Northwell board names Margaret Crotty as first female chair

Northwell Health’s board of trustees has elected its first female chair.

Margaret M. Crotty was chosen unanimously this month by the 37-member board of the New Hyde Park health care system, Northwell said this week.

Crotty, 50, is president and CEO of JSI, a global non-profit that manages public health, education and other projects in 40 countries and consults on health equity for federal, state and local governments in the United States.

She takes over the unpaid leadership post from Michael Epstein, who has chaired the board for four years. Crotty has been a member of Northwell’s board since 2019.

Northwell is New York’s largest private employer, with 83,000 workers. It's fitting that the health care system would have a female board chair, given that its workforce is 72% female, Crotty noted in an interview Tuesday. Overall, women make up 78% of the nation’s health care and social assistance industries, 2021 federal data show.

Women also make the majority of health care decisions, Crotty said. Research has shown that 80% of consumer health care decisions are made by women.

Crotty said her primary areas of interest include the social, economic, environmental and other non-medical factors that have been shown to account for 80% of health outcomes.

“If all you control is 20%, you're not going to have that much of an impact,” she said of health care providers. That’s why Northwell focuses on community programs, she said: “If you can really start thinking about how the other 80% affects the care, then you're going to have a much bigger impact.”

Crotty holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in history and African-American studies, an MBA from Harvard Business School and a master’s in public health from Columbia University. She has served as CEO of Partnership with Children, which provides community and school-based mental health care, and she launched and managed Save the Children’s $2 billion initiative to reduce global child and maternal mortality.

Crotty is “an incredibly esteemed executive, familiar with the complexities of health care delivery, and passionate about improving the health of individuals and communities around the world,” Michael J. Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell, said in a statement.

She lives in Manhattan with her husband, Rory Riggs, who works in biotech, and their 10-year-old son.