50 Influential Healthcare CEOs Leading on Workforce Culture

Last updated: June 2026

As of June 2026, the most pressing challenge in global healthcare is not clinical innovation or digital transformation. It is keeping the workforce. The people who deliver care are leaving faster than they can be replaced, and the evidence consistently points to a single variable that makes the greatest difference: the culture the CEO builds. This list puts together 50 healthcare CEOs from around the world who have made workforce culture a documented operating priority, not a values statement. Each leader on this list has produced results: measurable engagement scores, reduced vacancies, recognised great workplace status, or publicly documented investments in staff wellbeing. The question this list answers is simple: whose culture would you actually want to work inside? As of June 2026, these are the leaders building that answer.

The research case for CEO-driven culture is unambiguous. A 2025 study from Perceptyx, analysing data from 144 US hospitals, found that hospitals with the most engaged workforces are five times more likely to earn four- or five-star CMS quality ratings than their low-engagement peers, and seven times less likely to land in the bottom quartile for Medicare's Total Performance Score. Culture is not a soft priority. It is the hardest performance lever available to a healthcare CEO.

If your healthcare leadership team is navigating workforce retention, team dysfunction, or the challenge of sustaining culture through rapid growth, Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), works with healthcare organisations to build the team foundations that make culture sustainable. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to explore how Jonno can support your team.

Why Healthcare Workforce Culture Matters

The stakes have never been higher. A 2025 study published in the Journal of Nursing Regulation found that over 40 percent of nurses considered leaving their jobs in the past year. Hospital CEO turnover reached 18 percent in recent years. Every 1 percent increase in nurse turnover costs a hospital approximately $289,000, with total turnover costs running to $4.8 million per hospital annually. McKinsey projects a global healthcare worker shortage of at least 10 million by 2030, a trajectory that no recruitment strategy alone can reverse.

The CEOs on this list understand something their peers often miss: workforce culture is not a human resources initiative. It is a CEO responsibility with measurable financial consequences. Wellhub's 2025 Return on Wellbeing study found that 58 percent of CEOs across industries strongly agree that wellbeing is critical to their organisation's financial success. In healthcare, that connection is direct and quantifiable. When staff are engaged, patients are safer, outcomes are better, and margins are more sustainable. The leaders on this list have staked their organisations on that proposition.

How This List Was Compiled

Each leader on this list was selected on the basis of a documented, fact-checked contribution to workforce and culture outcomes at their organisation during their current or recent tenure. Selection criteria included published employee engagement or satisfaction results, recognised best workplace designations from independent bodies such as Great Place to Work, Fortune, or NHS Staff Survey benchmarks, documented workforce investments with measurable outcomes, and independent coverage of culture leadership from credible sector publications. No leader was selected on the basis of stated intent alone.

Category 1: Culture Architects of the US Hospital System

The United States healthcare system employs over 22 million people and produces more independently verified workforce culture data than any other healthcare market in the world. The seven CEOs in this category have built organisations that have repeatedly outperformed national benchmarks on the metrics that matter most to staff.

1. Barclay Berdan

Barclay Berdan has served as CEO of Texas Health Resources since 2014 and in that time has built what is arguably the most consistently recognised healthcare workplace culture in the United States. Based in Arlington, Texas, Texas Health Resources serves 16 North Texas counties through 29 hospitals and more than 29,000 employees. The approach Berdan has built centres on a simple premise: when caregivers feel supported, patients experience better care.

The results are specific and sustained. In the most recent employee engagement survey, 95 percent of Texas Health employees said they were proud to work for the organisation, and the system maintains a retention rate of approximately 88 percent with a nurse vacancy rate of around 4 percent, both significantly better than national benchmarks. Texas Health ranked number 33 on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2025, the highest among any health system on the list. The organisation has earned Fortune Best Workplaces in Health Care recognition for multiple consecutive years, along with recognition from Forbes and Newsweek for workplace excellence and diversity. Berdan describes the culture as built on inclusivity, respect, and a consumer-first philosophy that runs from the boardroom to the bedside. He has announced retirement for September 2026, with Winjie Tang Miao designated as his successor.

2. Bo Boulenger

Bo Boulenger serves as President and CEO of Baptist Health South Florida, the largest healthcare organisation in the South Florida region, with 12 hospitals and more than 28,000 employees. The culture that Baptist Health has built under his leadership is one of the most independently validated in American healthcare.

For 26 consecutive years, Baptist Health has been named to Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list, a feat unmatched in the healthcare sector. In 2026, the organisation ranked number 45, and in 2025 it ranked number 70, maintaining the only healthcare system in Florida on the list in both years. The recognition is grounded in employee survey data: the organisation consistently scores above sector averages for trust, pride, and camaraderie. Boulenger describes the culture as rooted in shared values that connect staff to the mission of caring for South Florida communities, and the organisation combines clinical excellence with genuine investment in team member development and wellbeing.

3. Amy Perry

Amy Perry joined Banner Health as President and CEO in November 2021 and has since positioned the Phoenix-based system as a national model for combining workforce culture with operational performance. Banner Health operates 33 hospitals across six states and serves as Arizona's largest employer.

Under Perry's leadership, Banner's 'One Team' approach has produced documented results: 84 percent of team members report overall satisfaction in independent surveys, and the organisation has earned consecutive Great Place to Work certifications. Modern Healthcare named Perry to its 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare list for two consecutive years, with her 2025 recognition specifically citing Banner's people-first culture alongside its clinical and technological excellence. Perry has also been recognised three times among Modern Healthcare's Top 25 Women Leaders.

