Rosa M. Colon-Kolacko, Ph.D. Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer at NYC Health + Hospitals
Rosa M. Colon-Kolacko, Ph.D., MBA, CDM was appointed in the fall of 2016 as NYC Health + Hospitals, Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer. The NYC Health + Hospitals health care system is a $6.7 billion integrated healthcare delivery system, the largest municipal healthcare organization in the country, and one of the New York area’s largest providers of government-sponsored health insurance, MetroPlus Health Plan, the plan of choice for nearly half a million New Yorkers. The NYC Health + Hospitals health care system serves 1.4 million New Yorkers every year and more than 475,000 are uninsured. Her responsibility is to serve employees of NYC H+H, 43,000 plus individuals with 11 hospitals and over 50+ clinics and other facilities. Functional responsibilities include Learning and Development, Talent Acquisition, Facility HR, HR Shared Services, Organizational Effectiveness (Lean/Breakthrough) and Innovation, Diversity and Inclusion, Benefits, HR Policies, Employee Retirement Programs, HR Transformation, Change Management, Workforce Planning, and Patient Experience.
Most recently, Dr. Colon-Kolacko served as president and founder of Global Learning and Diversity Partners, LLC, a consulting services organization that focuses on building multicultural, inclusive and learning organizations in health systems and Health Innovation Globally and to implement health technologies to leverage innovation to increase health services access including Telemedicine. For most of the past decade, she served Christiana Care Health System in Delaware, most recently as Senior Vice President of its Learning Institute and Chief Diversity Officer. Earlier in her career she worked at Bristol Myers-Squibb and, before that, SmithKline Beecham (since renamed GlaxoSmithKline), leading change and talent management functions in Asia, Europe, and North America, including Puerto Rico.
She has over 20 years’ experience in global pharmaceuticals, Academia and Non-Profit highly successful at demonstrating business results through the implementation of Learning and Development, Diversity, Inclusion, Cultural Competency and Equity Strategies, Organization Development, Talent Management Strategies, LGBTQ, Equity, Language Services, Educator Development, Learning Analytics and competency based learning to intensify learning to transform organizations to achieve high levels of performance.
Rosa is very involved in many national/state level boards and commissions: Chair of the Strategic Planning committee for the National Forum for Latino Healthcare Executives part of (ACHE), Chair of the DE Hispanic Commission Health & Social Services Committee where she conducted a statewide Cultural Competency and Linguistic Study and serves also on the American Leadership Council of the Institute for Diversity in Health Management. She had lead statewide projects in Delaware working directly with the past Secretary of Public Health and Social Services where she partnered with state agency directors to conduct a study to recommend a Diversity and Cultural Competency Strategy.
Rosa holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Development and Change from Benedictine University, a MBA from Henley Business School, University of Reading England, a post-graduate Marketing Diploma from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, London, and a Certificate in Diversity Management (CDM) from Georgetown University and the AHA Institute for Diversity in Healthcare Management. She is a researcher and has held Academic positions as Professor of Professional Practice at Bowling Green State University, adjunct faculty at Georgetown University and University of Delaware. She has conducted research in the areas of Change Management, Partnership between Organization Development and IT, Role of the Chief Diversity Officer and Cultural and Linguistic to promote equity.
Re-Imagining HR in an Era of Diversity and Human Experience
Chief People Officer, Dr. Rosa Colon-Kolacko will share her perspective and experiences in leading HR, Learning and Development, Office of Diversity and Patient Experience Functions in an era where leveraging diversity and building engaging workplaces can lead to the best customer experiences and a unique business differentiator. Rosa will address how companies can re-imagine isolated diversity programs to become an integrated element in workforce strategies and how the new work of HR is to build partnership to learn cultural and linguistic needs from both employees and customers so that organizations can design the best human experiences for both. She will share experience on how to reframe talent management and create a skills revolution within HR and your workforce. The session will share findings of DE systemwide Diversity and Cultural Competency studies and will provide insights into how to reinvent your HR function, new skills for the future and implement agile structures.