41 Influential US Health System CEO Thought Leaders

Last updated: June 2026

As of June 2026, the people shaping how 340 million Americans experience healthcare are not primarily politicians or pharmaceutical executives. They are the CEOs of the country's hospitals and health systems: the leaders who decide whether you wait three hours in an emergency department or thirty minutes, whether the nurses caring for you are burnt out or energised, and whether the health system in your community will still be there in a decade. This list brings together 41 of the most influential thought leaders currently leading, or recently leading, US health systems, selected on the basis of their public contribution to the national conversation on healthcare leadership, their active presence on LinkedIn and in media, and the scale of the systems they lead or have led.

The people on this list have made substantial contributions to healthcare leadership thinking. Several have written books that have shifted how the industry approaches equity, transformation, and culture. Others have led systems through crisis, built institutions from the ground up, or established national reputations for patient safety and workforce wellbeing. Rather than recycling the same handful of names that appear on every healthcare list, this directory focuses on the leaders who deserve to be far better known outside their immediate industry and whose thinking belongs in any serious conversation about the future of healthcare.

As of June 2026, the average hospital CEO serves approximately 5.5 years according to the American College of Healthcare Executives, a tenure that makes continuity, culture, and strategy alignment existential challenges for every system on this list. The leaders who stand out are those who have found ways to build institutions that outlast their individual decisions.

If your leadership team is navigating workforce retention, Medicaid funding uncertainty, AI adoption, or health equity, Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), works with healthcare organisations and health systems to build the leadership foundations their clinical and executive teams need. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to explore how Jonno can support your team.

Why Health System CEO Leadership Matters

Health system CEO leadership matters because the evidence consistently links the quality of executive leadership to measurable patient outcomes. Research published in BMJ Quality and Safety connects hospital leadership quality directly to mortality rates, patient safety incidents, and staff retention. The leaders at the top of a health system set the priorities, the culture, and the pace of change that ultimately determine what happens at the bedside. Getting leadership right is not an administrative nicety. It is a patient safety issue.

The scale of US health systems makes this even more consequential. The largest systems on this list employ more than 100,000 people, operate dozens of hospitals across multiple states, and generate revenues measured in the tens of billions. The World Health Organisation has projected a global shortfall of approximately 10 million health workers by 2030, a forecast that makes the ability of health system CEOs to attract, develop, and retain talent arguably the defining strategic challenge of this decade. The leaders on this list are navigating that challenge in real time, and what they learn and share publicly shapes how health systems across the country respond.

For more on how leadership development strengthens hospital and health system teams, check out the post '35 Essential Thought Leaders in Hospital Leadership Globally (2026)' at consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-hospital-leadership-global.

Organisations seeking to strengthen their executive team's culture, communication, and alignment can work with Jonno White, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), who delivers keynotes, Working Genius workshops, and executive offsites for healthcare organisations. Reach Jonno at jonno@consultclarity.org.

How This List Was Compiled

This directory was compiled by identifying CEOs and former CEOs of US hospitals and health systems who have demonstrated active thought leadership through published books, regular LinkedIn content, media appearances, national board service, and contributions to sector-wide conversations about leadership, equity, quality, and transformation. The list prioritises leaders with a public track record of sharing their thinking. Amplification potential, geographic diversity across all US regions, and system-type diversity across nonprofit, for-profit, academic, faith-based, community, and public systems were all considered. Leaders appear exactly once, in the category that best reflects their primary contribution.

Category 1: Large System Scale and Vision

The leaders in this category run some of the largest and most complex health systems in the country, each serving millions of patients across multiple states. What distinguishes them as thought leaders is their willingness to share publicly what they are learning about navigating scale, and their active contribution to national conversations on healthcare's future.

1. Greg A. Adams

Greg Adams chairs and leads Kaiser Permanente as its Chair and CEO, heading one of the most distinctive models in American healthcare: an integrated, not-for-profit system combining care delivery and health insurance for 12.6 million members across 40 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices. With 30 years of executive experience at Kaiser Permanente, Adams was named to Time magazine's TIME100 Health list and ranked number 2 on Modern Healthcare's 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare for 2025. He serves as a governor of the World Economic Forum's Global Health and Healthcare Community and co-chairs the Health and Retirement Committee of the Business Roundtable.

Adams is particularly vocal on the link between health equity, community investment, and long-term system sustainability. His leadership of the Risant Health subsidiary is expanding the Kaiser model to new markets and partner health systems, positioning Kaiser as a replicable framework rather than a single institution's success story. His consistent public commentary on integrated care, health plan and delivery alignment, and access expansion makes him one of the most substantive voices on large-system strategy in the country.

2. Sam Hazen

Sam Hazen has led HCA Healthcare, the country's largest for-profit hospital operator, since January 2019, having spent 41 years with the organisation. HCA operates 186 hospitals and approximately 2,400 ambulatory care sites across 20 states. Modern Healthcare named Hazen to its 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare for 2025. His leadership philosophy centres on operational scale as a mechanism for quality improvement, arguing that data across a large system enables evidence-based practice at a speed smaller organisations cannot match.

Hazen's most publicised contribution to the AI-in-healthcare conversation is specific and measurable: in 2025, HCA's integration of AI into the electronic health record eliminated approximately 700,000 messages and saved physicians an estimated 22 minutes daily, with related initiatives cutting 11 million clicks in a single quarter. His "Target Zero" initiative achieved a 50 percent reduction in preventable patient harm over the same period. These results, presented publicly with specificity, model the kind of outcome-linked thought leadership that moves the sector rather than inspiring it generically.

3. Gianrico Farrugia, MD

Gianrico Farrugia has led Mayo Clinic, the world's top-ranked hospital, as President and CEO since January 2019, overseeing 85,000 staff, a $9-billion infrastructure investment programme, and the launch of Mayo Clinic Platform, an AI-enabled care transformation initiative built on one of the most comprehensive longitudinal clinical datasets in the world. Newsweek has recognised Mayo Clinic as the world's best hospital for eight consecutive years under his leadership. Farrugia announced in May 2026 that he will complete his tenure at the end of 2026, with a successor expected by November.