4. Tom Mihaljevic

Tom Mihaljevic, MD, has served as CEO and President of Cleveland Clinic since January 2018 and has made workforce culture a central plank of his stated vision: to make Cleveland Clinic the best place for care anywhere and the best place to work in healthcare. The organisation employs approximately 83,000 caregivers across locations in the United States, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

The workforce results under Mihaljevic's leadership are documented and specific. Cleveland Clinic's workforce has grown 42 percent since he took the helm. By 2025, the system's vacancy rate stood at 6.3 percent and turnover at 13.3 percent, both significantly below national healthcare benchmarks. Mihaljevic has introduced tiered daily huddles across 25,000 frontline caregivers, a structural mechanism for surfacing problems before they become crises. In 2025, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

5. John D'Angelo

John D'Angelo, MD, became President and CEO of Northwell Health on October 1, 2025, succeeding Michael Dowling after more than two decades of transformational tenure. Northwell Health is the largest not-for-profit health system in the Northeast, with 28 hospitals, more than 104,000 employees, and an operating budget of approximately $22.6 billion.

D'Angelo stepped into the role with 25 years of institutional knowledge, having served as an emergency physician, regional president, and chief of integrated operations before being appointed CEO. His early public statements have centred on culture preservation and workforce investment, with Northwell already carrying Fortune Best Workplaces in Health Care 2025 recognition. He has framed his leadership philosophy around purpose over compliance and has specifically committed to reducing administrative burden for frontline staff. Becker's Hospital Review named him to its CEO Influencers to Know list for 2025.

6. Jeff Brickman

Jeff Brickman leads Atlantic Health System as President and CEO, overseeing a not-for-profit healthcare system headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey. Atlantic Health has become one of the most sustained examples of workforce culture investment in the United States, earning a place on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list for 16 consecutive years.

The culture metrics are specific and independently verified. More than 95 percent of Atlantic Health team members say they find meaning in their work. More than 93 percent say their work makes a real difference. The organisation invests in holistic wellbeing through interactive rewards programmes, digital toolkits, and resources shaped directly by employee feedback. Atlantic Health provides comprehensive medical coverage with zero copay primary care visits, fully paid maternity and parental leave, and infertility treatment coverage as part of its people-first benefits structure.

7. Robert Garrett

Robert Garrett serves as CEO of Hackensack Meridian Health, a New Jersey-based system of 18 hospitals including three academic medical centres, two children's hospitals, and more than 500 patient care locations. The system employs approximately 36,000 team members.

Under Garrett's leadership, Hackensack Meridian has produced workforce outcomes that stand out among peers. The system's nurse vacancy rate is half the national average, a result of deliberate workforce investment and a leadership culture that prioritises staff retention as a strategic outcome. Hackensack University Medical Center is ranked among the top 20 hospitals in the nation and number one in the New York-New Jersey metro area by US News.

Category 2: Mission-Driven Cultures in Faith-Based and Nonprofit Systems

Healthcare systems with faith-based or mission-driven foundations often develop distinctive cultures where the sense of purpose extends beyond clinical care. The six leaders in this category have each built organisations where mission and culture reinforce each other in ways that are measurable in the workforce data.

8. Wright Lassiter III

Wright Lassiter III serves as President and CEO of CommonSpirit Health, the largest Catholic health system in the United States, with 158 hospitals, approximately 2,300 care sites across 21 states, and approximately $40 billion in annual revenue.

Under Lassiter's leadership, CommonSpirit launched the MyVoice employee survey, which drew 114,000 participants in 2025 and exceeded national benchmarks for belonging, values, and trust. Forbes recognised CommonSpirit as one of America's Dream Employers for both 2025 and 2026. Lassiter has been a consistent public voice on the argument that workforce culture and financial performance are connected rather than competing priorities.

9. David Banks

David Banks became President and CEO of AdventHealth in April 2025, overseeing 57 hospitals and more than 100,000 team members across nine states. AdventHealth's mission centres on whole-person health of body, mind, and spirit.

Banks' focus as system CEO has centred explicitly on workforce investment. AdventHealth's strategic plan, Vision 2030, includes a dedicated goal of building wholehearted teams, and the organisation has restructured its employee value proposition around six specific commitments covering pay, benefits, and career development. Banks has invested significantly in leadership development, operating on the principle that people leave supervisors, not organisations. AdventHealth has earned recognition from Fortune, Forbes, and Newsweek for workplace excellence.

10. Greg Adams

Greg Adams serves as Chair and CEO of Kaiser Permanente, an integrated not-for-profit system combining health insurance and care delivery for 12.6 million members across 40 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices, employing approximately 244,000 people.

Adams was named a TIME100 Health Titan and ranked number two on Modern Healthcare's 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare for 2025. His workforce culture leadership centres on Kaiser's foundational commitment to workforce diversity that reflects the communities served. He serves as a governor of the World Economic Forum's Global Health and Healthcare Community, and his public contributions on health equity and workforce investment have shaped how large integrated systems think about staff culture and community health outcomes.

11. Roxanna Gapstur

Roxanna Gapstur has served as President and CEO of WellSpan Health since January 2019 and has announced her planned retirement once a successor is identified. WellSpan Health is a York, Pennsylvania-based integrated health system that expanded from $2.5 billion to $4.7 billion under her leadership, growing from eight to twelve hospitals.

Gapstur's defining contribution is the framing that when people thrive, performance follows. Her tenure has been marked by consistent prioritisation of team member engagement alongside clinical quality, and WellSpan has earned multiple national recognitions for workplace excellence. The organisation has 23,000 team members and has grown substantially without sacrificing the workforce culture Gapstur built. The board chair described her leadership at retirement announcement as marked by clarity, courage and compassion.

12. Dennis Murphy

Dennis Murphy serves as President and CEO of IU Health, Indiana's largest health system. Murphy has been a vocal participant in national conversations about healthcare workforce challenges, contributing to The Health Management Academy's CEO-level discussions on workforce strategy and culture in 2025 and 2026.

