Dear Colleagues,
Last week, the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees unanimously approved my proposal to establish the position of University chief executive officer at the University of Miami, reporting to me as the president. This move will allow the University to match the dramatic pace of change in our operating environment in every one of our verticals: the academic core, health care, intercollegiate athletics, and technological innovation. Today, I informed the board that my proposed candidate for the University CEO role is Joe Echevarria, our executive vice president for health affairs and CEO of UHealth.
Joe is a proven expert in managing complex organizations. He graduated from the Miami Herbert Business School and is a certified public accountant who joined Deloitte, LLP in 1978 and went on to become chief executive officer of the multinational professional services company, effectively leading the largest professional services organization in the United States.
At his alma mater, Joe has demonstrated his leadership acumen, financial expertise, and ability to collaborate with faculty and staff as CEO of our academic health system, a role he has held since February 2021, having served as interim CEO beginning in July 2020. He has executed plans to enhance crucial business functions in support of our health care, education, and research missions.
Under his leadership, despite a pandemic, the performance of UHealth has improved dramatically. Those of you who have worked with Joe know that he is a master at asking the right questions, empowering professionals to arrive at effective solutions, and driving accountability for results. His skill set is precisely what we need to help propel the University to achieve the vision of comprehensive excellence and selective preeminence laid out in our strategic plan. I am confident that Joe can do institution-wide what he has so effectively done at our academic health system: lead processes aimed at achieving results without second-guessing substantive expertise.
The current situation at our University is characterized by unprecedented disruption on every front, fierce competition in higher education, drastic changes in health care, significant investments in athletics, and market conditions ripe for expanding our role in tech innovation. The simultaneous presence of these forces points to the need for achieving efficiencies of scale. To that end, expanding the role of the high-performing CEO in the vertical that produces the vast majority of institutional revenue—health care—across the rest of our verticals makes perfect sense.
This organizational change will further empower me to focus on driving the vision for the institution as the only person who is simultaneously a member of the faculty, the head of the administration, and an ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees. At the same time, the new arrangement formally taps Joe’s considerable experience to achieve new—and necessary—levels of efficient and effective execution. This change adds the remaining 21% of our operations to the portfolio of the senior executive who has already proven the ability to perform as CEO of 79% of our business. In the space between strategy and operations lies execution—that is Joe’s specialty and precisely what the University CEO role is designed to help us achieve.
Under the new structure, all executive vice presidents, senior vice presidents, and the vice president/athletics director will report to the CEO. Two will do so only in their administrative (EVP) capacity, keeping a direct line to the president in their other areas of responsibility: my chief of staff, and the provost as chief academic officer directly overseeing the deans and academic leadership. The reporting and organizational structure at the health system is not affected by this change, and the faculty and shared governance structure also remains intact.
The CEO is tasked with ensuring that all business and administrative functions—whether centralized or decentralized—achieve their aims. As the head of the entire University, I continue to assume ultimate responsibility for those functions, but the new CEO role will allow me to devote even more time and energy to drive the strategic vision those functions support, represent the institution with all its constituencies, and lead the final push to achieve the goals of the current capital campaign. This model builds on the strengths of the institution’s leadership to position the University of Miami for success in its second century.
As the institution emerges from a pandemic and faces a complex economic and social landscape, it must accelerate progress to achieve the ambitious goals set forth in our strategic plan, the Roadmap to Our New Century. Doing so will require laser focus on execution. Please join me in thanking Joe for his willingness to serve in this capacity, and my entire Cabinet for their support in bringing this vision to life. Together we will strengthen the institution, truly working as one U to better serve our students, patients, and community. |
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