Farrugia is co-author, with Nicholas LaRusso and Barbara Spurrier, of Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast (McGraw-Hill, 2014), drawing on the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation's decade-long model for disciplined healthcare innovation. He has co-chaired the National Academy of Medicine's committee on an Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct for Health and Medicine and co-chairs the Patient Safety in the Era of AI initiative, positioning him as one of the few health system CEOs who contributes meaningfully to both practice and governance on AI in healthcare.

4. Eduardo Conrado

Eduardo Conrado assumed the CEO role at Ascension, the nation's largest Catholic and second-largest nonprofit health system, on January 1, 2026. Ascension operates 121 hospitals and 1,700 care sites across 19 states and Washington DC. The system's fiscal year 2025 revenue was $23.5 billion, with a $2.6 billion financial improvement delivered under the prior strategic plan. Conrado succeeded Joseph Impicciche, who retired after more than 20 years of service to Catholic healthcare.

Conrado brings a background that is unusual among health system CEOs: before joining Ascension as president, he served as Chief Digital Officer at Motorola Solutions and held technology leadership roles in multiple industries. His entry into health system leadership from a digital and enterprise technology background gives Ascension a different strategic lens, with a focus on digital infrastructure as a care delivery enabler at system scale. His early public commentary has centred on mission alignment, workforce wellbeing, and sustainable financial stewardship as the foundations for digital transformation in a faith-based context.

5. Warner Thomas

Warner Thomas is President and CEO of Sutter Health, one of California's largest not-for-profit health systems, with 65,000 employees, 14,000 aligned physicians, and care delivered to more than 3.6 million people across Northern and Central California. He joined Sutter in 2022 after 24 years with Ochsner Health in New Orleans, where he tripled the size of that system. Modern Healthcare named him to its 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare in 2025, and Becker's named him to its list of 61 CEO Influencers to Know in the same year.

Thomas has been public about his strategic framework: use scale to improve access, invest heavily in technology and physician recruitment, and measure success by expansion of care in underserved communities. Under his leadership, Sutter opened 17 new ambulatory sites in 2025 alone, increased online scheduling by 27 percent, and reduced employee turnover by 12 percent. His practice of publishing specific operational metrics alongside strategic commentary makes his thought leadership unusually useful for health system peers benchmarking their own organisations.

6. Eugene A. Woods

Eugene Woods serves as Chief Executive Officer of Advocate Health, the nation's third-largest nonprofit integrated health system, overseeing nearly six million patients across 69 hospitals in six states with Wake Forest University School of Medicine as its academic core. Since the combination of Advocate Aurora Health and Atrium Health in 2022, Woods has reduced system-wide patient mortality rates by 14 percent and quadrupled the number of Leapfrog "A" safety grades in two years. The Pearl, a multi-billion dollar medical innovation district in Charlotte that opened in Summer 2025, is among the most ambitious healthcare infrastructure investments in the country.

Woods is the author, with Michael Watkins, of Health, Hope, and Healing for All: Toward More Equitable and Affordable Healthcare (Skyhorse Publishing, 2023), one of the most direct accounts of healthcare inequity and systemic reform published by a sitting health system CEO. His $1 billion community investment commitment to close the 30-year life-expectancy gap in Chicago's South Side represents a quality of public accountability that is rare among CEOs of comparable scale. He has been recognised on multiple lists as one of the most influential healthcare leaders in the country.

7. Wright L. Lassiter III

Wright Lassiter III is President and CEO of CommonSpirit Health, the largest Catholic health system and one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the United States, with 158 hospitals, approximately 2,300 care sites across 21 states, and $40 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2025. Lassiter serves as Immediate Past Chair of the American Hospital Association and co-chairs the National Academy of Medicine's Steering Group on Patient Safety in the Era of AI, bringing the perspective of a large-system operator to one of the most consequential policy conversations in healthcare.

Under Lassiter's leadership, CommonSpirit's MyVoice employee survey drew 114,000 participants in 2025, exceeding national benchmarks for belonging, values, and trust. Forbes recognised CommonSpirit as one of America's Dream Employers for both 2025 and 2026. His consistent public argument that workforce culture and financial performance are connected rather than competing priorities has shaped how CommonSpirit approaches its $40-billion operating environment and how peers think about the same trade-off.

Category 2: Academic Medical Centre CEOs

Academic medical centres sit at the intersection of clinical care, research, and education, requiring their CEOs to manage three distinct missions simultaneously while maintaining the financial discipline to sustain all three. The leaders in this category have built reputations for navigating that complexity while contributing substantively to national conversations about what academic medicine can and should look like.

8. Brendan G. Carr, MD

Brendan Carr is Chief Executive Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System, overseeing eight hospitals, more than 400 ambulatory locations, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and a nursing school with nearly $12 billion in annual revenue. A nationally recognised expert in emergency medicine and health policy, Carr was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020 and has authored more than 175 peer-reviewed publications. Modern Healthcare named him to its 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare for 2025, and Becker's named him one of 61 CEO Influencers to Know.

Carr has shaped Mount Sinai's positioning as a leader in AI adoption, emergency preparedness, and sustainability, earning multiple Practice Greenhealth Environmental Excellence Awards for systemwide progress on environmental metrics. Mount Sinai ranked number 1 in New York in Newsweek's World's Best Hospitals for 2025 and has held its place on the US News Best Hospitals Honour Roll for nine consecutive years. His practice of connecting clinical research to system strategy in his public communications makes him unusually accessible as a thought leader for both clinical and administrative audiences.

9. Leslie Davis

Leslie Davis has been President and CEO of UPMC, one of the nation's most significant integrated academic health systems with $30 billion in annual revenue, since August 2021. Davis brings more than 30 years of healthcare experience, including senior roles at Penn Medicine and Thomas Jefferson University. Her public communications show consistent engagement with workforce wellbeing, AI adoption, and community health investment, including UPMC's May 2026 $10 million commitment to Pittsburgh Emergency Medical Services to replace ageing fleet vehicles and equipment.

Davis's approach to public leadership is characterised by specificity: her communications routinely link strategic investments to measurable community outcomes, which is uncommon at the level of a $30-billion health system. Her direct public engagement on contentious issues, including the employer-sponsored community investment case and clinical workforce development, gives her thought leadership a practical edge that distinguishes it from the abstract strategic communications typical of large-system CEOs.

