc, have established the system as a collaborator of choice and as a real-world testing ground for healthcare innovation. Meanwhile, the launch of a virtual Center for Nursing Well-being has improved RN burnout scores by 5%. Dr. Gapstur has delivered notable financial performance, maintaining one of only two “AA” ratings from both Moody’s and Fitch among Pennsylvania health systems. WellSpan’s Medicare ACO achieved over $74 million in shared savings over three years, and the system dedicated more than $400 million to community investments addressing housing, food access and behavioral health. She serves as chair of the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, is a member of the American Hospital Association’s Health Systems Committee, and sits on the Advisory Council of Pennsylvania’s Early Learning Investment Commission, among numerous other board roles. Dr. Gapstur was honored as a 2025 “Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania” by Governor Josh Shapiro.

Robert C. Garrett. CEO of Hackensack Meridian Health (Edison, N.J.). Mr. Garrett serves as CEO of Hackensack Meridian Health, a system of 18 hospitals that includes three academic medical centers, two children’s hospitals and more than 500 patient care locations. There, his leadership has driven Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center to be ranked among the top 20 hospitals in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, a state first, and the No. 1 hospital in the New York-New Jersey metro region. During his tenure, the system has committed $2.3 billion in investment across its three academic medical centers and $450 million to expand ambulatory care throughout the state, while innovative workforce strategies have produced a nurse vacancy rate that is half the national average. These endeavors have earned the system a place on Fortune‘s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list in 2025. Mr. Garrett has led groundbreaking national firsts in quality and equity, with the health network becoming the first in the U.S. to achieve both the Joint Commission’s health equity certification in 2023 and its sustainable health certification in 2024. The Lown Institute also named HMH as the top nonprofit health system in the nation for community giving in 2025. Mr. Garrett served as chair of the World Economic Forum’s Health and Healthcare Governors Community for two years, has been a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos from 2017–2025, and is a member of The Wall Street Journal CEO Council. He also chairs the American Hospital Association Academic Medical Center Group and serves on the boards of the New Jersey Hall of Fame Foundation and Ocean First Bank, among other leadership roles. He received the 2025 “Ellis Island Medal of Honor,” one of the nation’s most prestigious civic distinctions, recognized by both Houses of Congress.

Terry Gilliland, MD. President and CEO of Geisinger (Danville, Pa.). Dr. Gilliland leads Geisinger, a system featuring more than 160 care sites, including 10 hospitals, along with a health plan and the College of Health Sciences. Under his leadership, Geisinger has embarked on nearly $2 billion in facility expansion and improvements across its footprint, increased critical access with the opening of the system’s second behavioral health facility, and addressed clinical pipeline shortages by expanding its nursing school and adding a Master’s in Genetic Counseling degree. Dr. Gilliland has been a vocal advocate for rural healthcare funding at the state and federal levels, ensuring that rural communities can continue to access high-quality care close to home, a cause that has become a defining pillar of his leadership. Through board roles with digital health companies Color and Gemini Health, he brings a clinical lens to healthcare innovation, helping ensure that new tools and technologies align with the practical realities of care delivery. He is a recognized speaker on AI, value-based care and rural healthcare, frequently sharing his perspective at industry forums.

Kevin Hammons. CEO of Community Health Systems (Franklin, Tenn.). Mr. Hammons was appointed CEO of Community Health Systems in December 2025, culminating nearly 30 years of leadership roles at the company. He now holds responsibility for strategic and operational priorities across more than 60 acute-care hospitals and hundreds of additional sites of patient care, including physician practices, ambulatory surgery centers, urgent care centers and freestanding emergency rooms. Immediately upon assuming the role, he designed and deployed an organizationwide emphasis on advancing clinical quality, patient experience, and physician and employee engagement, while continuing to strengthen the company’s financial position. Prior to becoming CEO, Mr. Hammons served as the company’s CFO, overseeing corporate finance, treasury management, accounting and financial reporting, capital market transactions and investor relations. In that role, he led a multi-year implementation of a shared business operations center and an enterprise resource planning platform that has modernized key business processes and generated data-rich insights into efficiency opportunities. He also directed a divestiture program that has repositioned and strengthened both the company’s balance sheet and its hospital portfolio. He was recognized as the Nashville Business Journal‘s “CFO of the Year” in 2021.

Rod Hanners. CEO of Keck Medicine of USC (Los Angeles). Mr. Hanners serves as CEO of Keck Medicine of USC, one of only two university-based medical systems in the Los Angeles area. He oversees Keck Hospital of USC, USC Norris Cancer Hospital, USC Verdugo Hills Hospital and USC Arcadia Hospital, along with more than 100 unique clinics. A hallmark of his leadership is a deep commitment to physician and staff wellbeing, reflected in the health system’s innovative “Care for the Caregiver” program and a workplace culture built on management development training, trust and accountability. Under his leadership, Keck Medicine has earned significant quality recognition, including 2025 Leapfrog “A” grades for Keck Hospital of USC and USC Verdugo Hills Hospital, “Top Teaching Hospital” designations for both Keck Hospital and USC Norris Cancer Hospital, and a Vizient “Top Performer” recognition for Keck Hospital. Keck Medical Center of USC ranks among the top 50 hospitals in the country in seven specialties and a top 10 hospital in California per U.S. News & World Report‘s 2025-26 “Best Hospitals” rankings. In fall 2025, Mr/. Hanners oversaw the opening of a four-story, 100,000-square-foot facility in Pasadena offering more than 15 service lines and more than doubling capacity in the San Gabriel Valley, making it Keck Medicine’s largest and most advanced outpatient location. Prior to his current role, Mr. Hanners served as COO for Keck Medicine and CEO of Keck Medical Center, and previously held senior leadership roles at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente’s Los Angeles Medical Center. Before his healthcare career, he served as a naval officer in the U.S. Submarine Force.

Lisa Harris, MD. CEO of Eskenazi Health (Indianapolis). Dr. Harris leads Eskenazi Health, one of the country’s largest essential health systems and a force in public health within Indianapolis and beyond. She is known for spearheading bold initiatives to improve the social and clinical health of her city while advocating for public health on the national level. Her efforts to reverse the mortality gap in Indianapolis neighborhoods have been extensive, with patients receiving wraparound services tied to Joint Commission-recognized social determinants of health screenings, and targeted initiatives in three of the city’s most underserved neighborhoods focused on improving transportation, food access, safety and other barriers to health. One such initiative is a new 95,000-square-foot health campus that earned LEED Silver certification and won honors from the American Institute of Architects Indiana in 2025. Under her leadership, Eskenazi Health expanded and relocated an opioid treatment center in a neighborhood experiencing frequent overdoses, launched a new training center for mental health professionals, and proliferated lifestyle medicine programming across 10 neighborhood health centers. A practicing physician who has taught at Indiana University School of Medicine for decades, Dr. Harris has also championed workforce wellbeing, personally hosting annual employee appreciation events and greeting new employees at regular breakfasts and ultimately earning the system a Bell Seal platinum-level certification for workplace mental health from Mental Health America,. She serves as associate dean of Eskenazi Health Affairs and professor at Indiana University School of Medicine. She also serves on the boards of the Regenstrief Institute and the Indianapolis Coalition for Patient Safety, and previously chaired America’s Essential Hospitals. Dr. Harris has been recognized on IBJ Media‘s “Indiana 250” list of the state’s most influential leaders for four consecutive years, along with a career’s worth of honors dating back more than two decades.

Jena Hausmann. President and CEO of Children’s Hospital Colorado (Aurora). Ms. Hausmann leads Children’s Hospital Colorado, the top-ranked children’s hospital in Colorado and its Rocky Mountain region, providing visionary leadership to more than 11,000 team members across 17 locations. The hospital serving more than 300,000 children every year and earned a place on U.S. News & World Report‘s 2025-26 honor roll as one of the nation’s top 10 pediatric hospital systems. A defining moment of her tenure was her 2021 declaration of a youth mental health state of emergency, a bold advocacy move that resulted in millions of dollars in additional state funding, sparked a movement throughout Colorado and the nation, and enabled Children’s Colorado to increase its mental health capacity by more than 50% within one year, allowing thousands more children to access critical care. She was the architect of a five-year organizational strategic plan that accelerated innovation and expanded services to meet growing community needs. She also championed the launch of the Precision Medicine Institute, which tripled genomic sequencing capacity and opened an innovative whole-genome sequencing lab that is transforming pediatric care delivery. Under her leadership, Children’s Colorado has achieved exceptional clinical outcomes, including a 93.4% survival rate for the most complex STAT 5 heart surgeries, a nation-leading number of live donor liver transplants, and a significant expansion of sports medicine access, including the recent opening of the female athlete program. Ms. Hausmann serves on the boards of the Children’s Hospital Association of America, Colorado College, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Global Down Syndrome Foundation.

Kerry L. Heinrich. President and CEO of Adventist Health (Roseville, Calif.). Mr. Heinrich assumed the role of president and CEO of Adventist Health in 2022, bringing with him seven years of prior service on the organization’s board and a deep commitment to its mission and culture. Under his leadership, Adventist Health has expanded its network of care with additional hospitals and clinics, reduced associate turnover by more than 30% since 2021, and achieved its highest levels of employee engagement and Gallup scores since his arrival. The system saw more than 3 million clinic visits in 2024, as well as year-over-year revenue growth. A landmark initiative under his tenure is the systemwide transition to Epic EHR, targeted for completion by September 2026 and the largest single investment in the system’s history. In 2024, Adventist Health led the development of the first and largest-ever “energy as a service” partnership in the nation, resulting in $457 million in energy infrastructure investment, funded entirely through energy savings, and a 20% reduction in carbon emissions. Mr. Heinrich has maintained a strong focus on community impact, with Adventist Health investing more than $1 billion in community benefit annually, and on strengthening collaboration across the health system’s geographically intentional networks to meet the distinct needs of each community served. He serves as chair of all 27 Adventist Health hospital community boards and served as chair of the California Hospital Association’s board of trustees in 2024. Mr. Heinrich was named to the Sacramento Business Journal‘s “Power 100” list of influential leaders in 2025, and Adventist Health earned the 2024 “Digital Health Most Wired Level 7” recognition for both acute and ambulatory care from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.

James Hereford. President and CEO of Fairview Health Services (Minneapolis). Mr. Hereford leads Fairview Health Services, a system of more than 30,000 employees, where he has overseen one of the most significant financial turnarounds in recent healthcare history. With his guidance, operating performance improved by more than $600 million while preserving access to care, protecting essential programs and sustaining investment in community health. Rather than relying on short-term fixes, he has focused on long-term resilience by strengthening operational accountability, redesigning care models, and reinvesting in the people and systems that improve patient experience and outcomes. Mr. Hereford’s leadership is defined by his insistence that healthcare transformation must remain human-centered. He has elevated Fairview’s role as a community anchor, with the system’s work in food access, mental health innovation, and care for underserved populations earning Fairview the American Hospital Association’s “Foster G. McGaw Prize for Excellence in Community Service” in 2025. He is nationally recognized as an architect of lean management in healthcare, has been featured in national case studies including by the Harvard Business Review, and is a frequent keynote speaker at global and national healthcare forums. Mr. Hereford serves on the boards of the Minnesota Hospital Association, the Minnesota Business Partnership, the Medical Alley Association, the University of Minnesota Physicians and the YMCA of the North. In honor of his outstanding dedication to ethical business practices and community involvement, he has received the “Jim Wolford Business Award” from The Sanneh Foundation.

Paul Hiltz. President and CEO of Naples (Fla.) Comprehensive Health. Mr. Hiltz brings more than three decades of experience in transforming organizations, driving clinical excellence and strengthening community partnerships to his role. As president and CEO of Naples Comprehensive Health, a 713-bed, three-hospital nonprofit network with more than 1,100 affiliated physicians, he leads a clinically integrated system serving Southwest Florida with comprehensive inpatient and outpatient services. Known for his transparent communication style and ability to build high-performing executive and medical teams, Mr. Hiltz cultivates strong physician engagement, high patient satisfaction, and a culture rooted in quality and safety. Prior to joining the system, he delivered major operational turnarounds, including improving earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by $5.5 million at Cincinnati-based Mercy Hospital–Mt. Airy, and served as founding president of Mercy Health Select, one of the nation’s first ACOs, which covered 23,000 lives in its inaugural year. He has consistently launched revenue-producing programs, advanced population health initiatives, and fostered innovative community and governmental partnerships that expand access to high-value care. Mr. Hiltz was honored with the Xavier University “Distinguished Alumni Service Award” and also holds the Diana & Donald Wingard Chair in Executive Leadership.

Thomas Jackiewicz. President of University of Chicago Medicine. Mr. Jackiewicz leads UChicago Medicine, a $6.3 billion integrated academic and community health system. The system includes the flagship University of Chicago Medical Center, Comer Children’s Hospital, five community hospital partners and University of Chicago Physicians Group, one of the largest multispecialty practices in the Chicago area, as well as a microhospital in Northwest Indiana. Under his leadership, UChicago Medicine more than doubled in size, while strengthening quality and increasing access. Its flagship earned 29 consecutive “A” hospital safety grades from The Leapfrog Group, making it the only research-intensive academic hospital in the U.S. to achieve this distinction. Mr. Jackiewicz is leading an ambitious cancer care expansion, the building of an $815 million, 575,000-square-foot cancer care and research pavilion opening in 2027. As the first freestanding academic cancer facility in Illinois, AbbVie Foundation Cancer Pavilion will advance cancer health equity, especially on the South Side, where cancer rates are twice the national average. He is also working to deploy agentic AI in operations, including building an agentic primary care and population health model that proactively identifies care gaps, engages patients directly, and drives preventive health exams and vaccinations at scale. In addition, he helped to forge an expansive collaboration with 12 other providers to improve access to healthcare and resources in 15 communities on Chicago’s South Side, supported by up to $146 million in state funding.

Rob Jay. CEO of ScionHealth (Louisville, Ky.). Mr. Jay serves as CEO of ScionHealth, a multibillion-dollar health system comprising 77 community and specialty hospitals, which he has led to its strongest year yet in quality accolades and business performance in 2025. Under his guidance, ScionHealth implemented a companywide national quality strategy that has driven measurable improvements across the enterprise, with the number of hospitals earning top internal quality ratings growing significantly from year one to year two of the program. His leadership yielded a company-record five community hospitals earning an “A” hospital safety grade from The Leapfrog Group in spring 2025. Mr. Jay also oversaw Lewiston, Idaho-based St. Joseph Regional Medical Center’s acquisition of Catalyst Medical Group, expanding services while implementing a comprehensive human resources, recruitment and retention strategy across the enterprise. Beyond ScionHealth, he serves on the nine-person board of directors of the Federation of American Hospitals, helping shape policy for more than 1,000 tax-paying community hospitals and health systems nationwide. He also serves as executive sponsor of ScionHealth’s “HONOR” employee resource group, which supports military veterans.

Candace S. Johnson, PhD. President and CEO of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center (Buffalo, N.Y.). Dr. Johnson has led Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center as president and CEO since 2015, holding the M&T Bank Presidential Chair in Leadership and serving as professor of oncology and making history as the first woman to lead the institution. She has led a period of significant growth in staff and patients served, and has brought highly acclaimed physicians and scientists from around the world to Western New York. Under her leadership, Roswell Park has expanded pivotal program areas including immunotherapy, cellular therapies, and community outreach and engagement, reflecting her foundational expertise in translational research and her commitment to facilitating the seamless bench-to-bedside development and delivery of promising new cancer therapies. Prior to her appointment as CEO, she served as deputy director of the center and chair of the department of pharmacology and therapeutics for more than a decade. From 1997 to 2002, she served as deputy director of basic research at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and professor of pharmacology and medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. A distinguished researcher, Dr. Johnson has authored or co-authored nearly 200 journal publications, book chapters and abstracts, holds patents on the use of pretreatment chemicals to enhance the efficacy of cytotoxic agents, and has served on the National Cancer Institute review group and its experimental therapeutics study section. She serves as senior editor of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, on multiple other editorial boards, and has chaired the NCI Frederick National Laboratory Advisory Committee since 2021.

Laura S. Kaiser. President and CEO of SSM Health (St. Louis). Ms. Kaiser leads SSM Health with decades of experience in healthcare strategy, value-based care, innovation and organizational growth, deftly guiding the system through the significant challenges currently facing the healthcare industry while maintaining a focus on affordable, accessible and equitable care. Her strategic priorities center on growing operating margin, strengthening culture, enhancing analytical capabilities, and building organizational resilience against a rapidly changing healthcare and policy landscape. Under her leadership, the system launched the Aspiring Nurse Program, a landmark partnership with Chamberlain University that advances the next generation of nurses through education, hands-on experience and employment opportunities. She is also overseeing the construction of the new SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, with an anticipated completion date in 2027, which will provide expanded, state-of-the-art care to children and families across the region. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Ms. Kaiser serves on the boards of the American Hospital Association, Greater St. Louis Inc., Merit Medical, Navitus Health Solutions and the Seton Shrine National Leaders Council. She received the Missouri Hospital Association’s “Visionary Leadership Award” in 2025.

Alan Kaplan, MD. CEO of UW Health (Madison, Wis.). Dr. Kaplan leads UW Health, a multistate academic health system affiliated with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, comprising six main hospitals in Wisconsin and Illinois, more than 2,000 faculty physicians, 26,500 total employees, and more than 865,000 patients annually. Since joining UW Health in 2016, he has overseen remarkable growth, including the establishment of 74 additional clinic locations, a 68% increase in workforce and a sixfold rise in outpatient visits. He also spearheaded a joint operating agreement with Madison-based UnityPoint Health–Meriter, including a full merger of health plans and revenue sharing across inpatient and outpatient facilities. He developed the vision and secured board approval for the 420,000-square-foot UW Health Eastpark Medical Center, a state-of-the-art outpatient facility in Madison that houses adult oncology and women’s specialty care, seamless clinical trial access, and one of the first upright proton therapy offerings in the world. Dr. Kaplan has been a national leader on the responsible use of AI in healthcare, convening a 2024 event at the U.S. Capitol that brought together 25 healthcare leaders to examine AI through the lens of care delivery and produce policy recommendations. UW Health has since deployed ambient AI to more than 800 physicians, with demonstrated reductions in burnout and after-hours documentation time. Dr. Kaplan has also pioneered first-of-their-kind workforce apprenticeships in partnership with Madison College, spanning medical assistant, registered nurse and MRI technologist roles to address growing clinical workforce demand. Under his leadership, UW Health has been ranked the No. 1 hospital in Wisconsin for 14 consecutive years by U.S. News & World Report.

Anne Klibanski, MD. President and CEO of Mass General Brigham (Boston). As president and CEO of Mass General Brigham, Dr. Klibanski leads a system with internationally known Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, recognized specialty hospitals Mass Eye and Ear, McLean and Spaulding Rehabilitation, community hospitals, health centers and home-based care. It is the largest private employer in Massachusetts with 82,000 employees and $23 billion in annual revenue. Since her appointment in 2019, Dr. Klibanski led the transformation into a fully integrated academic health system, achieving greater clinical integration across its hospitals with multidisciplinary, disease-focused institutes, especially in heart and vascular, cancer and neuroscience. She expanded digital and virtual care and deepened investment in breakthrough research, including gene and cell therapies, supported by $2.9 billion in annual research and academic funding. She championed innovation, fueling the creation of over 300 health companies revolutionizing diagnostics, therapeutics and medical technology. She drives bold investments in AI to improve outcomes, reduce caregiver burden, enhance medical education and accelerate discovery from bench to bedside. A strong advocate for equity, Dr. Klibanski launched “United Against Racism,” a multi-year systemwide initiative to address health disparities and promote inclusion. An internationally recognized neuroendocrinologist, Dr. Klibanski previously served as Mass General Brigham’s chief academic officer and chief of neuroendocrine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Todd LaPorte. CEO of HonorHealth (Scottsdale, Ariz.). Mr. LaPorte has transformed HonorHealth from a system focused on treating illness to a trusted partner in lifelong health and wellbeing. His leadership philosophy is driven in part by his own personal experience surviving a heart attack. Believing that exceptional care delivery starts with caring for the people who provide it, he created an innovative chief wellbeing officer role to prioritize caregiver health and resilience, alongside a robust diversity, equity and inclusion program, leadership development pathways, competitive compensation structures, and a systemwide brand ambassador program. In 2023, Mr. LaPorte led HonorHealth to become the presenting sponsor of the Blue Zones Project Scottsdale, which is a transformative community initiative designed to improve wellbeing, resilience and economic vitality. He also secured Blue Zones worksite certification at every HonorHealth facility. Beyond HonorHealth, he serves on the boards of Experience Scottsdale and the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy, is a member of Greater Phoenix Leadership, and is a board member and past board chair of the Health System Alliance of Arizona. Previously, he served as board chair for Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the Paradise Valley School District’s Foundation for Public Education. Mr. LaPorte was named among In Business Magazine Phoenix‘s “11 Healthcare Innovators” in 2025.

Wright Lassiter III. CEO at CommonSpirit Health (Chicago). Mr. Lassiter leads CommonSpirit Health’s 160,000 team members across 2,300 care sites, 158 hospitals and 24 states. The system sees 25 million patients annually, with fiscal year 2025’s operating revenue totaling over $40 billion. Mr. Lassiter also oversees the CommonSpirit Health Foundation, which raised $316.1 million in fiscal year 2025 and directed $222.1 million to capital projects, research, oncology, cardiology, education, community outreach and health justice. Under his leadership, CommonSpirit applied a unified “One CommonSpirit” operating model and improved performance, increasing earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to $1.9 billion from $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2024, scaling the physician enterprise to nearly 25 million annual visits and expanding unified patient connection centers that handle over 3.2 million calls. Mr. Lassiter also elevated quality and experience, with 86% of eligible hospitals earning Leapfrog “A” or “B” grades and the system earning the “Eisenberg Award for Patient Safety and Quality” from The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum in 2025. Mr. Lassiter is also helping to form national patient safety priorities surrounding AI use, serving as co-chair of the National Academy of Medicine’s “Steering Group for Patient Safety in the Era of AI,” a two-year initiative beginning in spring 2026. In 2025, the system’s “MyVoice” employee survey was completed by 114,000 participants and showed belonging, values and trust scores above national benchmarks. Forbes recognized CommonSpirit as one of “America’s Dream Employers” for both 2025 and 2026. Mr. Lassiter serves on the boards of Quest Diagnostics and Fortive, and has previously served as lead independent director of DT Midstream. He is a member of Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose and The Wall Street Journal CEO Council.

Omar Lateef, DO. President and CEO of Rush University System for Health and Rush University Medical Center (Chicago). Dr. Lateef leads Rush University System for Health and Rush University Medical Center, advancing a system that has set the nation’s standard in healthcare quality and safety while maintaining a commitment to health equity. Under his leadership, Rush University Medical Center earned a spot on the U.S. News & World Report “Best Hospitals” honor roll for six consecutive years, ranked No. 6 in the nation for quality and accountability by Vizient in 2025, and was named No. 2 in Illinois and No. 98 in the world by Newsweek in 2024. Additionally, all three Rush hospitals repeatedly received high marks from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Dr. Lateef’s commitment to health equity and his innovative approach to addressing the root causes of disease through strong community partnerships and research has earned national recognition, including being named to STAT News‘ 2025 “STATUS List” of 50 leaders shaping headlines. He was the only president and CEO of an academic medical center to appear on the wide-ranging list of healthcare industry influencers. Dr. Lateef is a sought-after voice in the healthcare industry, having served as a panelist and keynote speaker at prominent forums including the Milken Institute 28th Annual Global Conference, the 2025 Health Evolution Summit and America’s Health Insurance Plans.

Alan Levine. Chairman, President and CEO of Ballad Health (Johnson City, Tenn.). Mr. Levine leads Ballad Health, an integrated health system serving a region of Appalachia spanning a large geographic footprint. In this role, he oversees 21 hospitals, the nation’s largest accountable care community, home health, pharmacies, skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation services, behavioral health services and Ballad Ventures, an innovation arm focused on emerging services and technologies. The innovation arm boasts $2 billion in annual revenue and employs 14,000 people serving more than 4 million patient contacts annually. He brings to the role more than 25 years of prior experience as CEO of hospitals and health systems ranging from small rural hospitals to some of the largest public systems in America. His commitment to public service spans multiple states and administrations, having served as Secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals and senior health policy advisor to Governor Bobby Jindal, Secretary of Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration under Governor Jeb Bush, where he oversaw a $17 billion budget, and on healthcare transition teams for several Florida Governors and one Virginia Governor. In these roles he managed healthcare responses to 12 major hurricanes, led Louisiana’s response to the H1N1 pandemic, improved Louisiana’s child immunization rates from 48th to 2nd in the nation, and was recognized for efforts combating fraud and abuse in public healthcare programs. Mr. Levine serves on the board of directors of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla. and Axogen, a publicly traded company. He also sits on the board of governors for the State University System of Florida. He was most recently named a “Junior Achievement Laureate” and inducted into the Business Hall of Fame in upper East Tennessee.

