Title: President

Company: Weis Associates, LLC

Location: Scottsdale, Az.

Shirley A. Weis is President of Weis Associates, LLC, an international management and leadership development consulting firm. She specializes in providing strategic advice to leaders in health care, insurance medical related startup companies. Prior to launching Weis Associates, Ms. Weis was Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer (the chief operational executive) for Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Her work involved coordinating overall institutional strategy and operations of Mayo Clinic’s $9 billion, 60,000 employee healthcare system that treats more than a million patients a year from around the world through its sites in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Ms. Weis has earned the reputation of a world-class leader adept in combining strategic leadership, communications and financial expertise to execute and provide oversight on enterprise-wide initiatives that enhance quality, safety and service while assuring bottom line results. She also relies on her educational background to keep herself strong and frequent in success, including earning a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Michigan State University and a master’s degree in management from Aquinas College, as well as the honorary doctoral degree she received from Michigan State University. Ms. Weis has a broad academic and teaching background. She is Emeritus Professor in the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, and has also taught healthcare leadership at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, Michigan State University, University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, Lansing Community College and for the Michigan Hospital Association.

The biggest challenge Ms. Weis has had to overcome was demonstrating her abilities in order to become the first woman in the 150-year history of the Mayo Clinic to be promoted to the Chief Administrative Officer position. Her greatest strengths are her ability to anticipate needs ahead of the curve, develop a strategic vision and to execute that vision; she is most proud of her ability to be an effective coach, mentor and an inspirational role model for women. A magna cum laude graduate of Michigan State University’s College of Nursing, Ms. Weis also earned a Master’s in Management degree from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Mich. She has been named a Michigan State University Distinguished Alumna and has received the Diana Award for Outstanding Business Women She was named one of the Top 25 Women in Healthcare by Modern Healthcare magazine for 2007 and 2013. Ms. Weis was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science Degree from Michigan State University in 2014.