President, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center

Jennifer Nickoles, M.S., president of Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, first came to Johns Hopkins in 1996 as a space management data coordinator in the school of medicine’s facilities management department. Over the last quarter century, she has helped to shape the strategic vision for Johns Hopkins Medicine in a number of leadership roles throughout the institution. Ms. Nickoles is returning to the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus, where she served for over a decade as the senior manager for the division of rheumatology and then as the assistant administrator for the division of pulmonary and critical care.

In her previous role as vice president of system integration and affiliations for Johns Hopkins, Ms. Nickoles was responsible for integrating our Johns Hopkins Health System network of hospitals across Maryland; Washington, D.C.; and Florida; and leading the Office of Health Care Transformation and Strategic Planning. She was also responsible for developing and implementing Johns Hopkins Medicine’s strategic plan, as well as overseeing management and expansion of affiliations and partnerships with regional hospitals and health systems. At Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, she implemented the hospital-wide recommendations to improve governance, quality and safety, medical affairs, human resources, and risk management processes and co-facilitated the system improvement agreement with CMS to improve regulatory compliance. Ms. Nickoles also served as the interim vice president for operations at JHACH during this time.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms. Nickoles led a joint team with representatives from the state of Maryland and Baltimore City, as well as leaders from Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical System, to stand up a 250-bed state-licensed COVID-19 field hospital at the Baltimore Convention Center (BCCFH). She held the position of chief operating officer and now serves in a governing role as a member of the BCCFH Oversight Committee.

Ms. Nickoles has previously served as chief of staff for Johns Hopkins Medicine, developing and ensuring the coordination and execution of JHM strategic initiatives and the governance structure of JHM. As a senior advisor to the dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and CEO of JHM, and the president of the Johns Hopkins Health System and executive vice president of JHM, she helped develop the five-year roadmap to expand JHM markets, the clinical delivery system and academic programs. As the director of the Office of Faculty and Research Resources, she designed and launched a senior faculty retirement program and the Academy at Johns Hopkins, a post-retirement college for emeritus faculty members at the schools of medicine, nursing and public health. During that time, she also created an institutional framework to manage more than 120 core facilities and implemented an enterprise-wide, web-based software program.

For the first 20 years of her career at Johns Hopkins, Ms. Nickoles took on increasing levels of responsibility and served in a variety of operations, finance and management roles within the Department of Medicine in the divisions of nephrology, rheumatology, and pulmonary and critical care. She earned her bachelor of science in business and management as the Delta Sigma Pi Scholar from The Johns Hopkins University, as well as a master of science in real estate. Ms. Nickoles also completed the Leading Transformation for Value-based Health Care executive program through the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and is a Carol Emmott Fellow.

She volunteers on the Executive Leadership Team of the American Heart Association Go Red for Women campaign and was a past co-chair of the committee. Ms. Nickoles is passionate about mentoring and serves as a preceptor for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health MHA residency program. She resides in Maryland with her husband and four sons.