David C. Linehan, MD. CEO of University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medicine. Dr. Linehan assumed the dual role of CEO of the University of Rochester Medical Center and dean of the Schools of Medicine and Dentistry in February 2024, bringing to the position a decade of leadership as chair of the medical center’s department of surgery and a distinguished career as a surgical oncologist and accomplished surgeon-scientist. As top executive of the enterprise, he oversees UR Medicine, the medical, dentistry and nursing schools, and the Eastman Institute for Oral Health. Holding the Seymour I. Schwartz Professorship in Surgery, Dr. Linehan has specialized in treating cancers and benign surgical conditions of the liver, pancreas, gallbladder and bile ducts, and is recognized for bringing novel and innovative therapies to patients with difficult-to-treat cancers. His research laboratory, internationally renowned for its work on new immunotherapy treatments for pancreatic cancer, has been continuously funded by the National Cancer Institute for nearly two decades, and his bench-to-bedside work at UR Medicine’s Wilmot Cancer Institute has attracted and promoted the growth of surgeon-scientists across the enterprise. Recruited from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in 2014, Dr. Linehan is deeply committed to the organization’s tripartite mission of patient care, research and education.

Richard P. Lofgren, MD. President and CEO of OU Health (Oklahoma City, Okla.). Dr. Lofgren leads OU Health, the University of Oklahoma’s academic health system, where he has driven a sweeping transformation into an integrated, performance-driven enterprise since taking the helm. Under his leadership, system revenue has grown from $1.4 billion in 2021 to a projected $3.6 billion for fiscal year 2026, enabling annual reinvestment to expand from $20 million to $220 million in facilities, technology and talent. His tenure has produced measurable gains in access and quality, including a 22% increase in inpatient admissions, a 13% increase in inpatient admissions of rural patients and a 41% increase in outpatient visits from rural patients. Major strategic initiatives under his leadership include the integration of Dean McGee Eye Institute, the expansion of the pediatric heart center, the development of a new pediatric behavioral health center, and the expansion of cancer care statewide. Dr. Lofgren also guided a systemwide culture initiative that aligned employees and physicians around shared goals, resulting in OU Health’s first-ever employee incentive plan distribution in 2025. Additionally, he oversaw the recruitment of 162 nationally and internationally recognized physicians over the past two years. He was named the 2024 “Oklahoman of the Year” by Oklahoma Magazine, as well as the 2025 nonprofit winner in The Journal Record‘s “Most Admired CEOs in Oklahoma” program.

Matthew A. Love. President and CEO of Nicklaus Children’s Health System (Miami). Mr. Love serves as president and CEO of Nicklaus Children’s Health System, South Florida’s only freestanding pediatric health system, where he has guided the organization through strategic growth while maintaining an unwavering focus on patient- and family-centered care. His leadership philosophy emphasizes accountability, transparency and collaboration, ensuring that organizational decisions align with both clinical excellence and long-term sustainability. Under his stewardship, Nicklaus Children’s Hospital has been consistently recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation’s leading pediatric hospitals, and the organization has received the prestigious “Top Hospital Award for Outstanding Quality and Safety” from Leapfrog. Mr. Love has also championed workforce engagement initiatives that prioritize caregiver wellbeing, professional development and inclusion, earning Nicklaus Children’s a place on Newsweek‘s “America’s Most Loved Workplaces” list for multiple consecutive years. He played a pivotal role in forging a strategic academic affiliation with Florida International University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, expanding South Florida’s pediatric training opportunities, research and the future pediatric specialists pipeline. In 2024, the governor of Florida appointed Mr. Love to the Graduate Medical Education Committee, where he now contributes to shaping statewide physician training strategy.

Steve Mackin. President and CEO of Mercy (Chesterfield, Mo.). Mr. Mackin leads Mercy, overseeing 55 hospitals, more than 1,000 physician practices and clinics, and more than 50,000 co-workers. A national leader in the integration of AI into healthcare delivery, he led Mercy’s partnership with Mayo Clinic, aiming to create a global healthcare database that will identify and treat diseases earlier, and forged a partnership with Microsoft to integrate AI into patient care environments. Recent milestones include selection as one of only 10 study sites nationwide to test an AI sepsis detection tool and recognition as one of only four health systems in the nation to receive the 2025 KLAS “Arch Collaborative EHR Breakthrough Recognition” for using AI to improve patient care and clinician satisfaction. Additional innovations under his leadership include AI integration into imaging services, autonomous hospital logistics robots, ambient and generative AI tools in clinical practice, and a hospital care at home program. Mr. Mackin also oversaw the development of the “Mercy Works On Demand” app, used by 24,000 employees. The app gives nurses greater flexibility in scheduling shifts and hours, driving meaningful improvements in recruitment, retention and labor spend. Beyond clinical innovation, Mercy’s ACO ranks in the top five nationally for patients served and generated $102 million in taxpayer savings, with quality ranking third among similarly sized ACOs. Mr. Mackin chairs the American Hospital Association’s Committee on Health Care Strategy and Innovation, serves on the boards of the Heartland Whole Health Institute and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and is a member of the executive committee of the Chair’s Council of Greater St. Louis.

Kevin B. Mahoney. CEO of Penn Medicine (Philadelphia). Mr. Mahoney leads the University of Pennsylvania Health System, the clinical enterprise of Penn Medicine, overseeing seven hospitals, 13 multispecialty centers, and hundreds of outpatient facilities across Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. He joined the organization in 1996, and served in leadership roles across nearly three decades before being appointed CEO in 2019. Among his most significant accomplishments is the creation of the Clifton Center for Medical Breakthroughs, the largest capital project in the University of Pennsylvania’s history and one of the largest hospital projects in the nation. The center is a $1.6 billion, 1.5-million-square-foot hospital featuring 47 operating rooms and 504 private patient rooms. He has continued to expand Penn Medicine’s reach through the addition of Penn Medicine Doylestown (Pa.) Health in 2025, construction of a new multispecialty outpatient center in Montgomeryville, Pa., a fourth proton therapy site, and new cancer and imaging facilities at Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center in Plainsboro, N.J. He also played a role in the launch of the Lurie Autism Institute, in collaboration with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Mr. Mahoney co-founded the Fund for Health, which has contributed $1.6 million to nine early-stage businesses addressing social determinants of health in underserved communities, and has championed AI-driven innovations including ambient listening technologies and “Chart Hero,” a Penn Medicine-developed tool that surfaces clinically meaningful insights to support faster, more informed decision-making. He serves on the boards of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia, the Science Center, and the Committee of Seventy, and is a senior fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.

Mark E. Manigan. President and CEO of RWJBarnabas Health (West Orange, N.J.). Mr. Manigan serves as president and CEO of RWJBarnabas Health, the state’s largest and most comprehensive academic health system, providing care to more than three million patients at 700 facilities statewide each year. His strategic vision has driven a 67% increase in revenues since 2019 while achieving a nearly 30% improvement in mortality, which translates into 1,000 lives saved. He has also driven significant improvements in key safety metrics, resulting in the tripling of Leapfrog “A” ratings in two years. Under his leadership, the system and Rutgers Cancer Institute unveiled The Jack & Sheryl Morris Cancer Center, one of only 13 freestanding cancer hospitals in the nation. Additionally, the system signed a definitive agreement to bring Englewood (N.J.) Health into the network, further expanding access across the region. Mr. Manigan has also championed a people-first culture that has driven a voluntary turnover decline of 16.3% since 2023, employee engagement surpassing the national average, and workforce growth of over 5% in both 2024 and 2025. The system’s community health worker program has benefitted more than 100,000 individuals since 2023, its “hire local-buy local” initiative has directed over $370 million to local vendors, and “food farmacies” have served nearly 89,000 individuals and donated 429,000 pounds of food. Mr. Manigan was appointed to the board of governors of Rutgers University in 2022, and was named “Executive of the Year” by New Jersey Business Magazine in 2025.

Peter McCanna. CEO at Baylor Scott & White Health (Dallas). As CEO of Texas’ largest nonprofit health system, Baylor Scott & White Health, Mr. McCanna is building a customer-centric, digitally enabled model of care that is continuous, convenient and personalized. The system includes 55 hospitals, more than 1,300 access points, over 59,000 employees, a research institute, a health plan and an accountable care organization, and a systemwide $17.3 billion in total revenue in fiscal year 2025. In addition, the system sees over 13.5 million patient encounters annually. Under Mr. McCanna’s leadership, the system has launched digital and clinical solutions that positively impact millions of customer interactions. Among these solutions is the award-winning “Help Me Decide” tool, a digital triage feature within the system’s care platform that guides customers to the right site of care and reduces unnecessary emergency visits among users by 80%. Baylor Scott & White Health ranks second nationally for quality, efficiency and experience, according to Premier Inc. Before becoming CEO in 2022, Mr. McCanna served as the system’s president. Before that, he served as CFO and then COO at Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine from 2002 to 2017. Mr. McCanna now serves as the founding board chair of Longitude Health, an organization aiming to revolutionize how health systems operate. He is also a board member of Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan Health and the Texas Hospital Association.

Cliff A. Megerian, MD. CEO of University Hospitals (Cleveland). Dr. Megerian leads University Hospitals, a comprehensive health system with annual revenues of $7 billion, more than 32,000 caregivers, 21 hospitals, more than 50 health centers and outpatient facilities, and over 200 physician offices. His leadership has established the system as a national model for academic distinction, operational excellence, and a culture grounded in empathy and human connection. A defining hallmark of his tenure is the “Five-Star Customer Experience” initiative, which has transformed patient experience by shifting from a hospital mindset to a hospitality mindset, treating every interaction as an opportunity to provide warm, personalized service. Under his direction, the system has advanced to among the nation’s most highly funded research institutions, with $214 million in research support and more than 3,400 clinical trials and studies underway, contributing to its ranking by Brand Finance as the No. 8 academic medical center in the nation. Dr. Megerian has also helped deliver measurable value-based care results, reducing systemwide length of stay by 3%, lowering Medicare patient costs by over $43.6 million, and generating a cumulative $216 million in savings for CMS since joining the Medicare Shared Savings Program in 2012. His focus on organizational culture has driven the system’s engagement index to 84% in 2025 and earned it a place among Forbes‘ top 25 “Dream Employers.” A professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and adjunct professor at Northeast Ohio Medical University, Dr. Megerian serves on the boards of the Ohio Hospital Association, the Greater Cleveland Partnership and the Ohio Business Roundtable. He was also one of four health system CEOs invited to a Health and Human Services roundtable to advance strategies to reduce administrative burden and foster innovation.

Tom Mihaljevic, MD. President and CEO of Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Mihaljevic has led Cleveland Clinic since January 2018, directing a $13 billion globally integrated healthcare system encompassing a main campus, 22 hospitals, and 275 outpatient locations across the United States and internationally. Along with 76,700 caregivers worldwide, including 5,700 physicians and scientists, he aims to make Cleveland Clinic the best place for care anywhere and the best place to work in healthcare, treating patients and caregivers like family and Cleveland Clinic as home. Prior to becoming CEO, Dr. Mihaljevic served as CEO of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi from 2015 to 2017, overseeing the opening of the first U.S. multispecialty hospital replicated outside of North America and establishing its reputation for clinical excellence, patient experience, research and education. He first joined Cleveland Clinic in 2004 after serving as director of the Cardiac Surgery Research Laboratory at Boston-based Brigham and Women’s Hospital and as assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is the author or co-author of more than 140 peer-reviewed publications, holds a patent for a novel system for minimally invasive cardiac surgery, and is the inaugural holder of the Morton L. Mandel CEO Chair, an endowment created by a 2022 gift from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation. He is also a distinguished cardiac surgeon who has performed nearly 3,000 operations, with specialization in minimally invasive and robot-assisted procedures, valve replacement and repair, and cardiac transplantation. Dr. Mihaljevic serves on the GE HealthCare board of directors, co-chairs the board of directors of the US-UAE Business Council, and serves on the boards of the Greater Cleveland Partnership and the United Way of Greater Cleveland.

Redonda Miller, MD. President of The Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore). Dr. Miller leads The Johns Hopkins Hospital, a 1,100-bed academic medical center with 11,000 employees and $3.5 billion in operating revenue, advancing a dual mission of innovation and community care since her appointment as president in 2016. Under her leadership, The Johns Hopkins Hospital has been consistently recognized for clinical excellence, maintaining its ranking among the top hospitals in the nation on the U.S. News & World Report honor roll, earning its fifth consecutive Magnet designation for nursing excellence, and receiving gold certification for person-centered care from Planetree International in both 2019 and 2024, making it the largest academic medical center in the world to be certified by the organization. Her connection to Johns Hopkins spans decades, having first arrived as a medical student in 1988. She served in progressive administrative roles, including vice chair of clinical operations for the department of medicine and senior vice president of medical affairs for the Johns Hopkins Health System, before assuming the presidency. A practicing internist and associate professor in the department of medicine since 2006, Dr. Miller continues to see patients, ensuring her firsthand clinical experience informs decisions that support both exceptional patient care and the wellbeing of providers and staff. She is actively engaged in the Baltimore community, serving on the boards of Turnaround Tuesday and Living Classrooms. In 2020, she was inducted into both the National Academy of Medicine and the Maryland Chamber of Commerce Business Hall of Fame.

Sarah Ness. President and CEO of PeaceHealth (Vancouver, Wash.). Ms. Ness became president and CEO of PeaceHealth in January 2026, making her the second female lay leader in the history of the 135-year-old nonprofit Catholic health system, which includes about 16,000 caregivers, nearly 3,200 physicians and clinicians, more than 160 clinics, and nine medical centers across Washington, Oregon and Alaska. She brings more than 25 years of leadership experience and deep institutional knowledge to the role, having previously served as executive vice president and chief administrative officer, overseeing human resources, mission integration, organizational integrity, and marketing and communications. She has held multiple other senior leadership roles throughout her career at PeaceHealth. Wielding a commitment to caregiver engagement and patient experience, she has outlined three clear priorities for PeaceHealth’s next chapter: deepening connections with caregivers, clinicians and community members through direct engagement and active listening; modernizing the system’s care delivery and services model by bringing hospitals, clinics and community-based services together around a shared purpose of delivering holistic care; and strengthening the system’s operational and financial health while expanding access in primary and specialty care through transfer acceptance, fast-track clinic models and digital pathways. She aims to build meaningfully on PeaceHealth’s legacy while meeting the evolving needs of the communities it serves.

Pete November. CEO at Ochsner Health (New Orleans). Mr. November leads Ochsner Health, Louisiana’s largest nonprofit academic health system and the state’s largest private employer. The system boasts 47 hospitals, over 370 health and urgent care centers, more than 40,000 team members, and 4,900 employed and affiliated physicians. The system cares for more than 1.6 million people, who hail from every state and 63 countries. Since his appointment in 2022, Mr. November guided system growth and partnerships across the Gulf South, expanding access to high-quality care and advancing the system’s mission to serve, heal, lead, educate and innovate. With over a decade of executive roles, most recently as executive vice president and CFO, he has driven nationally recognized innovations in telehealth, digital medicine and data-driven care. Among his achievements is the creation of the Ochsner LSU Health System of North Louisiana, a groundbreaking partnership that is strengthening regional health services, workforce development and community investment. Ochsner Health is also partnering with Xavier University of Louisiana to create Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine, and building the Gayle and Tom Benson Ochsner Children’s Hospital, which is set to open its doors in early 2028. Ochsner Health is also expanding access to neurology and neurosurgery by building the Debra H. and Robert J. Patrick Neuroscience Institute, opening at the end of 2026. A respected voice in healthcare innovation and community leadership, Mr. November serves on the boards of the National World War II Museum, New Orleans Business Council and Committee of 100. He is also an adjunct professor at Loyola University College of Business.

Christopher O’Connor. CEO of Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health. At the helm of Yale New Haven Health, Mr. O’Connor aims to leverage the world-class basic and translational science of the Yale School of Medicine across both the academic medical center and community hospitals, delivering groundbreaking care to patients throughout the region. A cornerstone of his tenure has been building a closer, more collaborative relationship with the Yale School of Medicine, ensuring that its scientific expertise and research capabilities are extended beyond the academic medical center to benefit patients across the full health system. Under his leadership, the system has expanded access to urgent care through the acquisition of PhysicianOne, strengthening the care continuum and extending high-quality services across the state. Mr. O’Connor has also placed a strong emphasis on workforce investment, recognizing that recruiting, retaining and engaging top talent is essential to the health system’s mission. He has put in place dedicated strategies focused on employee emotional wellbeing, professional development, career growth, and accelerated talent acquisition, thus reducing reliance on travelers and temporary workers. He is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, has served as chair of the Connecticut Hospital Association, and recently served as president of the board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation of Connecticut and Western Massachusetts. Under his leadership, Yale New Haven Health has been ranked the seventh best health system in the nation and the top-ranked health system in Connecticut by Castle Connolly.

Patrick O’Shaughnessy, DO. President and CEO of Catholic Health (Rockville Centre, N.Y.). Dr. O’Shaughnessy leads Catholic Health, a major health system serving Long Island and New York State, bringing to the role decades of experience in clinical care, leadership, strategy and operations that began with his career as an emergency department physician. He was appointed president and CEO in 2021 after serving in multiple senior leadership roles within the system, including executive vice president, chief medical officer and chief clinical officer. Since, he has focused on expanding Catholic Health’s reach, enhancing patient care, and pioneering new approaches to health care delivery and community health improvement. Under his leadership, Catholic Health has launched programs that provide nutritious food and tailored health education to at-risk individuals, grounded in a recognition of food as medicine, while also driving a progressive population health strategy focused on preventive care, digital innovation, and advanced primary care to detect and address disease earlier. As a recognized industry leader at the state level, Dr. O’Shaughnessy has strengthened New York’s healthcare system by securing increases in Medicaid reimbursement, expanding access to capital for safety-net providers, and helping prevent harmful policy proposals that would have threatened innovation and quality care. He serves as chair of the Healthcare Association of New York State and immediate past chair of the Greater New York Hospital Association. Additionally, he sits on the boards of the New York Institute of Technology and the Long Island Association, where he co-chairs the Health, Education and Non-Profit Committee. Dr. O’Shaughnessy was named a “Top 100 Long Islander” by Long Island Business News in 2025 and has been recognized as a “Top Business Influencer” by the publication for three consecutive years.

Ketul J. Patel. President and CEO of Wellstar Health System (Marietta, Ga.). Wellstar Health System’s board of trustees selected Mr. Patel to serve as the health system’s president and CEO. He assumed his responsibilities in late October 2025, bringing a record of transformational leadership from his roles as CEO of Tacoma, Wash.-based Virginia Mason Franciscan Health and as president of the Pacific Northwest Region of CommonSpirit Health, where he oversaw 12 hospitals, more than 300 patient care locations, and 20,000 team members. A defining accomplishment of his tenure was leading the merger of two health systems during the global pandemic, forming Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in January 2021 to create one of Washington state’s largest premier healthcare providers. Under his leadership, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health became the only health system in Washington state to earn all “A” Leapfrog patient safety grades, ranking among the best facilities in the nation. He also helped launch the VMFH Care Network in 2024 to establish formal relationships and provide expertise to independent hospitals and health systems across Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Montana. He simultaneously held executive oversight of the Benaroya Research Institute, which is internationally recognized for autoimmune disease research, and Bailey-Boushay House, the first skilled nursing and outpatient chronic care management program in the U.S. designed specifically for people with HIV/AIDS. He currently serves as chair of the Washington State Hospital Association board and is active on the boards of Washington Roundtable, Challenge Seattle and CEOs Against Cancer.

Amy Perry. CEO at Banner Health (Phoenix). Ms. Perry leads Banner Health, guiding transformation through health plan expansion, physician alignment, technology investments, groundbreaking research and digital innovation. Under her leadership, Banner Health has expanded graduate medical education and deepened partnerships with University of Arizona and other institutions to grow the next generation of clinicians. 231 graduating medical students will join the system’s residency programs in the summer of 2026. The system has also performed the most artificial heart implants in the world and the most heart transplants in Arizona, earned National Cancer Institute university designation, and entered into a partnership with Houston-based MD Anderson Cancer. The system is among the most advanced for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s research, and also offers Banner Academy for children with autism spectrum and emotional disabilities. Banner has one of the nation’s lowest physician burnout rates, a low employee voluntary turnover of 7% and high engagement scores. The system achieved over $300 million in efficiency gains in 2025, with annual revenues over $15 billion, as compared to $12.7 billion in 2022. A $1 billion technology, data and digital platform investment is now resulting in clinical, efficiency and productivity gains. Ms. Perry drives premium reimbursement strategies to support the 10-year vision of Banner being the most trusted health partner. Prior to joining Banner in 2021, she was hospital division president and executive vice president at Morristown, N.J.-based Atlantic Health System, with record-setting quality and financial performance.

Peter WT Pisters, MD. President of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston). Dr. Pisters leads The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, one of the world’s most respected institutions focused on cancer patient care, research, prevention and education, where his leadership has driven a series of historic achievements in the mission to end cancer. In 2025, he announced a pivotal $150 million gift from the Kinder Foundation to create the Kinder Children’s Cancer Center, a joint venture between MD Anderson and Texas Children’s with a singular mission to end childhood cancer. He also led the November launch of MD Anderson’s largest-ever philanthropic campaign, “Only Possible Here, The Campaign to End Cancer,” with a goal of raising $2.5 billion over 10 years. Under his leadership, the institution earned its highest Vizient ranking to date while maintaining a 5-star rating, grew annual institutional revenue to $7.8 billion, and saw its scientists contribute to 70% of FDA-approved cancer drugs in the most recent fiscal year. Dr. Pisters is overseeing a series of new state-of-the-art research and clinical facilities to meet growing demand for high-quality cancer care over the next decade. He serves as a leading voice in the industry, championing innovation in oncology and leadership grounded in core values.

Dennis Pullin. President and CEO of Virtua Health (Marlton, N.J.). Mr. Pullin leads Virtua Health with a holistic approach to what a health system can and should be, implementing cutting-edge clinical innovation, community health equity initiatives and workforce culture improvements. Under his leadership, the system has launched AI-enabled virtual care across its hospitals, featuring two-way patient room cameras and remote monitoring sensors. The system also expanded its “Eat Well” food access program with a new mobile grocery store and mobile “food farmacy,” introduced a second pediatric mobile services vehicle that’s expected to increase children’s visits from 6,000 to approximately 10,000 annually, and opened Oliver Station, an innovative community integrating affordable senior housing with an on-site primary care practice. Mr. Pullin has also cochaired a four-year, $5 million collaboration with Camden, N.J.-based Cooper University Health Care and the United Way of Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey to fight poverty, and is overseeing a six-story pavilion expansion at Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital set to open in late 2027 in Camden. In 2025, Mr. Pullin published Suited for Leadership, a 24-chapter book that topped Amazon’s “Hot New Releases” lists in the leadership development and workplace culture categories, drawing on stories from his career to examine the essential traits of effective leadership. He serves on the boards of Hillenbrand, Inc. and DaVita, Inc., is a fellow and past regent of the American College of Healthcare Executives. He has held board roles with the American Hospital Association, the New Jersey Hospital Association, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Economic and Community Advisory Council.

Steve Purves. President and CEO of Valleywise Health (Phoenix). Mr. Purves has led a historic transformation of Valleywise Health, which is Arizona’s public teaching hospital and safety net health system. He transformed Valleywise from a financially struggling legacy county hospital into a modern, financially secure organization that remains steadfastly committed to caring for underserved populations, more than 70% of whom are on Medicaid or uninsured. When he arrived in 2013, he launched a systemwide campaign encompassing hundreds of projects to simultaneously cut costs and improve operations, generating over $170 million in fiscal improvements without significant across-the-board staffing cuts, even during the Covid-19 pandemic. The culmination of his long-term strategic vision came in June 2024 with the opening of a state-of-the-art Valleywise Health Medical Center, which features a 34,500-square-foot emergency department, the nationally renowned Diane & Bruce Halle Arizona Burn Center, and a level 1 trauma center, replacing a facility that had stood for 53 years. In 2025, Mr. Purves spearheaded an $898 million bond proposition to expand behavioral health services, enhance emergency services and build new community health centers, earning voter approval in one of the nation’s largest counties in the November 2025 election. He became the first Valleywise Health executive to serve on the American Hospital Association board of trustees, served as board chair of America’s Essential Hospitals, and held leadership roles within the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association. Mr. Purves has received the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association’s prestigious “Salsbury Award,” was named “Leader of the Year in Healthcare” by the Arizona Capitol Times in 2023, and received the U.S. Army “Outstanding Civilian Service Medal,” among numerous other honors.