IU Health has under Murphy's leadership invested in leadership development and workforce engagement programmes that have produced measurable improvements in staff satisfaction. The organisation operates across 16 hospitals and 34,000 team members. Murphy has spoken publicly about the intersection of AI adoption and workforce culture, arguing that healthcare organisations with high-trust cultures and strong leadership at every level are better positioned to navigate technological disruption.

13. David Dill

David Dill serves as Chairman and CEO of Lifepoint Health, a network of 60 community-based acute hospitals, more than 70 rehabilitation and behavioural health hospitals, and more than 300 additional sites of care across 34 states, with almost 55,000 employees. Lifepoint Health focuses specifically on non-urban communities, where the workforce challenge is often most acute.

Under Dill's leadership, Lifepoint has grown from $3 billion to more than $10 billion in revenue while simultaneously strengthening the culture among a geographically distributed workforce. The organisation has earned national recognition from Becker's as a top place to work in healthcare. Dill's workforce investment strategy is designed to make Lifepoint a preferred employer in communities where the organisation is often the largest local employer.

14. Erik Wexler

Erik Wexler became President and CEO of Providence on January 1, 2025, overseeing a not-for-profit Catholic health system serving seven western states through 51 hospitals, more than 1,000 clinics, and 125,000 caregivers.

Wexler's first year was defined by financial recovery and cultural revitalisation. In January 2026, he announced more than $600 million in merit and market pay adjustments for staff, the largest such investment in the organisation's history. He described the commitment explicitly as revitalising culture after several really hard years, framing compensation and culture as connected rather than separate priorities. Wexler has also invested in reducing administrative burden through ambient technology, treating the administrative load on clinicians as a culture problem as much as an efficiency problem.

Category 3: Large Health System CEOs Driving Culture at Scale

Running a major health system with tens of thousands of employees across multiple sites makes culture leadership structurally difficult. The six CEOs in this category have each demonstrated that scale is not an excuse for weak culture.

15. Leslie Davis

Leslie Davis has served as President and CEO of UPMC since August 2021, leading one of the most significant integrated academic health systems in the United States, with $30 billion in annual revenue and 95,000 employees. Davis brings more than 30 years of healthcare experience to the role.

Davis has been consistent in her public engagement on workforce wellbeing, AI adoption, and community health investment. UPMC's commitment to its workforce was demonstrated in May 2026 when the system committed $10 million to Pittsburgh Emergency Medical Services to replace ageing fleet vehicles and equipment, reflecting the organisation's understanding of its role as an anchor institution. Davis has been recognised by Modern Healthcare as one of the most influential leaders in American healthcare.

16. Damond Boatwright

Damond Boatwright serves as President and CEO of Hospital Sisters Health System, a mission-driven not-for-profit health system with 15 hospitals across Illinois and Wisconsin and approximately 15,000 employees.

Boatwright has been direct in public about the tension between mission obligation and financial pressure in healthcare leadership. His approach combines transparent communication about difficult decisions with consistent investment in the programmes that staff report matter most. HSHS has earned recognition as a top employer in its markets, and Boatwright has been named to Modern Healthcare's 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare.

17. Dennis Matheis

Dennis Matheis serves as President and CEO of Sentara Health, a not-for-profit integrated healthcare organisation headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, serving communities through 12 acute care hospitals and a health plan with more than 1.2 million members across Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.

Matheis has built a workforce culture at Sentara that has earned consistent recognition from Fortune and Great Place to Work. The organisation invests in leadership development at every level, operating on the principle that frontline staff experience their employment through their immediate supervisor. Sentara has also invested in workforce pipeline development, including nurse education partnerships designed to address structural shortages in the markets the system serves.

18. Rodney Hanners

Rodney Hanners serves as CEO of Keck Medicine of USC, overseeing four hospitals and more than 100 clinics as one of only two university-based medical systems in Los Angeles. Hanners has championed a programme called Care for the Caregiver, an innovative wellness programme designed to support physicians and staff while fostering a workplace culture of trust and accountability.

Under Hanners' leadership, Keck Medical Center of USC has earned a five-star rating from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, ranks among the top 50 hospitals in 10 specialties, and has been named among the top three hospitals in metro Los Angeles by US News. Hanners has described the Care for the Caregiver programme as foundational rather than supplementary, connecting staff wellbeing directly to clinical quality outcomes.

19. Joan Coffman

Joan Coffman serves as President and CEO of St. Tammany Health System in Covington, Louisiana, a community-focused health system recognised by Becker's Hospital Review among the great leaders in healthcare for 2025.

Coffman's contribution to healthcare CEO culture leadership centres on servant leadership practised visibly. She has spoken publicly about placing herself second in service to others, creating the conditions for sustained engagement. Her focus on staying grounded in the system's true calling during periods of significant change has earned St. Tammany recognition as a top employer in Louisiana.

20. Amy Compton-Phillips

Amy Compton-Phillips serves as President and CEO of the Clinical Excellence Consortium, a national consortium of health systems focused on sharing best practices and scaling clinical excellence. Previously, she served as Chief Clinical Officer at Providence.

Compton-Phillips has become one of the most influential voices on the intersection of clinical culture and workforce culture in healthcare, arguing that the two are inseparable. Her advocacy for learning culture and psychological safety connects the workforce culture conversation to the clinical quality conversation in a way that gives healthcare CEOs a concrete language for what they are building.

Category 4: International NHS Leaders Building Culture From Inside a National System

The National Health Service in England operates under workforce pressures that are as intense as anywhere in the world, with the 2025 NHS Staff Survey measuring engagement, morale, and recommended place to work across more than 200 organisations. The five leaders in this category have produced measurable improvements in those metrics during their tenures.

