Karen Teitelbaum

Former President/CEO and Independent Board Member/Senior Advisor

With expertise in strategy, growth, risk, governance, and turnaround work, Karen is a nationally recognized leader and executive coach in ensuring scalability and market development through operational excellence and transformation of care.

In Karen’s executive coaching work, she is a thought partner with C-suite level executives as well as management who will benefit from transforming approaches to opportunities and barriers in work and life. Her work includes coaching both new and experienced CEOs and corporate leaders, attorneys, executives with global life sciences responsibilities and entrepreneurial founders.

Current boards include Ingenovis Health, a portfolio of forward-thinking staffing healthcare companies (Chair, Risk and Compliance Committee), Alliance Physical Therapy Partners, a national leading physical therapy services network (Member, Compensation and Compliance Committees), and Towne Park, a tech enabled, multi-service hospitality company, focused on delivering exceptional experiences. Her past board work included a growth-focused women’s health company, where she served as the Executive Chair of the Board and past Chair, Compensation Committee and member, Quality Committee, and a portfolio company of a global health services firm providing sterile processing solutions (Member, Commercial and Operating Committee).

An advocate for utilizing technology to improve healthcare delivery, Karen has been a board member at a global healthcare startup incubator and corporate innovation accelerator (Member, Nominating and Governance Committee). She has served as a mentor with a global organization delivering an objectives-based program for scalable, seed-stage, science- and technology-based companies.

An early career entrepreneur, after purchasing a rehabilitation services firm, Karen grew the company into the largest of its kind in Chicago before selling it to a publicly traded firm. Following the sale, Karen held increasingly responsible positions in health-related companies.

As the immediate past President/Chief Executive Officer of Sinai Chicago, a private safety net healthcare system with over $1 billion in revenues, Karen oversaw a successful turnaround of financial, philanthropic, and operational performance. She drove year-over-year improvement profitability from a loss of $42 million to a profit of $32.6 million, improved EBIDA from negative $14.8 million to positive $55.6 million and increased philanthropy six-fold.

Deeply involved in national policy impacting healthcare, Karen serves as a Senior Adviser to the Business Council of the American Hospital Association. Karen has been a participant in legislative policy-making agendas with both Senate and Congress. She is a past Chair of the Illinois Health and Hospital Association Board (Past Chair, Finance Committee, Member, Executive, Governance, and Health Equity Committees). Karen also served as a board member of America’s Essential Hospitals (Member, Governance Committee), and is a Visiting Lecturer at Kenya Methodist University in Nairobi.

Awards include “One of 10 Business Leaders to Watch” by the Chicago Tribune, twice named to Crain’s Chicago Business “Notable Women in Chicago Healthcare” list, the Weizmann Institute “Women of Science” award, and a recipient of the National Medical Fellowship “Leadership in Healthcare” award. Karen holds an MBA from Northwestern University, J.L. Kellogg School of Management and a Certificate of Coaching from the National Center for Healthcare Leadership. Residing in Chicago, Illinois and Grand Beach, Michigan, she is a frequently requested national speaker, world traveler, avid bicyclist, and cook.