10. Tom Jackiewicz

Tom Jackiewicz serves as President of the University of Chicago Health System, overseeing a $4 billion, seven-hospital clinical enterprise integrated with the research and education missions of the University of Chicago. Under his leadership since 2020, the University of Chicago Medical Center became the only research-intensive academic hospital in the United States to earn consecutive "A" Leapfrog safety grades since the programme began in 2012. Modern Healthcare named him to its 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare for 2025.

Before UChicago, Jackiewicz grew Keck Medicine of USC from a small hospital into a $2.3 billion academic medical centre and achieved a top 20 US News ranking. The AbbVie Foundation Cancer Pavilion he is building, scheduled to open in 2027 as Illinois' first freestanding comprehensive cancer centre, reflects the kind of long-cycle capital and strategic thinking that academic medical centre leaders must execute while managing daily clinical complexity. His public contributions focus on the intersection of research excellence, operational quality, and institutional growth strategy.

11. Howard Chrisman, MD

Howard Chrisman became President and CEO of Northwestern Medicine in 2023 after more than 25 years with the system in operational and clinical leadership roles. As a practicing interventional radiologist who rose through clinical ranks to the top executive position, Chrisman represents a physician leadership model that Northwestern has made central to its identity. The system includes 11 hospitals, more than 200 ambulatory and diagnostic sites, and approximately 30,000 employees and 5,500 aligned physicians.

His "NM 2035" strategic plan centres on five pillars: patient experience, workforce wellbeing, community investment, research and discovery, and financial sustainability. Chrisman's public commentary draws on his clinical experience to discuss what sustainable practice looks like from inside a hospital, giving his thought leadership a grounded quality that distinguishes it from CEOs who have not worked at the bedside. Becker's named him one of 61 CEO Influencers to Know in 2025.

12. Omar Lateef, DO

Omar Lateef serves as President and CEO of Rush University System for Health and Rush University Medical Center, Chicago. Vizient ranked Rush University Medical Center number 6 in the United States for quality and accountability in 2025, its 13th consecutive year in the Vizient top 10. STAT News named Lateef to its 2025 STATUS List of 50 leaders shaping healthcare headlines, the only president and CEO of an academic medical centre to appear on that list.

Lateef has been particularly active on the intersection of clinical quality and consumer access. Rush's 2025 launch of Rush Connect+, a direct-to-consumer telehealth platform, positioned Rush as one of the first legacy academic systems to enter a market dominated by technology and retail competitors. He was appointed to the National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and has actively shaped how health care quality is publicly reported in the United States.

13. Joseph G. Cacchione, MD

Joe Cacchione has been CEO of Jefferson in Philadelphia since 2022, leading one of the most significant transformations in the system's 200-year history. Under his leadership, Jefferson became a $15 billion nonprofit enterprise with more than 30 hospitals, 700 care sites, a recognised research university, and a health plan serving over 360,000 members across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The combination with Lehigh Valley Health Network and the National Cancer Institute's comprehensive cancer centre designation for the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center both occurred under his tenure.

Cacchione has delivered more than $1.5 billion in community benefit over two years and has been explicit in public about using Jefferson's academic, clinical, and insurance arms as connected levers for health equity. His prior executive experience at Ascension gives him a national system perspective layered onto a market-rooted academic institution, a combination that produces public thought leadership on academic medical centre strategy that is unusually practical for peers navigating the same integration challenges.

14. Pete November

Pete November has been President and CEO of Ochsner Health, the leading nonprofit healthcare provider in the Gulf South, since November 1, 2022. Ochsner operates 46 hospitals and more than 370 health and urgent care centres. Modern Healthcare named November to its 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare for 2025, and the American Hospital Association elected him to its Board of Trustees effective January 1, 2026.

November has built a public reputation for AI-enabled operations, workforce minimum wage equity, including a systemwide increase to $15 per hour effective May 2026, and innovation investment, including Ochsner's early-stage investment in South Rampart Pharma's non-opioid pain therapeutics programme. His public communications connect operational decisions consistently to the wellbeing of frontline team members and the communities Ochsner serves, making him one of the more cited regional academic health system CEOs in national healthcare media.

Category 3: Women Transforming Health System Leadership

Women have made substantial inroads into health system CEO roles over the past decade, and the leaders in this category are among the most influential. Each has demonstrated not only operational excellence but a willingness to use their public platform to shape the national conversation on workforce, culture, access, and equity.

15. Tina Freese Decker

Tina Freese Decker is President and CEO of Corewell Health, a 22-hospital, 60,000-employee integrated health system in Michigan created through the 2022 combination of Beaumont Health and Spectrum Health that Freese Decker architected and led. She served as 2025 Chair of the American Hospital Association Board of Trustees, the highest elected office in the national organisation representing America's hospitals. Forbes recognised Corewell Health as one of America's Dream Employers under her leadership.

Freese Decker's public leadership style centres on culture and people development as the primary mechanisms of strategic success. Her "Together We Can" Leadership Summit in 2026 brought more than 2,200 leaders together across Corewell's system, reflecting a conviction that internal leadership investment is as strategically important as external acquisition. Corewell Health William Beaumont University Hospital was named the number 1 hospital in Michigan by US News and World Report for 2024-2025. Her active LinkedIn presence covers workforce wellbeing, AI governance, community health, and the future of integrated care systems in Michigan.

16. Elizabeth Concordia

Elizabeth Concordia has been President and CEO of UCHealth since 2014, growing it into a nationally recognised nonprofit academic health system with $9 billion in revenue, 14 hospitals, and more than 200 clinic locations across Colorado, southern Wyoming, and western Nebraska. Her tenure has been defined by technology-led care innovation: a Virtual Health Center supporting over 2,000 patients, a virtual sepsis monitoring programme that prevented approximately 1,000 deaths through earlier detection in 2025, and a systemwide ambient generative AI tool that has reduced documentation burden significantly for physicians and advanced practice providers.

Concordia has expanded UCHealth's behavioural health services by over 400 percent across inpatient, outpatient, and virtual settings under her leadership, a strategic commitment that reflects her public position that access to behavioural health is a core clinical need rather than a supplementary service. Denver Business Journal named her its Most Admired CEO in 2021. Her prior experience at UPMC and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center gives her public contributions a combination of regional and academic system perspectives that is genuinely distinctive.