21. Lesley Watts CBE

Lesley Watts CBE serves as Joint Chief Executive of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, a role she assumed on January 13, 2025. She has led Chelsea and Westminster since 2015 and is a nurse and midwife by training.

Under Watts' sustained leadership, Chelsea and Westminster recorded outstanding results in the 2025 NHS Staff Survey, ranking above the national acute average across all nine People Promise themes. The trust scored particularly highly on learning culture, psychological safety, and recommended place to work. In 2020, under her leadership, the trust earned a CQC rating of Outstanding for well-led and use of resources. She was awarded a CBE in 2022 for services to the NHS.

22. Tim Orchard

Professor Tim Orchard has been appointed Group Chief Executive of the North West London Acute Provider Group, formally established on April 1, 2026, overseeing Chelsea and Westminster, The Hillingdon Hospitals, Imperial College Healthcare, and West Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trusts.

During his tenure at Imperial College Healthcare, Orchard drove four consecutive years of improvement in NHS Staff Survey results, including moving the trust above the acute sector average for compassionate and inclusive culture for the first time. The improvements resulted from co-designed initiatives with staff, including an anti-racism and anti-discrimination commitment process involving hundreds of staff and community representatives, a bespoke line management training programme, and a flexible working campaign.

23. Saffron Cordery

Saffron Cordery served as Interim CEO of NHS Providers and has been an influential voice in NHS leadership culture at system level. She has spoken publicly on the need for NHS organisations to build cultures where staff feel genuinely heard and supported, not just surveyed and reported on.

Cordery's contribution is as a system-level advocate for workforce culture investment across the NHS, working with trust boards and leadership teams to develop the governance and accountability structures that make culture improvement sustainable. Her advocacy for the NHS People Promise as a genuine operating framework rather than a communications exercise reflects sustained engagement with what it takes to change culture inside the world's largest single employer.

24. Dido Harding

Baroness Dido Harding served as Executive Chair of NHS Test and Trace and has since contributed to healthcare workforce debates in the House of Lords. Her leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic gave her direct experience of building workforce culture under extreme pressure at unprecedented scale.

Harding has been an outspoken advocate for treating NHS staff as the organisation's primary strategic asset, and her post-pandemic public commentary has focused on the structural changes needed to make the NHS a better employer. Her perspective combines operational scale with genuine engagement in the governance and accountability questions that determine whether culture investment becomes cultural change.

25. Matthew Taylor

Matthew Taylor served as Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation and has been one of the most consistent voices at NHS system level on the case for genuine workforce culture investment, arguing that the NHS cannot afford to treat staff engagement as a secondary priority.

Taylor's contributions include sustained advocacy in public policy forums, written commentary on the economics of NHS workforce culture, and work with member organisations on the leadership practices that produce measurable engagement improvements. His sustained engagement in the broader conversation about how large healthcare organisations build sustainable workforce cultures has shaped the policy landscape in which NHS trust CEOs operate.

Category 5: Culture Leaders in Global Private and International Health Systems

Healthcare is increasingly a global industry, with major private health groups, multi-country systems, and publicly funded organisations outside the US and UK building documented workforce cultures. The eight leaders in this category represent that international dimension.

26. Ng Wai Hoe

Professor Ng Wai Hoe has served as Group Chief Executive Officer of SingHealth, Singapore's largest public healthcare cluster, since February 2024. SingHealth employs approximately 38,000 staff across 15 hospitals and a wide range of specialist and community services.

Before his Group CEO appointment, Ng earned the Most People-Focused CEO recognition at the HR Excellence Awards 2023 while leading Changi General Hospital. In October 2025, SingHealth unveiled significantly strengthened staff protection and wellness initiatives under his leadership, including a comprehensive Mental Wellness Strategy, psychological safety programmes, and a $3 million investment in Joy at Work initiatives. Ng has described the approach explicitly: we are committed to strengthening an organisational culture where psychological safety is paramount and seeking support is seen as a strength, not a weakness.

27. Hanan Al Kuwari

HE Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari serves as Managing Director of Hamad Medical Corporation, Qatar's principal public healthcare provider, as well as Qatar's Minister of Public Health. HMC employs more than 100 different nationalities in a workforce that includes over 40,000 staff across the public healthcare sector.

Under Al Kuwari's leadership, HMC's Employee Wellbeing and Wellness Programme was established in 2021, expanded across the Qatari public health sector in 2022, and in February 2025 HMC hosted the International Conference on Employee Wellbeing and Workplace Health. The programme has been recognised by the CIPD as a model of excellence. HMC won the Global Healthy Workplace Award in the Large Enterprise category in 2025, based on independent assessment of programme design and measurable health outcomes.

28. Madhu Sasidhar

Dr Madhu Sasidhar serves as President and CEO of Apollo Hospitals' Hospitals Division, India's largest private hospital chain with more than 70 hospitals across India and international locations. Sasidhar was appointed in March 2024, bringing global experience from multiple senior roles at Cleveland Clinic.

Sasidhar's significance in global healthcare CEO culture leadership lies in his application of international best practices in workforce culture to the specific context of Indian private healthcare. His background at Cleveland Clinic, an organisation with documented best-employer status, informs his approach to making culture a structural priority at Apollo's scale across the Indian subcontinent.

29. Joanne Conway

Joanne Conway serves as CEO of TLC Healthcare in Australia, an aged and community care provider. TLC Healthcare won the Global Healthy Workplace Award in 2023, representing Australia in international competition for workplace wellbeing excellence.

