Omkar P. Kulkarni is Children's Hospital Los Angeles' (CHLA) first chief innovation officer. In his role, Kulkarni is responsible for fostering innovation across CHLA's clinical and research enterprises – including finding successful new methods of care, incubating new medical tools and software, and rallying communities in and out of the hospital to solve problems in the field of pediatrics – all with the goal of enhancing the experience and outcomes for the children and families CHLA serves.

Prior to joining CHLA, Kulkarni served as Executive Director of the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator powered by Techstars, where he helped build and launch the accelerator program. In that role, he evaluated over 3,000 healthcare start-ups and provided extensive mentoring, serving as the main liaison between the start-up community and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Kulkarni also led the performance improvement department at Cedars-Sinai for many years and has experience in financial process redesign at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Kulkarni has a master’s degree in public health and health care management from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from George Washington University.

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