Leveraging Your Succession Pipeline to Lead Effectively: Insights from the Department of Veterans Affairs

Hiring the right employees takes time and significant investment. Helping them thrive in increasingly complex healthcare environments takes even more. At the Veterans Health Administration—the nation’s largest integrated healthcare system—our commitment to delivering person-centered, state-of-the-art care depends on cultivating, developing and retaining exceptional leaders across all levels of the organization. In an era marked by workforce shortages and evolving patient needs, building a sustainable talent pipeline is both a strategic imperative and an operational necessity.

This session presents actionable strategies and proven models for designing and implementing future-ready leadership development systems that increase the talent pool, support executive succession and strengthen the healthcare system as a whole.

Using detailed examples, the session will showcase three high-impact approaches to leadership development:

1. A novel strategy for building executive pipelines through innovative partnership models across service lines and institutions


2. A statistically significant mentorship pilot that pairs aspiring clinical leaders with seasoned executives, designed to cultivate competencies for upward mobility and executive readiness


3. A modular leadership development program tailored for multidisciplinary professionals—including those in allied health, administrative and clinical roles—with a focus on promoting engagement, recognition and long-term retention

To date, more than 50% of program completers have been promoted into executive leadership roles across the enterprise and are leading our agency through significant change.

Participants will gain insight into how data-driven assessments, experiential learning and inclusive curriculum design have transformed these programs into scalable and sustainable systems. The session will also explore challenges faced and overcome, highlight new tools and frameworks created as a result of implementation, and present impact metrics that measure program success. Faculty—seasoned healthcare leaders themselves—will illuminate how they’ve strategically cultivated leadership pipelines to navigate and drive transformation. Through compelling case studies and lived experience, they will demonstrate that the future of healthcare leadership isn’t a distant vision—it’s being designed, led and accelerated right now.