Valerie Santana is a Principal and the National CDT Leader for the Executive Workforce Practice of SullivanCotter. With over 15 years of experience as a consultant, Valerie works with academic medical centers across the U.S., helping them attract and retain top talent through the design of strategic and competitive total compensation strategies. As the National CDT Leader, Valerie oversees and manages the firm’s national client delivery team model. She collaborates with other leaders of the firm to establish and execute talent management strategies that align and support the overall strategies of the Practice and the Firm.

Her experience includes:

• Advising boards and compensation committees in the creation of total rewards philosophies and programs that align with their organizational goals, leader demographics and industry dynamics.
• Developing real-time, customized peer groups based on size, type of care, revenue and research dollars, industry rankings and other unique characteristics to ensure that surveys, analysis and recommendations reflect market needs.
• Creating governance education, policies and dashboards to help organizations manage effective and compliant decision-making related to executive pay.
• Designing long- and short-term incentive plans – based on a variety of metrics such as quality, financial results, population health efforts and post-M&A integration – to drive business success and high levels of performance.
• Reviewing and designing an organization’s titling structures to support its strategy and mission and compare with its peer groups and the health care industry overall.
• Helping facilitate succession planning to anticipate a variety of changes and to map out smooth leadership transitions for the future.
• Preparing formal opinion letters regarding the reasonableness of compensation provided to disqualified persons of not-for-profit 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) organizations.

Valerie is an active member of American College of Healthcare Executives, WorldatWork, the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration and the Association of Healthcare Human Resources Administrators of Greater New York.

Valerie has a Bachelor of Science in accounting from Felician University in Lodi, New Jersey and a Master of Business Administration with a dual focus in business strategy and leadership development and marketing from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.