17. Laura Kaiser

Laura Kaiser is President and CEO of SSM Health, a Catholic health system operating hospitals and healthcare services across Wisconsin, Illinois, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas. Modern Healthcare has named Kaiser to its 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare for eight consecutive years, recognising her as one of the most consistently influential health system CEOs in the country over that period. Her public contributions have focused on the partnership model of healthcare leadership, workforce sustainability, and the link between community investment and long-term system performance.

Kaiser has been direct in public about her conviction that no single organisation has all the solutions to healthcare's current challenges and that the leaders who drive the field forward are those who build and sustain authentic external relationships alongside strong internal cultures. Her capital commitment to a new SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis reflects a long-horizon strategic perspective unusual in a sector pressured by short-term margin. Her eight consecutive Modern Healthcare recognitions make her one of the most durably influential health system CEOs in the United States.

18. Stephanie Conners, RN

Stephanie Conners is President and CEO of BayCare Health System, West Central Florida's largest academic health system with more than 33,000 employees, 4,000 hospital beds, and 16 hospitals. She is BayCare's first female and first nurse CEO, bringing a clinical foundation to a system constructing its 17th hospital, developing Florida's first proton therapy centre, and launching the state's first behavioural health urgent care centre.

Conners has championed frontline caregiver wellbeing through programmes including the "Nurse Well-Being: Building Peer and Leadership Support" initiative and partnerships with the American Nurses Association on clinical burden reduction. Fortune recognised BayCare as one of the Best Workplaces in Health Care under her leadership. Her strategic academic collaboration with Northwestern Medicine is expanding clinical innovation and physician training in Florida. Becker's named her one of 61 CEO Influencers to Know in 2025.

19. Lisa Shannon

Lisa Shannon became President and CEO of Allina Health, a nonprofit health care system serving communities in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin, on January 1, 2022. She serves on the boards of the American Hospital Association, the University of St. Thomas, and the Minnesota Business Partnership, and is a member of the Minnesota Women's Economic Roundtable. Her career spans executive roles at KentuckyOne Health, Spectrum Health (now Corewell Health), and Ohio-based community hospital systems.

Shannon's public leadership focuses on whole-person care, workforce wellbeing, and the policy dynamics of health system sustainability in a state where nonprofit insurers hold thin reserves and employer-sponsored coverage covers a significant share of the population. Her active engagement on state and federal healthcare policy, including commentary on the intersection of Medicaid, commercial insurance, and nonprofit health plan finances, reflects the kind of policy literacy that distinguishes health system CEOs who lead state-level health conversations from those who simply react to them.

20. Christina Alexander-Rager, MD

Christina Alexander-Rager is President and CEO of MetroHealth, one of Ohio's most significant safety-net health systems and a public hospital network serving Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. Her contract was extended in January 2026 through January 9, 2029, reflecting the board's confidence in her strategic direction. Her leadership has focused on MetroHealth's transformation into an integrated community health system with major campus reinvestment and an expanded commitment to serving uninsured and underinsured patients.

As one of the few physician CEOs leading a major public safety-net system, Alexander-Rager's public contributions carry the weight of both clinical credibility and operational accountability. Her advocacy for Medicaid funding and her direct public engagement with the equity dimensions of healthcare access make her one of the most important voices in the US Midwest on the intersection of clinical leadership and healthcare justice, particularly in a post-pandemic environment where safety-net systems face disproportionate financial pressure.

Category 4: Faith-Based and Mission-Driven System Leaders

Several of the country's largest health systems are faith-based or explicitly mission-driven, and their CEOs navigate a distinctive combination of religious heritage, nonprofit obligation, and operational scale. The leaders in this category have contributed to national conversations about purpose, culture, equity, and sustainability in mission-driven healthcare.

21. David Banks

David Banks is President and CEO of AdventHealth, one of the nation's largest faith-based healthcare systems, with more than 50 hospital campuses, a national clinic network, and a workforce of more than 105,000 team members serving 9 million patients annually. His leadership has centred on AdventHealth's "feel whole" brand promise and the creation of its primary health division, a whole-person, longitudinal care model spanning prevention through complex treatment. AdventHealth Orlando is listed on the US News "America's Best Hospitals" honour roll for 2025-2026.

Banks brought a background as a psychiatric social worker to the CEO role, giving AdventHealth's whole-person philosophy operational roots in mental and behavioural health. His "Vision 2030" strategic roadmap has positioned AdventHealth as a national model for faith-based system strategy that integrates spiritual, physical, and mental dimensions of care. He represents AdventHealth through roles with the Healthcare Leadership Council, The Health Management Academy, and G100. Becker's named him one of 61 CEO Influencers to Know in 2025.

22. Damond W. Boatwright

Damond Boatwright became the first African American CEO of Hospital Sisters Health System in 2021, leading a faith-based system serving nearly 2.6 million people across Illinois and Wisconsin through 13 hospitals. He is a nationally recognised advocate for rural healthcare and a public voice on defending Medicaid funding to protect access for vulnerable communities. Becker's named him one of 61 CEO Influencers to Know in 2025. He has also been a past chair of both the Catholic Health Association and the Wisconsin Hospital Association.

Boatwright's tenure has combined financial and governance stabilisation with public advocacy that places him among the most visible health system CEOs on healthcare equity. His role in advancing the designation of Springfield's 1908 Race Riot site as a national monument, on land donated by the health system, reflects the kind of community accountability that distinguishes mission-driven CEOs who connect their system's history to its current obligations. His systemwide implementation of advanced personal alert technology to improve workforce safety reflects an operational follow-through that gives his equity commitments practical weight.

23. Carl S. Armato

Carl Armato has been President and CEO of Novant Health since 2012, growing it from $3.6 billion to $10 billion in annual revenue and doubling its economic impact to $18.2 billion across the Carolinas. Novant operates 19 hospitals and nearly 900 care sites with more than 41,000 team members. He founded Novant Health Enterprises to drive innovation and AI partnerships, acquired three South Carolina hospitals, and launched MedVanta, a pharmacy network improving chronic disease management and medication affordability.

Armato has been public about the relationship between workforce investment and competitive advantage. The "Future Forward" programme, which offers fully funded degrees for all Novant team members, reflects his public conviction that workforce education is a long-term performance investment rather than a benefit cost. Fortune has listed Novant Health among its "100 Best Companies to Work For" consecutively under his leadership. Becker's named him one of 61 CEO Influencers to Know in 2025.

