Klasko Advisory Partners
Unlike traditional consultants, who seek to improve existing models of patient care and higher education, Klasko Advisory Partners helps your leadership team break free of siloed, place-based, twentieth-century thinking by unleashing creativity and innovation to meet change.
Recognized experts help your team create an optimistic future through:
- Organizational design to meet consumer/patient/student trends
- Identifying opportunities to diversify revenue within your organization
- Creating an innovation strategy and organizational structure
- Manager/employee leadership training designed to improve your culture
- Launching a start-up, spin-in, spin-out strategy
- Fundraising campaign design and implementation grounded in compelling ideas for change
- Proven M&A strategies for dynamically changing markets, using both
- capital and governance as currency
- Create community engagement programs to address issues of equity and health disparities
- Using simulation training and AI in educational settings
- Establish meaningful international educational linkages
- Develop international patient recruitment programs for hospitals
Potential partners include:
- Start up innovators targeting healthcare or higher education
- Hospitals and health systems
- Colleges and Universities
- Medical, Nursing and Health Professions schools
- Organizations confronted with unprecedented change and competition
Expert Advisors
Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, DSc honoris causa
Chief Visionary, Klasko Advisory Partners
CEO,
The Health Assurance Foundation
Ambassador and Chief Global Innovation Officer, Sheba Medical Center
Dr. Stephen K. Klasko is a healthcare innovator who thrives at the intersection of Silicon Valley and medical academia. As the former President and CEO, he transformed Thomas Jefferson University & Jefferson Health from a $1.8 billion regional player into a $10 billion healthcare empire. He pioneered the audacious merger between a health sciences university and a nationally ranked design school, proving that healthcare’s future lies in creativity as well. Jefferson Health was named the nation’s fastest-growing academic medical center.
Since leaving Jefferson, he has served as a Catalyst Advisor and as North American Ambassador to the global Future of Health (FOH) network. His board leadership spans NYSE’s Teleflex (as Board Chair of the $7 billion medical device entity) and NASDAQ’s DocGo (as Board Chair), plus a portfolio of cutting edge startups, including Globo, Amplify MD, Hippocratic AI, AIDOC, CraniUs, Paradigm, Oova, and Agentis, that are reimagining healthcare delivery.
Klasko, a recent Presidential appointee to the National Board of Education Sciences and former Dean of two medical colleges (University of South Florida and Drexel), has spent decades dismantling artificial barriers between high-tech innovation and high-touch care. His visionary leadership earned him recognition as #2 in Modern Healthcare’s “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare,” tied with industry titans Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos, and #21 in Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business.”
As a prolific author whose works range from serious healthcare manifestos to satirical children’s books, Klasko’s intellectual influence extends far beyond the page. His groundbreaking “UnHealthcare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance” (2021), co-authored with General Catalyst’s Hemant Taneja, not only diagnosed healthcare’s problems but also sparked a movement that directly inspired General Catalyst’s health assurance fund and led to the creation of HATCO (Health Assurance Transformation Company). His upcoming “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Healthcare Galaxy” (2026) promises to be his most provocative yet, a time-traveling romp through healthcare’s future that shows how the collison of radically different universes can fix America’s fractured system. His recent “Patient No Longer: How YOU Can Lead the Consumer Revolution in Healthcare” (2025) and “Feelin’ Alright: How the Message in the Music Can Make Healthcare Healthier” (2023) uncover profound insights in unexpected places.
While professionally, Dr. Klasko is an MD/MBA/honorary doctorate holder who chairs the CEO Council of the American Cancer Society, he also moonlights as an active DJ spinning sets from Miami to Las Vegas, a fitting metaphor for someone who has made a career of mixing seemingly incompatible worlds into something entirely new. Klasko approaches everything with the same philosophy that has defined his healthcare revolution: th emost interesting solutions emerge when you refuse to accept that different world can’t work together.
Dr. Klasko holds a B.S. from Lehigh University, an M.D. from Hahnemann University, an M.B.A from the Wharton School, as well as an honorary doctorate (D.Sc.) from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
John C. Ekarius
Managing Director, Klasko Advisory Partners
As Managing Director for Klasko Advisory Partners, John serves as strategic advisor to several healthcare and inusrtech start-ups. In addition, he provides consultation for healthcare and higher education marketing and communication as well as government affairs funding strategies.
During his tenure as EVP and Chief of Staff at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health, John worked alongside Jefferson President and CEO Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, and was integral to the growth of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health from 2013 through 2022. Today Jefferson comprises 18 hospitals and approximately 7,400 Nurses, 6,600 Physicians, 4,400 faculty, 8,000 students, two major campuses, 63,000 alumni and Health Partners Plans, an award-winning health maintenance organization with 291,000 members in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey.
As Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff, John oversaw enterprise-wide public and government affairs, presidential priorities and board of trustee’s governance and operations.
Major projects included development of federal research funding strategies, the creation of the Jefferson Innovation Pillar, and the launch of Global Jefferson with major initiatives in Italy, India and the European Union.
As COO at USF Health and the Morsani College of Medicine, John helped lead a $500 million enterprise (with research awards in excess of $200 million) comprised of the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Public Health, and the Schools of Physical Therapy and Biomedical Sciences, as well as a 425 physician practice group and the Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulations (CAMLS).
John’s earlier roles included: Associate Dean for External Relations and Strategic Development at Drexel University’s College of Medicine; Vice President of Public and Government Affairs at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey; and Associate Deputy State Treasurer for the State of New Jersey under Governor Christine Todd Whitman. He is a graduate of American University.
Rajesh Aggarwal MBBS, MA, PhD, FRCS, FACS
Dr. Aggarwal is a physician entrepreneur with an exceptional track record of success, in areas of education, innovation, patient safety and service quality, transforming clinical care delivery across complex academic and community health systems. He has extensive clinical, scientific and technological expertise with healthcare innovations, encompassing digital applications and health IT platforms, virtual and augmented reality solutions, medical devices and interventional robotics, and advanced analytics. In addition, Dr. Aggarwal has vast experience leading venture, strategic, research and commercial partnership deals with health systems.
As a surgeon, scientist and innovator, Dr. Aggarwal has a distributed and inclusive leadership style. He is driven by creativity and a collaborative vision across disciplines and structures, and is committed to significant shared and sustained impact.
In his role as Chief Growth and Strategy Officer at Panda Health, Dr. Aggarwal has lead the engagement of health systems and efforts to define and source digital health vendors in addition to building the operational team, executing partnership deals and raising $11M in funding.
Prior to joining Panda Health, Dr. Aggarwal served as Senior Vice President and then Executive Vice President of Strategic Ventures and Professor, Department of Surgery at Thomas Jefferson University & Jefferson Health from 2017 to 2020; Director, Steinberg Centre for Simulation and Interactive Learning (SCSIL) and Associate Professor, Department of Surgery at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec from 2014 to 2017; Instructor, Department of Surgery at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Medicine in Philadelphia from 2012 to 2014; Department of Surgey, Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London, UK.
Aman Bhullar, MD, MBA
Aman Bhullar is a physician and entrepreneur who has successfully applied his real-life experience towards advising and investing in early-stage startups.
With a clinician’s perspective he has also provided tailored solutions for healthcare organizations addressing the challenges of today.
Dr. Bhullar completed his Internal Medicine training at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Montefiore Medical Center and has a MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Aman is also a lead for the WEMBA38 Investment Club.
Michael Hoad, MA
Born in Guyana, raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Michael earned his master’s in journalism at Stanford University. He’s lead communications offices at universities and health systems, and became a specialist in values-based messaging for CEOs. He has taught social marketing in public health, news media training, and written about issues of race and equity. He is co-author of two books with Stephen Klasko.
Larry Merlis, MBA
Larry Merlis is a seasoned health care executive with over 40 plus years of hospital and health system leadership including 28 years as CEO. Over his career Mr. Merlis has had responsibility for leading organizations including an academic medical center, teaching hospitals, and community organizations in New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania in both urban and suburban settings.
From 2015-2018 Mr. Merlis served as the Executive Vice President at Thomas Jefferson University and COO for Jefferson Health where he led the clinical enterprise and operations. Jefferson is a $9 billion, 18 hospital, 40K employee integrated delivery and financing system based in Philadelphia. Also from 2015-2021 he was responsible for overseeing the strategic partnerships and M&A functions that resulted in the addition of 13 hospitals through 7 transactions from 2015-2021.
Mr. Merlis also led the strategic ventures and innovation function at Jefferson from 2018-2021 that focused on working with startups and innovative companies to create new products and solutions that would generate value for both Jefferson and its partners.
Prior to Jefferson Mr. Merlis was appointed CEO of Abington Health in 2010, an ~$800M, 2 hospital system, in Pennsylvania; CEO of GBMC in 1999, a ~$500M organization in Maryland; EVP of Meridian Health System, a 4 hospital system in New Jersey upon its formation in 1997 responsible for the hospitals and clinical operations; and was CEO of two other hospitals in NJ prior to Meridian.
M. Merlis has an MBA from The George Washington University and a Bachelor’s from Union College.