Meet the 2026 Leadership Academy Faculty

Kierstin Cates Kennedy, MD, MSHA is a Professor of Medicine at the University ofAlabama at Birmingham and the Chief Medical and Quality Officer for UAB Hospital. A 1,257-bed quaternary hospital and academic health science center, UAB is the 8th largest hospital in the US.

Dr. Ahuja graduated from the University of California at Berkeley & received her medical degree from the University of Texas McGovern Medical School, Houston in 1997. She then went on to complete her residency training in Internal Medicine & Pediatrics from the same institution, obtaining double board certification.

Dr. Khaalisha Ajala, MD, MBA, FHM is an assistant professor of medicine within the Emory Division of Hospital Medicine. She is the Assistant Site Director of Education for Hospital Medicine at Grady Memorial Hospital and the co-director Education Council of the Emory Division of Hospital Medicine’s, the nation’s largest academic hospital medicine program.

Rachel Cyrus, MD, SFHM is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Her current roles include Associate Chief Medical Officer for Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Medical Director for inpatient medicine, and Clinical Practice Director for the Division of Hospital Medicine at Northwestern. She recently completed an 8-year cycle as an officer in the Medical Staff Office, culminating as Chief of Staff.

Dr. Mary Fredrickson is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Department of Medicine and a practicing hospitalist with HealthPartners Medical Group in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her scholarly focus is on education, communication, and clinician well-being and she has presented both locally and internationally on these topics. She has extensive experience in teaching clinical communication and leadership skills to practicing clinicians and healthcare leaders.

Jorge Ganem serves as Vice-Chair of the Department of Pediatrics and is the Medical Director for Inpatient Pediatrics at Peace Health Sacred Heart River Bend Hospital in Springfield, Oregon. Jorge has over a decade of clinical, administrative, operational, and educational leadership in academic and community settings. Jorge is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Hospital Medicine’s Executive Committee and previously served as Chair of their Health Equity Task Force. His passion for mentoring and sponsoring new leaders led to co-creating and leading the ADVANCE PHM EVOLVE Leadership Fellowship. Jorge is an award-winning educator and a graduate of the AAP’s APEX program. He has presented at multiple national conferences on leadership, health equity, and quality improvement. Jorge completed his medical education at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, and his Pediatrics Residency at the University of California San Francisco’s BenioT Children’s Hospital of Oakland where he also served as Chief Resident.

Jeffrey J. Glasheen, MD, MHM is the Director of the Institute for Healthcare Quality, Safety and Efficiency, the Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs and Professor of Medicine with Tenure at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The IHQSE offers multiple distinct development programs in quality, safety and healthcare leadership having trained over 4000 participants across ten different programs. It is the only quality development program in the country to be associated with improvements in publicly reported hospital quality rankings.

Dr. Brian Harte is the President of Cleveland Clinic’s East Submarket and President of the Hillcrest and Mentor Hospitals, a position he assumed as of February 1, 2025. He most recently served as the President of the Cleveland Clinic’s South Submarket and President of Cleveland Clinic Akron General and Lodi Hospital, where he oversaw safety and quality of patient care for more than a dozen healthcare locations in northeast Ohio. He joined the Cleveland Clinic in 2004 and has held numerous leadership roles including President of Hillcrest and South Pointe hospitals. He is also the former Chair of the Department of Hospital Medicine and the Medicine Institute at Cleveland Clinic. He is a practicing hospitalist.

Rusty is the founder and CEO of Resonate Leadership Lab, a healthcare coaching, consulting and leadership development company that is proud to have clients in 10 countries across 3 continents. His professional focus is exclusively centered around helping healthcare leaders and their teams become truly exceptional.

Kheyandra D. Lewis, MD, MEd, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Drexel University College of Medicine and serves as Vice Chair of Faculty and Professional Development at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, where she leads initiatives to support faculty growth and professional success. Following pediatric residency and a chief residency at St. Christopher’s, Dr. Lewis joined the Section of Hospital Medicine as a pediatric hospitalist. She also serves as an Associate Program Director for the pediatric residency program and co-chairs the Mid-Atlantic region of the Association of Pediatric Program Directors.

Dr. Efrén C. Manjarrez is an Associate Professor of Medicine and founded Hospital Medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in 2001.