Jochen Reiser, MD, PhD. President of The University of Texas Medical Branch and CEO of UTMB Health System (Galveston). Dr. Reiser has served as president of The University of Texas Medical Branch and CEO of the UTMB Health System since August 2023, also holding the John D. Stobo, MD Distinguished Chair and a professorship in the John Sealy School of Medicine. A prominent research leader in the field of kidney disease and wielding a focus on molecular biology, genetics and immunology, his scientific discoveries have opened new lines of inquiry and significantly advanced treatment options for renal diseases, some of which are in active clinical trial stage. He is a member of Leopoldina, the world’s oldest National Academy of Sciences, reflecting the global distinction of his scientific contributions. Prior to joining UTMB Health,  Dr. Reiser served in faculty and leadership roles at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School, giving him a breadth of institutional experience that informs his vision for improving health and quality of life in Texas and beyond. He aims to advance UTMB Health’s historic mission in education, research, clinical care and innovation.

Prem Reddy, MD. Founder, Chairman and CEO of Prime Healthcare (Ontario, Calif.). Dr. Reddy founded Prime Healthcare in 2001 and has since built it into a national health system that owns and operates 51 hospitals and more than 360 outpatient locations across 14 states, serving patients in more than 600 communities nationwide. The system is driven by a sustained ability to rescue failing hospitals and transform them into financially stable, high-quality community healthcare providers. A physician executive with dual board certifications in internal medicine and cardiology, Dr. Reddy integrates clinical insight into strategic decision-making, and under his leadership Prime Healthcare has been named among the “10 Top Health Systems” and “15 Top Health Systems” in the nation three times, with Prime hospitals recognized 72 times among the “100 Top Hospitals” by Fortune/Premier since 2003. More than $3.65 billion in capital investments since 2005 have helped modernize facilities and improve patient care, and more than $16 billion in charity and uncompensated care has been provided since 2010. Beyond Prime Healthcare, Dr. Reddy founded the Prime Healthcare Foundation, the Dr. Prem Reddy Family Foundation, and the California University of Science and Medicine. He also served as chairman of the Federation of American Hospitals board of directors in 2021. Thanks to his devotion to philanthropy and community healthcare, he was honored with a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from President Joseph Biden in 2023. He also earned the “Human Values Award” from the World Forum for Ethics in Business, as well as a “Healthcare Lifetime Achievement Award” presented by Michigan’s governor.

Tim Robinson. CEO of Nationwide Children’s Hospital (Columbus, Ohio). Mr. Robinson’s nearly three decades of service at Nationwide Children’s Hospital have helped elevate the organization from a respected regional pediatric hospital into an internationally recognized academic health system. Named CEO in 2019 after serving as the organization’s CFO, he has led with a clear focus on clinical excellence, research innovation, workforce development and community impact. Under his guidance, Nationwide Children’s has become the third largest children’s hospital in the nation, serving 1.7 million patient visits annually from all 50 states and more than 50 countries. The hospital is a perennial member of U.S. News & World Report‘s honor roll of top 10 children’s hospitals, is home to one of the nation’s most highly funded freestanding pediatric research institutes, and operates the largest pediatric behavioral and mental health treatment and research pavilion of its kind in the country. Mr. Robinson was instrumental in launching the “Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families” initiative, a nationally recognized model that has helped develop or improve more than 800 units of affordable housing in historically underserved Columbus neighborhoods, while supporting education, workforce development and economic opportunity. He has also championed research commercialization efforts that have led to the creation of 21 companies based on Nationwide Children’s scientific and medical discoveries, and overseen the expansion of a school-based health program that is now the most robust in the country with a reach of 32 southeastern Ohio counties. Mr. Robinson holds the E. Thomas Boles Jr. Professorship of Surgery at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and serves on numerous boards, including the Children’s Hospital Association, Andelyn Biosciences and the Columbus Downtown Development Corporation.

Mitchell H. Rosner, MD. CEO of UVA Health and Executive Vice President for Health Affairs, University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Va.). Dr. Rosner serves as CEO of UVA Health and executive vice president for health affairs for the University of Virginia, bringing a longstanding record of clinical excellence, academic distinction and values-driven executive leadership to one of the most impactful academic health systems in the country. A board-certified nephrologist and nationally respected physician-scientist, he holds the Henry B. Mulholland Professorship of Medicine, has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and seven books, serves as education director for the International Society of Nephrology, and is the recipient of the American Society of Nephrology’s “Robert Narins Award” for outstanding lifetime contributions to education. Prior to his current role, Dr. Rosner chaired the University of Virginia School of Medicine’s department of medicine, which is its largest clinical department. There, he oversaw the growth of major strategic programs in cardiology, oncology and critical care. In early 2025, he was called upon to serve as interim executive vice president for health affairs during a period of significant organizational disruption, and his transparent communication, consistent presence and empathetic engagement with UVA Health’s 18,000 team members built trust and led to his appointment as permanent executive vice president and CEO in September 2025. Dr. Rosner is still committed to clinical practice, maintaining weekly time in his nephrology clinic to ensure that strategic decisions remain grounded in the realities of frontline patient care. He was awarded the University of Virginia’s “Thomas Jefferson Award” in 2022, which is the highest honor bestowed upon a member of the UVA community. He was also elected fellow of the Royal Society of Physicians in 2023.

Lisa Shannon. President and CEO of Allina Health (Minneapolis). Ms. Shannon leads Allina Health, one of the largest healthcare systems in Minnesota, with a focus on quality care delivery and a culture of safety and inclusivity for frontline workers, first responders and staff. Her population health strategy has been central to expanding access and improving outcomes, including a partnership with population health company Navvis to optimize hospital throughput and patient flow, tighten relationships with skilled nursing facilities, reduce unnecessary hospital days, and open capacity to reduce emergency department wait times and improve post-surgical bed availability. Ms. Shannon has also driven innovative payer partnerships, including a successful pilot using nurse practitioners and AI to improve coding accuracy that has resulted in a .274 average improvement in risk adjustment factor scores. Additionally, she has implemented the Center for Provider Well-Being to support clinicians navigating challenging situations and change. Allina Health’s climate action plan has set goals of a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050, earning the system multiple awards from Practice Greenhealth, including the 2024 “System for Change Award” for the second consecutive year. Ms. Shannon began a three-year term on the American Hospital Association’s board of trustees in January 2025 and also serves on the boards of Greater Twin Cities United Way and the Minnesota Business Partnership.

Mike Slubowski. President and CEO at Trinity Health (Livonia, Mich.). Mr. Slubowski leads Trinity Health, one of the nation’s largest Catholic health systems, overseeing 92 hospitals, 133,000 employees and $25.4 billion in annual revenue while guiding the organization’s strategy, performance and mission-driven growth across 23 states. A seasoned executive of nationally recognized health systems, he is the former Trinity Health president and COO. Mr. Slubowski has long been recognized nationally for his emphasis on aligning people, processes, technology and culture to improve systemwide outcomes. Under his leadership, Trinity Health is undergoing a major strategic shift toward outpatient and community-based care, investing heavily in urgent care, medical groups, ambulatory surgery centers and “Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly”, initiatives that are driving double-digit annual growth and reshaping the system’s capital strategy. His focus on organic, physician-driven growth has contributed to a significant financial turnaround. Mr. Slubowski also is a past chairperson of the Catholic Health Association board of trustees and continues serving on its advisory group. He also joined the American Hospital Association’s board of trustees in January 2026 for a three-year term. He also holds board roles and fellowships reflecting decades of leadership across health systems such as Detroit-based Henry Ford Health, Broomfield, Colo.-based Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System, which merged with Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health in 2022, and Corvallis, Ore.-based Samaritan Health Services.

Johnese Spisso. President of UCLA Health, CEO of UCLA Hospital System and Associate Vice Chancellor of UCLA Health Sciences (Los Angeles). An acclaimed national leader in academic health, Ms. Spisso oversees UCLA Health’s extensive network, which provides care in Southern and Central California, and continually receives high rankings in U.S. News & World Report‘s “America’s Best Hospitals” listings. She supports research and discovery through partnerships and programs that fund new ideas, promote a culture of innovation, and help translate academic and scientific breakthroughs into clinical applications that improve patient care and health outcomes. In her role since 2016, she leads strategic growth and innovation with key acquisitions to expand access to quality care. This includes transforming a former community hospital into a world-class neuropsychiatric hospital to increase psychiatric inpatient capacity, opening in late summer 2026. Successful efforts with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health expanded the age range of Medi-Cal patients treated at UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital. UCLA Health’s homeless health collaborative has over 50,000 patient encounters and reduced repeat emergency visits by 32%. Ms. Spisso previously held executive roles at UW Medicine in Seattle. Her board service includes being past chair of the Hospital Association of Southern California and a California Hospital Association trustee. Ms. Spisso has authored numerous articles and book chapters on leadership. She has received numerous recognitions, including Los Angeles Business Journal‘s “CEO of the Year” award.

Julie J. Sprengel. President and CEO of CommonSpirit Health’s California Region. Ms. Sprengel leads CommonSpirit’s vast California Region, which cares for one in every four Californians. With $12 billion in annual revenue, the California Region contributes $1 billion in charity care and community benefits each year. Bringing over two decades in healthcare leadership, Ms. Sprengel advances the clinical workforce with a focus on quality, safety and experience, and strengthens care delivery through sustainable growth initiatives. Her focus on improving population health includes managing one million lives as part of value-based care arrangements and utilizing a state-of-the-art transfer center to address repatriation that ensures the appropriate level of care is delivered. The region funded homeless service agencies such as Parking LA, giving people a secure place to sleep in their vehicles with access to restrooms. Five Medical Safe Haven clinics are staffed by family physicians trained in trauma-informed care for victims and survivors of human trafficking. A statewide food recovery partnership redirects surplus food from hospitals to community organizations, addressing food insecurity while combating climate change. A champion for equity and inclusion, Ms. Sprengel paved the way for Morehouse School of Medicine to expand graduate medical education for underrepresented clinicians in key California communities. She is the California Hospital Association 2026 board chair and a Charles R. Drew University School of Medicine and Science executive trustee.

John Starcher. President and CEO of Bon Secours Mercy Health (Cincinnati). Mr. Starcher leads Bon Secours Mercy Health, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems and the fifth largest Catholic health system in the nation, overseeing more than 14 million patient encounters annually across six states and two countries via 47 acute care hospitals and more than 1,200 sites of care. Since guiding the merger of Bon Secours and Mercy Health in 2018, he has grown the organization into a $13 billion health system with continued expansion last year, including the acquisition of 10 urgent care centers in two states and the launch of a Global Business Services Center in the Philippines to extend shared global services capabilities. Mr. Starcher has been a leading force in the system’s digital transformation, overseeing a 10-year partnership with Philips to deploy remote patient monitoring tools that integrate patient data across a more connected care environment, and investing in virtual care company Hellocare.ai to advance smart-technology infrastructure across hospitals. He brings this forward-thinking approach to strategic expansion of the system’s business-to-business portfolio through Conduit Health Partners, Advantus Health Partners and Accrete Health Partners, all brands designed to disrupt the industry, enhance care delivery and drive operational growth. He serves as a director on the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Catholic Health Association, Ensemble Health Partners and Pediatrix, Inc., having served on more than 25 boards throughout his career. Mr. Starcher received the “Sister Concilia Moran Award” from the Catholic Health Association in 2021.

Robert Stone. CEO of City of Hope (Duarte, Calif.). Mr. Stone leads City of Hope, one of the nation’s largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organizations, where he has advanced a vision to connect lifesaving innovation to the patients and communities who need it most. His efforts have driven financial performance that surged more than 70% over the past two years through disciplined operational integration, strategic service-line growth and one of the strongest philanthropic engines in cancer care. Under his leadership, City of Hope launched a national clinical trials network in 2025 that enables simultaneous trial activation across multiple states, accelerating access to investigational therapies for patients who historically lacked such opportunities. Under his leadership, the system also opened Orange County’s first specialty cancer hospital and unveiled the system’s largest outpatient cancer center, Hope Plaza in Los Angeles, to bring complex care including CAR T-cell therapy into community settings. Mr. Stone has guided City of Hope to become a global leader in immunotherapy, CAR T-cell therapy, stem cell transplantation and precision medicine, with a translational infrastructure that includes two on-campus Good Manufacturing Practice facilities and now impacts more than 200 million people worldwide. His policy leadership has been equally consequential, including: founding AccessHope to extend National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center expertise virtually to communities across the country, now impacting more than 9 million lives; championing the California Cancer Care Equity Act to expand precision medicine and clinical trial access for approximately 15 million Medi-Cal patients; and leading the “Cancer Care is Different” coalition to widen insurance networks for vulnerable populations. The organization’s employee engagement is near the national 90th percentile and boasts a turnover rate of 10.5% compared to a 15.1% national average. Mr. Stone has been named “Hospital CEO of the Year” by the Los Angeles Business Journal and included among the “100 Most Influential CEOs in Oncology” by OncoDaily.

Debra F. Sukin, PhD. President and CEO of Texas Children’s Hospital (Houston). Dr. Sukin leads the nation’s largest pediatric and women’s health system. A Houston Business Journal “Most Admired CEO” honoree with a longstanding and accomplished career in healthcare leadership, Dr. Sukin has driven significant strategic and operational results since assuming the CEO role, including an over $500 million financial turnaround affirmed by stable outlooks from all three major credit rating agencies. She launched the Texas Children’s Research Institute to accelerate translational discovery and established Texas Children’s Physician Organization to strengthen physician leadership and outpatient performance. Dr. Sukin finalized a historic collaboration with Houston-based The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to create the Kinder Children’s Cancer Center, a first-of-its-kind partnership dedicated to advancing pediatric cancer care, research and clinical trials on a global scale. A strong advocate for culture and workforce engagement, she led a systemwide refresh of Texas Children’s values, reinforcing accountability, compassion and trust across the organization. Under her leadership, Texas Children’s continues to rank No. 1 in Texas for the 17th consecutive year and among the nation’s top pediatric hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, with all 10 specialties ranked in the top 10 nationally. She serves on the Texas Hospital Association board of trustees and American Hospital Association’s maternal and child health committee.

Mohan Suntha, MD. President and CEO of University of Maryland Medical System (Baltimore). Dr. Suntha leads the University of Maryland Medical System, the largest health system in Maryland with 11 hospitals and over 150 other care locations. He has consistently championed the tripartite academic medicine mission of patient care, research and education, ensuring that the system’s clinical scale strengthens rather than dilutes the academic enterprise. A physician by training and a tenured professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Dr. Suntha has deepened the partnership between the system and the School of Medicine to expand teaching, research and innovation opportunities across both academic and community hospitals. He has also emerged as a nationally respected advocate for value-based care, serving as a leading voice in Maryland’s unique all-payer model and a key health system partner in advancing the state’s “AHEAD Model,” working closely with state and federal leaders to align quality, equity and cost containment. He advocates for health systems acting as anchor institutions, leading significant investments across Baltimore and Maryland in workforce development, food security, economic empowerment and neighborhood revitalization. Beyond his role within the system, Dr. Suntha serves as chair of the Greater Baltimore Committee, where he brings together business, civic, academic and nonprofit leaders to advance inclusive economic growth across the region. He has been a frequent fixture on the Baltimore Business Journal‘s “Power 100” list and received the Boy Scouts of America Baltimore Area Council’s “Distinguished Citizen Award” in 2024.

Kevin Tabb, MD. President and CEO of Beth Israel Lahey Health (Burlington, Mass.). Dr. Tabb leads Beth Israel Lahey Health as president and CEO, overseeing a pioneering integrated health care system that offers a full continuum of services ranging from hospital to ambulatory to urgent to behavioral health care. The system is uniquely structured to advance meaningful collaboration across organizations, care settings, specialties and geographies to ensure patients receive the treatment they need in the communities where they live and work. He previously served as CEO of the Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess system and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and before that as chief medical officer at Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Hospital & Clinics, where he held broad strategic and operational responsibilities spanning physician network strategy, clinical quality and patient safety, regulatory and medical staff affairs, and graduate and continuing medical education. He also served as chief quality and medical information officer at Stanford earlier in his tenure there. Prior to his time at Stanford, Dr. Tabb led the clinical data service division of GE Healthcare IT, giving him a distinctive blend of clinical leadership, health system executive experience and healthcare technology expertise. In March 2026, Dr. Tabb announced his intention to step down in a year, after more than 14 years of transformative leadership of the system and its predecessor healthcare providers. He will continue in his role until a successor is selected and a smooth transition is fully supported.

Warner Thomas. President and CEO of Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.). Mr. Thomas leads Sutter Health, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems, where in 2025 he guided the organization to care for more than 3.6 million patients, representing an increase of more than 110,000 from the prior year. During this time, the system also opened or expanded 31 ambulatory care sites, enabled 1.1 million additional online appointments, and achieved 65% digital patient engagement across Northern and Central California. A cornerstone of his growth strategy has been one of the most effective clinician recruitment efforts in the industry, growing Sutter’s aligned medical groups from 4,331 to 6,144 clinicians between 2022 and 2025 for a nearly 42% increase, while putting the system on track to become the largest community-based medical training program in Northern California, with a goal of 1,000 residents and fellows by 2030. Quality outcomes have strengthened meaningfully under his leadership, with 16 system hospitals earning Leapfrog “A” safety grades in 2025, the system’s strongest performance to date, alongside delivery of more than 917,000 additional cancer screenings compared to the prior year. Philanthropy reached historic levels in 2025 with $242 million raised, including a largest-in-system-history gift of $110 million to expand access in California’s Greater Silicon Valley. Mr. Thomas has served on the American Hospital Association’s board of trustees and chaired its health systems governing council. He has also served on the Medicare payment advisory commission, continues to advise Congress on Medicare-related issues, and is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. He was named 2026 “CEO of the Year” by Press Ganey.

Michael Ugwueke, DHA. President and CEO of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare (Memphis, Tenn.). Dr. Ugwueke has served as president and CEO of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare since January 2017, providing strategic leadership and overseeing the system’s five-year plan, “MLH Reimagined.” Prior to this role, he was president and COO, overseeing five adult hospitals and affiliated companies. He previously served as senior vice president for Methodist North and South Hospitals. With over 26 years of experience, he has held leadership positions in health systems across Atlanta, Sarasota, Washington, D.C. and Chicago. Before joining Methodist, he was vice president of operations at Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Ill. There, he led a significant transformation of the imaging department that decreased lead-times, enhanced patient volumes, and positively impacted physician relationships. Additionally, he co-led an emergency department project that cut wait times by 50% and led to increased patient satisfaction scores.

Chris Van Gorder. President and CEO of Scripps Health (San Diego). As the leader of one of the top rated healthcare systems, Mr. Van Gorder has guided Scripps Health for 26 years. He expanded Scripps from a $1 billion group of hospitals with 55 days cash on hand to a $5 billion integrated health system with more than 400 days cash on hand. The system boasts 17,800 employees and over 3,500 affiliated physicians. His focus on a strong organizational culture, transparency and career development earned Scripps a place on Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list for 18 years. His leadership academy turns middle managers into leaders, with graduates moving into higher management and executive positions at Scripps Health and nationwide. Equally committed to helping physicians expand their clinical acumen with leadership knowledge, experience and understanding of the issues facing healthcare delivery, Mr. Van Gorder is known for listening and accepting 100% of his physician leadership cabinet recommendations. Among his countless innovations is the Scripps Health dyad leadership model, which pairs administrators with physicians. A former police officer whose public service began after a near-fatal injury in the line of duty, he brings a unique perspective rooted in resilience, teamwork and service. As a San Diego County reserve assistant sheriff, he led Scripps’ medical response team to support Hurricane Katrina, Haiti and Nepal earthquakes. Past American College of Healthcare Executives chair and California Commission on Emergency Medical Services appointee, he received the merican College of Healthcare Executives “Gold Medal Award” for leadership and community contributions.

Selwyn M. Vickers, MD. President and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York City). Internationally acclaimed pancreatic cancer surgeon, researcher and leader in health equity, Dr. Vickers leads Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, whose people are united by the singular mission of ending cancer for life. He is guiding the cancer center through an era of groundbreaking discovery and compassionate, patient-centered care, which has led to Memorial Sloan Kettering being named world’s best hospital for oncology in the world this year by Newsweek. Prior to joining the center in 2022, he served as CEO of Birmingham, Ala.-based UAB Health System and UAB/Ascension St. Vincent’s Alliance, as well as senior vice president for medicine and dean of the Heersink School of Medicine at University of Alabama at Birmingham. His pioneering research in pancreatic cancer led to the development of Minnelide, an investigational therapy now in clinical trials, as well as transformative advances in oncolytic viral treatments. A member of the National Academy of Medicine and former president of several leading surgical societies, Dr. Vickers also sees patients and mentors the next generation of physician-scientists. His leadership is marked by a commitment to advancing scientific innovation, improving access to high-quality cancer care and eliminating disparities in health outcomes worldwide. In 2025, the care center cared for more than 75,000 patients. It also offers access to over 1,800 clinical trials enrolling 5,000 participants annually, providing therapies often unavailable elsewhere. Over the past five years, its research has contributed to more than 40 FDA‑approved cancer treatments, including 10 in 2025 alone.

Shawn Vincent. President and CEO of Loyola Medicine (Maywood, Ill.). Mr. Vincent serves as president and CEO of Loyola Medicine, overseeing Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health’s five Illinois and Indiana hospitals. In his leadership role, he brings a high degree of integrity and transparency in all interactions with colleagues, patients, physicians and community members. A defining accomplishment of his tenure has been the successful merger of Trinity Health’s Illinois and Indiana markets into a single unified region with one leadership team, driving improvements in safety, quality, operations and financial performance, including a $55 million financial turnaround of the Indiana market within just 12 months. Mr. Vincent also stabilized the clinical workforce by returning net hire ratios to pre-pandemic levels and oversaw the $70 million expansion of a comprehensive outpatient center in Tinley Park, Ill. Under his leadership, Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood earned its fourth Magnet designation, Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park, Ill. earned its first, and Loyola MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn, Ill. achieved Magnet designation with distinction, making it only the sixth hospital in the nation to reach that milestone. He serves as chair of the board of trustees of the Illinois Health & Hospital Association, chairs the Trinity Health Specialty Pharmacy board and is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago, among numerous other board and leadership roles. Mr. Vincent was included in Crain’s Chicago Business‘ “Who’s Who in Chicago Business” list for 2025.

Erik Wexler. President and CEO at Providence (Renton, Wash.). Mr. Wexler leads one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems with more than 120,000 caregivers in seven states, 51 hospitals and 1,000 clinics. During his first year as president and CEO in 2025, Mr. Wexler guided Providence through strategic transformation in the face of significant economic and political challenges. Key accomplishments included creating an office of transformation to deploy AI and digital tools to reduce clinical workload and burnout, restructuring functions to redirect critical resources to frontline care, significantly improving financial performance, and helping introduce federal legislation that will hold insurers accountable for payment delays. Looking ahead to the future of health care, Mr. Wexler recently announced a five-year strategic direction for Providence that focuses on driving innovation for positive change. His influence in the industry is reinforced by his appointment to the board of trustees of the American Hospital Association in 2026 and his ongoing service on the board of directors of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and FBI healthcare advisory council. Since joining the organization in 2016, Mr. Wexler has held several executive leadership positions, including Providence’s COO, president of operations and strategy for Providence’s South Division, and regional chief executive for Providence Southern California. Earlier in his career, he served as chief executive for Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare’s Northeast Region, overseeing operations in three states.

Eugene Woods. CEO of Advocate Health (Charlotte, N.C.). Mr. Woods leads Advocate Health, the nation’s third-largest nonprofit integrated health system, with a sweeping strategic vision to redefine care. In just the past year, his leadership has produced a remarkable series of milestones, including the opening of “The Pearl” innovation district featuring Charlotte’s first four-year medical school and the exclusive North American headquarters of the surgical training and research center IRCAD. He also facilitated the launch of the Advocate Health National Center for Clinical Trials to democratize access to breakthrough treatments, as well as a billion-dollar investment on Chicago’s South Side, including a new hospital and 10 neighborhood care sites, aimed at addressing a 30-year life expectancy gap in the community. Under his “REWIRE 2030” strategy, Mr. Woods has overseen the scaling of AI initiatives saving clinicians up to one hour per day in documentation, the launch of national service lines bringing top clinical expertise across the system footprint, and the achievement of $1.5 billion in annual cost savings since the system’s formation in December 2022. His commitment to safety and quality has driven a striking increase in Leapfrog “A” safety grades, going from 5 to 24 hospitals in a single year, alongside a 14% reduction in mortality since Advocate Health was formed. In addition, the system delivered $6.2 billion in community benefit in the past year alone. The system earned the 2025 American Medical Association “Joy in Medicine Gold” recognition, making it the largest health system to be honored at the highest level. This achievement is a direct result of Mr. Woods’ “Best Place to Care” initiative and a culture where 87% of teammates recommend Advocate as a safe place to receive care. Mr. Woods has chaired both the American Hospital Association board of trustees and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond board, and currently serves on the board of Johnson & Johnson. He has received the National Center for Healthcare Leadership’s “Gail L. Warden Leadership Excellence Award,” among numerous other honors.

