Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, DSc honoris causa
CEO and Chair, The Health Assurance Foundation
Chairman of the Board, Redesign Health
Advisor, General Catalyst
Board Member, Fairleigh Dickinson University
For four decades, Dr. Stephen Klasko has connected worlds too often kept apart: Silicon Valley and medical academia, business and medicine, scientific rigor and creative imagination.
Building the humAIn infrastructure of health assurance
As CEO and Chair of the Health Assurance Foundation (HAF), he leads a philanthropic platform that accelerates the shift from sick care to proactive, personalized, and affordable support at every address. HAF builds the workforce, education, credentials, equity, trust, and accountability that technology alone cannot deliver. Through grants, coalitions, and real-world demonstrations, it brings together health systems, universities, standards bodies, payers, patients, and caregivers to redesign work before displacement and prepare people for emerging health professions.
HAF is building an Agentic Alliance and a Caregiver Alliance as a unified workforce of care, connecting safe, accountable human-AI teams with supported family and community caregivers. Its approach: Connect, Convene, Coach, Credential, and Compensate links preparation and employer-recognized competencies to sustainable payment pathways, with equity built in from the start.
Leadership across disciplines
As President and CEO of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health, he expanded a $1.8 billion regional organization into a $10 billion enterprise and merged a health sciences university with a nationally ranked design school. Jefferson became the nation’s fastest-growing academic medical center. Modern Healthcare ranked him #2 among its “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare,” and Fast Company named him one of its most creative people in business.
He also chairs Redesign Health, a global venture and applied technology firm that has joined forces with ARC Global, founded at Sheba Medical Center, and acquired AVIA, a digital transformation partner that helps health systems select, implement, and scale digital and AI solutions. Together, they work with more than 100 health systems across five continents to turn frontline ideas into companies and bring innovative technologies into widespread use. An OB/GYN by training and a former dean of two medical colleges, he has chaired NYSE- and Nasdaq-listed companies, served as Executive in Residence at General Catalyst, and been a presidential appointee to the National Board of Education.
Author and creative thinker
The author of seven books, Klasko co-wrote UnHealthcare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance with Hemant Taneja, helping shape General Catalyst’s health assurance investment strategy. His forthcoming Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Healthcare Galaxy explores healthcare’s future through a time-traveling lens. He is also a vinyl-spinning DJ, a distance runner, and a graduate literature student at Northwestern University: proof that he takes his own advice about bringing different worlds together.
