Women Leaders in Health Care Track

Laurie Cooke is the president and CEO of the HBA. Laurie is a dedicated advocate for gender parity, speaker, thought leader, PharmaVOICE 100 most inspiring people in life sciences and ASAE Mentor of the Year. Laurie served on PMI’s executive management team; and prior to nonprofit management work, she served in increasing senior roles ex-US with Hoechst, Hoechst Roussel, Hoechst Marion Roussel, and Aventis working across all pre-clinical to post approval areas including phase I biometrics, project management, process improvement, and late stage team effectiveness. Laurie began her career as a head hospital pharmacist in Washington State. Laurie graduated with a degree in microbiology from University of Maryland, advanced scientific degree in pharmacy from University of Washington, masters in Software Engineering Management from University of Luton, England. She is a licensed pharmacist and certified association executive. Laurie has lived and worked in Europe, New Zealand and both U.S., coasts and currently lives in the Philadelphia main line with her husband and four active pets.

Laurie Kowalevsky is the Vice President of Global Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer for Lilly Bio-Medicines. In her 12 years at Lilly, Laurie led the Cialis brand in the US where she was instrumental in advancing the third-to-market entrant to market leader with the launch of its once-daily formulation and ED+BPH indication. She spent six years as a Global Brand Leader launching one of Lilly's largest immunology assets, and creating the experience design for Lilly’s Customer Support Programs. Laurie is also the founding chairwoman of Lilly’s Women’s Initiative for Leading at Lilly (WILL) where she led the Women’s Employee Journey research project and partnered with HR and senior leadership to begin to pave the path for the future talent model at Lilly and be a catalyst for a renewed D&I/People Strategy. Before joining Lilly, she spent almost 20 years in consumer marketing roles within a series of Fortune 500 companies that included a decade agency-side at Publicis where she was EVP of Client Services.

Ms. Popwell serves as the Chief Strategy Officer for Ascension Michigan where she is responsible for the strategic direction and alignment of the Ministry Market. Ascension is a faith-based healthcare organization dedicated to transformation through innovation across the continuum of care. As one of the leading non-profit and Catholic health systems in the U.S., Ascension is committed to delivering compassionate, personalized care to all, with special attention to persons living in poverty and those most vulnerable. In FY2018, Ascension provided nearly $2 billion in care of persons living in poverty and other community benefit programs. Ascension includes approximately 156,000 associates and 34,000 aligned providers. The national health system operates more than 2,600 sites of care – including 151 hospitals and more than 50 senior living facilities – in 21 states and the District of Columbia, while providing a variety of services including physician practice management, venture capital investing, investment management, biomedical engineering, facilities management, clinical care management, information services, risk management, and contracting through Ascension’s own group purchasing organization.

Prior to her role with Ascension, Ms. Popwell served as Vice President, Strategy Executive for the Strategic Service Group of Atrium Health. She led the organization wide strategy management process and advised System level executives in her areas of expertise which include: strategic planning, strategy execution, strategic growth, service line planning, portfolio/ project management, and cost management.

Prior to this position, Ms. Popwell was the Chief Ancillary Executive at Carolinas HealthCare System-Cleveland including two hospitals, one nursing home and a long-term acute care hospital (LTACH) in Cleveland County. Ms. Popwell was responsible for all Ancillary and Support Services for CCHS, and she was with the organization for a little over 12 years. During that time, she led the team to award winning quality outcomes, award winning patient satisfaction results, top tier employee engagement results, and successful growth strategies in a turbulent healthcare climate and challenging per capita income community.

Ms. Popwell has been a healthcare professional for over 25 years. Over the course of her career, Ms. Popwell has served as a quality and accreditation senior leader as well as a healthcare consultant specializing in the use of benchmarking and labor productivity data. She is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Association as well as a Senior Fellow of the American Leadership Forum (ALF). She is also certified as a Project Management Professional and was honored in 2015 with the Charlotte region’s Top 50 Most Influential Women Award.

Dr. Kimberly Townsend is President and Chief Executive Officer of Loretto, a continuing care system located in New York with assets in skilled nursing, housing, managed care, short-term rehabilitation and medical adult day services. She is also the author of “Lifecircle Leadership: How Exceptional People Make Every Day Extraordinary.”

Dr. Townsend, EdD, JD, MPA, MBA, CPA, GPHR, is a role model for anyone who wants to make positive change in the world. Like many women, she’s juggling the demands of family and the pressures of a full-time job, while also finding time to improve herself, her company and her community, through her philosophy of pragmatic altruism – which believes that every problem has a solution that benefits all parties. She has used this approach to create community partnerships that help individual employees overcome barriers that hinder their ability to perform or advance with the company, which has resulted in measurable increases in recruitment and retention for Loretto.

She invites others to reconsider their approach to business and life, and hopes they discover that doing good for others is good for long-term business success. Learn more about Dr. Townsend at www.drkimberlytownsend.com.