Paula is a trailblazing leader and passionate voice for equity. A strategic, systems-level thinker and partnership cultivator, Paula has over 15 years of experience in the healthcare industry including clinical operations, health equity, and managing internal and external diversity relations. She currently serves as Director, Health Equity at CVS Kidney Care®, a CVS Health company. In this role, she is responsible for creating the inaugural health equity strategy to address social determinants of health and achieve more equitable health outcomes in communities with Chronic Kidney Disease and End-Stage Renal Disease across the country.
Prior to CVS Health, she served as Director, Diversity and Inclusion at RWJBarnabas Health, NJ’s largest academic healthcare system. During her tenure at RWJBarnabas Health, she was instrumental in designing and implementing programs and strategies that foster diversity, health equity and inclusion such as addressing health inequities and social determinants of health in historically marginalized communities. Her portfolio also included operational oversight of and expansion of the Babs Sipertsein PROUD Center, NJ’s 1st LGBTQ+ healthcare center affiliated with a healthcare system. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Paula helped lead RWJBarnabas Health’s outreach efforts in the Hispanic community to increase awareness on the spread of COVID-19 and encourage vaccination. These efforts contributed to a significant decline in COVID-19 cases among Hispanics in Somerset County, NJ and garnered statewide recognition from the New Jersey Hospital Association and NJBIZ Magazine. She authored a chapter of a Population Health Management textbook for graduate students highlighting this work as a case study.
Paula’s health care leadership experience also includes serving as Administrator for the Kidney/Pancreas and Liver Transplant Divisions at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City and various roles with the NJ Sharing Network, where she worked closely with hospitals, transplant centers and community organizations to increase access and awareness of organ and tissue donation and transplantation.
Paula is also active in her civic community. She serves as a Board Trustee at Partners for Health Foundation in Montclair, NJ; a Civil Rights Commissioner for Bloomfield Township, NJ; and an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University’s School of Health and Medical Sciences.
Paula holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from New Jersey Institute of Technology and a Master’s degree in Healthcare Administration from Seton Hall University.