Johnese Spisso doesn’t talk about her career as a series of promotions. She talks about it as clear moments of responsibilities – each one building on the last and anchored in a fundamental belief that the quality of patient care depends on the people delivering it.
That philosophy was forged early. Spisso began her professional life as a critical care nurse in the medical, surgical and transplant intensive care unit at the University of Medical Center Presbyterian in Pittsburgh, where she supported some of the institution’s most complex and groundbreaking procedures. For Spisso, it was a formative posting – high-stakes, intensely collaborative and built around the kind of multidisciplinary teamwork that would later define her management style.
“Nurses have the opportunity to be working with every team member,” said Spisso, who also grew up in Pittsburgh. “You understand what the doctors need, what the physical therapists need, what respiratory therapy needs, what social work needs – and how all of that together to really create the best care for a patient.”
Now in her ninth year as president of UCLA Health – the first woman ever to hold that position – Spisso is at the center of some of the most consequential health care decisions across a system of five hospitals and more than 280 clinics in Southern California and the Central Coast. For one, she’s overseeing a $600 million expansion of mental health care, with the fall 2026 opening of the UCLA Lynda and Stewart Resnick Neuropsychiatric Campus.
The scale of such a project, and the many other programs under her watch, is underpinned by philanthropic and strategic investment – driving research and innovation that benefits the entire community, she said.
“The philanthropy allows us to bring forward new facilities, new treatments, new cures – and really part of our quest to improve the health of our whole community,” she said. “We couldn’t do it without them.”
Climbing every rung
Spisso’s start as a registered nurse is the foundation of everything for her. Following her early years in Pittsburgh, Spisso moved to California to pursue her graduate degree from the University of San Francisco. She landed at the University of California, Davis, where she spent the next 12 years building her administrative credentials. From there, she joined the UW Medicine in Seattle, eventually rising to lead the health system – overseeing its hospital, clinics and Airlift Northwest program – for eight of her 22 years with the medical center.
The pivotal moment in her leadership trajectory came during graduate school, Spisso said. As a nursing manager at the time, she was at a crossroads: pursue a clinical nurse specialty or pivot to management and business. She chose the latter and never looked back.
A system at scale
In 2016, Spisso joined UCLA Health as president. She’s also chief executive of UCLA Hospital System and associate vice chancellor of UCLA Health Sciences.
The scope of what she manages on any given day is staggering – and yet she speaks about it with the same grounded clarity she applies to a single patient interaction. She brings, in particular, urgency to the expansion of women’s health services at UCLA Health – one that is both institutional and personal. She has used her platform to drive investment in programs and research that have historically been underfunded and overlooked. That includes women’s maternal health, UCLA Health’s Women’s Health Cardiovascular Center, and its comprehensive menopause program. Spisso credits the slow progress in women’s health research and treatment to a simple structural reality. For too long, women were absent from the rooms where these decisions were made.
“Now that we have more women in medicine – more women who are leaders in health systems – that has really changed things, she said”
The $600 million mental health investment
Perhaps no initiative better illustrates Spisso’s long-range thinking than the expanded neuropsychiatric campus, a project that’s been years in the making. It all began when UCLA Health acquired a shuttered hospital in the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood and committed to rebuilding it as a state-of-the-art mental health facility. Total investment: roughly $600 million. The result will be a 139-bed inpatient mental health center and a dedicated outpatient clinic, nearly doubling the system’s current 74-bed capacity. In February, a $100 million gift from philanthropists Lynda and Stewart Resnick – also billionaire owners of The Wonderful Co. – solidified the effort.
Spisso noted that the project comes at a critical juncture, when many mental health systems are reducing access to behavioral health services because of poor reimbursement. UCLA Health has followed the data that shows what the Covid-19 pandemic made undeniable – a sustained rise in depression, anxiety and acute mental health needs, especially among young adults and kids, she said.
“There’s such a great need for mental health services,” Spisso said. “It’s one of the most vulnerable patient populations we have … The need for beds has just gone up and up. We’re really thrilled to be bringing this forward for our community.”