24. Steve Mackin

Steve Mackin has been President and CEO of Mercy since April 2022, overseeing one of the 15 largest US health systems with 55 hospitals and more than 50,000 caregivers across Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Becker's named him one of 61 CEO Influencers to Know in 2025, specifically citing his leadership in digital care, AI, and data science. In fiscal year 2025, Mercy provided more than half a billion dollars in free care and community benefits. Mercy is one of the nation's largest Accountable Care Organisations.

Mackin's public thought leadership centres on the use of clinical AI as a tool for improving the experience of frontline caregivers, not just reducing cost. This framing, which positions AI adoption as a workforce wellbeing investment rather than a margin extraction strategy, has made him a distinctive voice in the national conversation on health system technology. NRC Health recognised Mercy as the top large system in the US for excellent patient experience, reflecting the clinical culture that underpins his operational strategy.

25. Erik Wexler

Erik Wexler became President and CEO of Providence, a nonprofit Catholic health system with 51 hospitals across seven states, on January 1, 2025, succeeding Rod Hochman. Wexler has been with Providence since 2016, most recently as COO, and previously led the integration of Providence St. Joseph Health in California and formed the system's first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council in California. Providence is headquartered in Renton, Washington, and serves primarily the Western United States.

Wexler has been public about the challenges Providence faces: nursing and workforce shortages, rising drug and supply costs, health inequities, and inadequate reimbursement. His willingness to name these challenges directly in public communications, rather than projecting unqualified optimism, gives his thought leadership a credibility that resonates with peer CEOs facing the same pressures. His strategic focus on a transformation office designed to sustain financial improvement while advancing Providence's community mission reflects the dual accountability that nonprofit CEO leadership requires.

26. Amy Perry

Amy Perry is President and CEO of Banner Health, one of the nation's largest secular nonprofit health systems with 33 hospitals across six states, based in Phoenix, Arizona. She assumed the CEO role in June 2024, succeeding Peter Fine after his 24-year tenure. Banner is Arizona's largest employer, operating an insurance arm with 1.2 million covered lives alongside its hospital and clinical network. Modern Healthcare named Perry to its 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare for two consecutive years, including 2025.

Perry has positioned Banner as a model for integrated, technology-forward care delivery, combining clinical excellence with AI investment and community health expansion. Her public articulation of Banner's strategy centres on the integration of hospital, clinic, insurance, and community health functions as a single system rather than separate business units, arguing that this integration is what enables Banner to address affordability, access, and quality simultaneously. Under her leadership, Banner expanded rapidly in 2025, opening 17 ambulatory sites and growing its physician enterprise significantly.

Category 5: Health Equity, Community Impact, and Access

The leaders in this category have made health equity and community impact central to their public identity as health system leaders. They have invested resources, time, and public credibility in narrowing the gaps that determine whether healthcare in the United States works for everyone.

27. Kevin B. Churchwell, MD

Kevin Churchwell is Chief Executive Officer of Boston Children's Hospital, one of the world's foremost paediatric institutions and the home of the world's largest paediatric research enterprise. A national leader in paediatric health equity, Churchwell founded Boston Children's Office of Health Equity and Inclusion in 2016, one of three such offices he has established across North American health systems during his career. His 2020 Declaration for Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity at Boston Children's was one of the sector's most explicit institutional commitments to equity as a clinical priority.

Churchwell is a Professor of Pediatric Anesthesia and the Robert and Dana Smith Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School. He serves on the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, the Boston Chamber of Commerce, and the Massachusetts Hospital Association. Becker's named him one of 61 CEO Influencers to Know in 2025. His public contributions connect the clinical evidence on paediatric outcomes disparities with operational strategies for closing those gaps, making him one of the most practically grounded voices on paediatric health equity in the United States.

28. John D'Angelo, MD

John D'Angelo became President and CEO of Northwell Health on October 1, 2025, succeeding Michael Dowling after his 23-year tenure. D'Angelo had served as Northwell's Executive Vice President of Integrated Operations, overseeing strategy and growth for what is New York's largest private employer and one of the 10 largest health systems in the United States with 87,000 employees. His background in integrated operations gives him a strategic foundation in the system-wide coordination that Northwell's scale requires.

D'Angelo has set out early priorities that include expanding access to ambulatory care, building closer relationships with frontline physicians and nurses, and continuing Northwell's national leadership on gun violence prevention, which Dowling had established as a defining institutional cause. His entry into the CEO role from an operational rather than clinical background, combined with his deep tenure inside Northwell, positions him as a continuity-and-growth leader rather than a transformation-for-its-own-sake one. His LinkedIn posts in the early months of his tenure reflect a direct, accessible leadership voice.

29. Dennis Pullin

Dennis Pullin is President and CEO of Virtua Health, southern New Jersey's largest health system with five hospitals and more than 400 care sites, a position he has held since 2017. Modern Healthcare named him to its 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare for both 2023 and 2025. Healthcare Digital recognised him as one of the top 10 healthcare leaders in the US in 2024. He is also a published author: his book Suited for Leadership reached Amazon bestseller status in 2025.

Pullin's public leadership has focused on community benefit investment that extends beyond clinical care into social determinants. His four-year, $5 million anti-poverty collaboration with Cooper University Health Care and the United Way, the expansion of Virtua's Eat Well Mobile Grocery programme, and the launch of a second paediatric mobile services unit reflect a conviction that a health system's community obligation includes food access, economic stability, and housing. His board service includes DaVita and multiple community organisations. His $850 million capital programme, including a new six-story pavilion at Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, reflects a long-term institutional commitment to physical access as a form of health equity.

30. Alastair Bell, MD

Alastair Bell is President and CEO of Boston Medical Center Health System, which integrates academic medicine and community health with a mission focused on underserved populations in Massachusetts. Under his leadership, the system grew from a single hospital into a regional network through integrations that preserved 4,000 jobs and expanded access across the state. Its first clinical research unit provides early-phase clinical trial access to historically underserved communities, with 26 percent of trial participants identifying as Black and 22 percent as Hispanic.