Albert L. Wright, Jr. President and CEO of WVU Health System (Morgantown, W.Va.). Mr. Wright serves as president and CEO of the WVU Health System, the state’s largest private employer, which he has transformed into an integrated network of 25 hospitals and clinics spanning a four-state region that includes West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Since joining the Health System in 2014, Mr. Wright has directed more than $3 billion in capital investments to build new facilities, modernize infrastructure and expand specialty care, growing the system to more than 35,000 employees and $7 billion in revenue. A particularly defining accomplishment of his tenure was the 2023 launch of Peak Health, a health insurance company co-owned by nonprofit health providers including WVU Health System, Huntington, W.Va.-based Marshall Health Network and Winchester, Va.-based Valley Health, where Mr. Wright serves as chairman of the board. Peak Health’s work is aimed at lowering the cost of care, decreasing administrative burden, and reducing friction between payers and providers. Mr. Wright previously held senior leadership positions at OhioHealth in Columbus and UPMC in Pittsburgh.

Matthew Zuino. President and CEO of Baptist Health (Jacksonville, Fla.). Mr. Zuino became the eighth president and CEO in the 70-year history of Baptist Health in January 2026, stepping into the role after serving as executive vice president and COO for six years and president of physician integration for three. He entered his 10th year with the organization having been a key architect of its growth and strategic direction. A forward-thinking executive with more than 30 years of overall healthcare experience, he is widely credited as a principal architect of the organization’s “Vision for 2030,” a strategic operational roadmap for growth and innovation. During his tenure as COO, he oversaw net revenue growth from $2 billion in fiscal year 2020 to a projected $3.7 billion in fiscal year 2026. Prior to joining Baptist Health, Mr. Zuino spent 17 years at Marlton-based Virtua Health, South Jersey’s largest health system, holding multiple senior leadership roles including senior vice president and COO of hospital operations and vice president and COO of Virtua Medical Group. He now leads the nonprofit health system, which is recognized nationally for clinical excellence and compassionate care with a consistent focus on people and community. Beyond Baptist Health, he serves as vice chair of the board of directors for the United Way of Northeast Florida, on the JAX Chamber board of directors, and as a member of the Chairman’s Club of the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl. Mr. Zuino is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and a 2026 nominee for Florida Trend‘s “Florida 500 Most Influential Business Leaders.”

C-suite

Feby Abraham, PhD. Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston). Dr. Abraham has led transformative initiatives since joining Memorial Hermann Health System in 2020, focusing on expanding patient access, reducing costs and driving innovation. Under his leadership as executive vice president and chief strategy officer, Memorial Hermann’s urgent care network tripled through joint ventures, alleviating emergency room congestion and enhancing immediate care options. His efforts have resulted in strategic equity investments, as well as new partnerships and joint ventures, such as a collaboration with Dallas-based United Surgical Partners International. Through the system’s Innovation Hub, he has launched active pilots that have reduced clinician burnout, helped with early disease detection and created at-home oncology models for enhanced patient care. His data-driven approach has streamlined digital scheduling, personalized chronic disease management and broadened behavioral health access, significantly improving patient outcomes. Widely recognized as a thought leader in healthcare strategy, Dr. Abraham is determined to advance innovation and scale systemwide improvements.

Shakeeb Akhter. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. As Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s leader of enterprise digital transformation, Mr. Akhter oversees technology, analytics, AI automation and cyber security. He focuses on enhancing patient care, health system operations, and seamless experiences for patients and clinicians using technology. He developed the system’s digital transformation strategy, positioning it as a leader for pediatric digital innovation in AI, automation and digitally enabled care models. Under his leadership, the system launched “CHOP GPT,” an AI chatbot, as well as an automation center of excellence. He is also leading the deployment of Epic’s Gen AI capabilities, such as AI-based note summarization and AI-assisted messages. The system was the first organization to scale “ART,” Epic’s AI-assisted messaging feature, to all clinicians. The system also piloted Abridge for ambient listening. To enable digital care, the system has now deployed various remote patient programs, transforming care for over 10,000 children, resulting in life-saving events and reducing readmission by 30% for some programs. In addition, the system is digitizing the patient journey to improve access and experience, cutting some specialty wait times up to 20 days. Lastly, the system is modernizing technology and improving workforce experience via a strategic partnership with Microsoft to leverage AI tools and Microsoft Azure to host clinical and operational applications, driving millions in savings.

Debra Albert, DNP, RN. CNO and Senior Vice President for Patient Care Services at NYU Langone Health (New York City). Dr. Albert has been with NYU Langone Health since April 2020. She oversees the nursing staff for the health system, which includes seven inpatient locations and a large network of outpatient clinics and services. The health system has been honored by Vizient as the No. 1 health system in the nation for four consecutive years as of fall 2025, thanks to strong quality and safety performance. All of NYU Langone’s inpatient hospitals are Magnet-designated for excellence in nursing and quality patient care, and NYU Langone Hospital–Suffolk in Patchogue, N.Y., the most recently acquired, is actively working toward its first certification. Before her current role, Dr. Albert served as the senior vice president and CNO of UChicago Medicine.

Maria Ansari, MD. Co-CEO of The Permanente Federation (Oakland, Calif.). Dr. Ansari serves as co-CEO of The Permanente Federation alongside Ramin Davidoff, MD. Following a 2025 affiliation between The Permanente Medical Group and Northwest Permanente, she now leads three medical groups encompassing 13,000 physicians and 48,000 staff that serve nearly 6 million members across multiple states – The Permanente Medical Group, the Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group and Northwest Permanente. Under her leadership, Kaiser Permanente members are 20% less likely to lose years of life due to cancer and 33% less likely to lose years of life due to heart disease, as compared with nonmembers in their communities. In addition, every Kaiser Permanente market either received or tied for top National Committee for Quality Assurance ranking, with Northern California earning its highest rating awarded in California in 2025. A defining hallmark of her leadership is championing the world’s largest deployment of ambient AI scribe technology in healthcare, making it available to more than 25,000 physicians across facilities, with an initial The Permanente Medical Group rollout showing physicians saved approximately one hour of clerical work daily and 81% of patients reporting their physician spent less time looking at a computer screen. Her prioritization of physician wellness through operational and technological improvements earned five Permanente Medical Groups recognition in the American Medical Association’s “Joy in Medicine” program in 2025. Dr. Ansari also oversees The Permanente Medical Group’s division of research, one of the nation’s largest research facilities with more than 1,000 publications produced per year. She launched the AIM-HI Coordinating Center to fund AI and machine learning research across five U.S. healthcare organizations. She has advocated on Capitol Hill for value-based care, responsible physician-led AI, and the maintenance of access and coverage for millions of Americans.

Sachin Apte, MD. Chief Clinical Officer of Huntsman Cancer Institute and Physician-in-Chief (Salt Lake City). Dr. Apte serves as chief clinical officer at Huntsman Cancer Institute and physician-in-chief of the cancer hospital, part of the University of Utah Health system. He brings to the role a distinguished career as a board-certified gynecologic oncologist and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Utah Health. Since joining Huntsman Cancer Institute in 2021, he has been committed to performance excellence through high-quality, innovative cancer care delivery fully integrated into the research mission, with a sustained focus on value and sustainability for patients, the health system and the communities served. His research program focuses on clinical trials for new investigational therapies in patients with gynecologic cancers, as well as improving surgical quality and outcomes. Prior to joining Huntsman, Dr. Apte served as chair of the department of gynecologic oncology and subsequently as associate chief medical officer at Tampa, Fla.-based Moffitt Cancer Center, one of the nation’s premier cancer institutions. His prior experience gave him deep expertise in both clinical leadership and the operational complexities of running a high-performing cancer program at scale.

Richard R. Barakat, MD. Physician-in-Chief and Executive Director of Cancer Services and Research for Northwell Health Cancer Institute, and Senior Vice President of Cancer Services at Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.). Dr. Barakat serves as physician-in-chief and executive director of cancer services and research at Northwell Health’s Cancer Institute and senior vice president of cancer services, bringing to the role an internationally recognized career as a surgeon and clinical investigator with a particular focus on gynecologic oncology. Prior to joining Northwell Health, he served as chief of the gynecology service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and held the Ronald O. Perelman Chair in Gynecologic Surgery. There, he was lead investigator on several influential research projects, including landmark studies comparing laparoscopic versus standard surgery for endometrial cancer and evaluating lower-extremity lymphedema in women treated for uterine corpus cancer. A professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Dr. Barakat is the author or co-author of more than 340 peer-reviewed articles, numerous textbook chapters, an editor of a surgical atlas on gynecologic cancer, and an editor of the latest edition of Principles and Practice of Gynecologic Oncology, one of the leading texts in the field. His research has made foundational contributions to understanding the incidence, risk factors and quality-of-life impact of lymphedema in women surgically treated for gynecologic cancers, with key findings establishing that lymph node dissection puts patients at increased and persistent risk for lower extremity lymphedema. He has served as president of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology, the International Gynecologic Cancer Society, the Metropolitan Gynecologic Cancer Society, and the New York Obstetrical Society, and previously served as vice chair of the cancer prevention committee of the Gynecologic Oncology Group and as an examiner for the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

John Brownstein, PhD. Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Brownstein serves both as senior vice president and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s, as well as a professor of pediatrics and biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers. His focus is on novel methods and applications in public health surveillance. His work has pioneered “digital epidemiology,” utilizing diverse digital data sources to understand population health. Dr. Brownstein’s research is recognized for its translational impact, particularly through the development and application of AI, data mining and citizen science. His innovative platforms, such as Vaccines.gov, Global.health and HealthMap, serve millions annually and have received recognition from the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. Dr. Brownstein’s contributions extend beyond academia into advisory roles for top agencies including the World Health Organization, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Defense, Centers for Disease Control and The White House. His efforts at Boston Children’s have catalyzed the launch of new startups and unique collaborations with companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Uber, Instacart, Microsoft and OpenAI. Dr. Brownstein is also co-founder of digital health companies Epidemico and Circulation. He also serves as an ABC medical news contributor.

Steve Burriss. COO of Orlando (Fla.) Health. Mr. Burriss joined Orlando Health at a pivotal moment as the organization prepared for transformational growth, and over the past two years has played a central role in expanding access to care through the acquisition of five hospitals in central Alabama and two on Florida’s east coast. His efforts have helped grow Orlando Health from approximately 20,000 to more than 40,000 team members while maintaining strong quality outcomes and a mission-driven culture throughout rapid expansion. He has driven collaborations in quality, safety and access through strategic partnerships established with Florida Medical Clinic and Watson Clinic, culminating in the openings of two new hospitals designed to deliver coordinated, high-quality, connected care across the continuum. Mr. Burriss reimagined the organizational leadership model by establishing regional systems across Florida and Alabama to accommodate expanded scale, improving operational consistency and quality while empowering regional leaders to address community-specific needs. He led the development of a system chief quality officer role and the implementation of a monthly quality close meeting with 100% senior executive participation, which included regular reviews of site-specific performance, patient safety events and improvement initiatives. These practices resulted in accelerated best-practice sharing, faster improvement cycles and measurable reductions in variation across the system. Despite the complexity of multiple simultaneous acquisitions, Orlando Health achieved top-decile team member engagement and satisfaction results under his leadership. Burriss has received the Triangle Business Journal “40 Under 40 Award” and the Leadership Triangle “Goodmon Award.”

Will Carroll, PharmD. Vice President and Chief Pharmacy Officer of Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.). Dr. Carroll joined Sutter Health as vice president and chief pharmacy officer in November 2025, bringing to the 27-hospital system a depth of pharmacy leadership experience gained most recently at Edison, N.J.-based Hackensack Meridian Health, where he served as vice president of network pharmacy and chief pharmacy officer for three years. In his new role at Sutter, Dr. Carroll leads efforts to create a seamless, integrated experience for patients on complex medication therapies and improve quality through a system service lines approach, a scope that spans inpatient, outpatient, ambulatory and specialty pharmacy services across one of California’s largest and most comprehensive health systems. His background in network-level pharmacy leadership at a major integrated health system positions him well to drive the clinical and operational integration that complex medication management requires at scale.

Rohit Chandra, PhD. Chief Digital Officer at Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Chandra stepped into the chief digital officer role in 2022. He leads the information technology division and drives digital innovation across Cleveland Clinic’s health system on a global scale. Dr. Chandra has more than 25 years of experience in digital technology and engineering. He is furthering Cleveland Clinic’s work in areas including AI, machine learning and big data, broadening access to care and enhancing the patient and caregiver experience. He previously served as the vice president of engineering at technology startup Sunshine Products, where he led the engineering team.

Ramin Davidoff, MD. Co-CEO of The Permanente Federation (Oakland, Calif.). Dr. Davidoff serves as co-CEO of The Permanente Federation alongside Maria Ansari, MD, providing national leadership for the Permanente Medical Groups that together with Kaiser Foundation Health Plans and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals comprise Kaiser Permanente. Simultaneously, he serves as executive medical director and board chair of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group and as board chair and CEO of both The Southeast Permanente Medical Group and The Hawaii Permanente Medical Group. Under his leadership, Kaiser Permanente has received the highest or tied for top National Committee for Quality Assurance ranking in every region served, ranks in the top 5-10% nationally for preventive screenings across multiple conditions as measured by Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set, and has achieved five-year cancer survival rates in Southern California that exceed the National Cancer Institute’s benchmarks for all 42 cancer types, some by more than 14%. He oversaw the rollout of ambient AI tools to more than 9,000 physicians across Southern California, Hawaii and Southeast Permanente medical groups as part of a national introduction to more than 25,000 physicians, saving clinicians an average of one hour per day, and championed a national program offering patients video or telephone visits with physicians within a two-hour window. Dr. Davidoff’s commitment to health equity led to a quality improvement initiative, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, that narrowed gaps in blood pressure control between Black and white patients. He also co-led the expansion of Kaiser Permanente’s national cancer expert review program, enabling specialist consultations for 11 cancer types. He has advocated on Capitol Hill for measures to strengthen the physician pipeline, including support for the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2025, and serves as a board member of the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine. He was named one of The CEO Forum’s “Top 10 CEOs Transforming Healthcare in America” for 2025.

Erik Decker. Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer of Intermountain Health (Salt Lake City). Mr. Decker serves as vice president and CISO at Intermountain Health, a multi-state integrated delivery network. He brings 24 years of IT experience, 17 of which were focused on information security, to one of the most consequential cybersecurity roles in American healthcare. He most recently served as chairman for the Healthcare Sector Coordinating Council’s joint cybersecurity working group, a critical infrastructure public-private partnership organization covering more than 450 organizations and nearly 1,000 members. He co-leads the Department of Health and Human Services 405(d) task group focused on implementing the Cybersecurity Act of 2015’s 405(d) legislation within the healthcare sector, and co-authored the landmark publication and foundational reference piece “Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices: Managing Threats and Protecting Patients,” first released in 2018 and updated in 2023. He is also co-author of the “Hospital Resiliency Landscape Analysis” publication released in 2023, further guiding healthcare organizations through an increasingly complex threat environment. Mr. Decker is also a frequent expert witness and highly engaged national policy contributor.

Steven Goldstein. President of System Integration Strategy for UR Medicine (Rochester, N.Y.). Mr. Goldstein, former president and CEO of Strong Memorial Hospital and Highland Hospital, now leads strategic integration for the UR Medicine health system. He has played a key role in the growth of both hospitals and the establishment of UR Medicine, ensuring high-quality healthcare across upstate New York. Previously, he was president and CEO of Rochester General Hospital before joining Strong Memorial in 1996. In his president and CEO role, Mr. Goldstein oversaw all aspects of hospital operations. Throughout his career, he has been actively involved in shaping healthcare reform, including through service on the American Hospital Association’s board of trustees.

Bruce Hall, MD, PhD. Chief Clinical Officer for UC Davis Health System (Sacramento, Calif.). Dr. Hall has served as chief clinical officer for UC Davis Health since joining the system in 2024, overseeing all clinical operations with responsibilities spanning the reliability and efficiency of care delivery, total cost of care management, consistent high-quality care across all venues, growth and acquisition analysis, and overall access improvement. His areas of expertise include performance measurement, quality improvement, clinical integration, care standardization, resource stewardship and facilitating change. He has honed his skills across a distinguished career, with more than two decades at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine and St. Louis-based BJC Healthcare. There, he served as vice president and system chief medical officer, leading the clinical advisory group for the BJC Center for Clinical Excellence and providing medical direction for supply chain operations. A professor of surgery at Washington University’s School of Medicine and a professor of healthcare management at its Olin Business School, Dr. Hall has taught healthcare economics and management courses for more than two decades, and lectured nationally and internationally on healthcare quality, management, health economics and policy, insurance theory and industry change. He has been part of the leadership team for the American College of Surgeons’ national surgical quality improvement program since its founding more than 20 years ago, serving as a critical contributor to a program that has involved hundreds of national and global hospitals and touched the lives of millions of surgical patients, and for which he currently serves as consulting director. He was recognized by the American College of Surgeons in July 2025 for more than 20 years of exemplary leadership and service.

Michael Hasselberg, PhD, RN. Chief Transformation and Digital Officer for Nebraska Medicine (Omaha). Dr. Hasselberg joined Nebraska Medicine as its inaugural chief transformation and digital officer in September 2025, bringing to the newly created role a nationally recognized record of innovative leadership in AI, rural health, behavioral science, entrepreneurship and clinical research. He came to Nebraska Medicine from UR Medicine in Rochester, N.Y., where he served as chief digital health officer for more than a decade. In his new role, Dr. Hasselberg and his team are charged with bridging the gaps between clinical operations, IT, administration and academic research, a uniquely integrative mandate aiming to align digital transformation efforts with a clinical and academic mission. The scope of his leadership at Nebraska Medicine includes direct reports from the interim vice president of IT and the vice president of strategy enablement, positioning him to drive coherent, enterprisewide transformation across the health system’s most critical operational and strategic functions.

Brian Hasselfeld, MD. Executive Medical Director of Digital Health and Innovation at Johns Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore). Dr. Hasselfeld serves as executive medical director of digital health and innovation at Johns Hopkins Medicine, responsible for the office of telemedicine, which oversees virtual care operational and technical implementation across the system’s six hospitals, ambulatory operations, and international, home care and insurance business lines. He also serves as associate director of “Johns Hopkins inHealth,” a strategic initiative to advance precision medicine across the health system, and as a board member for the Johns Hopkins Health Plans Medicare Advantage insurance plan. Throughout, he maintains a practice as a primary care physician in Baltimore, keeping his digital health leadership grounded in frontline clinical realities. His background combines clinical medicine with deep expertise in technology, entrepreneurship and finance, including experience as an investment banking analyst on Wall Street in technology, media and telecommunications. Outside Johns Hopkins, Dr. Hasselfeld serves on the clinical advisory board for Atropos Health, advises ShareWell, is a member of the Wolters Kluwer Health insight leaders council, and serves on the .406 Ventures Healthcare executive council.

Susan Huang, MD. Chief Physician Executive of Providence, and Chief Executive of Providence Clinical Network (Renton, Wash.). Dr. Huang serves as chief physician executive for Providence and chief executive of the Providence Clinical Network, encompassing all of Providence’s ambulatory operations with over 10,000 physicians and advanced practice providers, 30,000 caregivers and 1,100 clinics. She is responsible for diagnostics, ExpressCare and urgent care centers, clinical institutes, graduate medical education, research, genomics, value-based care, virtual care, Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, and the Institute for Human Caring. In her role as the organization’s top physician executive, she leads efforts to revitalize the practice of medicine for all physicians and advanced practice providers while driving clinical excellence and innovation across the Providence system. Her career has spanned clinical leadership, payer-provider strategy, AI innovation and academic medicine, with prior roles as chief medical officer for Providence’s South Division, CEO of California’s payer-provider Providence Health Network, and as chief value medical officer at the Palo Alto Foundation Medical Group within Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health. Dr. Huang helped develop one of the first successful AI models in healthcare at Google, and is a published scientific author in journals including Nature. She is also a board-certified dermatologist.

Olu Jegede, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Health Equity and Community Impact Officer for Cone Health (Greensboro, N.C.). Dr. Jegede leads health equity and community impact at Cone Health with a measurable vision to design the “CATCH 5 in 5” program, which aims to take collaborative actions toward community health to increase life expectancy by five years in five years. The program was prompted by the discovery of a 15-year life expectancy gap between zip codes in the communities Cone Health serves. Launched on July 8, 2023, in partnership with more than 73 community-based organizations and two local universities, the program implements strategic community wellness events through a mobile health clinic to expand access to care, conduct screenings for cardiometabolic risk factors and social determinants of health, and provide real-time care coordination with community-based organizations. These efforts are supported by community health worker pathways and primary care referral tracks for longer-term follow-up. The Cone Health board of trustees has approved $150 million in investment across five counties over five years to achieve the program’s goals. His impact extends to Cone Health’s mobile medicine program, delivering more than 4,189 clinical encounters per year to medically underserved communities. He has also led operational and cultural improvements that reduced emergency department utilization by 18.1% and inpatient admissions by 37%, and established the first transitional care clinic, which reduced 30-day readmission rates by 43% among established patients within its first year. He serves as medical director of Cone Health’s sickle cell program, as a faculty member at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and on the Governor’s N.C. Appointed Council on Sickle Cell Syndrome Services, among other leadership roles. Dr. Jegede received the American College of Healthcare Executives “Regent’s Award for Leadership in Health Equity” in 2024 and led the team that won “The Bernard J. Tyson Award for the Pursuit of Healthcare Equity” from The Joint Commission.

Vipin Kamath. Vice President and Chief of Digital Operations, MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston). Mr. Kamath serves as vice president and chief of digital operations at MD Anderson Cancer Center, overseeing the digital backbone that supports excellence in cancer care, research, education and prevention. In this enterprise role, he leads a high-performing team of 800 professionals across infrastructure, architecture, shared services and digital solutions, working to deliver mission-critical, resilient, secure and scalable platforms. His strategic focus is on evolving institutional operations into a unified and frictionless digital experience by strengthening IT service management practices, modernizing the technology stack and ensuring architectural integrity across systems. His responsibilities span from optimizing uptime and cyber readiness to influencing vendor partnerships and enterprise investments. Mr. Kamath also champions operational readiness, automation and digital continuity planning. He is committed to building a culture where innovation thrives, ensuring that the clinicians, researchers, educators and staff at MD Anderson are empowered to engage with technology in ways that advance the center’s singular mission of ending cancer.

Alexa B. Kimball, MD. CEO and President of Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston). Dr. Kimball leads Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, serving as a strategist, patient and physician advocate, clinical innovator and accessible leader. She has driven nearly 50% growth during her nine-year tenure as CEO, with the organization surpassing $1 billion in annual revenue in 2025. In 2025 alone, she helped recruit 340 new physicians and created the recruitment infrastructure for the physician group’s revolutionary 60-year, $1.7 billion collaboration with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, supporting the successful hiring of nearly 50 faculty within six months. Equally defining is her commitment to physician wellbeing, with the American Medical Association’s 2025 “Joy in Medicine” survey finding that from 2024 to 2025 physician stress fell 21.8%, burnout declined 8.5%, and intent to leave within two years dropped 9.3% at the physician group. A practicing dermatologist and clinical researcher, Dr. Kimball has conducted more than 150 clinical trials as principal investigator, contributed academic work on biomarkers that has directly shaped treatment pathways for severe chronic conditions, and helped develop drugs for underserved medical conditions through industry partnerships. She has also launched leadership training courses for physicians nationwide, negotiated directly with payers to ensure fair physician compensation, and championed gender equity in academic medicine through published advocacy. Dr. Kimball serves as physician chair of the Beth Israel Lahey Health Performance Network board of managers, and on the boards of Beth Israel Lahey Health, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the American Skin Association and the American Dermatologic Association.

Eric S. Kirkendall, MD. CMIO and CIO of Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist and of Academic Health for Advocate Health (Winston-Salem and Charlotte, N.C.). Dr. Kirkendall serves as CMIO and CIO for both Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist and the academic health enterprise of Advocate Health, supporting the missions of the clinical health system as well as the research and academic enterprise of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He also serves as deputy director of the Wake Forest Center for Healthcare Innovation, where he utilizes informatics tools to rapidly translate discoveries into a growing clinical enterprise, ultimately bringing about increased care quality, safety and cost-effectiveness. His research focuses on using health IT to maximize patient safety and quality, provider efficiency, data management, novel application and software development, and emerging technologies, with specialization in applied clinical decision support and digital health innovation. His efforts are sustained by a continuous stream of funding from federal and private sources. Prior to joining Wake Forest in 2018, Dr. Kirkendall served as associate CMIO at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where he oversaw the design, implementation and optimization of the EHR and associated technologies. He built a broad foundation across operations, research, education, innovation and administration that informs his uniquely comprehensive approach to health system informatics leadership today.