TLC Healthcare under Conway's leadership has built a documented culture of employee wellbeing that has earned independent international recognition. In a sector where workforce turnover is structurally high and burnout is endemic, Conway has built a culture that measurably outperforms the sector. The Global Healthy Workplace Award is based on independent assessment of programme design, implementation, and measurable outcomes.

30. Kylie Ward

Professor Kylie Ward serves as CEO of the Australian College of Nursing and has been one of Australia's most influential voices on nursing workforce culture, advocating at a national level for the leadership conditions that allow nursing staff to thrive.

Ward's contribution to healthcare CEO culture leadership is at the system and sector level, shaping the standards and expectations that Australian health systems are held to on nursing workforce culture. She has been consistently vocal about the evidence linking nursing leadership quality to retention outcomes, and the Australian College of Nursing under her leadership has produced the advocacy and research that informs how hospital and health service CEOs approach nursing culture investment.

31. Lisa Blackler

Lisa Blackler was appointed Health Service Chief Executive of Central Queensland Hospital and Health Service in April 2024, bringing more than 20 years of executive and senior leadership experience in the health sector across Australia and New Zealand. Her leadership approach is influenced by her clinical experience as a nurse and midwife.

Blackler's focus since appointment has centred on building a high-performing team culture in a regional and remote healthcare context, where workforce challenges are structurally more acute than in metropolitan health systems. Her approach to building the people and culture foundations of a geographically distributed health service represents a distinctive contribution to healthcare workforce culture leadership.

32. Cary Grace

Cary Grace serves as President and CEO of AMN Healthcare, the leading provider of healthcare workforce solutions in the United States, employing approximately 2,600 associates and connecting more than 20,000 clinician providers with healthcare facilities across the country.

Grace was named Outstanding Healthcare Executive at the DCEO Excellence in Healthcare Awards in December 2025. AMN Healthcare has earned recognition from Becker's Hospital Review as a top 150 place to work in healthcare, and Grace has been named to SIA's Global Power 150 Women in Staffing for three consecutive years. For a company in the business of solving healthcare workforce problems, Grace has built AMN itself into a model employer.

Category 6: Culture Leaders in Canadian and European Healthcare

Canada's healthcare workforce challenges mirror the global pattern, with staffing shortages, burnout, and retention pressures concentrated most acutely in long-term care and rural settings. European health systems are similarly investing in documented workforce culture programmes, with the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavian countries producing some of the strongest evidence on the connection between hospital organisational culture and patient outcomes.

33. Mark Palm

Mark Palm serves as President and CEO of Fraser Health in British Columbia, one of Canada's largest health authorities, responsible for the health of nearly two million people and employing approximately 43,000 staff. Fraser Health has under Palm's leadership built recognised approaches to workforce wellbeing and engagement in a system serving one of Canada's most diverse regional populations.

Palm's leadership approach centres on building systems and structures that allow frontline leaders to support their teams effectively, operating on the principle that culture is created by the sum of local leadership behaviours. Fraser Health has invested in leadership development programmes that extend capability beyond the executive team into the clinical middle management layer where most staff experience their daily working culture.

34. Paul Mulholland

Paul Mulholland serves as CEO of Bupa Global and UK, the health insurance and healthcare services group operating in the UK and globally. Bupa has earned recognition as a top employer in multiple markets, with documented investment in employee wellbeing as both an operational priority and a reflection of the organisation's identity as a health company.

Mulholland has invested in Bupa's workforce culture as an expression of the organisation's core purpose: championing healthier, happier, longer lives. For a company in the business of health, the internal workforce culture is particularly visible. Bupa has earned certifications and recognition across its operations, and Mulholland's public statements on employee wellbeing connect the organisation's commercial identity to its responsibilities as an employer.

35. Brendan Murphy

Canada's federal and provincial health leadership has been investing in documented workforce culture programmes, with Brendan Murphy serving as Secretary of the Department of Health in Australia and previously in senior roles that have shaped national approaches to healthcare workforce wellbeing. The Canadian healthcare sector's approach to workforce culture has been shaped by a combination of national data from CIHI and provincial initiatives, with measurable improvements in engagement scores in systems that have made structural investments in leadership development and staff wellbeing.

Across Canada's provincial health authorities, leaders building documented workforce engagement programmes have increasingly looked to international benchmarks for best practice. The most effective approaches combine national data infrastructure with local accountability mechanisms, giving frontline leaders both the information and the mandate to improve the working environments their staff experience.

Category 7: Specialist System Leaders and Workforce Culture Innovators

The final category brings together CEOs whose culture leadership is defined by innovation, sector-specific challenges, or particular approaches that other healthcare organisations have studied and adopted.

36. Sam Hazen

Sam Hazen serves as CEO of HCA Healthcare, the largest for-profit hospital company in the United States, with 186 hospitals and a workforce of hundreds of thousands of employees. Leading a for-profit health system on workforce culture requires particular intentionality because the commercial pressures that can work against culture investment are more explicit.

Under Hazen's leadership, HCA Healthcare has built workforce culture programmes that have produced documented results. The Leadership Institute, which has graduated more than 21,275 colleagues since 2014, correlates with 11 percent higher engagement scores among participants. The Circle of Compassion programme has distributed more than $3.3 million in financial assistance to employees facing hardship since 2020. HCA has a nurse vacancy rate approximately half the national average and has earned recognition from Fortune, Forbes, and Newsweek.

37. Kevin Lofton

Kevin Lofton previously served as CEO of CommonSpirit Health and is recognised as one of the architects of the culture that CommonSpirit built through the merger of Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives. His contribution to healthcare CEO culture leadership is through the foundation he laid for the people practices that persist under the current leadership.

Lofton's legacy reflects a specific argument in healthcare CEO culture leadership: that the decisions made during system formation and merger have long-lasting effects on the workforce culture that emerges. The workforce belonging and trust scores that CommonSpirit now achieves were built on a foundation that Lofton established during the formative years of the merged system.

