Dr. Rosa Colon-Kolacko

Rosa M. Colon-Kolacko, PhD, MBA, CDM, is the president and founder of Global Learning and Diversity Partners, LLC, and the former NYC Health + Hospitals senior vice president and chief people officer.

The NYC Health + Hospitals is a $6.7 billion integrated healthcare delivery system, the largest municipal healthcare organization in the country, and one of the New York area’s largest providers of government-sponsored health insurance—MetroPlus Health Plan, the plan of choice for nearly half a million New Yorkers. Rosa’s functional responsibilities included learning and development, talent acquisition, facility HR, HR shared services, organizational effectiveness (lean/breakthrough) and innovation, diversity and inclusion, language services, health equity, benefits, HR policies, employee retirement programs, HR transformation, change management, workforce planning, and patient experience.

Global Learning and Diversity Partners is a consulting services organization that focuses on implementing human capital and diversity strategies to build inclusive and learning organizations. Rosa also co-founded Health Innovation Globally, LLC, providing multi-cultural consulting services to support organizations globally by introducing to new markets innovative telemedicine products that improve healthcare access and build healthy communities.

For most of the past decade, she served Christiana Care Health System in Delaware as senior vice president of its learning institute, and chief diversity officer. Earlier in her career she worked at Bristol Myers-Squibb and, before that, SmithKline Beecham (since renamed GlaxoSmithKline), leading change and talent management functions in Asia, Europe, and North America, including Puerto Rico.

Rosa has over 20 years of experience in global pharmaceuticals, academia and nonprofit, and has been highly successful at demonstrating business results through the implementation of learning and development, diversity, inclusion, cultural competency and equity strategies, organization development, talent management strategies, LGBTQ, equity, language services, educator development, competency-based learning (intensify learning to transform organizations to achieve high levels of performance), and leveraging technology.

Rosa is very involved in many national- and state-level boards and commissions: chair of the strategic planning committee for the National Association of Latino Healthcare Executives (part of ACHE), chair of the Delaware Hispanic Commission health and social services committee, where she conducted a statewide cultural competence and linguistic study, and also serves on the American Leadership Council of the Institute for Diversity and Equity. She has lead statewide projects in Delaware working directly with the past secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS), where she conducted a study of all agencies and developed the white paper, “DHSS Diversity and Cultural Competence Strategy.”

Rosa holds a PhD in organizational development and change from Benedictine University, an MBA from Henley Business School, University of Reading England, a post-graduate marketing diploma from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, London, and a certificate in diversity management (CDM) from Georgetown University and the AHA Institute for Diversity in Healthcare Management.

A researcher, she has held academic positions as professor of professional practice at Bowling Green State University, adjunct faculty at Georgetown University, University of Delaware, and most recent appointment at Jefferson, University of Philadelphia. Rosa has conducted research in the areas of change management, partnership between organization development and IT, and role of the chief diversity officer and cultural and linguistic services to promote equity.