Greater D.C. Healthcare Update

Ruth Williams-Brinkley is regional president of Kaiser Permanente in the Mid-Atlantic region. In this role, Williams-Brinkley oversees all of Kaiser Permanente’s care delivery and health plan operations in Washington, D.C. and suburban Maryland, Baltimore, and Northern Virginia. The Mid-Atlantic States Region operates 33 medical office buildings and has 770,000 members. Williams-Brinkley reports to the group president for Markets Outside of California, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Hospitals. Williams-Brinkley joined Kaiser Permanente in November 2017, serving as president of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals of the Northwest. She oversaw all of Kaiser Permanente’s care delivery and health plan operations in Oregon and markets in Vancouver and Longview/Kelso, Washington. Prior to that she served as CEO of KentuckyOne Health, Kentucky’s largest integrated health system. KentuckyOne was a division of CommonSpirit Health, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems. Prior to her tenure with KentuckyOne, Williams-Brinkley served as president and CEO of Carondelet Health Network in Tucson, Arizona, and as president and CEO of Memorial Health Care System in Chattanooga, Tennessee.Williams-Brinkley has often appeared on Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Women in Healthcare and Top 25 Minority Executives in Healthcare, and was named one of Becker’s Most Admired CEOs. She holds bachelor’s and Master of Science degrees from De Paul University, and an honorary doctoral degree from Spaulding University, Louisville, KY.

Irene joined Children’s National in March, 2017 specifically to lead the redevelopment of nearly 12 acres and 400K square feet of existing, historic buildings Children’s National acquired from the Federal Government on the site of the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In this position she is responsible for space programming, building and site design development, environmental remediation, all aspects of regulatory approval (including Certificate of Need), historic and new market tax credits, site zoning and construction execution. Previously, Irene worked for Kaiser Permanente’s Mid-Atlantic Region where she directed Service Delivery Planning; developing market strategic plans with over $400M in new facility acquisition and development, gaining approval for $175M for individual facility projects and managing space utilization for Kaiser’s 32 outpatient medical centers. Irene is a certified Project Management Professional and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Boston College and a Masters in Health Policy and Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

My name is Don and I joined the Whitman-Walker Health team in 2006. I am humbled and honored to served as CEO for the Whitman-Walker Health System. I believe in a service leadership philosophy where all employees and volunteers extend dignity, respect, and affirmation to those we care for in community. In my role, I work collaboratively with the Board of Directors and community stakeholders to advance Whitman-Walker as the nation’s leading LGBTQ health care group. My work is strongly influenced by a simple yet powerful principle—health is a matter of equality and social justice. I have lived in Washington, DC for three decades and am a native of Foxboro, MA (home of the New England Patriots). However, soccer is my first true athletic love.

Chris has been a leader in Wrap-Up insurance for close to three decades, with experience in underwriting, risk management, and brokerage. The 90’s were spent at Liberty Mutual where he helped build their Construction Unit and underwrote insurance for Construction and Large Wrap-Up accounts. In the 2000’s Chris was Turner Construction Company’s Insurance Manager and National CCIP Director. He helped create their Rolling CCIP program and helped make it the largest Rolling CCIP program in the country. Since 2011, Chris helped make Turner’s sister company, Turner Surety and Insurance Brokerage (TSIB) into one of the leading, privately held, independent, Wrap-Up brokerage groups in the county selling OCIP specific services. His client list included the likes of Tishman Speyer, Related, Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA), Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission (PVSC), Alameda County, Sacramento Light Rail, and most recently Amazon to name a few. Chris earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Massachusetts.

Kurt has been responsible for programming and planning tens of millions of square feet around the globe, including more than six million square feet of hospital, ambulatory, psychiatric and medical office building space. He has provided pre-design services for a multitude of healthcare and educational building types worldwide and is accomplished in a wide variety of analytical, decision-making and facilitating techniques. Kurt has unique strength in the ability to take overwhelming amounts of data—both quantitative and qualitative—and abstract it to easily understood information that supports informed decision-making. Through his significant portfolio of work, pioneering non-architectural applications, and public outreach, he has distinguished himself as an “architect of decision-making.” A frequent speaker on healthcare programming and planning, he is well regarded for his understanding of how healthcare facilities work.