He graduated from the UC San Diego School of Medicine then completed his Medicine and Pediatrics Residency at the University of Miami/ Jackson Memorial Hospital. Dr. Manjarrez completed a Faculty Development Program in General Internal Medicine at UNC Chapel Hill and advanced training in Quality Improvement at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City.

Kimberly D. Manning, MD, MACP, FAAP is a general internist/hospitalist in the Department of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. Manning is Professor of Medicine and Vice Chair of Community and Engagement, and immediate past program director of the Emory University Transitional Year Residency program. Her clinical work is at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta’s safety net facility, where she has been for over two decades.

Ankit Mehta is a hospitalist with HealthPartners and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota (UMN) Medical School. He has a keen interest in the  intersection of arts, humanities, and medicine. He is certified in CHEST/SHM Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS).

Kirsten Gibbs Nieto, MD, is an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at UT Austin Dell Medical School. She is the Inpatient Medical Director at Dell Seton Medical Center, where she expertly leads academic, hospitalist, specialty, and intensive care service lines in high quality multidisciplinary care delivery, operational and clinical efficiency, and transitions of care. Previous roles include interim Associate Chair for Inpatient Clinical Operations in the Department of Medicine from 2022-2024. Regionally, Nieto was the President of the Ascension Texas Board of Directors from 2021-2025. She continues to serve as a board member with over 8 years as a physician leader on the Ascension Texas Patient Safety and Quality Committee.

Dr. Jennifer O’Toole is Designated Institutional Official (DIO) and Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education at UC Health and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine (UCCOM). Clinically she is an adult and pediatric hospitalist at University of Cincinnati Medical Center and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC), and a Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at UCCOM. She holds a Master of Education degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Cincinnati College of Education.

Amit Prachand is the Associate Vice President, Information and Analytics in the Office of the Provost at Northwestern University. As the leader of the Office of Institutional Research, he leads efforts to collect, integrate, and analyze institutional and external data to inform institutional decision-making, planning, and policy development. He is also an instructor in the MS in Higher Education Administration and Policy in the School of Education and Social Policy. Before joining the Office of the Provost, he was the Managing Director, Planning and Administration, at the Kellogg School of Management and helped develop infrastructure to advance the school’s thought leadership initiatives and to measure progress against the school’s strategic plan. Amit has previously held roles in healthcare at Northwestern Memorial Hospital that ranged from leading process improvement efforts to serving as the administrator for the Division of Hospital Medicine. He has also worked within the manufacturing sector while leading continuous improvement activities at Saturn Corporation (General Motors) and RR Donnelley. Amit received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University and his Master of Engineering degree from Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Thompson is a nationally respected leader with 20 years of experience developing strong and successful teams within and across health systems. She is a change agent for system quality and value improvement, integrating fiscal accountability and resource stewardship and maintaining a persistent aim of benefit for our patients, our people and our communities.

Mark started working as a hospitalist soon after finishing his internal medicine residency without realizing this could be a career. After graduating from Emory University School of Medicine and completing a residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), his first job was serving as one of the first four emergency medicine attendings staffing MGH’s emergency department. By the end of his first year, he was recruited back to Emory and Grady Memorial Hospital in Georgia to lead the 65,000 visits/year Medical Emergency Clinic. During this time, he also attended on the teaching inpatient service. He subsequently developed Grady’s Urgent Care Center and then established the first hospitalist program for a public hospital in 1998 at Grady. This evolved into building three of the largest academic hospitalist programs in the U.S. at Emory (1998–2007), Northwestern (2007–2013) and the University of Kentucky HealthCare system (2014-2019). While at the University of Kentucky he also served as Director of the Center for Health Services Research and Chief Quality & Transformation Officer at UK HealthCare. Subsequently he served as Professor & Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine and BJC HealthCare in Saint Louis, Missouri leading its growth from 100 to 160+ people. He stopped work in June of 2025 to join his wife Jing Li, MD, DrPH, MS at the University of Alabama-Birmingham where she became the Alfred Oberman, MD Professor in Cardiovascular Disease and Director of CARDIA. In February of this year, he returned to doing what he enjoys most—improving patient care as the Vice President, Learning Health System & Quality Improvement at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Health System.