Adam Landman, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Information Officer for Brown Health (Providence, R.I.). Dr. Landman serves as senior vice president and chief digital information officer at Brown Health, bringing to the role an extensive clinical informatics and digital health leadership career built across some of the nation’s most prestigious academic medical institutions. He joined Brown University Health from Boston-based Mass General Brigham, where he served as CIO and senior vice president for digital. In that role, he led efforts to improve the care team experience and to optimize clinical and operational systems through the strategic use of digital and AI technologies, all while concurrently serving as an associate professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School. His career at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he began in 2010 as an emergency physician and director of clinical informatics, laid the foundation for his informatics leadership, which progressed through roles as CMIO, vice president, and ultimately CIO before moving to the enterprise level at Mass General Brigham. At Brown Health, Dr. Landman brings this depth of experience to advancing the health system’s digital capabilities, applying his expertise in AI, clinical informatics and operational optimization to support Brown Health’s mission of delivering exceptional patient care and advancing academic medicine.

Dennis Laraway. Executive Vice President and CFO of Cleveland Clinic. Mr. Laraway was named Cleveland Clinic’s CFO in March 2023. He is tasked with oversight of enterprisewide financial operations and corporate finance strategies. The company boasts a $18.3 billion operating revenue, as of December 2025. He joined Cleveland Clinic, a nonprofit academic medical center comprising 23 hospitals and 300 outpatient facilities, after having served as executive vice president and CFO at Banner Health, a Phoenix-based health system. He also has experience as CFO for Scott & White Health in Temple, Texas.

Scott MacLean. Senior Vice President and CIO at MedStar Health (Columbia, Md.). At MedStar Health, Mr. MacLean oversees informatics, applications, infrastructure, cybersecurity, clinical engineering and unified communications across the $9 billion provider and insurance network affiliated with Georgetown University. As senior vice president and CIO, he leads an 850-person team, including outsourced partners, and is accountable for $300 million in operating and capital budgets while supporting more than 300 care locations, over 4,000 physicians and nearly 10,000 nurses. His teams are implementing Epic while continuing to operate Oracle Health EHR and revenue cycle platforms, stewarding analytic databases that enable proactive clinical and business decision-making. He has negotiated major infrastructure outsourcing agreements to stabilize platforms and prepare the organization for advanced analytics, AI and digital interventions, partnering with innovation and digital transformation leaders to improve care and patient experience. With nearly three decades in health IT leadership, he previously spent 21 years at Boston-based Mass General Brigham, where he helped develop specialized oncology systems, integrated quality and safety tools across care settings, and strengthened infrastructure to support a unified EHR strategy, including technology planning for a greenfield hospital in Bangkok. Mr. MacLean has chaired national boards including College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, led CRISP Shared Services, and has testified before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee on cybersecurity. He continues to share expertise through national forums and serves on the board of the Alliance for Smart Healthcare Excellence while helping advance MedStar’s “Level 9 CHIME Digital Health Most Wired” achievement in both acute and ambulatory care.

Tiffany Murdock, DNP, MSN. Senior Vice President and CNO at Ochsner Health (New Orleans). Dr. Murdock serves as senior vice president and CNO at Ochsner Health, setting the strategy and vision for nursing practice and leading close to 10,000 nurses across clinical excellence, quality, education and workforce development. She partners closely with system quality leadership to advance enterprise performance while prioritizing nurse wellbeing, development and professional voice. Under her leadership, the system expanded initiatives like a virtual nursing model and strengthened workforce pipelines through programs such as “Ochsner Scholars” and a nurse tech program developed with academic partners and the state board of nursing. She also supported investments in the current workforce, including salary market adjustments, annual merit increases, employee bonuses, retirement contributions and enhanced family benefits. Dr. Murdock maintains direct visibility with nursing teams through quarterly rounding, shadow shifts, frontline and leader meetings, and volunteer events across the system’s seven regions. In 2025, Ochsner Health earned a “Top Workplaces 2025” honor by Top Workplaces for Nursing, thanks to its progress in building a culture where nurses feel valued, empowered and equipped to excel.

Cristy Page. MD. CEO and Dean at UNC Health & School of Medicine (Chapel Hill, N.C.). Dr. Page leads one of the nation’s largest public academic health systems, overseeing a statewide network of over 20 hospitals, 900 clinics and over 55,000 team members. She also serves as dean of UNC School of Medicine and vice chancellor for medical affairs at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, aligning clinical care, research and education across the enterprise. A physician leader in primary care and rural health, Dr. Page focuses her leadership on expanding access, strengthening the healthcare workforce and improving outcomes in underserved communities. She has advanced rural residency programs, expanded community-based training models and built physician pipeline initiatives to address long-term workforce shortages across the state. Prior to her appointment as CEO, she served as president of UNC Health Enterprises, leading systemwide strategy, partnerships and innovation efforts to support growth and transformation. As executive dean of UNC School of Medicine and chief academic officer for UNC Health, she oversaw clinical care, research and education across the enterprise, helping to strengthen alignment between academic excellence and community-based care delivery. Dr. Page is founder of “FIRST Scholars” program, a nationally recognized initiative designed to prepare the next generation of physicians while improving access to care in rural and underserved areas. A Morehead Scholar and lifelong North Carolinian, she is focused on advancing the system’s public mission to improve health across the state.

Margaret Pastuszko. President and COO of Mount Sinai Health System (New York City). Ms. Pastuszko serves as president and COO of Mount Sinai Health System, responsible for establishing, achieving and exceeding short- and long-term objectives, maintaining the overall viability of the health system, and directing operations and corporate services across one of the nation’s most respected academic medical institutions. She joined Mount Sinai in 2000 as director of strategic planning and implementation for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and has held positions of increasing responsibility spanning analytics, operations, strategy and system integration over more than two decades. Her uniquely comprehensive institutional knowledge now informs her leadership at the enterprise level. As executive vice president, COO and chief strategy officer, she led Mount Sinai’s agile operational response to the unprecedented challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. She has worked to improve access and throughput, optimize resource allocation, and advance new technologies to enhance care and operations. As the economics of healthcare shift from growth mode to efficiency and value creation, Ms. Pastuszko has been a driving force in Mount Sinai’s identification of opportunities for investment and resource optimization, spearheading large investments in population health and reinforcing the health system’s commitment to the wellbeing of its surrounding communities. She holds a professorship in population health science and policy, and serves as faculty at the Institute for Health Equity Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, she worked as a consultant at APM Management Consultants and CSC Healthcare Consulting, specializing in strategic planning.

Michael Pfeffer, MD. Senior Vice President and CIO for Stanford Health Care (Palo Alto, Calif.). Dr. Pfeffer serves as the CIO Stanford Health Care. In this role, he oversees technology and digital solutions, paving the way for novel research, teaching and compassionate care across hospitals and clinics. He also has a focus on bringing AI into Stanford’s healthcare operations. Prior to joining Stanford, he acted as assistant vice chancellor and CIO for UCLA Health Sciences in Los Angeles.

Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD. Chief Clinical Transformation Officer for University Hospitals and President of UH Veale Healthcare Transformation Institute (Cleveland). Dr. Pronovost is a world-renowned patient safety champion, critical care physician and prolific researcher with more than 1,000 peer-reviewed publications. He’s also an innovator whose transformative work leveraging checklists to reduce central line-associated bloodstream infections has saved thousands of lives, reducing infections that once killed as many people as breast or prostate cancer by 80% and earning him recognition as one of Time Magazine‘s 100 most influential people in the world and a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” At University Hospitals, he serves as chief clinical transformation officer and president of the UH Veale Healthcare Transformation Institute, and was named the Veale Distinguished Chair in Leadership and Clinical Transformation in 2023. There, he developed a checklist system to highlight defects in care value and deployed a management and accountability system that reduced annual Medicare patient care costs by 30% over three years while improving quality. This culminated in the system winning the American Hospital Association’s “Quest for Quality” award in 2022. Dr. Pronovost co-chaired the Healthcare Quality Summit alongside the deputy secretary of Health and Human Services in response to the presidential executive order to modernize quality measures across HHS, Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. He also served on the previous president’s Council for Science and Technology Patient Safety Working Group. Prior, Dr. Pronovost served as Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine’s senior vice president for patient safety and quality, founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, and senior vice president for clinical strategy and chief medical officer for UnitedHealthcare. He is a professor in the medicine, nursing and management schools at Case Western Reserve University. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2011, is an advisor to the World Health Organization’s World Alliance for Patient Safety. He also founded VisICU, since acquired by Philips, and Doctella, acquired by Masimo, among other healthcare technology ventures.

Jason Richeson. System Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for CommonSpirit Health (Chicago). Mr. Richeson serves as system senior vice president and chief technology officer at CommonSpirit Health, one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the nation. He oversees the strategic direction, design, development and implementation of enterprisewide IT infrastructure and business solutions that support the organization across its vast national footprint. In his dual role, he brings a strong background in IT strategy, software development lifecycle and business intelligence to help deliver innovative, secure and scalable IT solutions that enhance the quality, efficiency and accessibility of healthcare for millions of patients and caregivers alike. His leadership philosophy is grounded in fostering a culture of collaboration, diversity and excellence among his team of IT professionals, partnering closely with internal and external stakeholders to ensure IT initiatives remain tightly aligned with business goals and industry standards. Mr. Richeson uses his role to drive positive change and transformation in the healthcare IT sector, and to create lasting value and impact for CommonSpirit Health and the communities it serves. He leverages technology not as an end in itself but as a powerful enabler of better care, greater operational efficiency and expanded access.

Donna Roach. System Chief Digital Information Officer of University of Utah Health (Salt Lake City). Ms. Roach serves as system CIDO for University of Utah Health. Prior to assuming the expanded role in January 2026, she had been serving as CIO since 2020. Her expanded role means that she is now providing executive leadership and oversight of the system’s digital and IT infrastructure. Her innovative approach to healthcare has led to the implementation of transformative digital solutions, including improved interoperability, clinical automation and business innovation. In addition to her executive role at University of Utah Health, she co-chairs the system’s digital engagement committee, serves as a board member for the Utah Health Information Network and the KLAS advisory board, and is a lifetime fellow of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives. Thanks to her dedication to healthcare IT, Ms. Roach received the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society “John A. Page Distinguished Fellows Service Changemaker” award in 2023. She has over 35 years of healthcare industry experience and most recently served as vice president for information services at St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare and Washington University Medical School.

Nabile Safdar, MD. Chief AI Officer for Emory Healthcare and Emory University (Atlanta). Dr. Safdar serves as chief AI officer at Emory Healthcare and Emory University, bringing to the role a career defined by leveraging technology to improve the quality of healthcare delivery and communication. He also serves as director of the division of imaging informatics, applying his expertise at the intersection of radiology, informatics and AI to advance how health systems harness data and technology to enhance clinical care. A recognized thought leader in the field, Dr. Safdar is a frequent speaker at major professional and scientific conferences. He also serves on numerous national-level committees, including the American College of Radiology IT and informatics committee, the American Board of Radiology IT advisory committee and the American Roentgen Ray Society research committee. These roles allow him to shape standards and practices in imaging informatics and AI adoption across the radiology profession. He is trained in imaging informatics and musculoskeletal imaging, with a specialized foundation that bridges clinical radiology and health IT. His dual role spanning both Emory Healthcare and Emory University positions him to advance AI strategy and implementation across both the clinical enterprise and the academic and research missions of one of the nation’s leading academic health systems, ensuring that AI is deployed thoughtfully, rigorously and in service of better outcomes.

Roberta Schwartz. Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer for Houston Methodist. Ms. Schwartz, executive vice president and chief innovation officer at Houston Methodist, leads the center for innovation and the system’s internal innovation leadership committee, aiming to drive digital health advancements across the system’s hospitals, including the “hospital of the future,” Houston Methodist Cypress (Texas) Hospital, which opened in March 2025. She has cultivated a dual-role team structure, integrating innovation across disciplines like IT, clinical care and marketing. Her leadership has earned Houston Methodist recognition from Fortune as one of the most innovative health systems for 2026, ranking No. 64 nationally. In addition, Newsweek named Houston Methodist as one of the world’s best smart hospitals for 2026, coming in at No. 10. Ms. Schwartz’s proactive investments in digital health positioned the hospital to excel during the Covid-19 pandemic, supporting the community and serving as a national leader. She has also introduced pivotal roles, including a chief AI officer, to strengthen future innovation. She was honored as a 2023 “Women Who Mean Business” honoree by the Houston Business Journal. Outside of her executive role, she drew on her own experience as a cancer survivor to co-found the “Young Survival Coalition” nonprofit for young adults living with breast cancer.

Amber Sims. Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Growth Officer for Ascension (St. Louis). In her role at Ascension, Ms. Sims leads enterprise strategy, business development, marketing, digital experience and service line growth. She oversees market and enterprise-level strategy, ensuring alignment and expansion through strategic access channels and portfolio management. Since joining Ascension in 2000, she has held multiple leadership roles, including senior vice president and chief strategy officer since 2020 and vice president and chief strategy officer for Ascension Saint Thomas in Nashville, Tenn. Under her leadership, Ascension has strengthened service line growth, physician enterprise development and ambulatory expansion, positioning the organization for long-term sustainability and patient-centered care.

Barry Stein, MD. Vice President and Chief Clinical Innovation Officer at Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare. Dr. Stein is vice president and chief clinical innovation officer at Hartford HealthCare, where he has spent two decades translating opportunities at the intersection of care delivery and transformative technology into scalable clinical and operational impact. He has built a multi-stakeholder innovation ecosystem spanning academic institutions, government and corporate partners, venture capital and collaborations with MIT to accelerate ideas from research into bedside practice. In 2024, Dr. Stein and colleagues launched a center for AI innovation in healthcare to advance AI use in a safe and trustworthy manner across access, affordability, equity, quality and safety priorities. The system undertook a nine-plus-year foundation-building effort that includes governance to reduce patient harm risk, immersive education across functions and a disciplined methodology to integrate and scale AI into clinical practice. Dr. Stein also co-founded Holistic Hospital Optimization in 2022 with MIT Sloan collaborators to develop practice models that improve length of stay and optimize complex nursing schedules.

Luis Taveras. Senior Vice President and CIO at Jefferson Health (Philadelphia). Mr. Taveras serves as senior vice president and CIO at Jefferson Health, where he leads enterprise technology and digital strategy during a period of significant growth and transformation, including the integration of Lehigh Valley Health Network following its 2024 acquisition. He has been intentional in positioning IT not as a cost center, but as a value engine that’s focused on making disciplined investments that deliver measurable organizational impact. Central to his approach is a strong governance model that ensures emerging technologies, particularly AI, are evaluated and scaled based on clear value, operational readiness and strategic alignment. Under his leadership, Jefferson developed a multi-year digital roadmap that moves the organization from reactive operations toward operational excellence and ultimately high performance. Dr. Taveras has prioritized workforce efficiency and experience as one of the most tangible returns on digital investment, with ambient AI already reshaping documentation and care team workflows. Initially deployed with physicians in 2025 and now expanding to nursing, these tools are helping reduce administrative burden while supporting care delivery at scale.

Amy Trainor, RN. CIO and System Vice President for Ochsner Health (New Orleans). Ms. Trainor oversees the alignment of information services with strategic initiatives at Ochsner Health, which comprises 47 hospitals, more than 370 health and urgent care centers, and a “Connected Health” digital medicine program. Under her leadership, the system has implemented various innovative IT initiatives, including a new generative AI tool that helps providers respond to patient questions more efficiently. She aims to reduce inbox burden and improve documentation for providers. She is also leading the team responsible for the design, implementation and use of healthcare information services systemwide. Before becoming CIO, Ms. Trainor served as chief applications officer and vice president of clinical systems for Ochsner. She first joined Ochsner in 2011 from Cerner, now Oracle Health, where she implemented an EHR at a local community hospital and hospital clinics.

Saurabh Tripathi. Executive Vice President and CFO at Ascension (St. Louis). Mr. Tripathi, named executive vice president and CFO of Ascension in April 2024, brings global experience and advanced financial expertise to one of the country’s largest healthcare systems. At Ascension, he leads core finance operations, including treasury, accounting, analytics, reimbursement, managed care and data science functions. Previously CFO of Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health, Mr. Tripathi has led complex transformation and growth initiatives, and also held senior roles at Fresenius Medical Care and General Electric. He also contributes as a board member for several Pittsburgh-based organizations and startups, showcasing his longstanding commitment to innovation and community engagement.

Richard Zane, MD. Chief Medical Officer and Chief Innovation Officer at UCHealth (Aurora, Colo.). Dr. Zane serves as UCHealth’s chief medical officer and chief innovation officer, overseeing clinical, quality and safety programs across a Colorado nonprofit health system with 15 acute care hospitals and hundreds of clinics. In partnership with operational leaders, the University of Colorado School of Medicine and UCHealth Medical Group, he helps drive exceptional care delivery and continuous innovation at scale. He expanded UCHealth’s virtual infrastructure to include services such as virtual primary care with same-day appointment access and virtual hospitalist support for critical access hospitals, alongside broad virtual programs spanning critical care, emergency and urgent care, nursing, respiratory therapy, surveillance and prevention initiatives. He is credited with advancing AI-enabled early detection capabilities, with more than 1,100 patients each year leaving UCHealth facilities who otherwise wouldn’t have due to algorithms detecting sepsis, deterioration, stroke and early-stage cancers. He also elevated UCHealth’s pharmacogenomics program into the nation’s largest, impacting more than 73,400 patients and returning over one million drug-gene indicators to guide medication selection, dosing and side-effect risk. Across operational improvements, he leveraged advanced AI and administrative automation to achieve a financial impact of $5.7 million in cost savings and an additional $3.3 million in contribution margin.Health plans

CEOs and presidents

Don Antonucci. President and CEO of Providence Health Plan (Eugene, Ore.). Mr. Antonucci, who serves as president and CEO of Providence Health Plan, is a passionate advocate for equitable, high-quality and affordable healthcare. Since 2021, he has expanded the health plan’s membership and driven innovation, inclusivity and strategic partnerships to improve care access and equity. Under his leadership, the health plan eliminated referral requirements for in-network specialty care and launched initiatives like “Health For All”, collaborating with community organizations to address local healthcare disparities. According to the J.D. Power “U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study” for 2025, the health plan was the year’s highest ranking commercial health plan in the Northwest for member satisfaction. The health plan also earned a 4-star Medicare Advantage Rating for 2026, extending into 2027. A recognized thought leader, Mr. Antonucci actively contributes to industry discussions on social determinants of health and value-based care while engaging in community service through organizations like the American Heart Association. Thanks to his work leading the health plan, he was named to the Portland Business Journal’s “Executives of the Year” list in 2024.

Mark T. Bertolini. CEO of Oscar Health (New York City). Mr. Bertolini leads Oscar Health, a technology-driven health insurance company dedicated to making a healthier life accessible and affordable for all. He is the former co-CEO of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest and most successful hedge fund, and the former chairman and CEO of Aetna, where he assumed the CEO role in November 2010 and the chairmanship in April 2011, leading the company’s transformation from a traditional health insurance organization to a consumer-oriented healthcare company focused on delivering holistic, integrated care in local communities. His tenure at Aetna culminated in the $69 billion acquisition by CVS Health in November 2018, upon completion of which he served as a director of CVS Health. Prior to Aetna, Mr. Bertolini held executive positions at Cigna, NYLCare Health Plans and SelectCare, where he served as president and CEO. A national healthcare thought leader, he brings to Oscar Health a uniquely comprehensive perspective on the transformation of American healthcare spanning insurance, consumer experience and technology innovation. He serves on the boards of Verizon Communications, Thrive Global and the FIDELCO Guide Dog Foundation.

Gail Boudreaux. President and CEO of Elevance Health (Indianapolis). Ms. Boudreaux leads Elevance Health, one of America’s largest health companies, overseeing nearly 100,000 associates, 118 million people served, and a growing portfolio of plans and subsidiaries. She brings more than three decades of healthcare industry experience and the ability to skillfully scale multibillion-dollar businesses to help improve the health of humanity, simplify healthcare and build trust with customers. Under her leadership, Elevance Health has generated revenue of more than $137 billion, and she has guided the company through a period of significant growth and transformation. Fortune and Forbes have repeatedly recognized Ms. Boudreaux on their annual lists of the “Most Powerful Women in Business.” She serves on the boards of directors for Elevance Health, Target, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and American Health Insurance Plans, contributing her strategic perspective to some of the most consequential organizations in business and healthcare. Ms. Boudreaux has served on Dartmouth College’s board of trustees. A distinguished collegiate athlete, she is a member of the New England Basketball Hall of Fame and has received the “Theodore Roosevelt Award,” the “Silver Anniversary Award,” and the “Billie Jean King Leadership Award” from the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Krista Hoglund. President of Jefferson Health Plans (Philadelphia). Ms. Hoglund assumed the presidency of Jefferson Health Plans in March 2025, bringing a seasoned executive career in health insurance and a strong track record of strategic innovation, value-based care expertise and deep technical grounding. Most recently, she served as CEO of Security Health Plan of Wisconsin, a subsidiary of Marshfield (Wis.) Clinic Health System, having previously held multiple leadership roles within the organization including chief actuary and financial officer before assuming the CEO position in 2021. Her experience leading Security Health Plan, closely integrated with an 11-hospital health system, gave her deep insight into integrated delivery and financing systems, where health plans and providers collaborate to deliver high-quality, cost-effective care. This expertise is particularly well-suited to Jefferson Health Plans’ position within the broader Jefferson health system. Her career began as an actuarial analyst, providing a strong technical foundation that has informed her knowledge of Medicare, Medicaid and Affordable Care Act plans, as well as CMS and value-based contracting. She joined Jefferson Health Plans at a pivotal moment of transformation and integration in care delivery.

David L. Holmberg. CEO of Highmark Health (Pittsburgh). Mr. Holmberg leads Highmark Health, a $29 billion blended health organization that includes one of America’s largest Blue Cross Blue Shield insurers and a growing regional hospital and physician network, overseeing 44,000 employees who serve millions of customers nationwide through affiliated businesses including Highmark, Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network, HM Insurance Group, United Concordia Dental, Helion and enGen. During his tenure, the organization grew revenues from $15 billion in 2013 to $29 billion in 2024, driven by a diversified business model and consistently strong consolidated financial performance that has proven resilient through post-Affordable Care Act turbulence, inflation, labor shortages and the Covid-19 pandemic. Among his most consequential leadership moments was guiding the financial turnaround of Allegheny Health Network, which was nearing bankruptcy when acquired by Highmark in 2013 and has since grown to 14 hospitals and six health and wellness pavilions, and successfully negotiating a 2019 agreement with the Pennsylvania Attorney General to preserve residents’ access to the region’s two leading health systems. Mr. Holmberg has shaped the broader healthcare industry through active engagement with trade associations, regulators and government, including a 2016 federal lawsuit that resulted in a landmark 2020 Supreme Court ruling affirming the federal government’s obligation to fulfill promises underpinning public-private partnerships. In 2022, Highmark Health launched “My Highmark,” a first-of-its-kind health platform providing seamless care navigation, shared care plans, virtual and digital health, simplified bill payment and cost transparency to 7 million members. He joined Highmark in 2007 and served in progressive executive roles before assuming the CEO position.

Sachin Jain, MD. CEO of SCAN Group and SCAN Health Plan (Long Beach, Calif.). Dr. Jain leads SCAN Group and SCAN Health Plan, a nonprofit Medicare Advantage organization with revenues topping $5 billion and more than 300,000 members. He oversees growth and diversification, as well as sustained efforts to reduce healthcare disparities. Under his leadership, the health plan has been rated No. 1 in customer satisfaction among Medicare Advantage plans in California by J.D. Power and expanded operations into Arizona, Nevada, Texas and New Mexico. Total revenues have grown by more than $1.5 billion, and membership has grown more than 30% in just over three years. He has also driven meaningful product innovation, launching “Affirm,” the first-ever LGBTQ+ health plan product, and “Inspired,” the first health plan designed specifically for women, alongside four subsidiary medical groups intended to support seniors through the full range of inflection points in the aging process. Prior, Dr. Jain served as president and CEO of CareMore Health and Aspire Health, innovative care delivery systems with more than $1.6 billion in revenues serving 200,000 Medicare and Medicaid patients in 32 states, where he pioneered and scaled the first clinical program in the world focused on social isolation. His earlier career includes serving as chief medical information and innovation officer at Merck, holding leadership roles at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and serving on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School. An adjunct professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and a practicing academic hospitalist with the VA, Dr. Jain serves on several boards and has been named LinkedIn’s top voice for healthcare industry content.

Mary Beth Jenkins. President and CEO of UPMC Health Plan, President of UPMC Insurance Services and Executive Vice President of UPMC (Pittsburgh). Ms. Jenkins is the executive vice president of UPMC, president of the UPMC insurance services division, and president and CEO of UPMC Health Plan. With over 25 years of leadership experience, she has played a pivotal role in driving operational efficiency, affordability and high-quality service within one of the nation’s largest provider-sponsored insurers, serving over 4 million members. Under her leadership, UPMC Health Plan has maintained low administrative costs, high customer satisfaction and top-tier quality rankings in the healthcare marketplace. A nationally recognized expert in service excellence, Ms. Jenkins is deeply committed to community service, serving on the boards of several nonprofit organizations and private companies. She is also a longtime volunteer for the United Way of Allegheny County.

