Katherine Santos, MBA

Katherine S. Santos is the chief strategy officer (CSO) at Legacy Lifecare (LL), a leading and innovative network of nonprofit senior care organizations (Affiliates) that provide high quality and compassionate post-acute and residential care in Massachusetts. As CSO, she oversees the organizational strategies for advancing clinical and operational excellence at LL. Working with senior leadership, Katherine leads the formation, facilitation, tracking, communication, and achievement of annual strategic goals. She also leads the evaluation of prospective Affiliates and integration of new Affiliates into LL as well as assists the CEO with board communication and engagement.

Katherine joined LL in 2019 as vice president of Strategy and Operational Excellence, leading and facilitating efforts that enhance and expand a culture of service excellence and continuous improvement. In 2022, she became regional president, Chelsea of Chelsea Jewish Lifecare, a founding LL Affiliate. As regional president, she managed the strategic direction and operations of two award-winning nursing homes (Leonard Florence Center for Living and Katzman Family Center for Living), a highly regarded assisted living residence (Cohen Florence Levine Estates and Florence & Chafetz Home for Specialized Care) and five-star rated Chelsea Jewish Home Care and Hospice. Together, these services offer a comprehensive continuum of care for seniors and individuals living with neurological conditions.

Throughout her career, Katherine has established herself as a leading expert in healthcare quality and performance improvement. Prior to joining LL, she spent seventeen years working in this field at Brigham Health, most recently as the director of Service Excellence and Performance Improvement at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital. Katherine is also on the leadership board of the Massachusetts Healthcare Lean Network, a grassroots organization with over 400 members and 100 healthcare organizations across Massachusetts and New England that promotes learning within the healthcare quality and process improvement field.

Katherine is also passionate about sharing her experiences and teaching healthcare leaders how to lead quality improvement in their own organizations. She is a highly trained and experienced instructor of Lean, Kaizen, Work-Out, and Change Acceleration Process by GE Healthcare Performance Solutions. Katherine also holds several teaching positions in the Postgraduate Medical Education Department at Harvard Medical School, frequently serving as faculty in both the master’s degree and certificate programs attended by healthcare leaders across the globe. She is currently the lead program director of the Safety, Quality, Informatics, and Leadership Program and the Leadership in Medicine: Egypt Program, the associate program director of the Master of Healthcare Quality and Safety, and the capstone director of the Leadership in Medicine Program at Sunway University.

Katherine earned her Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from Harvard. She also holds a Master of Business Administration, with a concentration on Business Analytics, from MIT Sloan School of Management.