In healthcare, there is sometimes a disconnect between executives and those who provide direct clinical care, but not when Jynette, who works at USC Arcadia Hospital, is in the room.
A registered nurse by training, Jynette began her career in clinical care, where she quickly became a champion for empowering nurses and improving unit-level processes through unit-based councils. Her journey has taken her through roles in education, quality improvement, performance excellence and hospital strategy, always guided by her deep understanding of what it means to care for patients firsthand.
That frontline perspective remains her compass. Today, Jynette serves as the first registered nurse to hold the position of chief of staff to the president and CEO at USC Arcadia Hospital — a groundbreaking role that reflects her ability to translate clinical insight into strategic leadership.
Bold, grounded, and deeply mission-driven, Jynette is known for driving meaningful culture change. She sees both the forest and the trees, and she’s just as comfortable at the bedside as she is in the boardroom. Her leadership is hands-on, empathetic, and relentless in the pursuit of better outcomes for both patients and staff.
Jynette’s superpower lies in her ability to harness the strengths of nurses to transform care. In her short career, she has led high-impact quality improvement projects through nursing and interprofessional collaboration, such as reducing deep venous thrombosis in surgical patients, optimizing critical care progression through implementation of the ICU Liberation Campaign across 8 ICUs, building dashboards, improving length of stay through multidisciplinary rounds, and implementing new clinical programs across the hospital.
Through her work, Jynette exemplifies the powerful role nurses can play in leadership — and why their voices are essential at every level of a health system.Â