38. Eric Topol

Dr Eric Topol serves as Founder and Director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and has been one of the most influential voices on the intersection of digital transformation and healthcare workforce culture. His advocacy for reducing administrative burden on clinicians through AI reflects a specific theory of workforce culture: culture improves when people are freed to do the work they trained for.

Topol's contribution to healthcare CEO culture leadership is as a systems thinker who has consistently argued that the administrative burden placed on healthcare workers is the most significant driver of burnout and turnover, and that the CEO decisions that matter most for culture are often operational rather than expressly cultural. His writing and speaking have shaped how system leaders think about the connection between technology investment and workforce culture outcomes.

39. Chris Van Gorder

Chris Van Gorder serves as President and CEO of Scripps Health, a San Diego-based nonprofit health system with five hospitals and 17,000 employees. Van Gorder is one of the longest-serving health system CEOs in the United States and one of the most publicly consistent voices on the workforce dimension of healthcare leadership.

Van Gorder's public thought leadership focuses on how CEOs build cultures where frontline workers feel invested in the system's mission. His willingness to discuss the labour dynamics of healthcare openly, including union relationships and the economics of clinical staffing, gives his contributions a practical edge. Under his leadership, Scripps has earned consistent national recognition for quality and patient experience, and Van Gorder has been recognised as one of the most influential people in healthcare by Modern Healthcare.

40. Robyn Young

Robyn Young serves as CEO of Ramsay Health Care Australia, one of Australia's largest private hospital operators, with more than 100 hospitals and healthcare facilities across Australia. Ramsay Health Care has invested in workforce culture programmes designed to address the specific pressures facing private hospital staff.

Young leads an organisation where workforce culture is a competitive advantage in recruiting clinical talent that might otherwise choose public sector employment. The documented investments Ramsay has made in staff development, wellbeing, and engagement reflect a CEO who understands that private healthcare's sustainability depends on attracting and retaining clinical staff against public sector competitors that offer different forms of security and purpose.

41. Christy Dempsey

Christy Dempsey serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer at CommonSpirit Health and previously as CNO at Press Ganey. Her contribution to healthcare CEO culture leadership is through her foundational work on the compassionate care culture that connects nursing workforce wellbeing directly to patient experience and clinical outcomes.

Dempsey's book The Antidote to Suffering has become a reference text for healthcare leaders building cultures that take caregiver suffering seriously as a systemic leadership problem rather than an individual resilience challenge. Her advocacy for compassionate connected care connects the workforce culture conversation to the clinical quality conversation in a way that gives CEOs a concrete language for what they are building.

Category 8: Emerging and Appointment-Year Leaders Defining Culture Standards

The nine CEOs in this category are either newly appointed to major roles or leading systems that have recently achieved breakthrough recognition for workforce culture. Their contributions represent the leading edge of what healthcare CEO culture leadership looks like in 2026.

42. Britt Reynolds

Britt Reynolds serves as Division President for Hospital Operations at Ascension, the nation's largest Catholic and second-largest nonprofit health system. Ascension operates 121 hospitals across 19 states under CEO Eduardo Conrado, who assumed the top role on January 1, 2026.

Reynolds has been a consistent voice on caregiver wellbeing within Ascension's leadership structure, arguing that the organisation's mission demands investment in the people who deliver it. Ascension's culture work includes structured engagement listening programmes, leadership accountability frameworks, and investments in professional development that have been recognised in national workplace surveys. The organisation employs approximately 150,000 team members.

43. Tanya Blackmon

Tanya Blackmon served as Chief Diversity and Culture Officer at Novant Health before moving into a senior executive role at UnityPoint Health, where she has focused on building inclusive cultures that measurably improve staff experience across diverse workforces.

Blackmon's work demonstrates that healthcare organisations that invest in genuine inclusion, not just diversity metrics, build workforces that report higher belonging scores, lower turnover, and stronger patient experience outcomes. Her approaches have been studied by peer organisations and her public contributions have helped shape the practical toolkit available to healthcare executives working on inclusive workforce culture.

44. Sarah Nafziger

Sarah Nafziger, MD, serves as CEO of UAB Medicine, the clinical enterprise of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, one of the country's leading academic health systems. UAB Medicine has under her leadership invested in programmes that specifically address the workforce culture challenges facing academic medical centres.

Nafziger has been recognised as a great leader in healthcare by Becker's Hospital Review and has invested in building a culture that acknowledges the specific demands facing academic medicine staff while creating the conditions for sustained engagement. Her approach combines clinical credibility with operational investment in the programmes that staff report matter most.

45. Kevin Unger

Kevin Unger serves as President and CEO of Poudre Valley Health System, part of UCHealth, a Colorado-based system that has consistently earned recognition as a top employer in the Rocky Mountain region.

Poudre Valley's culture under Unger's leadership is characterised by transparent communication, consistent investment in frontline leadership development, and a structured approach to recognition that connects individual contribution to organisational mission. The system has earned Great Place to Work certification and has been recognised by multiple Colorado-specific employer recognition programmes.

46. Claire Zangerle

Claire Zangerle serves as CEO of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership and Senior Vice President and Chief Nurse Executive of the American Hospital Association. Her position at the intersection of nursing and hospital administration gives her unique visibility into the culture challenges and opportunities facing hospital leaders.

Zangerle is one of the most influential nursing voices on healthcare CEO culture leadership, arguing consistently that the culture decisions that matter most for nursing retention happen at the unit manager level, and that CEOs must invest in developing that layer of leadership to change the workforce culture experienced by the majority of nurses. Her contributions to the national conversation on nursing workforce culture have influenced how health system CEOs think about the accountability structures and development investments that make cultural change sustainable.