Kim Keck. President and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (Chicago). Ms. Keck leads the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association as its first female CEO, unifying 33 independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies around a shared mission to improve affordability, access and experience for nearly 116 million Americans. In her five years at the helm, she has steered the Blue System toward bold action on healthcare policy reform, including advocacy for fair hospital billing and addressing practices that drive up drug costs. In 2025, she helped mobilize Blue Plans and industry leaders to commit to six major actions to improve the prior authorization experience for more than 257 million patients and providers, advancing digital capabilities designed to meet and exceed interoperability standards by 2027. Her forward-looking approach to technology has led to partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic to bring secure, scalable enterprise GPT capabilities to all 33 plans. She was also instrumental in advancing generative AI pilots to provide a promising agentic AI solution for federal employees covered under the federal employee program. Under her stewardship, the program achieved its 40th consecutive year of growth and maintained a 99%-plus retention rate, while launching initiatives expected to generate over $1 billion in specialty pharmacy savings for members. Ms. Keck serves as board chairperson of Synergie Medication Collective and as a board member of HarmonyCares, Evolent Health and BCS Financial. She was recognized as a “CNBC Changemaker” in 2025.

Dan Kueter. CEO of UnitedHealthcare Employer and Individual (Minnetonka, Minn.). Mr. Kueter leads UnitedHealthcare Employer & Individual, an $80 billion division of UnitedHealthcare and the nation’s largest business serving the health coverage and wellbeing needs of employers and consumers. He was named CEO in 2022 after a career spanning more than two decades within the UnitedHealth Group enterprise. Prior to assuming the CEO role, he served as CFO of UnitedHealthcare Employer & Individual, providing financial and strategic oversight of a diverse portfolio of health plans ranging from traditional fully insured and self-funded plans to the full scope of ancillary and voluntary benefits. Mr. Kueter joined UnitedHealth Group in 2001, and built a broad and deep understanding of the organization through roles at Optum and UnitedHealthcare Networks before transitioning to Employer & Individual in 2008 to become a health plan market CEO. He subsequently spent nearly six years outside the enterprise developing and leading large-scale, provider-led population health organizations before returning to UnitedHealthcare in 2018 to lead Employer & Individual’s network strategy. This combination of financial leadership, market CEO experience, population health expertise, and network strategy gives him a uniquely comprehensive vantage point.

Talya Schwartz, MD. President and CEO of MetroPlusHealth (New York City). Through her position as president and CEO of MetroPlusHealth, Dr. Schwartz has driven growth, financial stability and community impact. Under her direction, MetroPlusHealth’s membership peaked at 760,000, a 35% increase, while expanding provider access by 4,300 and eliminating $10 million in healthcare waste. She has championed initiatives like UberHealth, ZocDoc and a dedicated call center to improve member engagement. In addition, MetroPlusHealth became the No. 1 HIV-SNP plan with an 82% viral suppression rate. A strong advocate for underserved populations, she helped over 20,000 asylum seekers gain healthcare coverage and oversaw more than 500 community events addressing food insecurity, maternal health and vaccinations. Committed to diversity, she has built a leadership team where over 60% of senior roles are held by women, and launched the organization’s first diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiative. She is on the boards of New York Health Plan Association, New York Public Health Plans and The Health Plan Alliance, and has been named to City & State New York’s “Health Care Power 100” from 2020-24.

C-Suite

Christina J. Barrington, PharmD. Chief Pharmacy Officer of UPMC Health Plan (Pittsburgh). Dr. Barrington serves as chief pharmacy officer for the UPMC Insurance Services Division, working with senior leaders to develop, implement and evaluate pharmacy clinical resource management, quality management and quality improvement programs. Simultaneously, she works closely with the UPMC Health Plan clinical services department to monitor the impact of pharmacy data on the continuum of care. She brings more than 20 years of experience across a range of healthcare roles, including serving as vice president and chief pharmacy officer for Priority Health, where she was responsible for setting the strategic direction of the organization’s pharmacy department, as senior director for clinical quality management at OptumRx/Catamaran, and as a director at Humana. This breadth of managed care pharmacy experience spans strategy, quality and operations at some of the nation’s leading health plans and pharmacy benefit organizations. Beyond her role at UPMC, Dr. Barrington serves as president of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy’s board of directors, contributing to the managed care pharmacy profession at the national level and helping shape standards and practices that influence how pharmacy services are delivered across health plans nationwide.

Morgan Kendrick. Executive Vice President of Elevance Health and President of Elevance Commercial Health Benefits (Indianapolis). Mr. Kendrick leads Elevance Health’s commercial health benefits business with more than 30 years of industry experience and a leadership approach rooted in accountability, simplicity and execution. He’s guided by the belief that “all healthcare is local,” as well as a commitment to making healthcare more affordable, accessible and easier to navigate for customers and consumers. Under his leadership, the commercial business has delivered strong and sustained results, including a 99% national account retention rate for the second consecutive year, expansion into four new Affordable Care Act markets and a 97% national account client satisfaction score. The business serves 33 million commercial members through a No. 1-rated healthcare app, with the Sydney app earning a 79 Net Promoter Score and the largest, most innovative advocacy platform in the market driving a 94% customer satisfaction score. His teams help members manage complex and chronic conditions by negotiating lower prescription drug prices, reducing fraud and waste through advanced technology, and advocating for federal and state policies that improve access and reduce costs. Mr. Kendrick’s associates across his teams contributed more than 22,500 volunteer hours in 2025 in the communities where they live and work, and he is deeply committed to talent development, mentorship and cultivating a supportive workplace. He serves on the executive board of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, has served as chairman of the Georgia chapter of the American Cancer Society’s CEOs Against Cancer Committee, and shares his expertise as a guest lecturer at Auburn University. Elevance Health has been recognized under his tenure as one of Fortune‘s “World’s Most Admired Companies” and “100 Best Companies to Work For.”

Jay Khosla. Chief Government Affairs Officer of Humana (Louisville, Ky.). Mr. Khosla serves as chief government affairs officer of Humana, responsible for developing and advancing the company’s strategy for public policy, advocacy at the federal, state and local levels, and political giving programs, including the Humana Political Action Committee. He brings to the role more than two decades of experience at the highest levels of federal policymaking on Capitol Hill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recognized Mr. Khosla as having been at the “center of practically every major economic policy achievement over the past decade-plus,” a testament to his sustained influence across tax, trade, financial services and healthcare policy. Prior to joining Humana, he served as majority staff director for the Senate Finance Committee, where he directed the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the most significant overhaul of the domestic and international tax code in 30 years. He’s also been policy director and chief health counsel on the Finance Committee, where he directed the passage of more than 40 bipartisan bills, more than any Congress since 1980. Earlier in his career, Mr. Khosla served as policy counsel to former Senate Majority Leader William Frist, MD, held senior policy roles for the Senate Budget Committee and Senator Orrin Hatch, and served as Senator John McCain’s senior policy advisor for healthcare, labor and entitlement reform during the 2008 presidential campaign. He is a member of the Virginia State Bar and the Supreme Court Bar, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Council on Germany, and sits on the board of the Winston Health Policy Fellowship. He brings a breadth of legal, policy and international expertise to his role as one of the most experienced government affairs executives in the healthcare industry.

Benjamin Kornitzer, MD. Chief Medical Officer of Aetna (Hartford, Conn.). Dr. Kornitzer serves as chief medical officer of Aetna at CVS Health, bringing to the role a distinguished career as a nationally recognized leader in value-based care, primary care and healthcare transformation. He joined Aetna from Agilon Health, where he led clinical and quality initiatives across a network of 3,000 primary care physicians in more than 30 markets. He played a key role in enabling provider organizations to succeed in value-based care by delivering high-quality, cost-effective healthcare primarily serving Medicare Advantage patients. Prior to his role at Agilon Health, he served as chief medical officer of Mount Sinai Health in New York City, bringing health system leadership experience to complement his deep expertise in value-based care models and physician network management. As a physician, Dr. Kornitzer also brings a clinical foundation that has informed his approach to healthcare transformation throughout his career. He also previously worked at McKinsey & Company’s healthcare practice, developing broad strategic expertise across the full spectrum of healthcare delivery and financing.

Lauren Leverich Castaldo. CFO for MetroPlusHealth (New York City). Ms. Leverich Castaldo serves as CFO of MetroPlusHealth, with complete oversight of all fiscal functions including development, interpretation, coordination, and administration of plan policies on finance, accounting, insurance, financial and accounting systems, internal controls, budgeting and auditing. Her career at MetroPlusHealth reflects a model of progressive institutional leadership, having joined the finance department in 2006 and steadily assumed expanding responsibilities. She previously served as deputy CFO, where she led planning, reporting and analysis of the finance and claims divisions before being appointed CAO in 2019 and subsequently elevated to CFO. Her deep institutional knowledge, built over nearly two decades at MetroPlusHealth, gives her a comprehensive understanding of the health plan’s operations, finances and regulatory environment. Prior to joining MetroPlusHealth, she brought strong public sector financial leadership experience to her work, having served as associate staff analyst at the New York City Police Department’s office of the deputy commissioner and as senior analyst at the office of management and budget in the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York.Companies

CEOs and founders

Joe Anstine. Co-Founder and CEO of Rhyme (Columbus, Ohio). Mr. Anstine co-founded Rhyme and has served as its CEO since 2016, driven by a passion for creating synergistic benefits across the healthcare industry, with a particular focus on  prior authorization, one of healthcare’s most persistent administrative burdens. Rhyme’s platform makes prior authorizations fully touchless by meticulously tracking the end-to-end prior auth process and automatically removing unnecessary manual effort, friction and waste. This addresses a problem that costs the healthcare system billions of dollars annually and consumes enormous clinician and administrative time. Mr. Anstine has become a recognized voice on the structural barriers that prevent meaningful progress in prior authorization reform, identifying foundational problems like the incredible variation in EHR data that effectively blocks it from flowing out to payers, and the lack of meaning or context that this data carries for payers on the receiving end. His leadership at Rhyme reflects a conviction that durable solutions to healthcare’s administrative challenges require not just policy change but meticulous operational execution, deep technical expertise, and an unwavering focus on eliminating variation and inefficiency.

Richard Atkin. CEO of Greenway Health (Tampa, Fla.). Mr. Atkin brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in software and healthcare technology to his role as CEO of Greenway Health. There, he has accelerated the company’s focus on AI-driven innovation to deliver value-centric solutions that enhance provider operations and patient outcomes. His career includes executive roles as CEO of Sunquest Information Systems and senior leadership with Vista Equity Partners, where he helped guide strategy and expansion for multiple technology organizations. Over the past year, he oversaw two landmark launches that represent a fundamental reimagining of ambulatory care technology. One was the Agentic AI Factory, developed in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, a first-of-its-kind AI production engine built to create secure, compliant and explainable AI agents that would liberate clinicians from administrative burdens and reconnect them to the joy of practicing medicine. The other was The Automated Healthcare Practice, an intelligent, agentic AI-driven ecosystem unveiled at Greenway’s annual customer event, ENGAGE 2025. Unlike traditional systems that layer automation on top of legacy EHRs, The Automated Healthcare Practice is built from the ground up to orchestrate clinical, financial and patient engagement workflows into a single intelligent network in order to replace fragmented, one-off experiments with a continuous innovation engine that reduces administrative friction and increases time for care. Mr. Atkin also serves as executive chairman of the board of Greenway Health.

Joel E. Barthelemy. CEO of GlobalMed (Scottsdale, Ariz.). Mr. Barthelemy is a Marine Corps Reserve veteran who founded one of the world’s first telehealth companies in 2002, inspired by his veteran father’s difficulty accessing treatment in a rural area. He has since empowered nearly 100 million telehealth consults in more than 60 countries. He designed a fully integrated virtual health platform combining software, integrated devices and virtual care delivery stations to support the entire continuum of care, ranging from low-acuity video visits to high-acuity, specialty and complex care scenarios. Today, the program powers some of the world’s largest and most advanced digital health programs, including the White House Medical Unit, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Defense Health Agency. The platform holds authority to operate on U.S. Department of Defense networks through military-grade security and has connected patients to expert care in severe disaster zones, on military battlefields, in Antarctica research stations and in caves 100 feet underground. One recent accomplishment under his leadership was a partnership with the Colombian Armada and an Indigenous organization to integrate digital health programs with tribal systems to tackle geographic barriers and health disparities in Native American communities. Another was an update to GlobalMed’s eNcounter software, with AI innovations spanning image recognition, triage and ambient listening. A fellow of the American Telemedicine Association, Mr. Barthelemy consults with government leaders across the world on connecting vulnerable patients to quality care through digital health, and also serves on the AZ Telehealth Committee and The Salvation Army-Broward board. He received the AZ Veterans Hall of Fame “Copper Eagle Award” in 2025, was recognized as EY “Entrepreneur of the Year” at the regional level, and has appeared three times on the “Inc. 500” list, reaching No. 95 overall and No. 7 in healthcare.

Sagnik Bhattacharya. CEO of Rhapsody (Boston). Mr. Bhattacharya leads Rhapsody with a mission of helping healthcare organizations by enabling data to move reliably, securely and at scale across complex environments. Under his leadership, Rhapsody has advanced a cloud-forward, API-centric strategy aligned with upcoming healthcare trends of more real-time exchange, greater external data dependency and more need for governed access across systems. In 2025, he oversaw the introduction of a host of new offerings expanding how organizations manage and activate data across clinical and imaging workflows. These milestones build on Rhapsody’s established interoperability strengths while extending its ability to support AI readiness, workflow orchestration and secure integration at scale. The company is grounded in a practical understanding of the operational realities healthcare IT teams face, including limited resources, growing integration demands, cybersecurity risk and increasing complexity across hybrid environments. Mr. Bhattacharya brings deep cross-sector healthcare technology experience to his role, having previously served as executive vice president and general manager of HealthEdge, head of payer and provider initiatives at PatientPing, and as a leader of the population health and outpatient EHR divisions at Epic. He serves on the advisory board and board of directors for Carequality, and is a respected voice in industry conversations on interoperability, AI readiness and healthcare data governance.

Allon Bloch. Co-Founder and CEO of K Health (New York City). When Mr. Bloch co-founded K Health, he envisioned a healthcare system that delivers access to high-quality medicine at scale, powered by an AI-enabled care platform that integrates with the system of record, connects to care delivery and functions as part of the care team. Under his leadership, K Health expanded its impact to over 15 million patients in 2025, bringing Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare, Boston-based Mass General Brigham and New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health onto K’s platform to power 24/7 virtual primary care. Some partner systems have seen daily primary care volume rise 15% and virtual primary care capacity quadruple within six months, directly addressing the crisis of Americans who typically wait six weeks for primary care appointments. This growth is matched by a rigorous commitment to clinical quality, demonstrated in a 2025 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, in which K Health’s AI physician mode matched doctors’ clinical decisions in two-thirds of real patient cases and offered higher overall quality in the remaining third, while patient outcomes exceeded national benchmarks across hypertension, diabetes, obesity and behavioral health. Mr. Bloch brought industry leaders together to execute on this vision, translating K’s technology into systemwide impact that shows up in measurable metrics for millions of patients. He serves as a board member of Wix and was named among the “Top 25 HealthTech Entrepreneurs of New York” in 2025 by Great Entrepreneurs and received the Techonomy/Worth AI & Health Access “Pioneer Award” in 2025.

Nancy Brown. CEO of American Heart Association (Dallas). Ms. Brown has led the American Heart Association as CEO since 2008. She is transforming the organization into a global authority on cardiovascular and brain health that generates $1.2 billion annually to power its mission, uniting 35 million volunteers, supporters and staff across 100 countries in the pursuit of longer, healthier lives worldwide. Under her leadership, the organization has invested more than $6.1 billion to accelerate scientific discoveries in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular care, elevated heart and stroke quality improvement programs and registries across more than 3,000 hospitals and nearly 2,000 clinics in the U.S. and 14 countries, and launched the “Nation of Lifesavers” movement to expand CPR and AED education and training. She has championed women’s health through the “Go Red for Women” movement, the “Research Goes Red” registry, and the “Go Red for Women Venture Fund,” which is the largest known dedicated women’s health venture fund in the nation. She is also advancing brain health science, furthering nutrition security through a multisector “Health Care by Food” initiative, and defining cardio-kidney-metabolic syndrome for the first time and launching an initiative to provide treatment guidelines for those affected. Ms. Brown has built innovative commercial and investment vehicles to support entrepreneurial businesses and community leaders in creating equitable, sustainable health solutions. She also partners with top CEOs through the organization’s CEO Roundtable to improve employee and community health. Her policy advocacy through the “Heart Powered” grassroots network and “Voices for Healthy Kids” has advanced legislation supporting healthy communities and access to affordable care, and the launch of a world-class clinical research services enterprise has further accelerated solutions using data science, registries and real-world studies.

Nikhil Buduma. Co-Founder and CEO of Ambience Healthcare (San Francisco). Mr. Buduma stepped into the CEO role at Ambience Healthcare in September 2025, having co-founded the company in 2020 alongside his partner. The company’s mission is to free clinicians from the administrative burden of the EHR and enable them to deliver the best possible patient care. He brings to the CEO role the deep technical credibility of one of the early pioneers in deep learning research and the author of Fundamentals of Deep Learning, the first widely adopted textbook on modern AI. As CEO, he leads day-to-day operations, drives company growth and product innovation, and ensures Ambience continues to deliver transformative impact for clinicians and patients. Since its founding, Ambience has raised $343 million in funding, scaled to a team of more than 200 employees across engineering, clinical and go-to-market functions, and partnered with more than 40 leading healthcare organizations including Cleveland Clinic, San Francisco-based UCSF Health, Houston Methodist, Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System, and Kansas City, Mo.-based St. Luke’s Health System. The platform has achieved a 97.7% spotlight report score from KLAS Research in the ambient AI category, and has become the first ambient AI technology to expand beyond AI scribing into pre-charting, coding, clinical documentation improvement and clinical decision support.

Caroline Carney, MD. CEO of Magellan Health (Scottsdale, Ariz.). Dr. Carney leads Magellan Health, a leader in behavioral health and related services, as CEO. She’s responsible for the company’s strategic direction and operational execution across a customer base that includes health plans, managed care organizations, employers, labor unions, military and governmental agencies, and third-party administrators. She joined Magellan Health in 2016 and built her leadership within the organization progressively, serving in various clinical leadership roles before becoming chief medical officer in 2020 and president of the behavioral health business in 2022. A board-certified internist and board-certified psychiatrist, Dr. Carney has dedicated her career to serving complex populations at the intersection of medical and behavioral health, an expertise reflected in her authorship and co-authorship of more than 100 peer and non-peer reviewed publications surrounding comorbid medical and behavioral health conditions. Prior to joining Magellan Health, she served as medical director for the Indiana Office of Medicaid Policy and Planning, helping to launch the Medicaid expansion product and leading the behavioral health transformation for the state’s community mental health services. This experience gave her a firsthand understanding of the policy and operational realities of delivering behavioral health care at scale.

Sean Cassidy. CEO of Lucem Health (Dallas). Mr. Cassidy leads Lucem Health, wielding the conviction that new technologies must earn their place in clinical care by delivering measurable value for providers, patients and partners rather than just hype. Under his leadership, the company underwent a deliberate evolution from a platform-centric company to a product- and program-focused model centered on high-yield care delivery, with AI solutions designed to identify risk earlier, enable faster intervention, and improve the efficiency of clinical programs by routing patients based on disease stage and acuity. That philosophy translated into significant commercial momentum in 2025, including partnerships with Johnson & Johnson, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi and iRhythm, a differentiated model in which life sciences partners help fund the deployment of early detection programs within health systems, lowering adoption barriers for providers while accelerating guideline-based care across chronic disease, oncology and cardiology. Lucem also secured a $2.3 million funding round to accelerate product development and expand its talent, and was named a “Rising Star for AI in Health Operations” at HLTH 2025. Mr. Cassidy is an emerging voice in healthcare AI innovation, regularly challenging prevailing assumptions around early detection, clinical AI and digital health ROI, emphasizing earlier action and practical implementation over experimentation.

Chris Collins. President and CEO of ECG Management Consultants (Boston). Mr. Collins serves as president, CEO and board chair of ECG Management Consultants, a leading healthcare consulting firm founded more than 50 years ago. He is responsible for guiding the firm’s mission, strategy, financial performance, consulting divisions and corporate operations. A trusted adviser to boards and senior executives of academic medical centers and large nonacademic health systems for more than 25 years, including 20 years at ECG, he brings deep expertise in strategy, organizational design and effectiveness, physician enterprise integration, and large-scale strategic partnerships and affiliations. Prior to becoming president in 2022, Mr. Collins led ECG’s national academic healthcare practice and its Boston office, continuing to lead or serve as senior adviser for select client engagements alongside his executive responsibilities. Working in close partnership with his executive team and ECG partners, he drives the firm’s growth by delivering innovative advisory services and products to the healthcare market, combining top talent with sovereign AI-enabled analytics to help the payer and provider sectors optimize the business of healthcare to benefit patients.

Joe Connolly. Co-Founder and CEO of Visana Health (Minneapolis). Mr. Connolly founded Visana Health in 2019, driven by a mission to fundamentally change the way women experience healthcare by building an entirely new care model for those with complex, chronic conditions who are routinely dismissed, misdiagnosed and underserved. What began as a virtual medical clinic focused on endometriosis and uterine fibroids has evolved into a comprehensive, evidence-based care model supporting women across every life stage, ranging from preventative services to complex conditions and comorbidities. The company now partners with national and regional health plans in all 50 states, represents more than 35 million covered lives, and has been adopted by more than 40 employers covering over one million lives. In the last 12 months alone, Visana secured $24 million in Series A funding, achieved more than 4x enrollment growth, expanded into cardiometabolic care and hormonal health, announced a new partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and joined Aligned Marketplace’s network of advanced primary care providers. The success of the company proves that compassionate, clinically rigorous women’s healthcare can be operationally and financially scalable while delivering outstanding clinical outcomes and sustainable economic value. Mr. Connolly serves as an advisory board member for Medical Alley Starts and has been named to the Twin Cities Business Journal‘s class of “Notable Healthcare Leaders” for 2026.

Carmela Coyle. President and CEO of California Hospital Association (Sacramento). Ms. Coyle leads the California Hospital Association, representing nearly 400 hospitals throughout California in advocating for better, more accessible healthcare for the state’s 40 million residents. Since joining the organization as president and CEO in 2017, she has guided California’s hospitals through unprecedented challenges, including the Covid-19 pandemic, expansive economic instability and an increasingly aggressive policy environment focused on controlling hospital spending, building broad coalitions along the way to advance behavioral health care and health insurance coverage for all. Her deep policy expertise spans more than four decades, including nine years as president and CEO of the Maryland Hospital Association and 20 years with the American Hospital Association, concluding as a member of its executive management team leading policy development for the nation’s hospitals, along with six years earlier in her career with the Congressional Budget Office. This breadth of experience across federal and state policy, hospital association leadership, and legislative advocacy has made her one of the most seasoned and respected voices in healthcare policy in the country. In February 2026, Ms. Coyle announced plans to retire in early 2027.

Christopher Crow, MD. CEO and Co-Founder of Catalyst Health Group (Dallas). Dr. Crow leads Catalyst Health Group, reimagining primary care around value rather than volume for better outcomes, lower costs, and a more sustainable experience for both patients and providers. Under his guidance over the past decade, Catalyst has generated $500 million in shared savings from value-based contracts, and today manages more than 70,000 Medicare members in full-risk arrangements, achieving an 83% monthly engagement rate with high-risk patients and an approximately 8% reduction in hospitalizations last year alone. He has championed technology-enabled workflows and integrated clinical partnerships that give care teams real-time insights into patient needs, enabling earlier intervention and more personalized care while allowing physicians to practice at the top of their license with reduced administrative burden. Beyond Catalyst, Dr. Crow founded Stellus Rx, a national tech-enabled pharmacy support service extending clinical care for over one million patients; Lightpath Health, a nonprofit offering team-based primary care to the uninsured; and Village Health Partners, one of the first level 3 National Committee for Quality Assurance patient-centric medical homes. He serves on the boards of Gentiva, Leading Reach and Stella Mattina, and is an advisory board member at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. Dr. Crow received the American Academy of Family Physicians’ “Robert Graham Award as Physician Executive of the Year” in 2024, the “TAFP Presidential Award of Merit” from the Texas Association of Family Physicians in 2024, and has been recognized by D CEO Magazine as “Healthcare Innovator of the Year” and among its top 500 CEOs from 2019 through 2024.