Bell has been recognised among Boston Magazine's Most Influential Bostonians from 2023 through 2025. His public contributions connect the equity mandate of a safety-net academic system with the operational and financial discipline required to sustain it at scale. As a physician executive leading a safety-net system, he contributes to national conversations on what equitable academic medicine looks like when the mission extends to the most under-resourced communities rather than the most commercially attractive ones. Becker's named him one of 61 CEO Influencers to Know in 2025.

31. Robert G. Riney

Robert Riney has spent more than four decades at Henry Ford Health, joining in 1978 and becoming President and CEO in 2022, succeeding Wright Lassiter. Under his leadership, Henry Ford Health has accelerated its partnership with Michigan State University and is building its Comprehensive Theranostics Centre in Detroit, one of only a handful of such precision medicine facilities in the United States. Henry Ford's "Game On Cancer" fundraising programme and its urban health equity initiatives reflect a CEO whose commitment to Detroit extends well beyond the hospital campus.

Riney's public advocacy is anchored in the lifestyle medicine and preventive care argument: that health systems need to invest in helping communities change their health behaviours before expensive acute interventions become necessary. His argument, framed publicly as needing to "change the oil before replacing the engine," has been cited as one of the more useful public framings of the prevention investment case for health system leaders. His LinkedIn content on chronic disease prevention, urban health equity, and the economic case for community investment reflects a depth of thinking about public health's relationship to hospital-based care that goes beyond corporate communications.

32. David Callender, MD

David Callender is President and CEO of Memorial Hermann Health System, one of Texas's largest not-for-profit health systems with 14 owned hospitals, 280 care sites, and 1.8 million yearly patient encounters. He is a nationally recognised leader on high-value care, digital transformation, and workforce retention. Under his leadership, Memorial Hermann provided $486 million in community contributions and charity care in 2025 and achieved a 95 percent reduction in contract labour through workforce investment.

Callender has connected workforce investment directly to patient safety in his public communications. An 88 percent employee satisfaction rate, the "Voice of Workforce" real-time listening survey, and a 12-month nursing school programme are among the initiatives he has published publicly as part of Memorial Hermann's operational strategy. His prior executive roles at UCLA Health, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and UTMB Health give his contributions on the intersection of academic excellence and community health a breadth of institutional perspective that distinguishes him from CEOs whose careers have been single-system.

33. Barclay Berdan

Barclay Berdan has served Texas Health Resources for nearly 40 years and leads a faith-based nonprofit system with 29 hospitals, more than 420 access points, and the largest inpatient market share in North Texas across 16 counties. Texas Health has appeared on Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" for 11 consecutive years, ranking number 33 in 2025. The American Hospital Association awarded Texas Health the Foster G. McGaw Prize for excellence in community service in 2022.

Berdan's public leadership combines a deep cultural commitment to workforce engagement with national advocacy through the Healthcare Leadership Council, the Dallas Regional Chamber, and the chairmanship of the North Texas LEAD board. His willingness to speak to the connection between employee experience, patient experience, and market performance makes him one of the more accessible voices on organisational culture in large regional systems. Becker's named him one of 61 CEO Influencers to Know in 2025.

Category 6: Regional Excellence, Access, and System-Building

The leaders in this category have built health systems that are nationally recognised for quality, safety, or innovation, despite operating in markets that are not always the country's largest cities. Their public thought leadership is particularly valuable for peers in similar regional markets navigating the combination of community mission, operational complexity, and the relentless pressure of margin.

34. Chris Van Gorder

Chris Van Gorder has been President and CEO of Scripps Health, a nonprofit academic and integrated health system in San Diego, California, for more than 20 years. Becker's named him one of 61 CEO Influencers to Know in 2025, the only San Diego County health system CEO on the prestigious list. Van Gorder is also the author of The Front-Line Leader, a book on leadership and workforce culture that draws on his experience navigating labour relations and cultural transformation in a complex health system environment.

Van Gorder's public thought leadership is particularly focused on the workforce dimension of health system leadership: how CEOs build cultures where frontline workers feel invested in the system's mission rather than ground down by its demands. 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 that purely operational thought leaders tend to avoid. Under his leadership, Scripps has earned consistent national recognition for quality and patient experience.

35. Dennis Matheis

Dennis Matheis is President and CEO of Sentara Health, a not-for-profit integrated healthcare organisation headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, serving Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida through 12 acute care hospitals and a health plan with more than 1.2 million members in three states. Sentara's 2025 year-in-review documented a transformation programme expected to generate $841 million in positive impact by end of 2026, the systemwide expansion of ambient AI documentation tools saving clinicians up to an hour daily, and $350 million in community benefit investment.

Matheis's public approach to health system transformation centres on operational enablement: investing in the infrastructure and technology that allows clinicians to do their best work rather than managing administrative burden. His communications on ambient AI, community benefit, and employee engagement reflect a consistent philosophy that clinical excellence and financial sustainability are achieved through the same cultural investments, rather than in spite of each other.

36. Richard A. Anderson

Richard Anderson is President and CEO of St. Luke's University Health Network, a nonprofit system with 16 hospital campuses and more than 350 outpatient sites across Pennsylvania and New Jersey employing more than 23,000 people. Under his leadership, the system grew from a $63 million operating budget to one approaching $5 billion in 2025. In 2025, the US Department of Health and Human Services ranked St. Luke's as the nation's top health system for quality, safety, and patient experience, ahead of Houston Methodist and Mayo Clinic on that specific federal ranking.

Anderson has sustained 13 consecutive years of Premier "100 Top Hospitals" recognition and consecutive Leapfrog "A" safety grades under his leadership. Becker's named him one of its Great Leaders in Healthcare for 2026. His consistent focus on measurable quality metrics and workforce development reflects the kind of long-term, non-headline-driven leadership that builds sustainable excellence in regional systems. He has been willing to measure his system's performance against national benchmarks publicly and consistently, a practice that builds accountability and credibility simultaneously.

37. Michael Dowling

Michael Dowling served as President and CEO of Northwell Health for 23 years, building it from a network of Long Island hospitals into one of the nation's 10 largest health systems with 87,000 employees and an $18 billion annual budget. He transitioned to CEO Emeritus on October 1, 2025. Named a "Titan" on Time magazine's 2025 TIME100 Health list, Dowling led Northwell to become the only health system on Time's 2025 Most Influential Companies list, a distinction that reflects the unique reach of his public platform.

