Lisa Gutierrez is a global business executive, healthcare leader, strategist, board trustee, and advisor whose career has been defined by an ability to connect people, ideas, and organizational priorities to solve complex problems and create sustainable results. With more than 25 years of experience spanning healthcare, professional services, manufacturing, academia, research, and other industries, Lisa brings an unusually broad perspective to executive and board-level challenges. She is recognized for translating ambitious strategies into practical action while helping organizations remain grounded in their mission, values, people, and stakeholders. At the center of her leadership philosophy is a straightforward principle: meaningful business performance and doing the right thing do not have to be competing objectives.
Most recently, Lisa served as Vice President of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion for Ardent Health from March 2024 through May 2025, adding another significant healthcare leadership role to an already extensive career in the sector. Previously, she served as Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer for Indiana University Health, where she provided strategic leadership across a healthcare system of approximately 38,000 team members. Her work extended well beyond traditional diversity initiatives, intersecting with patient experience, workforce strategy, leadership, community relationships, health equity, organizational culture, data, and enterprise performance. Among her accomplishments, Lisa helped integrate DEI into the operating rhythm of a highly decentralized healthcare organization and partnered across functions to develop practical solutions to longstanding organizational and patient-facing challenges.
Her tenure at Indiana University Health demonstrated Lisa’s ability to turn strategy into measurable organizational impact. She helped develop an integrated learning curriculum addressing civility and respect, bias, cultural humility, and anti-racism in healthcare, with more than 91 percent of approximately 38,000 employees completing the initial modules. The internally developed approach was estimated to save the organization more than $8 million in external training fees. Lisa also developed and launched DEI dashboards integrated with executive and HR reporting, helped improve leadership representation, and influenced the addition of DEI measures to employee engagement efforts. These initiatives reflected a hallmark of her career: combining human-centered leadership with disciplined measurement, accountability, and business results.
Before joining IU Health, Lisa served as Vice President of Diversity & Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer for Cardinal Health, a global healthcare services and products organization. There, she refreshed enterprise strategy around customers, people, community, and suppliers, gaining Board of Directors approval for the strategic direction within her first four months. She strengthened the organization’s use of metrics, dashboards, talent reviews, leader scorecards, and leadership accountability while providing consulting and coaching across the enterprise. She also leveraged the company’s management incentive framework to communicate effective inclusive-leadership practices to thousands of leaders, with the vast majority implementing related goals in their annual planning.
Lisa’s executive perspective was shaped well before her healthcare leadership roles. As Senior Director of Diversity & Inclusion for Cox Enterprises, she launched an internal consulting practice that became a center of excellence for enterprise D&I thought leadership and advisory work. At Cummins, she served as Executive Director of Global Diversity, leading strategies across a workforce of approximately 50,000 employees in more than 50 countries and developing a five-year strategy to embed diversity and inclusion into the organization’s broader human resources infrastructure. Earlier roles at the University of California’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, Deloitte Consulting, and Procter & Gamble gave her experience across leadership development, workforce performance, learning, recruiting, customer business development, organizational change, and complex institutional environments.
That progression has given Lisa a distinctive combination of operating experience and advisory capability. Through LG Strategies, LLC, she has also applied her experience as a managing partner and consultant, helping organizations address executive leadership, talent management, human resources, organizational development, change leadership, and diversity strategy. Her approach is particularly valuable in environments undergoing growth or transformation, where leaders must connect today’s realities with future ambitions without losing sight of organizational purpose. Lisa is adept at identifying connections others may overlook, aligning diverse stakeholders around a common objective, and helping organizations move from discussion to practical, sustainable action. Her professional capabilities are reinforced by extensive experience in strategy, leadership development, organizational effectiveness, change management, executive coaching, talent management, and cross-functional leadership.
Lisa brings this same perspective to board governance and philanthropic stewardship. She has served as a Trustee of the Mount Carmel Health Foundation and currently chairs its Allocations Committee, with her board service scheduled to conclude on December 31, 2026. As part of the Trinity Health ecosystem, the Foundation operates at an important intersection of healthcare, philanthropy, community priorities, and responsible stewardship. Lisa has helped influence approaches that consider not simply where resources are allocated, but how those investments can generate meaningful value for patients, communities, donors, and the healthcare mission. She is particularly proud of governance and strategic practices developed through the Foundation that anticipated broader system expectations and demonstrated how thoughtful board leadership can connect community impact with disciplined decision-making.