Michael Dalton. CEO and Founder of Ovatient (Cleveland). Mr. Dalton founded Ovatient with the belief that healthcare should start where patients are and seamlessly connect them to the right clinical resources without compromising quality, safety or trust. His credibility is rooted in operational leadership at scale, having previously served as vice president of the virtual care enterprise at The MetroHealth System in Cleveland, where he led the development of virtual and at-home care strategy and helped design and launch hospital at home, remote monitoring and virtual maternity care programs during a period of rapid adoption. He carried those lessons into Ovatient, building a scalable operating model on Epic and MyChart that enables tight coordination between virtual and in-person care pathways and scaling the organization from concept to execution. Published patient experience results reflect the strength of this model, including an industry-leading Net Promoter Score of 72 and 97% of patients reporting they would use the service again. Earlier in his career, Mr. Dalton created and led the care innovation and community improvement program, securing over $1.6 billion in federal funding since 2017 for Ohio health systems to address opioid use disorder and population health challenges. He serves as board chair of Cultivate CDC and is a frequent national speaker on virtual-first care and health system innovation. Mr. Dalton was named one of Slice of Healthcare‘s “Top Digital Health Leaders” in 2025.

David Feinberg, MD. Chairman of Oracle Health (Austin, Texas).  Dr. Feinberg serves as chairman of Oracle Health, where he is committed to making healthcare more accessible, affordable and equitable through an open and connected healthcare data ecosystem. He previously served as president and CEO of Cerner, now Oracle Health, where he led teams focused on delivering tools and technology to improve the patient and caregiver experience. Prior to that, he assumed leadership of Google Health in early 2019. His executive career also includes serving as president and CEO of both Los Angeles-based UCLA Health and Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health, giving him a rare breadth of experience spanning academic medical centers, integrated health systems, health technology and digital health at a national scale. Dr. Feinberg built his early career as a pediatric psychiatrist, grounding his leadership in a deep commitment to helping children and families that has remained a through line across every role he has held. This combination of frontline clinical experience, health system leadership, and technology strategy positions him as one of the most distinctive and influential voices shaping the future of healthcare information technology and data-driven care delivery.

Kyna Fong. Co-founder and CEO of Elation Health (San Francisco). Ms. Fong is a computer scientist and health economist who co-founded Elation Health and has built it into the largest AI-powered, clinician-first EHR and billing platform dedicated to primary care, supporting more than 36,000 clinicians caring for over 18 million Americans. She spent her teenage years working in her father’s small family medicine practice, developing the belief that technology should relieve burden rather than add to it, and that the physician-patient relationship is fundamental to good medicine. Under her leadership, Elation developed and launched “Note Assist,” the market’s first embedded, EHR-native AI documentation solution designed to keep physicians in control while reducing administrative work, with clinicians saving an average of 13 minutes per visit, 87% reporting higher-quality care, 87% experiencing less burnout and 75% saying they are rediscovering joy in their work. Beyond Elation, Ms. Fong has become a leading national voice on the future of primary care and AI in medicine, with a widely cited Harvard Business Review article making the economic case for investing in primary care as the foundation of a sustainable healthcare system, and ongoing advocacy through collaborations with the American Academy of Family Physicians, Primary Care for America and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She has been a vocal proponent of designing AI “for trust,” insisting that tools must strengthen rather than erode the human relationships at the heart of care, and showing that innovation can be scaled while preserving clinical autonomy and empathy. Ms. Fong is a member of the Fast Company executive leadership board, and has received the Goldman Sachs “Most Exceptional Entrepreneur Award,” among other honors.

Dan Frogel, MD. CEO of Thriveworks (Richmond, Va.). Dr. Frogel leads Thriveworks, a nationwide provider of talk therapy and psychiatry services across 340 locations and more than 2,600 clinicians. His understanding of care delivery has been shaped by two decades of frontline clinical experience spanning emergency medicine, urgent care and behavioral health. A physician turned healthcare executive, Dr. Frogel has been a consistent advocate for integrating behavioral health into broader health systems as a strategic imperative for improving overall health outcomes and lowering the total cost of care, viewing mental health not as separate from physical health and primary care, but as fundamentally interlinked with it. Under his leadership, Thriveworks is advancing partnerships with leading health systems focused on embedding behavioral health into existing care pathways, aligning around measurable outcomes and building infrastructure that supports clinicians in making the greatest possible impact. His leadership philosophy emphasizes transparent communication, steadfast accountability, and clear priorities that keep teams aligned with long-term purpose rather than short-term wins. He serves on the boards of CityMD and Yunara Health, and was recognized on City & State‘s “Health Care Power 100” in 2024 and received the “Corporate Partners in Care Award” from Touro University’s School of Health Sciences in 2025.

Georgia Gaveras, DO. Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Talkiatry (New York City). Dr. Gaveras co-founded Talkiatry and personally designed its full-stack clinical model. The company aims to deliver high-quality psychiatry at national scale through deliberate, clinician-led leadership that addresses access, quality and sustainability. Under her leadership, Talkiatry has implemented a model of full-time, W-2 employment for both psychiatrists and therapists, enabling consistent standards of care, continuity for patients and continued investment in clinical infrastructure. This structure has also produced remarkable workforce outcomes, with Talkiatry clinicians reporting 80% less burnout than the industry average. Dr. Gaveras has insisted on clinical validation as a prerequisite for scale, leading multiple peer-reviewed studies evaluating telepsychiatry outcomes involving more than 1,800 patients, with results including 87% of patients experiencing symptom reduction in depression and up to 86% achieving clinical remission in anxiety, directly advancing Talkiatry’s partnerships with payers, employers and health systems, and leading to accelerated adoption of value-based behavioral healthcare nationwide. Prior to Talkiatry, Dr. Gaveras held academic appointments and medical leadership roles at multiple medical institutions. She is a sought-after voice on workforce sustainability, value-based psychiatry and equitable access, having addressed these topics at HLTH, ViVE and the American Telemedicine Association. Dr. Gaveras was named to Inc.‘s 2025 “Female Founders 500,” named a Crain‘s “Notable Health Care Leader” in 2023, and honored as a City and State “Trailblazer in Health Care” for 2025.

Mohan Giridharadas. Founder and CEO of LeanTaaS (Santa Clara, Calif.). Mr. Giridharadas founded LeanTaaS to help health systems unlock capacity, improve patient access and reduce costs through AI-powered capacity optimization. He has built a company whose products are now used by more than 190 health systems and deployed across over 1,200 hospitals and centers nationwide, improving operational performance in operating rooms, surgical clinics, infusion centers and inpatient care. His approach to healthcare transformation is grounded in nearly two decades of experience at McKinsey & Company, where he served as a senior partner leading the lean manufacturing and lean service operations practices in North America and the Asia-Pacific region, working with many of the largest and most innovative U.S. health systems along the way. That deep operational and analytical expertise, combined with a conviction that mathematical rigor and lean principles can fundamentally improve how healthcare is delivered, forms the intellectual foundation of LeanTaaS and its suite of AI-driven solutions. Mr. Giridharadas co-authored the book Better Healthcare Through Math, reflecting his belief that the path to a more efficient and accessible healthcare system runs through data, operations science and technology thoughtfully applied to the realities of clinical workflows. His leadership has positioned LeanTaaS as one of the most widely adopted capacity management platforms in American healthcare, serving health systems that collectively represent a significant share of inpatient and outpatient care delivery across the country.

Cary Grace. President and CEO of AMN Healthcare (Dallas). Ms. Grace leads AMN Healthcare, the nation’s leading healthcare workforce solutions and staffing company. The company delivered $2.7 billion in last twelve months revenue in 2025, exceeding guidance and eliminating the company’s revolving credit balance while supporting 93% of the top 100 U.S. health systems and maintaining market leadership in travel nurse, allied and locum tenens staffing. Under her leadership, the company has made significant technology investments to strengthen its competitive position, including expanding the “AMN Passport” mobile app to 340,000 clinicians and advancing “WorkWise,” an omnichannel technology suite with AI enablement that streamlines workforce processes and empowers clients to source cost-effective talent through automated workforce management. She has also advanced disciplined portfolio strategies including the divestiture of Smart Square, a strategic technology partnership, and a broadening of workforce and language services. She has also spearheaded the company’s expanded presence in labor disruption services. Ms. Grace has maintained a 92% client satisfaction rating with increased expansions and renewals, balancing financial discipline with long-term workforce stability. Her commitment to inclusion is reflected in AMN earning a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, achieving gender diversity parity with 69% women in the corporate workforce, and maintaining more than 50% women’s representation across leadership levels including directors and executives. She serves on the boards of State Farm Insurance, League, Chicago-based Rush University Medical Center and Georgetown University. Ms. Grace was recognized on Staffing Industry Analysts’s “Staffing 100” and named “Outstanding Healthcare Executive” by D CEO.

Trey Holterman. Co-Founder and CEO of Tennr (New York City). Mr. Holterman has led Tennr since July 2021, building a company powered by proprietary AI models. The company handles the complex paperwork that gets patients through the door and providers paid, helping healthcare operators capture more referrals, cut denials and reduce care delays. His leadership is defined by a passion for leveraging AI to automate the complex, unstructured workflows that delay patient care and burden frontline staff, targeting the administrative processes that stand between a patient’s need for care and their ability to receive it. Tennr’s core mission is to meaningfully increase patient conversions by replacing manual, error-prone document handling with intelligent automation that can interpret and act on the unstructured data that flows between referral sources, providers and payers. His focus on the unglamorous but consequential back-office workflows of healthcare reflects a conviction that the path to better patient outcomes runs not only through clinical innovation but through the elimination of the administrative barriers that too often prevent patients from accessing care in the first place.

Lisa Israelovitch. Co-Founder and CEO of AssistIQ (Toronto, Ontario). Ms. Israelovitch co-founded and leads AssistIQ, an AI company using computer vision to transform how hospitals capture and manage surgical and procedural supplies and implants. The company aims to automatically identify and record supplies as they are used during procedures and replace manual, end-of-case documentation with accurate, real-time capture at the point of use. Under her leadership, the platform has delivered measurable results across health system partners, consistently achieving recognition rates above 98%, driving up to 32% more billable revenue in operating rooms and up to 70% in various imaging environments, reducing expired product costs by up to 48% and cutting inventory errors by more than 90%. Beyond financial and operational outcomes, Ms. Israelovitch has prioritized how the technology shows up for frontline teams, with automated documentation saving nurses and technologists between 15 and 60 minutes per case. AssistIQ is deployed across leading health systems, with further expansion planned in 2026. The company was named a “Top 50 Digital Health Company” by CB Insights and HLTH, making it the only AI company recognized in the supply chain category.  To guide product development, Ms. Israelovitch established a clinical leadership team, including a chief medical officer and clinical nurse advisor, reflecting her commitment to building technology that respects the realities of hospital environments. She received the $30,000 grand prize at the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons Shark Tank competition in 2023.

Judson Ivy. Founder and CEO of Ensemble (Nashville, Tenn.). Mr. Ivy began his healthcare career as an emergency room registrar, working directly with patients and families during their most critical moments. This experience shaped 15 years of leading revenue cycle operations for major health systems before he founded Ensemble, now one of the most innovative revenue cycle management companies in healthcare. Under his leadership, Ensemble has scaled to over 14,750 associates, managing $46 billion in net patient revenue across 35 health systems nationwide. The company has achieved a 100% client rebuy rate and a 94% exceed-expectations rating, performance that earned Ensemble the No. 1 ranking among provider partners. In 2025, Mr. Ivy fostered a strategic partner ecosystem with Microsoft, Cohere and Databricks to deliver predictive modeling, real-time insights and automated workflows that catch issues upstream and keep revenue flowing, ultimately delivering a 5% net patient revenue improvement, fewer denials and enhanced patient experiences across the care journey. His commitment to a longitudinal, holistic approach to RCM stands in contrast to competitors rushing half-built solutions to market. MR. Ivy has built a culture where associates thrive, achieving onboarding retention rates above 95% and earning recognition on Fortune‘s 2025 “Best Workplaces in Health Care” list. When a client suffered a ransomware attack during a holiday, he personally mobilized his team and joined onsite recovery efforts, exemplifying his belief that the company must be an extension of each client’s team. He serves as a venture partner for Caduceus Capital Partners and is a member of both the Healthcare Financial Management Association and the American College of Healthcare Executives.

Peter Katsufrakis, MD. President and CEO of NBME (Philadelphia). Dr. Katsufrakis leads the National Board of Medical Examiners, an organization with more than 110 years of history. Under his leadership, NBME has championed a meaningful shift from assessment of learning to assessment for learning, providing medical students and educators with actionable feedback that fosters lifelong growth beyond a single score, all while maintaining rigorous and reliable exam standards. Deeply rooted in his background as a family physician and HIV/AIDS education pioneer, Dr. Katsufrakis has prioritized fairness, opportunity and inclusion as core values, overseeing a comprehensive review of the entire exam question bank to address potential bias and foster inclusive language and representation. He also significantly increased funding to programs supporting students and educators through NBME’s “Community Collaborations and Contributions” initiative. Thanks to a culture of transparency, employee engagement scores have far exceeded industry benchmarks during his tenure. Beyond NBME, Dr. Katsufrakis is an expert collaborator within the Federation of State medical boards, the American Medical Association, the American Board of Medical Specialties and the Association of American Medical Colleges. As he prepares to retire in 2026, he plans to return to volunteering in clinics serving underserved communities. He was recognized as a “Most Admired CEO” by the Philadelphia Business Journal in 2024.

Thomas Kelly, MD. CEO and Co-Founder of Heidi (New York City). Dr. Kelly co-founded Heidi by drawing directly on his experience as a former vascular surgical resident, where he lived firsthand the administrative burden that left clinicians burned out and patients underserved. Under his leadership, Heidi has become one of the fastest-growing healthcare AI companies globally, achieving 15,323% three-year growth and earning the No. 1 spot on the Deloitte “Fast 50,” while scaling to a $465 million valuation and raising nearly $100 million in funding. The platform now supports over 2.4 million patient consults every week across 110 languages, more than 200 medical specialties, and tens of thousands of clinicians in 116 countries, ultimately saving providers more than 31 million hours in the last 18 months alone through scribing and workflow tools. Heidi’s differentiated commitment to designing solely with the clinician experience in mind has driven higher-than-industry-average adoption rates and made the platform indispensable to leading U.S. health systems and more than 1.5 million NHS appointments monthly in the U.K. Dr. Kelly’s mission to double the world’s healthcare capacity by empowering every clinician with an AI care partner reflects a long-term commitment to equity, access and sustainability in healthcare. He has earned the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives “Foundation Partner of the Year Award.”

Irena King, PhD. Founder and CEO of Surgicure Technologies (Boston). Dr. King founded Surgicure Technologies at age 20 while studying neuroscience, driven by deeply personal medical experiences that instilled a conviction that trauma patients deserve better tools, better outcomes and leaders who understand the human cost of system failure. She has contributed to a National Institutes of Health-funded Alzheimer’s vaccine development program and a Gates Foundation-funded HIV biomarker study. Meanwhile, her exposure to respiratory failure during the Covid-19 years directly shaped Surgicure’s clinical focus. Discovering a shelved Army clinician-developed airway securement technology that addressed a critical patient safety gap, she independently validated unmet need by interviewing frontline clinicians across civilian and military care settings, cold-called the U.S. Army technology transfer office to license the patent, and bootstrapped Surgicure from the ground up as a solo founder for over five years, leading product development, clinical validation, regulatory navigation and early commercialization. This work evolved into Surgicure’s flagship airway securement platform, developed through deep collaboration with clinicians, nurses and first responders, which within months of commercial launch secured an exclusive U.S. distribution partnership and began deployment across hospital systems and frontline war zone care settings. Beyond Surgicure, she is an active mentor within Boston’s innovation ecosystem, and was named a BostInno “40 Under 40” honoree in 2025, received a citation of recognition from the Executive Office of Economic Development on behalf of Governor Maura Healey in 2024, and is a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship recipient.

Israel Krush. CEO and Co-Founder of Hyro (New York City). Mr. Krush leads Hyro with a philosophy focused entirely on measurable outcomes, removing chaos from healthcare workflows and ensuring patients get what they need quickly, confidently and on their own terms. Recognizing early that legacy communication infrastructures were breaking under the weight of workforce shortages and rising costs, he steered Hyro to build a healthcare-native AI agent platform that shifts the paradigm from a reactive, agent-based model to a proactive, need-based model. The platform fundamentally synchronizes patient communication across voice and digital channels and creates a seamless connective intelligence layer for health systems. The results are validated by data across Hyro’s footprint of more than 50 leading health systems, enabling over 30 million patient interactions annually, with customers achieving large returns on investment, saving staff hours, realizing cost savings and unlocking capacity gains. In October 2025, Mr. Krush secured a $45 million strategic growth round led by Healthier Capital, doubling the company’s valuation and bringing total funding to $95 million. His work is bolstered by his background as a statistician. Hyro has been recognized on CB Insights’ “Digital Health 50” in 2025 and was named a Gartner “Cool Vendor” in 2022, among numerous other industry honors.

Thomas Lally, MD. Founder, CEO and Chairman of Bloom Healthcare (Denver). Dr. Lally founded Bloom Healthcare to ensure that high-needs, aging adults receive individualized, dignified, and compassionate home-based primary care and hospice services, delivered directly in patients’ homes. Under his leadership, Bloom has become a national model for integrated senior care, with outcomes consistently in the top percentiles for readmissions, days at home and unplanned hospitalizations. He has been a relentless advocate for value-based care and payment reform innovation, including advancing models to support sustainable care for homebound and high-needs patients. He is guiding Bloom into participation in the next generation of value-based care through the “LEAD” model. Before founding Bloom, Dr. Lally served as president and chief medical officer of a national home-based primary care division and co-founded hospice services integrated with clinical care, earning recognition from the American Academy of Home Care Medicine, where he currently serves as president of the board, for his thought leadership and scholarship on high-risk Medicare populations. Bloom has earned recognition as one of the nation’s most sought-after workplaces for nurses and caregivers. Dr. Lally received the Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year Mountain West Award” for 2023 and was named “Physician of the Year” by the American Academy of Home Care Medicine in 2014.

Pat Leonard. CEO of CorroHealth (Dallas). Mr. Leonard co-founded CorroHealth with a visionary ambition to build the nation’s leading provider of clinician-led, technology-driven solutions that strengthen the financial health of hospitals and health systems. He has since grown the company into one of the healthcare industry’s most comprehensive and trusted revenue cycle partners. Under his leadership, CorroHealth has evolved into a full-spectrum revenue cycle organization employing over 17,000 global team members, including physicians, nurses, clinical documentation integrity professionals, certified coders and specialists in RCM, technology and AI. He has executed his growth vision through a balanced strategy of acquisitions, partnerships and organic expansion, deliberately assembling a leadership team of globally recognized experts across policy, technology and finance to build a resilient foundation for sustainable growth. A hallmark of his leadership is the culture of possibility he has cultivated, reflected in an exceptional 98% annual employee retention rate, with team members consistently citing his leadership and the company’s mission as key reasons they stay and grow with CorroHealth. His strategic foresight and operational discipline have positioned CorroHealth to deliver greater value across the entire clinical revenue cycle, strengthening both its impact and its reputation throughout the healthcare industry. Mr. Leonard was named a “Top Healthcare Technology CEO” of 2025 by The Healthcare Technology Report.

Martin A. Makary, MD. Commissioner of Food and Drugs for the Food and Drug Administration (Washington, D.C.). Dr. Makary was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March 2025 as the 27th Commissioner of Food and Drugs. He oversees the full breadth of the FDA portfolio and the execution of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, including assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products, medical devices, the nation’s food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements and tobacco products. Prior to joining the FDA, he served at Johns Hopkins University as a surgical oncologist specializing in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery and chief of islet transplant surgery, and as a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. There, he conducted a broad range of public policy research on the underlying causes of disease, healthcare costs and relationship-based medicine. A prolific writer and public voice in healthcare, Dr. Makary has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific articles and is a regular contributor to The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and has written multiple bestselling books including Unaccountable, The Price We Pay and Blind Spots, with Unaccountable serving as the inspiration for the popular TV series The Resident. He has served in a leadership position at the World Health Organization patient safety program, was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2018, and is the recipient of the “Nobility in Science Award” from the National Pancreas Foundation, among numerous other honors. His appointment as FDA Commissioner brings together his deep clinical expertise, health policy scholarship, and commitment to transparency and accountability in medicine.

Meena Mallipeddi. Co-Founder for CEO AmplifyMD (San Francisco). Ms. Mallipeddi leads AmplifyMD, believing that access to high-quality specialty care should not depend on geography, staffing luck or the resilience of individual clinicians. Rather than treating virtual care as a standalone service or point solution, she has championed a model that treats it as core clinical infrastructure that integrates deeply into hospital workflows, surfaces the right data at the right moment, and reduces friction for both onsite and remote clinicians. Under her leadership, AmplifyMD has helped hospitals expand specialty coverage, improve operational efficiency, reduce reliance on locums, and stabilize clinical teams over the long term. She connects mission with execution, equally fluent in conversations about health equity and clinician burnout as she is in discussions with CFOs and COOs about cost structure, throughput and return on investment. Beyond AmplifyMD, she is an active voice in shaping the future of healthcare delivery, regularly speaking and writing on workforce sustainability, virtual-first care models and the operational realities of scaling specialty access. She serves on the American Telemedicine Association leadership council and was recognized as a “Top Healthcare Technology CEO” by the Healthcare Technology Report in 2026, named a Forbes Technology Council “Top Health Tech CEO to Watch” in 2025, and included on Inc.’s “Female Founders 250” in 2024.

Allen Mason. Co-Founder and CEO of Leap Distributors (Dallas). Mr. Mason brings more than 25 years of medical sales experience and over a decade of executive-level healthcare leadership to his role as co-founder and CEO of Leap Distributors. There, he has transformed a two-person startup into a thriving, multimillion-dollar business with a national independent distribution network, supporting more than 350 facilities that perform over 10,000 surgeries per year. He founded Leap Distributors with a mission to transform the healthcare landscape by prioritizing cost reduction, increasing patient choice and improving overall quality of care. His leadership style removes layers of bureaucracy and encourages everyone, regardless of title, to contribute ideas, solve problems and shape the future of the company. A seasoned entrepreneur, Mr. Mason has built nine successful businesses, most notably Leap Distributors and Leap Surgical, acquired by Leap Distributors in 2024, and also co-founded MindSight Medical, an FDA-registered tissue bank in Dallas. He also serves as an operating partner, partner or board member across numerous other healthcare ventures including Total Ancillary, Axis Datalytics, Staysis Medical, and Biovotec. He is also actively involved in community leadership through Leap Six, a service-disabled, veteran-owned small business he helped create that specializes in connecting niche medical suppliers with hospitals, distributors and the VA health system. Earlier in his career, he earned Medtronic’s “National DBS Rookie of the Year Award” in 2009 and went on to win the “National DBS Representative” award multiple times, along with the “President’s Club Award,” the “Star Achievers Award,” and the “All-Star Award.”

Lynn Massingale, MD. Co-Founder and Chairman for TeamHealth (Knoxville, Tenn.). Dr. Massingale co-founded TeamHealth more than four decades ago and has helped shape it into one of the nation’s largest physician-led healthcare organizations, today touching roughly 28 million patients a year, including nearly 10% of all emergency department visits in the nation. Throughout his tenure, he has remained focused on three enduring priorities: quality care, accountability and growing the people around him, maintaining that commitment across thousands of hospital partnerships nationwide. He brings deep personal investment in TeamHealth’s leadership development initiatives, working directly with physicians, advanced practice clinicians and emerging leaders across the organization, with alumni now serving as medical directors, executives and educators across the country. His influence extends well beyond TeamHealth, having served as medical director of emergency medical services for the state of Tennessee, chaired the Emergency Department Practice Management Association, and served on the boards of the Nashville Healthcare Council, Cedar Recovery and Southeast Primary Care Partners, among numerous other roles. He has been recognized as one of the American College of Emergency Physicians’ “Heroes of Emergency Medicine,” and inducted into the Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame in 2018. Dr. Massingale also received the EY “Entrepreneur of the Year” award in the services category for the Southeast region and the “Outstanding Alumnus Award” from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis.

Luke Miels. CEO of GSK (London, U.K.). Mr. Miels assumed full responsibilities as CEO of GSK and joined its board on January 1, 2026, taking the helm of one of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies at a pivotal moment in its growth trajectory. The company anticipates total sales of more than £40 billion by 2031 and 15 major pipeline opportunities set to launch between 2025 and 2031. He joined GSK in 2017 and most recently served as chief commercial officer with worldwide responsibility for medicines and vaccines, proving instrumental in building GSK’s specialty medicines portfolio, particularly in oncology and respiratory. A highly respected and experienced global biopharma leader, Mr. Miels brings to the CEO role a breadth of senior-level experience, having previously held leadership positions at AstraZeneca, Roche and Sanofi-Aventis before joining GSK. His predecessor allowed GSK to deliver a comprehensive step-change in operating performance, portfolio and pipeline, prioritizing specialty medicines and vaccines, reinvigorating research and development, strengthening the balance sheet, and creating Haleon through the successful demerger of consumer healthcare. Mr. Miels assumed leadership of a company performing to a new standard, with a strengthened foundation and clear ambitions for long-term growth.