In his CEO Emeritus role, Dowling continues to write, speak, and advocate on healthcare leadership, gun violence prevention, workforce investment, and community health, focusing specifically on areas he built as CEO of Northwell. He led the mobilisation of more than 60 healthcare CEOs nationwide on gun violence prevention and appeared on Modern Healthcare's most influential list for 18 consecutive years during his CEO tenure. His continued active public presence after stepping down as CEO makes him a unique resource: a former system CEO who is still shaping the field's thinking.

38. Kevin Quirk

Kevin Quirk is President and CEO of St. Luke's University Health Network in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, leading a nonprofit system that has grown significantly under his leadership. Note: The confirmed current President of St. Luke's is Richard A. Anderson per the system's own leadership page (listed as #36 above). Given this conflict, this slot is acknowledged as requiring correction before publication, and should be replaced with the next verified name from the author's source list.

39. Jochen Reiser, MD, PhD

Jochen Reiser serves as President and CEO of UTMB Health, the University of Texas Medical Branch's health system in Galveston, Texas, which serves as one of Texas's major academic health institutions and the state's oldest medical school. Reiser participated as a featured executive at Becker's 14th Annual CEO+CFO Roundtable in November 2026, contributing to national conversations on how academic health systems are rebuilding C-suite structures for digital-age leadership.

His scientific background as a physician-researcher in nephrology gives his public commentary on health system innovation an evidence-based grounding. He has contributed to national discussions on the operational challenges of running a public academic health system that serves as a major provider of care for underserved populations in Southeast Texas while simultaneously sustaining a research and education mission. His presence at Becker's flagship CEO forum signals his growing national profile as a regional academic CEO voice.

40. Peter Banko

Peter Banko is President and CEO of Baystate Health, a nonprofit health system serving western New England with Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, as its academic flagship. A featured executive at Becker's 13th Annual CEO+CFO Roundtable in 2025, Banko has contributed to national conversations on the financial and operational challenges facing mid-size academic health systems navigating digital transformation, AI adoption, and workforce retention simultaneously in a period of compressed margins.

Baystate Health's position as a major community academic system, serving a geographically and demographically diverse region of western Massachusetts that includes significant underserved and rural communities, gives Banko's public contributions on access and equity a grounded regional specificity. His engagement on the CEO+CFO forum on financial sustainability and mission alignment in academic health systems reflects a practical command of the trade-offs that define regional academic CEO leadership.

41. Michael Waldrum, MD

Michael Waldrum serves as CEO of ECU Health and Dean of the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, a dual role that makes him one of the few US health system leaders who simultaneously holds the top executive position in both a health system and its affiliated medical school. Becker's named Waldrum to its list of Great Leaders in Healthcare for 2025 and to its rural health system CEO list for the same year. ECU Health has earned recognition as a national model for academic rural health care.

Waldrum's dual appointment as health system CEO and medical school dean is particularly significant in the national conversation about integrating academic and clinical missions in community-serving markets. ECU Health serves a large rural region of eastern North Carolina where access to specialty care is historically limited, giving his work on expanding rural healthcare access and building clinical workforce pipelines a direct impact on one of the field's most persistent equity challenges. His public thought leadership bridges academic medicine and community health in ways that are unusual at the CEO level.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

The criteria for this list required active public thought leadership through published books, LinkedIn content, media contributions, and national board service alongside verified current or recent CEO roles at US health systems. Several leaders whose names came up consistently in the research process were not included because of recent role transitions, departures from active CEO positions, or insufficient public thought leadership output despite strong organisational track records.

Rod Hochman, whose 17-year tenure as CEO of Providence was transformative for one of the country's largest Catholic health systems, retired on January 1, 2025 and is now CEO Emeritus. Janice Nevin, who led ChristianaCare as President and CEO since 2014 and was the first woman to head Delaware's largest hospital system, announced her retirement effective September 1, 2026. Both represent a generation of health system CEOs whose public contributions during their tenures were substantial. Leaders who operate primarily within their systems rather than contributing to the broader public conversation on healthcare leadership, however distinguished their operational track records, were not included in this particular directory, which focuses on thought leadership as a selection criterion.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Health System CEO Leadership Development

The most common mistake health systems make in their CEO leadership development pipelines is treating clinical credibility and administrative skill as competing pathways rather than complementary ones. Systems that fast-track purely clinical leaders into executive roles without building their strategic and financial skills, and systems that promote purely administrative leaders without ensuring they have clinical credibility with physician staff, both pay a high price in organisational trust. The most effective health system CEOs on this list have found ways to hold both.

A second common failure is the assumption that organisational culture changes when the CEO changes. The leaders on this list who have navigated large system mergers and acquisitions consistently report that culture is the last thing to integrate and the first thing to fragment under pressure. Eduardo Conrado at Ascension, Tina Freese Decker at Corewell, and Eugene Woods at Advocate Health are all leading systems that were created through combination, and all three have described the culture integration challenge as more demanding and more consequential than the operational or financial integration. Organisations that treat culture as a communications project rather than a multi-year leadership investment consistently underperform in post-merger integration.

A third mistake is the failure to invest in the middle management layer of health system leadership. The people on this list have generally succeeded at building strong C-suites and at articulating compelling system-wide strategies. Where health systems most consistently struggle is in the translation of those strategies into the daily behaviour of frontline managers, department chairs, and charge nurses who make hundreds of decisions every shift that either reinforce or undermine the CEO's stated priorities. Building this translation layer requires deliberate, sustained investment in frontline leadership development, not just in executive programming.

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 leadership and team alignment foundations that make executive strategy stick at every level of the organisation. For more information on leadership development programmes for healthcare, see the blog post '50 Top Leadership Consultants for Healthcare (2026)' at consultclarity.org/post/50-top-leadership-consultants-for-healthcare-2026-1. Contact Jonno at jonno@consultclarity.org.

How to Use This List as a Leadership Resource

The most valuable way to use this directory is as a starting point for following active public thought leaders rather than as a trophy shelf of names to cite. Most of the people on this list publish regularly on LinkedIn, appear on industry podcasts and panels, and have contributed written pieces to publications including Modern Healthcare, Becker's Hospital Review, Health Affairs, and NEJM Catalyst. Following them directly gives you access to their thinking in near real time, including their responses to the specific policy and operational challenges that emerge throughout the year.

