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
Chief Visionary
Dr. Stephen Klasko is a transformative leader and advocate for a revolution in our systems of health care and higher education. He has been a university president, a dean, a CEO, and an obstetrician, and now pursues his vision for the creative reconstruction of American healthcare by bridging traditional academic centers with entrepreneurs and innovators.
His passion is using technology to eliminate health disparities and offer everyone the promise of health assurance. Dr. Klasko is also a lifelong DJ who believes that the message in the music can give us the courage to tackle a broken, fragmented, unfriendly, expensive, and inequitable healthcare system.
He currently serves as an executive in residence at General Catalyst, North American ambassador for Sheba Medical Center in Israel, and as CMO of Abundant Partners. He serves on the board of directors at Teleflex. In 2022, President Biden appointed him to the National Board of Education Sciences.
His 2023 book is titled Feeling Alright: How the Message in the Music can Save Healthcare. To be published by ACHE.
As president of Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health from 2013-2021, he led one of the nation’s fastest growing academic health institutions based on his vision of re-imagining health care and higher education.
Under his leadership, Jefferson expanded from three hospitals to 18 and from a health sciences university to a professional university with multiple campuses. Its revenue grew from $1.8 to $9 billion. His 2017 merger of Thomas Jefferson University with Philadelphia University created a pre-eminent national doctoral university that includes top-20 programs in fashion and design and occupational therapy, the first design-thinking curriculum in a medical school, and the nation’s leading research on the role of empathy in health care.
His track record of success has earned him Modern Healthcare’s #2 in 2018’s “100 Most Influential Individuals”; as #21 in Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business 2018”; “Philadelphia Entrepreneur of the Year 2018”; Ernst & Young’s “Greater Philadelphia Entrepreneur of the Year 2018”; and Becker’s Hospital Review’s “100 Great Leaders in Healthcare.”
Dr. Klasko is an internationally recognized advocate for transformation in health care and higher education. He is the author of 2020’s UnHealthcare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance, with Silicon Valley investor Hemant Taneja. In 2019, he spoke about the future of hospitals at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and in 2020, was named a Distinguished Fellow of the World Economic Forum and co-chair of its Board of Stewards for the Forum’s platform on the digital economy. He is co-author of the 2020 book, Patient No Longer with Ryan Donahue; Bless This Mess: A Picture Story of Healthcare in America (2018) – an account of how the USA was elected to the Intergalactic Council of Cool Health Systems by 2035; WE Can Fix Healthcare in America (2016); and The Phantom Stethoscope (1999).
He is married to Colleen Wyse, a fashion leader and founder of The Philadelphia Trunk Show, and has three children: Lynne, David and Jill.
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.
Clayton Mitchell, PE, CEM
Clayton Mitchell (Mitch) is a visionary leader and corporate real estate executive who has consistently built high performing teams capable of delivering transformational real estate portfolio results. His technical and executive acumen were honed through a 25-year career as a U.S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps officer, serving in various impactful assignments such as; Navy Legislative Fellow to the Senate Majority Leader; Vice President, Global Public Works with Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC); Director, Navy Task Force Energy coordinating energy strategy development across all major Navy Systems Commands, and; Project Executive for the $1B expansion of the National Naval Military Medical Center at Bethesda.
Mitch has leveraged these foundational experiences in creating exceptional value within the healthcare sector, in various executive real estate assignments with Kaiser Permanente and ultimately, as Senior Vice President, Real Estate and Facilities for Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health. Over a four-year timeframe, Mitch completely transformed Jefferson’s real estate and facilities (public safety) into an industry leading enterprise shared service, driving $250M in value extraction across the entire spectrum of facilities management services delivery. Mitch is a graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (BS Industrial Engineering) and University of California at Berkeley (MS Civil Engineer/Construction Management) and has completed executive management and leadership programs at Tuck School of Business (Dartmouth) and the Harvard Business School.