Michelle O’Connor. President and CEO of Meditech (Westwood, Mass.). Ms. O’Connor leads Meditech, one of the healthcare industry’s most established and trusted EHR vendors, overseeing a company that serves more than 2,000 customers across 29 countries and territories. One of her most significant accomplishments over more than three decades at the company has been spearheading the continuous development and successful rollout of “Meditech Expanse,” a web-native, mobile, patient-centered EHR platform for acute, ambulatory and post-acute care settings that today serves over 1,200 customers. She has also guided the company’s strategic transition to cloud-based and subscription models through “Meditech-as-a-Service,” a delivery option that democratizes health IT by bringing advanced technology to smaller hospitals and rural health systems that might otherwise face affordability or management challenges with large-scale implementations. Ms. O’Connor is a driving force behind initiatives to enhance interoperability, improve patient engagement and promote AI-driven solutions, with a particular focus on addressing physician burnout and data overload by prioritizing usability and optimizing clinician workflows. She leads cross-functional teams across product development, sales and marketing, client services and implementation, aligning organizational goals with the evolving needs of healthcare providers. She also serves as a member of Meditech’s board of directors. Ms. O’Connor was named among The Healthcare Technology Report‘s “Top 25 Healthcare Software Executives” for 2025.

Florian Otto, MD, DDS, PhD. CEO and Co-Founder of Cedar (New York City). Dr. Otto co-founded Cedar after his wife struggled through a nightmarish hospital billing experience, channeling that personal frustration into a mission to make healthcare more accessible and affordable. The company’s AI-powered platform helps healthcare organizations solve the growing complexity of personalized patient financial engagement. Before founding Cedar, he served as an executive at Zocdoc focused on delivering a superior patient experience and began his business career as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company within their healthcare practice. In the past year, Dr. Otto has driven two groundbreaking innovations. One of them is “Kora,” the first AI voice agent built specifically for healthcare billing, which is expected to automate 30% of patient billing calls by the end of 2026. The other is “Cedar Cover,” the healthcare industry’s first proactive, comprehensive digital safety net designed to secure coverage and financial aid for underinsured and uninsured patients while protecting providers from uncompensated care. Cedar Cover is already delivering significant results across nearly a dozen leading health systems, including a 30% increase in insurance reimbursement from overturned denials driving $8 million in annual value recovery, a 97% Medicaid application approval rate, and more than $12,000 in average medication assistance grants per approved application. Cedar has forged key partnerships with leading health systems and was recognized as one of TIME‘s “World’s Top Health Tech Companies.” Dr. Otto is a member of the Forbes business council and was named among The Healthcare Technology Report‘s “Top 25 Healthcare Software Executives” of 2025.

Shiv Rao, MD. Founder and CEO of Abridge (Pittsburgh). Dr. Rao co-founded Abridge in 2018, believing that the everyday conversation between clinician and patient is one of healthcare’s most valuable and underused signals. He helped build a company whose generative AI now powers clinical documentation across inpatient and outpatient settings in more than 200 health systems, spanning numerous specialties and languages with precise understanding of therapeutics, pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. A practicing cardiologist at Pittsburgh-based UPMC and former executive at UPMC’s provider-facing venture arm, where he led the provider-facing investment portfolio and helped fund a machine learning in health program at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Rao is the rare AI CEO who has spent more time inside a health system than outside it. From the start, he leaned into rigorous health system pilots and the hardest tests of the technology’s capabilities, building toward a larger goal of rewiring the economics of care in a system where administrative costs alone amount to nearly $1 trillion annually. His vision for Abridge extends beyond documentation efficiency to equipping clinicians to be what he describes as near-omniscient and omnipresent detectives, communicators, advocates and healers.

Kyu Rhee, MD. President and CEO of National Association of Community Health Centers (Bethesda, Md.). Dr. Rhee leads the National Association of Community Health Centers, the advocacy and support organization for America’s largest primary care network, serving 52 million patients nationwide through community health centers. At a time of significant policy threats and deep uncertainty around federal funding for community health centers, Dr. Rhee has been a forceful advocate on Capitol Hill, leading multiple legislative advocacy events and spearheading a national campaign to amplify a united brand for community health centers while their patient bases continued to grow. He has strengthened the organizational infrastructure by establishing the Dr. John W. Hatch Center for Science, the Center for Leadership and Governance and the Center for Vital Conditions, attracting partnerships, funding and collaborations, including alliances with the Coalition for Health AI, Scale Health and the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. Under his leadership, the organization partnered with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to establish the Bloomberg Health Initiative Fellowship, supporting emerging community health center leaders with scholarships, mentorship and growth opportunities to strengthen the workforce pipeline. Dr. Rhee also established NACHC Cares to enable community health centers nationwide to leverage collective buying power for comprehensive employee health benefits, and has served as a representative at major industry forums including HLTH, ViVE, the Health Evolution Summit, the Milken Institute and JPM Health. He received the American College of Preventive Medicine’s “Blumenthal Award” in 2025.

Patrick Ryan. Chairman and CEO of Press Ganey (South Bend, Ind.). Mr. Ryan has led Press Ganey for 14 years, guiding the firm’s evolution from a patient experience pioneer into an enterprise and industrywide leader at the intersection of healthcare and technology. In 2025, he guided the acquisitions of both InMoment and Hyperlift to expand Press Ganey’s ability to capture and analyze a growing range of human experience data. He also steered the company’s $6.75 billion intended acquisition by Silver Lake to combine forces with Qualtrics, one of the largest non-pharmaceutical healthcare transactions announced in 2025, uniting Press Ganey’s network of 41,000 healthcare providers across 30 countries with Qualtrics’ platform serving nearly 20,000 organizations worldwide. Mr. Ryan also committed $500 million over five years to generative AI capabilities in 2024, materializing in 2025 with the launch of expanded AI capabilities in partnership with Microsoft and built on the industry’s largest integrated dataset of 5.5 billion patient encounters and 2.2 million employee voices. These capabilities are delivering measurable impact, including AI-powered predictive rounding that doubled hospitals’ ability to identify at-risk patients and nursing intelligence tools that reduce time spent reviewing patient experience data by 50%. Mr. Ryan serves as chairman of the board of both Hallmark Health Care Solutions and Compassus, and has previously served on various other boards.

Bob Segert. Chairman and CEO of athenahealth (Boston). Mr. Segert has led athenahealth as chairman and CEO since February 2019, joining after serving as chairman and CEO of Virence Health and bringing to the role more than 25 years of leadership experience in the software and IT services industry spanning sales, marketing, operations and corporate strategy. His executive career reflects a consistent track record of scaling technology organizations to market-leading positions, having served as executive chairman of Aspect Software, president and CEO of Expert Global Solutions, and president and CEO of GXS. His leadership philosophy is grounded in a passion for understanding and delivering on the needs of the customer, a relentless commitment to operational excellence, and a proven ability to drive outstanding results across complex, large-scale technology organizations. At athenahealth, he has applied this experience to one of the healthcare industry’s most widely used cloud-based platforms for EHRs, revenue cycle management and patient engagement, serving physician practices and health systems across the country. He currently serves on the board of directors of EPAM Systems, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra board of governors and foundation board, and on the foundation board of the Vogel Alcove, a nonprofit supporting early childhood development and education for the homeless in Dallas.

Munjal Shah. Co-Founder and CEO of Hippocratic AI (Palo Alto, Calif.). Mr. Shah co-founded Hippocratic AI in 2023 with a mission to build foundation models for healthcare that improve patient outcomes, lower costs and address the growing global shortage of healthcare workers. He has developed a safety-focused large language model for non-diagnostic healthcare services that has outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-4 on 105 of 114 healthcare exams and certifications. His entrepreneurial journey began in 1999 with Andale, one of the first cloud-based software as a service companies for small businesses, followed by like.com, a groundbreaking e-commerce platform that utilized AI-based computer vision for visual search and was later acquired by Google. His entry into healthcare technology came with the 2013 founding of Health IQ, which initially provided discounted life insurance to health-conscious individuals using machine learning algorithms before expanding to help seniors find optimal Medicare Advantage plans through its Precision Medicare algorithm. Beyond his founding roles, Mr. Shah is a prolific seed investor, having backed more than 42 companies and 23 venture funds, many of which have achieved unicorn status or successful exits. His vision for Hippocratic AI represents the convergence of two decades of AI entrepreneurship and a deep commitment to using technology to address some of healthcare’s most pressing systemic challenges.

Paul Singh. CEO of U.S. Dermatology Partners (Dallas). Mr. Singh has led U.S. Dermatology Partners since 2018, transforming the organization into one of the largest and most effective dermatology practices in the nation, now encompassing more than 120 locations across nine states and serving more than two million patients annually, with a compounded annual growth rate of over 20% in earnings. He has overseen the seamless integration of more than 65 acquisitions into a unified clinical care network, achieving a patient retention rate of 78% compared to a medical industry average of 43%, a 4.9-star average Google rating, and a Net Promoter Score of 80. A defining hallmark of his tenure is a cultural transformation that places physician autonomy, transparency and collaboration at the forefront, producing a physician retention rate of 94% since 2022 and a physician job satisfaction score of 4.3 out of 5.0, compared to the American Medical Association “Joy in Medicine” survey’s dermatology group average of 3.8. Mr. Singh has also driven significant research and access expansion, growing the U.S. Dermatology Partners Research Institute with a 150% increase in patient participation, a 466% increase in provider engagement and a 163% increase in clinical trials. Meanwhile, his outreach program has opened 48 new locations in rural and underserved communities, resulting in the diagnosis and care of over 38,000 skin cancer cases, more than 20,000 psoriasis cases and more than 115,000 cases of actinic keratosis. He serves as a board advisor for One Peak Medical and Adonis, is healthcare alumni president for the Dallas chapter of Harvard Business School’s medical school digital program, and is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization Dallas chapter. Mr. Singh was named to D CEO‘s “Dallas 500” in 2024 and “Outstanding Healthcare Executive” in 2023. In 2026, Castle Connolly ranked U.S. Dermatology Partners the “No. 1 Dermatology Practice in the Nation.”

Shan Sinha. Co-Founder and CEO of Canopy Works (San Jose, Calif.). Mr. Sinha co-founded Canopy Works in 2019, aiming to protect frontline healthcare professionals from workplace violence through a connected safety platform that combines wearable duress technology with real-time situational awareness. The platform now helps protect over 300,000 healthcare workers across more than 60 major health systems and 1,200-plus facilities. He brings to this mission a technology entrepreneurship background, having previously founded DocVerse, acquired by Google and forming the basis of the Google Drive desktop client, and co-founded Highfive, a video conferencing platform acquired by Dialpad, in addition to building enterprise technology products at Microsoft. Under his leadership, Canopy has evolved beyond a niche safety tool into a comprehensive workforce safety solution that integrates proactive support alongside reactive alerting, with coverage extending both indoors and outdoors and into home healthcare environments. Mr. Sinha has been a vocal public advocate for making worker safety central to health systems’ operational priorities, addressing rising workplace assault rates in industry publications and consistently weaving empathy for healthcare workers into Canopy’s culture and product strategy. Beyond Canopy, he serves as a venture advisor at AI Fund working with early-stage founders on strategic growth and fundraising, and holds board roles at Fivetran and as a board observer at Bearing AI. He was recognized on the Slice of Healthcare “50 Under 50” list in 2025.

Jeff Smith. CEO of Bamboo Health (Louisville, Ky.). Mr. Smith leads Bamboo Health as CEO, overseeing a platform that now supports more than 9 billion annual transactions, including 7.5 billion prescription drug exchanges, across three key product suites spanning care coordination, prescription drug management and behavioral health. Under his leadership, Bamboo has scaled its reach to support 2,500 hospitals, 29 health plans, more than 45,000 pharmacies, 8,000 post-acute facilities, and more than 50 states and territories, enabling partners to close care gaps, proactively identify high-risk patients, reduce readmissions and ease workforce strain. He regularly invites clients to share real patient stories during companywide meetings to keep innovation grounded in empathy and purpose, consistently reinforcing that Bamboo’s work is about the people behind the technology, not the technology itself. Mr. Smith has implemented an all-remote workforce policy to ensure Bamboo can attract the best possible talent regardless of geography. Prior to Bamboo Health, he served as president of the value-based care enablement business at Lumeris, held multiple senior leadership roles at CVS Health leading enterprise strategy, acquisitions and population health initiatives, and earlier in his career founded an electronic prescribing company that was successfully acquired by Allscripts. He serves on the Bamboo Health board of directors, and has previously served on the boards of Surescripts and Generation Health, and was recognized by The Healthcare Technology Report as a “Top 25 Healthcare Software Executive” of 2024.

Leslie Snavely. CEO of CHG Healthcare (Salt Lake City). Ms. Snavely was promoted to CEO of CHG Healthcare in August 2024, becoming the leader of the nation’s largest physician staffing company. She brings a distinguished 14-year career within the organization that included roles as chief strategy and digital officer, chief sales officer, senior vice president of marketing and business development, and most recently president, having been named to that role in 2023 and playing a crucial role in evolving CHG’s business model. Prior to joining CHG in 2010, Ms. Snavely spent more than a decade in the consumer-packaged goods industry at leading companies including Procter & Gamble and Pepsi, bringing a strong commercial and strategic foundation to her healthcare staffing career. Her leadership philosophy is rooted in CHG’s core values with a foundation of putting people first,  and she is known for championing inclusion and ensuring everyone has a voice at CHG. Ms. Snavely has been recognized among Staffing Industry Analysts’ “Global Power 150 Women in Staffing” and “Top 100 Leaders in North America” in 2023, previously served as vice chair of the Women’s Leadership Institute of Utah, and is actively involved in nonprofit leadership within the Park City community.

Punit Singh Soni. Founder and CEO of Suki (Redwood City, Calif.). Mr. Soni founded Suki to lift the administrative burden from clinicians through AI-backed voice technology, leading a team of physicians, engineers and technologists building innovative solutions that allow healthcare providers to focus on patients rather than paperwork. Suki’s flagship product, “Suki Assistant,” provides clinicians with an AI-powered voice tool that streamlines clinical documentation, while the company’s proprietary platform enables partners to build best-in-class AI experiences within their own healthcare solutions. Mr. Soni brings to healthcare a seasoned product leader’s perspective rooted in the mobile sector, with deep expertise spanning product management, strategy, execution, cloud, big data, mobile platforms and hardware. His experience informs his approach to building technology that must be both technically sophisticated and intuitively usable in the demanding environment of clinical care. Prior to founding Suki, he served as chief product officer of Flipkart, a $15 billion Indian e-commerce company. Now, as CEO, he takes a general manager’s approach to all aspects of the business by crafting strategy, building teams and executing go-to-market.

Imamu “Mu” Tomlinson, MD. CEO of Vituity and President of Vituity Cares Foundation (Emeryville, Calif.). Dr. Tomlinson has led Vituity as CEO since 2017, bringing to the role a physician executive’s perspective shaped by years of frontline emergency medicine practice, which he continues today at Adventist Health Central Valley Network in California, and a passionate commitment to healthcare justice and equity that defines both his leadership philosophy and the organization’s culture. Before becoming CEO, he served as Vituity’s president and led the creation of one of the organization’s first multi-hospital, multi-specialty integrated networks, as well as serving as chief of staff for the Adventist Health Central Valley Network. At Vituity, Dr. Tomlinson has cultivated what he calls a culture of brilliance, which empowers every team member to bring their unique and diverse strengths to work for the benefit of patients and the healthcare system, all while enforcing culturally competent care standards throughout all levels of the organization and actively creating pathways for future generations of diverse leaders. He also leads the Vituity Cares Foundation, which works to improve community health by addressing the inequity and inequality that lead to poorer health outcomes and seeks to remedy the lack of representation among healthcare clinicians perpetuating these disparities. Dr. Tomlinson is a sought-after influencer and advocate who inspires executives, clinicians and the public to take action on healthcare inequities. He was recognized as “Highly Commended CEO of the Year” by CEO Magazine in 2025.

Rhoda Weiss, PhD. Founder of Health Market Leaders and National Healthcare Consultant, Speaker, Author and Editor (Los Angeles). Dr. Weiss is a pioneer in strategy, marketing, branding, crisis management and executive advisory, with extensive consulting and speaking engagements across 49 states and globally. She founded and currently chairs Health Market Leaders, a network for chief marketing and communications officers from leading U.S. health systems, fostering collaboration and best practices. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she launched a biweekly forum for chief marketing officers from 115 health systems, facilitating over 150 meetings, 2,500 best practices and more than 50 CEO keynotes. She also united L.A. health systems to create BetterTogether.Health, a multimedia campaign promoting timely care access. A writer and educator, she has authored books, columns and courses on healthcare marketing and public relations. A Kellogg Foundation fellow and National Security Forum mentor, Dr. Weiss has earned numerous accolades, including the U.S. Air Force & U.S. Space Force “Distinguished Public Service Award”.

Brian Whorley. Founder and CEO of Paytient (Columbia, Mo.). Mr. Whorley founded Paytient after a decade in hospital administration, driven by a refusal to ignore the financial harm that so often accompanies physical healing. His core vision is building a better care economy with a platform designed to ensure that care is provided right away for the millions of Americans who face financial barriers to acces. Under his leadership, 2025 was a watershed year for Paytient, with the platform facilitating 200% of the total care volume delivered across the company’s entire history. His tenacity and clarity of vision have secured over $103 million in capital from top-tier investors. He is turning what is typically opaque and complex about healthcare financing into a genuine, human experience for patients, as well as the employers and health plans that support them. Mr. Whorley was inducted into the University of Missouri Industrial Engineering Hall of Fame in 2018, was named among “50 Missourians You Should Know” by Ingram’s Business Magazine in 2023, and was recognized among Columbia Business Times‘ “20 Under 40” in 2017.

John J. Whyte, MD. CEO and Executive Vice President of the American Medical Association (Chicago). Dr. Whyte leads the American Medical Association, the nation’s largest physician organization, bringing to the role a career spanning digital health, federal regulation, media and health policy at the highest levels. Prior to his current role, he served as chief medical officer at WebMD, where he led initiatives that expanded strategic partnerships, created new business opportunities and evolved WebMD’s platforms from content delivery engines to powerful tools connecting consumers directly to care and establishing critical new revenue models. Before WebMD, Dr. Whyte served as director of professional affairs and stakeholder engagement at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, spearheading groundbreaking initiatives to modernize clinical trial design, expand diversity in research and advance the regulatory use of real-world evidence. Earlier in his career, he served as chief medical expert and vice president of health and medical education at Discovery Channel, launching educational programming that captured both medical and mainstream audiences. At the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, he played a pivotal role in formalizing Medicare’s national coverage decision process and advancing innovative models to improve healthcare outcomes. He is also a board-certified internist and accomplished author of five best-selling books for both professional and consumer audiences.

C-Suite and VP

Hari Bala. Chief Technology Officer of Health Information Systems for Solventum (Maplewood, Minn.). Mr. Bala brings more than 25 years of experience building complex, scalable AI and cloud systems at leading organizations including Microsoft, Oracle and GE Healthcare to his role as CTO of health information systems at Solventum. A renowned thought leader who holds 10 patents in AI and machine learning, he focuses on applying AI to solve real-world challenges in clinical documentation, autonomous coding and revenue cycle optimization. He is focused on advancing clinician capabilities and improving outcomes while remaining equally passionate about governed AI use, responsible training, and HIPAA and GDPR compliance. He works actively alongside clinicians to understand their concerns and unique needs before implementing solutions, a particularly critical approach given that a recent Solventum global survey revealed 59% of healthcare professionals are concerned innovation may increase stress and expectations. Throughout his career, he has built and led global organizations of more than 2,000 people and delivered multi-billion-dollar business impact through high-performing AI, cloud and software solutions, having been recognized as a top 1% performer at Microsoft and selected for Oracle’s “Outstanding Top Talent” program. Mr. Bala has mentored numerous professionals into executive leadership roles, and contributes his insights regularly to leading forums and publications including Fortune, Forbes, ViVE, HLTH and Healthcare IT News. He was named a finalist for the “IT Innovator of the Year Award” by The Millennium Alliance in 2025.

Mark Clements, MD. Chief Medical and Strategy Officer for Glooko (Palo Alto, Calif.). Dr. Clements brings to his role at Glooko frontline clinical experience as a former practicing pediatric endocrinologist, scientific expertise, and compassionate leadership that advances the field of diabetes care. At Glooko, he has strengthened the company’s clinical rigor, shaped a more evidence-driven product strategy, and championed research collaborations that ground the platform in science and real-world clinical needs. He is currently guiding the company’s expansion into deeper clinical value, including improved tools for population-level insights and a more seamless experience for patients and providers. He is able to translate sophisticated clinical and data science concepts into actionable direction for technologists, engineers and product teams, all while ensuring Glooko’s solutions align with care guidelines, emerging quality measures and the practical realities of clinical workflows. Beyond Glooko, Dr. Clements is a national leader in diabetes research, having authored influential publications, contributed to multicenter studies focused on improving care for youth with Type 1 diabetes, and helped shape standards for data-driven disease management. He is deeply committed to addressing disparities in diabetes outcomes and expanding access to high-quality care for underserved communities. He is a sought-after speaker, educator and collaborator who consistently bridges the gap between clinical practice and digital innovation.

Brett Hoggard, MD. Chief Medical Officer of Brundage Group (Pinellas Park, Fla.). Dr. Hoggard serves as chief medical officer and director of quality at Brundage Group, leading the company’s clinical team and directing the development of its clinical service lines. He is charged with shaping clinical strategy, establishing standards of excellence, and serving as a trusted advisor to healthcare executives and clinical leaders nationwide. A diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine, his clinical credibility and operational insight enables him to guide healthcare organizations toward approaches that balance patient care, compliance and performance outcomes. He is directly involved in product design and development, partnering closely with product, technology and operations teams to ensure Brundage Group’s solutions are built with clinicians in mind, intuitive to use, grounded in real-world workflows, and supportive rather than burdensome to providers. Dr. Hoggard is also a recognized expert in physician documentation, having co-authored the Association of Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialists course “Clinical Documentation Essentials for the Hospital Provider,” which equips clinicians nationwide with practical tools to improve documentation accuracy, compliance and representation of patient complexity.

Neil Lindsay. Senior Vice President of Amazon Health Services (Seattle). Mr. Lindsay leads Amazon Health Services, focused on a clear mission of making it easier for customers to find, choose, afford, and engage with the care they need to get and stay healthy. The company centers on curated choice that empowers patients with agency in care decisions, convenience in accessing care, clarity of cost through meaningful price transparency, and continuity of care across an expanding ecosystem. In 2025, Amazon Pharmacy expanded same-day delivery to reach nearly half of U.S. customers, helped customers save more than $150 million through automatically applied manufacturer-sponsored coupons, and grew sales nearly 50% year-over-year, while One Medical achieved 40% year-over-year growth in new membership enrollment and launched a menopause program addressing a critical gap in women’s healthcare. Mr. Lindsay has also prioritized clinician wellbeing, championing the development of AI-enabled tools within One Medical’s EHR that cut patient message response time by 50% and meaningfully reduced time spent on paperwork. His impact extends through partnerships with leading health systems including Cleveland Clinic and Edison, N.J.-based Hackensack Meridian Health, and through thought leadership at forums including the 2025 McKinsey Healthcare Conference and the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit, where he has spoken on AI’s role in reducing provider burden, expanding virtual care access and advancing cost transparency. Theresa Meadows. CIO in Residence for Symplr (Houston). Ms. Meadows began her career as a cardiac transplant nurse and has spent more than three decades driving meaningful transformation across healthcare, building a distinguished executive career that bridges frontline clinical experience with large-scale health system technology leadership. She served for 15 years as senior vice president and chief digital and information officer at Cook Children’s Health Care System, leading IT and digital health strategy across an integrated delivery network of nine hospitals and directing a team of more than 400 employees spanning infrastructure, applications, advanced analytics, cybersecurity and program management. She previously held senior IT leadership roles at Ascension in St. Louis, including regional director for shared services, where she managed a $16 million operating budget across 10 acute care hospitals. Today, as CIO in residence at symplr, she is a driving force behind the company’s mission to accelerate the transformation of healthcare operations. She played a pivotal role in symplr’s acquisition of a Smart Square, a workforce management technology that helps healthcare leaders anticipate staffing needs, deploy resources to the front lines and improve the workforce experience. In November 2025, she was appointed to the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives foundation board of directors, becoming only the second individual in its history to serve on both the provider and foundation boards. She previously co-chaired the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Healthcare Cybersecurity Task Force. Ms. Meadows received the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives’s “CIO of the Year” award in 2022, the “Baldrige Leadership Excellence Award for Cybersecurity” in 2023, the “Outstanding Service Award” in 2020. She was also recognized on Health Data Management’s “Most Powerful Women in Healthcare IT” list from 2016 through 2019.

The post Great leaders in healthcare | 2026 appeared first on Becker's Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.