Dr. Elizabeth Baca - Social Entrepreneur and Physician Dedicated to Creating Total Health and Well-Being

Elizabeth Baca, MD, MPA, Specialist Leader at Deloitte Consulting Strategy and Analytics

Dr. Elizabeth Baca is a Specialist Leader at Deloitte providing systems thinking and insights to health care and life science clients to support care delivery innovation and research to foster total health and well-being.

She served in both administrations of Governor Brown and Governor Newsom, first as Senior Health Advisor and then Deputy Director in the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research for California. She has worked on a variety of projects to foster health through land use planning, systems change, food systems, precision health, precision medicine and big data. Much of her work is about connecting the dots; she loves working across sectors to foster participant-centered design and collaboration. A significant part of her work is aligning win-wins for projects that offer co-benefits particularly in addressing the social, economic, and environmental factors that impact health. As an example, she has done work to improve health through climate mitigation and adaptation projects. In her role with California, she has provided leadership and guidance to several initiatives including The California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine, the Global Climate Action Summit, and the California Health Care Climate Alliance.

Dr. Baca has served in several national and global advisory roles including with the Urban Land Institutes Health Leaders Program, an advisor to FoodSystem6, a food system accelerator, and as a contributor and member of the Biotech Futures Council for the World Economic Forum. She has been a contributing author on several publications including the National Academy of Sciences (formally Institute of Medicine) Consensus Committee for Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity, Demystifying Big Data and Machine Learning for Health Care, and Precision Medicine: An Action Plan for California.

Previously, she served on the General Pediatric Faculty at Stanford Medical School and directed the Community Pediatric and Child Advocacy Rotation.

Dr. Baca studied health policy at Universidad Simon Bolivar in Venezuela. She completed her Masters in Public Administration at Harvard Kennedy School of Government and her Doctorate of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Baca completed her residency in the Pediatric Leadership for the Underserved (PLUS) program at University of California, San Francisco.

She can be reached at ebaca@deloitte.com or on Twitter @DrElizabethBaca.

elizabeth-baca-photo.jpg

Q. Best advice for women who want to go out in life and crush it!

A. Believe in your dreams

Q. What do you do to celebrate women?

A. Lift each other up. So many women are doing amazing things and I often hear them minimizing themselves. Take a step back and celebrate!

Q. What do you want to see more of?

A. More women as CEOs, elected officials, and in various other leadership roles.

Q. Recommended reading and listening:

The Start Up of You — terrific book to think of yourself as a start up — we are always evolving.

Oprah’s Super Soul podcast — to ground and connect to a more spiritual side of myself.

My own gratitude journal- sometimes we can look at the things we do not have or that we are seeking. I find keeping a gratitude journal measurably improves my life to acknowledge all the blessings around.

Q. The theme for this year's women's history month is Valiant Women of the Vote. What women's rights are you most passionate about?

A. Our ability to participate and lead change. I think we have to keep taking risks, be comfortable with being uncomfortable and mostly to lift up other women into leadership roles as we create more positive change.

Q. Shout out to another woman who has made a difference in your life and how she/they did that.

A. You Monica! You amaze with all you do! I have known you for over 24 years now, and I continue to be inspired how you brighten so many days and believe in the good of people.

Connect with Elizabeth Baca online:

Monica Phillips