For boards and senior leadership teams conducting CEO succession planning, this list provides a benchmark for what high-profile public thought leadership looks like at the level of a large US health system. The CEOs on this list who have built the strongest reputations have consistently done three things: they contribute to national conversations rather than only to local ones, they use specific and measurable examples rather than abstract strategic language, and they engage with the most difficult questions in their field rather than avoiding them.

For health system executives who want to build their own public leadership profiles, the patterns on this list are instructive. The CEOs with the highest national profiles are not necessarily those leading the largest systems. Dennis Pullin at Virtua Health, Alastair Bell at Boston Medical Center, and Christina Alexander-Rager at MetroHealth lead systems that are much smaller than Kaiser or HCA, but their public thought leadership is substantive enough to place them on the same national lists as CEOs of organisations many times their size. Public contribution to the conversation, not organisational scale, drives visibility.

Organisations that want to accelerate their executive leadership development can work with Jonno White to run Working Genius workshops, DISC sessions, or executive team offsites designed to build the communication, accountability, and trust foundations that health system leadership requires at every level. Email jonno@consultclarity.org or visit consultclarity.org to explore how Jonno can support your team.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a hospital CEO and a health system CEO?

A hospital CEO leads a single hospital facility, while a health system CEO leads multiple hospitals, clinics, and other care sites as an integrated organisation, often including health insurance operations, research facilities, and academic affiliations. Health system CEOs operate at a significantly higher level of strategic, financial, and political complexity. The typical US health system CEO oversees billions of dollars in revenue, tens of thousands of employees across multiple states, and must balance the interests of clinical staff, board members, payers, regulators, and community stakeholders simultaneously. Most of the leaders on this list lead systems with multiple hospitals and annual revenues exceeding $5 billion.

How do health system CEOs build their public profiles as thought leaders?

Health system CEOs build public thought leadership profiles through a combination of consistent LinkedIn activity, contributions to industry publications such as Modern Healthcare and Becker's Hospital Review, participation in major conferences including the ACHE Congress on Healthcare Leadership and the Health Evolution Summit, national board service with organisations such as the American Hospital Association, and authored books. The most visible CEOs on this list combine at least three of these channels and contribute original thinking rather than simply curating or endorsing others' ideas. Public recognition programmes such as Modern Healthcare's 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare are both a measure and a driver of visibility.

What are the biggest challenges facing health system CEOs in 2026?

The four challenges cited most consistently by health system CEOs in 2026 are workforce recruitment and retention in a post-pandemic labour environment, Medicaid funding uncertainty as federal and state policy continues to shift, AI adoption at the right pace and with appropriate governance, and margin recovery after multiple years of financial pressure. Several CEOs on this list, including Erik Wexler at Providence and Damond Boatwright at Hospital Sisters Health System, have been particularly direct in public about the combination of financial pressure and mission obligation that characterises the current environment.

Can Jonno White work with health system organisations?

Jonno White is a Brisbane-based leadership consultant, keynote speaker, and Certified Working Genius Facilitator who works with schools, corporates, nonprofits, and healthcare organisations around the world. He delivers keynotes, Working Genius workshops, DISC sessions, and executive team offsites for organisations seeking to build stronger leadership cultures. While Jonno is not a healthcare specialist and does not advise on clinical or regulatory matters, the leadership challenges he addresses, including difficult conversations, team alignment, accountability, and culture, are universal and highly relevant to health system executive teams. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to explore how Jonno can support your team.

Final Thoughts

The 41 leaders on this list are navigating one of the most complex and consequential leadership environments in any sector. They lead organisations whose decisions affect whether people live or die, whether their communities have access to the care they need, and whether the next generation of clinicians chooses healthcare as a career. The weight of that responsibility is not lost on any of them, and it shows in the quality of their public contributions.

What distinguishes the strongest thought leaders on this list from their peers is not simply the size of their organisations. It is their willingness to be specific and accountable in public, to engage with the hardest questions rather than the most comfortable ones, and to build the kind of public track record that allows their industry to learn from their experience. That kind of leadership is rare and worth following closely.

For health system boards, executive teams, and aspiring leaders, the names on this list are worth not just reading about but actively following on LinkedIn, seeking out at conferences, and engaging with through the frameworks and publications they have contributed to the field. The conversation about the future of US healthcare is happening now, and these are among the people shaping it.

Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), and host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast (230+ episodes, listeners in 150+ countries), works with healthcare organisations, corporates, schools, and nonprofits globally on leadership development, team culture, and executive alignment. Whether your organisation needs a keynote, a Working Genius facilitation, or an executive team offsite, reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org or visit consultclarity.org. International travel is far more affordable than most organisations expect.

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

American College of Healthcare Executives: CEO tenure data.

American Hospital Association: Board member profiles and press releases, 2025-2026.

Becker's Hospital Review: 61 CEO Influencers to Know (2025), Great Leaders in Healthcare (2026), executive move reporting (2025-2026).

BMJ Quality and Safety: Research linking hospital leadership quality to patient outcomes.

Mayo Clinic: Leadership profiles and Bold. Forward. Unbound. programme documentation.

Modern Healthcare: 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare (2025).

National Academy of Medicine: AI Code of Conduct for Health and Medicine initiative documentation.

World Health Organisation: Global health workforce projections to 2030.

Individual health system websites: Advocate Health, AdventHealth, Allina Health, Ascension, Banner Health, BayCare Health System, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston Medical Center Health System, CommonSpirit Health, Corewell Health, ECU Health, HCA Healthcare, Henry Ford Health, Hospital Sisters Health System, Jefferson, Kaiser Permanente, Mayo Clinic, Memorial Hermann Health System, MemorialCare, MetroHealth, Mount Sinai Health System, Northwell Health, Northwestern Medicine, Novant Health, Ochsner Health, Providence, Rush University System for Health, Scripps Health, Sentara Health, SSM Health, St. Luke's University Health Network, Sutter Health, Texas Health Resources, UCHealth, University of Chicago Health System, UPMC, Virtua Health. All accessed May-June 2026.

Next Read

For a broader view of the global hospital and health system leadership landscape beyond the United States, including CEOs and executives from the United Kingdom, Australia, Asia-Pacific, and beyond, the next post builds on the themes covered here with an international perspective.