New California HealthCare Foundation Leader Will Continue to Practice Medicine

Sandra Hernández believes in keeping a side job.

As head of the San Francisco Foundation, a position she stepped down from last week, she also worked at the AIDS clinic at San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Hernández says practicing medicine one day a week has helped her stay in touch with the needs of nonprofits and their clients.

“One of the things that can happen in these roles is you can become a little aloof to what it is you’re actually trying to do,” she says.

Dr. Hernández, 55, who spent 16 years at the helm of the community foundation, will soon resume her dual role as doctor and grant maker when she becomes chief executive of the California HealthCare Foundation in January.

Founded in 1996, the California HealthCare Foundation has an endowment of $700-million and awards roughly $35-million in grants each year. It focuses on expanding access to health care, promoting transparency and accountability in health care, and improving treatment for people with chronic conditions.

The foundation searched for a new leader who was a practicing physician, says Micheline Chau, chairwoman of the California HealthCare Foundation’s Board of Directors and former president of Lucasfilm.

“She’s on the front lines,” Ms. Chau says of Dr. Hernández. “She knows the medical system inside and out, and she knows what works and what doesn’t work in the system.”

Dr. Hernández says she is excited about the new position because it will let her apply what she’s learned about philanthropy to help make health care available to more Californians.

The Affordable Care Act is a profound policy change for the country, and putting it into effect in the state will be critical to whether it’s successful, says Dr. Hernández.

“There’s just a ton of work to do in a very diverse state—diverse ethnically, diverse regionally,” she says. “You’ve got major urban centers with amazing delivery systems. You have rural areas that are relatively unserved.”

Long Commitments

In her new role, Dr. Hernández will draw on one of the most significant lessons she learned during her time at the San Francisco Foundation: the importance of bringing people together to tackle big challenges.

Among the proudest accomplishments during her tenure she cites efforts the foundation led to revitalize neighborhood parks, build low-cost housing near public transportation, and create job-training programs that focus on industry needs. All three projects involved grant makers, nonprofits, government agencies, and businesses.

“It is rare that we’re going to solve a social issue, an economic issue in a single sector,” she says.

Under Dr. Hernández’s leadership, says Andy Ballard, chairman of the San Francisco Foundation’s Board of Trustees, the foundation took on projects that required five or 10 years of sustained commitment to help tackle tough problems. “Sandra created a set of capabilities and an expectation that we should take on big, hairy things that can have really substantive impact on communities,” he says.

There’s no shortage of challenging issues for grant makers to support in response to the new health-care law, says Dr. Hernández.

Foundations, she says, have an important role to play in areas such as promoting innovations in health-care delivery that improve treatment for patients and working to identify unintended consequences of the new law and who will still be left without access to medical help.

Dr. Hernández says she’s happy the new job will allow her to continue working with people she’s built relationships with over the last 16 years.

“All of these colleagues I’ve had the pleasure of working with will continue to be colleagues,” she says. “What I’m spending my days and nights on will change, and where I report to work will change. But for me this is the natural next step.”

Sandra Hernández, chief executive, California HealthCare Foundation

Education: Bachelor’s degree, Yale University; M.D., Tufts University School of Medicine; program for senior executives in state and local government at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government

Career highlights: Chief executive, San Francisco Foundation; director of public health for the city and county of San Francisco

New salary: $530,000

Hobbies: Dr. Hernández enjoys hiking and gardening and is an avid San Francisco Giants fan.