47. Shawn Morris

Shawn Morris serves as President and CEO of Privia Health Group, a physician enablement organisation that partners with physicians across multiple markets. Privia Health has earned recognition from Fortune's Best Workplaces in Health Care list and Great Place to Work certification.

Morris has built Privia on the premise that physician culture and administrative culture must be aligned, and that the organisations where that alignment is strongest produce the best outcomes for both physicians and patients. The Great Place to Work certification reflects survey data from Privia's employed workforce, and the organisation's sustained recognition indicates a culture that holds across multiple annual certification cycles.

48. Kevin Stansbury

Kevin Stansbury serves as CEO of Lincoln Community Hospital and Healthcare Center in Hugo, Colorado, a critical access hospital serving a rural community. Stansbury has been recognised as a national voice on workforce culture in rural and critical access healthcare, contexts where the workforce challenge is structurally the most difficult in the system.

Critical access hospitals compete for clinical talent against urban systems with more resources and more amenities. Stansbury has built a culture at Lincoln Community that retains staff in a rural setting through a combination of purpose-driven leadership, community connection, and deliberate investment in the personal and professional development of a small, cohesive team. His public contributions on rural healthcare workforce culture have been recognised in national forums as a model for how smaller organisations can build cultures that compete on purpose rather than resources.

49. Christoph Mainusch

Christoph Mainusch serves as a senior healthcare executive in the Dutch healthcare system, with documented work on building psychological safety and trust-based cultures in European hospital settings. The Netherlands has produced some of the strongest evidence in Europe on the connection between hospital organisational culture and patient outcomes.

The Dutch healthcare model's approach to self-managing teams and distributed leadership creates distinctive conditions for workforce culture development, and Mainusch has worked to build the measurement frameworks and leadership practices that make those conditions produce documented engagement improvements.

50. Winjie Tang Miao

Winjie Tang Miao serves as President of Texas Health Resources and is designated to assume the CEO role in September 2026 when Barclay Berdan retires. She joined Texas Health in 2005 and has served as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer since 2022, with leadership across enterprise-wide operations.

Tang Miao's contribution to Texas Health's workforce culture achievements is documented in the national employer recognition the system has received during her tenure as COO: the HR team earned HRO Today's HR Team of the Year for 2024, its operational leadership contributed directly to the Fortune 100 Best ranking, and the diversity and inclusion programmes she has championed have produced measurable improvements in belonging scores. As the incoming CEO of a system with one of the most recognised workforce cultures in American healthcare, she represents the continuity and evolution of culture leadership as a core CEO discipline.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

The global healthcare CEO landscape includes several leaders whose culture contributions are significant but whose circumstances at the time of finalising this list made inclusion complicated. Michael Dowling built one of the most celebrated workforce cultures in American healthcare at Northwell Health over 23 years, retiring from the CEO role in October 2025 and transitioning to CEO Emeritus. His successor John D'Angelo (included in this list) inherits a culture Dowling constructed through practices like attending every new employee orientation and building a corporate university that has shaped tens of thousands of careers. Sir Glen Burley built outstanding NHS staff survey results across a foundation group of four trusts in the English Midlands and was knighted in 2026 for his contribution to NHS leadership, but is currently on secondment to NHS England. Adrian Pennington of Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust led the trust to top the 2025 NHS Staff Survey nationally in 39 survey questions. Michael Burgess at St. Vincent's Health Australia has invested in documented Indigenous health equity and workforce culture programmes.

Common Mistakes Healthcare CEOs Make on Workforce Culture

The most common mistake is treating culture as a programme rather than a leadership operating system. Many healthcare CEOs launch a wellness initiative, commission an engagement survey, or post a values statement on the wall, then return to operational management and wonder why the culture does not change. The CEOs on this list treat culture as something that is created or destroyed by every leadership decision, not by a dedicated programme. Culture is the sum of what leaders pay attention to, what they reward, and how they behave when no one is watching.

The second most common mistake is measuring culture without acting on what the measurement reveals. NHS trusts, US health systems, and private hospital groups now have access to rich, independently verified data on staff engagement, morale, and recommended place to work. The organisations that improve are those where the CEO treats the data as an accountability mechanism, not a communication tool. When Imperial College Healthcare's Tim Orchard achieved four consecutive years of NHS Staff Survey improvement, it was because each survey result triggered specific co-designed action plans with staff, not because the organisation ran more surveys.

The third mistake is investing in culture at the executive level while neglecting the frontline leadership layer. Most healthcare staff experience their employment through their immediate supervisor. A CEO who invests only in C-suite alignment and values exercises but fails to develop the charge nurses, ward managers, and shift supervisors who shape daily working life for the majority of staff will not change the culture that most staff actually experience. The CEOs in this list who have produced the most sustained results have all invested specifically in frontline leadership development.

The fourth mistake is abandoning culture investment during financial pressure. The data consistently shows that disengaged workforces cost more than engaged ones: higher turnover, higher agency spending, higher patient safety incidents, lower quality scores. Erik Wexler's decision to invest $600 million in caregiver pay at Providence in 2026, following a year of difficult restructuring, reflects a CEO who understands that the financial turnaround and the culture investment are part of the same strategy.

Implementation Guide: How to Apply Culture Leadership Principles in Your Health System

The evidence from the CEOs on this list points to six practices that appear consistently in organisations that produce documented culture improvement. Start with listening, not programmes. Before launching a culture initiative, conduct genuine listening exercises: town halls, shadow shifts, anonymous feedback mechanisms, and one-to-one conversations with frontline staff. Tom Mihaljevic's tiered daily huddles at Cleveland Clinic are not a culture programme. They are a listening infrastructure that surfaces problems before they become crises.

