Kathy is the Principal of KPW Solutions LLC, which provides change management improvement solutions to healthcare organizations, while building exceptional leadership capacity by strategically aligning culture and executive coaching. KPW Solutions assists organizations with creating a culture of safety, establishing quality outcomes, initiating ANCC’s Magnet journey, embracing shared decision-making, enhancing patient and family engagement, and establishing peer review for professional clinical practice.
Kathy has extensive experience leading the establishment of shared governance structures. She brings experience from academic health science centers, large multi-institutional health systems, and independent hospitals coupled with an understanding of collective bargaining and right-to-work environments. Through her vision and leadership, she collaborates with many executives to transform organizational culture leading to the adoption of exemplary professional practices. She has a wealth of experience in engaging, developing, and implementing a robust professional peer review program. For the past eight years, Kathy co-led the annual Academy for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety: the Telluride experience patient safety “boot camps” for medical students and graduate nursing students. She has served as the Magnet Program Director for three institutions in the Midwest.
While at the University of Chicago Medicine, Kathy was the nurse faculty member on three grants focused on improving physician-nurse relationships. Her background includes working at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago as a neonatal staff nurse, shared governance president, and as a project manager at Rush University College of Nursing.
Her areas of expertise, where she’s published and presented regionally and nationally, include patient safety, change management, shared decision-making, and interprofessional education. She has published on several topics, including aligning patient safety with the ANCC Magnet recognition program.
Kathy holds a Master of Science degree in nursing with an emphasis in leadership and patient safety from the University of Illinois, College of Nursing and a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Illinois, Chicago, Liautaud Graduate School of Business. She completed her undergraduate education at Northern Illinois University majoring in sociology and initiated her nursing education at the College of DuPage.