Dr. Stephen K. Klasko, M.D. M.B.A.

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 in 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.