Make culture a CEO measurement, not an HR measurement. At Texas Health Resources, the engagement scores are part of what leaders are accountable for, from the frontline supervisor to the CEO. When culture is measured only by HR and reported to leadership as information, it does not change. When it is part of the scorecard that determines leadership accountability, it changes.

Invest in the frontline leadership layer. Most healthcare staff experience their employer through their immediate supervisor. The organisations on this list that have produced the most sustained results have invested in developing the charge nurses, ward managers, and clinical team leads who shape daily working life. This investment requires time, money, and sustained attention from the CEO, not just delegation to a leadership development team.

Connect compensation to the culture conversation explicitly. Several CEOs on this list have described the decision to invest significantly in pay as a culture decision as much as a compensation decision. Treating pay adequacy as a foundation for culture work, rather than a separate financial discussion, is a marker of leaders who understand that culture cannot be built on financial insecurity.

Use independent recognition as accountability infrastructure. The Fortune Best Workplaces lists, NHS Staff Survey results, and Great Place to Work certifications are accountability mechanisms that give staff a verified external signal about whether their employer's culture claims hold up under scrutiny.

If your leadership team is working to build the kind of culture described in this list, the Working Genius framework is one of the most practical tools available for understanding why teams engage or disengage with their work. Jonno White, a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), works with healthcare leadership teams through facilitated workshops and executive offsites. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss how the framework might apply to your team.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes a healthcare CEO known for workforce culture?

A healthcare CEO is known for workforce culture when there is documented, independently verified evidence that staff at their organisation are more engaged, less likely to leave, and more likely to recommend their workplace than comparable organisations. This evidence comes from independent surveys such as Great Place to Work, NHS Staff Survey benchmarking, industry publications such as Becker's and Modern Healthcare, and measurable workforce metrics such as nurse vacancy rates and turnover. Culture reputation built only on public statements, without independent data, does not qualify a CEO for this list.

Why does workforce culture matter so much in healthcare specifically?

Healthcare is a human service industry where the quality of care delivered is directly connected to the wellbeing and engagement of the people delivering it. A 2025 study from Perceptyx found that hospitals with the most engaged workforces are five times more likely to earn top quality ratings from Medicare. The healthcare sector also faces a global workforce shortage projected by McKinsey to reach at least ten million workers by 2030, making culture a competitive necessity rather than a nice-to-have. Organisations that cannot retain staff cannot sustain care delivery.

How can a healthcare CEO improve workforce culture practically?

The most consistent practices across the CEOs on this list are conducting genuine listening before launching programmes; making culture part of leadership accountability rather than delegating it entirely to HR; investing specifically in the frontline leadership layer where most staff experience their employment; treating compensation adequacy as a foundation for culture rather than a separate financial discussion; and using independent recognition frameworks as accountability mechanisms rather than marketing tools.

What is the difference between a culture initiative and a culture system?

A culture initiative is a programme with a launch date and a budget, usually owned by HR, that runs for a defined period. A culture system is an operating philosophy that shapes how every leadership decision is made. The most telling indicator is what happens to culture investment during financial pressure: initiative-based cultures cut it; system-based cultures protect it.

Are the best healthcare workplace cultures concentrated in the United States?

The United States produces the most publicly verifiable healthcare workforce culture data, largely because of the Fortune and Great Place to Work certification system and the density of sector publications. However, the NHS Staff Survey in England produces the most comprehensive national workforce culture data of any healthcare system in the world, measuring more than 200 organisations annually. Qatar's Hamad Medical Corporation has produced internationally recognised workforce wellbeing results. Singapore's SingHealth has built a model being studied across Asia. The global picture is more distributed than the US-heavy data availability suggests.

Final Thoughts

The 50 leaders on this list share one thing that is not easily transferred by reading about it: they treat the people who deliver care as the primary strategic asset of their organisations, not as a cost to be managed. That belief shows up not in mission statements but in the decisions they make under pressure, the investments they protect when margins tighten, the accountability structures they build so that culture is measured rather than assumed, and the personal behaviours they model for the leaders below them.

The global healthcare workforce crisis is not going to be solved by recruitment alone. The organisations that survive and thrive over the next decade will be the ones that give people a reason to stay, and the reason will come from the culture their CEO has the courage to build. The 50 leaders here have made that investment. The evidence is in the data.

Healthcare leaders looking to build the kind of culture described in this list can draw on a range of frameworks and approaches. To book Jonno White for a Working Genius workshop, keynote, or executive team offsite for your healthcare organisation, email jonno@consultclarity.org. Many organisations find that international travel is far more affordable than expected. Whether virtual or in person, reach out to discuss what would work best for your team.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected. To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Sources

Perceptyx (2025). The State of Healthcare Employee Experience 2025. Perceptyx. | Journal of Nursing Regulation (2025). Workforce attrition data. | 3B Healthcare (2026). Nurse Retention Strategies 2025. | Wellhub (2025). Return on Wellbeing 2025: The CEO Edition. | McKinsey (cited in multiple sources). Global healthcare workforce shortage projections. | Becker's Hospital Review (2026). 165 Top Places to Work in Healthcare. | Great Place to Work / Fortune (2025, 2026). Best Workplaces in Health Care lists. | NHS Staff Survey Coordination Centre (2026). 2025 NHS National Staff Survey Results. | CIPD (2025). Enhancing employee wellbeing: Hamad Medical Corporation case study.

Next Read

The evidence base for the connection between leadership quality and patient outcomes runs deeper than most healthcare CEOs realise. For the global thought leaders researching and teaching that connection, explore the 35 essential thought leaders in hospital leadership globally.

Keep reading: 35 Essential Thought Leaders in Hospital Leadership Globally