Dr. J. Nwando Olayiwola

President, Advocate National Center for Clinical & Community Impact and Senior Vice President, Advocate Health; Professor, Wake Forest School of Medicine

Dr. J. Nwando Olayiwola, MD, MPH, FAAFP is an experienced and transformational primary care physician and healthcare executive with a distinguished track record of leadership across community health, academic medicine, private practice, managed care, and corporate healthcare environments. A respected business builder and visionary leader, she currently serves as the President of the Advocate National Center for Clinical & Community Impact (CCI) and Senior Vice President of Advocate Health, roles she assumed in August 2024. She is also a Professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.

Previously, Dr. Olayiwola was the inaugural Chief Health Equity Officer and Senior Vice President at Humana, Inc., serving from 2021 to 2024. Prior to her corporate leadership, she held academic and clinical leadership roles as Professor and Chair of the Department of Family Medicine and Chief of Family Health Services at The Ohio State University. There, she also founded the Center for Primary Care Innovation and Transformation. She has previously served as Director of the Center for Excellence in Primary Care at University of California, San Francisco, Chief Clinical Transformation Officer at RubiconMD (a health tech start up focused on bridging the gap between primary and specialty care), and Chief Medical Officer of Community Health Center, Inc., Connecticut’s largest Federally Qualified Health Center system.

Dr. Olayiwola, board-certified in Family Medicine and a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, is recognized for her expertise in health systems redesign, primary care transformation, and addressing health disparities. She is a dynamic and accomplished executive with extensive operational and strategic leadership experience, having led teams ranging from 15 to 500 staff and managed budgets between $4 million and $35 million.

Dr. Olayiwola is celebrated for her innovative use of technology and creative solutions to expand access to care for underserved populations. Her work spans global health system strengthening, clinical quality improvement, strategic partnerships, and the development of national and scalable programs. She is also a passionate advocate for women’s health and empowerment, having designed numerous impactful programs to improve the lives of women and girls worldwide. An accomplished author, Dr. Olayiwola has published 4 books and countless scientific articles. Some of her health services research interests include closure of care gaps and elimination of health disparities through evidence-based practice transformation, technological advancements to improve access to and quality of care, leveraging patient experiences for clinical quality improvement, health system transformation to build healthy communities, harnessing big data and analytics tostrengthen the health of communities and individuals, empowerment of caregivers to provide holistic and patient-centered care, and clinical-social health integration.

Her global influence includes consulting health ministries and organizations in multiple countries on hospital-primary care integration, technology innovation, and equitable care delivery. In recognition of her contributions to the field, she was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine in October 2022, one of the highest honors in healthcare and into The Ohio State University Hall of Fame through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion in April 2024.

Dr. Olayiwola was a Commonwealth Fund/Harvard University Fellow in Minority Health Policy at Harvard Medical School from 2004 to 2005. During this fellowship and leadership training, she received her master’s degree in public health with a concentration in health policy from the Harvard School of Public Health and was also a Presidential Scholar. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Human Nutrition/Pre-Medicine at the Ohio State University, Summa Cum Laude and With Distinction, and her medical degree from the Ohio State University/ Cleveland Clinic Foundation with multiple Honors. She completed her residency training in family medicine at Columbia University/New York Presbyterian Hospital, where she was a Chief Resident. In 2013, she was inducted into the American College of Physician Executives after completing the Certified Physician Executive program in 2012. She completed the Harvard Business School’s Credential of Readiness Certificate in Financial Accounting, Economics for Managers and Business Analytics in 2024. Personally, Dr. Olayiwola is married and has two children and enjoys traveling, reading novels, gardening, sports, and all types of music. She is an active member of her local community, a number of non-profit organizations, as well as her sorority.