Lisa brings 13 years of sales experience with Procter & Gamble, complemented by extensive experience teaching and implementing Decision Mapping, a strategic sales methodology focused on identifying the key owners, influencers, and implementers behind complex decisions and helping organizations move those decisions successfully through execution. This thought leadership, combined with her strong business acumen and experience with methodologies such as Lean and Six Sigma, has shaped her ability to develop practical solutions across diverse roles and industries. She is particularly skilled at helping organizations establish the language, rhythm, and alignment needed to implement decisions and programs effectively. Her approach is also informed by principles of business anthropology, enabling her to navigate stakeholder differences across locations, countries, cultures, and organizational contexts while building shared understanding and driving meaningful outcomes.
Her global experience further strengthens the perspective she brings to executive teams and boards. Throughout her career, Lisa has worked across cultural, geographic, and organizational boundaries, with experience involving Brazil, China, Europe, South Africa, Nigeria, Australia, Mexico, India, Puerto Rico, and numerous other markets and regions. At Cummins, her responsibilities extended across more than 50 countries, requiring her to translate enterprise strategy into approaches that could work within very different cultural contexts. This global exposure taught her that effective leadership cannot simply export one solution everywhere; leaders must understand local realities while maintaining alignment around shared enterprise objectives. Her ability to listen, adapt, influence, and connect across differences has therefore become as important to her leadership style as the strategies themselves.
Lisa is also an experienced communicator who is comfortable engaging audiences ranging from employees and emerging leaders to senior executives, community stakeholders, and professional organizations. Her speaking experience has included engagements in New York, with the Indiana CPA Association, at The Ohio State University, and in other professional and academic settings. She approaches communication as a leadership responsibility rather than simply a presentation skill. Whether facilitating a difficult conversation, coaching an executive, presenting strategy, or helping stakeholders understand a complex organizational issue, Lisa works to make ideas accessible, actionable, and relevant to the people responsible for carrying them forward.
Underlying Lisa’s professional achievements is a leadership philosophy centered on helping other people succeed. She values working behind the scenes when necessary, creating conditions in which colleagues and leaders can shine while keeping attention focused on the mission rather than personal recognition. Her experience has taught her that organizations increasingly need leaders who can shift quickly, adapt thoughtfully, and connect seemingly unrelated issues without sacrificing integrity or long-term thinking. She brings a reputation for building trust, considering perspectives that might otherwise go unheard, and balancing decisive action with thoughtful stakeholder engagement. Her longstanding executive experience has consistently required her to navigate complexity while maintaining high ethical standards and organizational credibility.
Lisa holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing and Organizational Management from the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. Her professional development includes certification in the Birkman Instrument and MBTI Assessment, and her career recognition has included being named among Hispanic Magazine’s Top 100 Hispanic Influentials and receiving recognition as one of Black Enterprise Magazine’s Top 100 Diversity Leaders. Her history of civic and professional involvement has also included the Columbus Council on World Affairs, America’s Essential Hospitals Education Committee, the Vizient CDO Council, and other leadership and professional initiatives.
As Lisa looks toward the next chapter of her career, she is particularly interested in contributing at the board level, where the breadth of her experience can support organizations facing growth, transformation, workforce, governance, healthcare, culture, and stakeholder challenges. She brings the perspective of an executive who has worked inside large global enterprises, healthcare systems, consulting environments, research institutions, and community organizations. Whether advising a growing company seeking to scale responsibly or contributing to the governance of an established enterprise, Lisa’s value lies in her ability to see connections, ask thoughtful questions, align people around purpose, and help translate complexity into action. She views effective board service not as an opportunity to occupy a seat, but as a responsibility to bring experience, curiosity, integrity, and practical insight to decisions that shape an organization’s future.
Character:
Lisa leads with integrity, humility, and a deeply rooted commitment to helping organizations and people succeed while remaining aligned with their values. She builds trust by listening to different perspectives, doing the work behind the scenes when appropriate, and keeping sustainable organizational impact ahead of personal recognition.
Knowledge:
Her career combines more than 25 years of experience across healthcare, global business, human resources, organizational development, leadership, strategy, culture, talent, and transformation. Having worked across multiple industries, organizational models, and international environments, she brings an interdisciplinary perspective that enables her to recognize connections that may be missed when challenges are viewed through only one functional lens.
Strategic:
Lisa excels at connecting present-day realities with future organizational objectives and converting complex ideas into practical approaches that leaders can implement. Her experience developing enterprise strategies, establishing measurement systems, allocating resources, advising executives, and influencing organizational change enables her to balance mission, stakeholder needs, business performance, and long-term sustainability.
Communication:
An experienced speaker, facilitator, coach, and executive advisor who can engage audiences across organizational levels, professional disciplines, and cultural backgrounds. She communicates complex subjects in ways that encourage understanding and action while using listening, influence, and thoughtful dialogue to build alignment among stakeholders.
