Michael Dowling

CEO Northwell Health

Michael Dowling is one of the health care industry’s most highly respected voices, achieving the No. 1 ranking in Modern Healthcare magazine’s 2022 list of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare.” As a health care executive over the past three decades, he has been a no-excuses advocate for reforms that have helped the industry become more patient-focused and committed to quality and safety. His willingness to take a stand on societal issues such as gun violence and immigration has earned widespread praise and recognition from peers and the news media. During his years in academia and government, Mr. Dowling has distinguished himself as a compassionate voice for those in need, developing and promoting innovative health and human services policies.​

As president and CEO of Northwell Health for 22 years, he has demonstrated invaluable leadership in overseeing a rapidly expanding clinical, research and academic enterprise with annual revenue of $18 billion. With a workforce of more than 85,000, Northwell is the largest health care provider and private employer in New York State, caring for more than two million people annually through a vast network of 21 hospitals, more than 900 outpatient facilities—including 220 primary care practices and 50-plus urgent care centers—along with home care, rehabilitation and end-of-life services.​

Hailing from Ireland, Mr. Dowling bridges borders and brings a global perspective to health care. In 2020, he received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad, which recognized his contributions to Ireland and to Irish communities abroad, presented by the President of Ireland. He also received an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and is a board member of the Foreign Policy Association. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science, and the North American Board of the Smurfit School of Business at University College in Dublin, Ireland. He also earned his bachelor’s degree from University College Cork, and went on to receive honorary doctorates from Queens University Belfast and University College Dublin. Mr. Dowling was the Grand Marshal of New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 2017, when he was also inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame.​

Mr. Dowling has invested heavily in Northwell’s research arm, the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, home to 50 research labs, 3,000 clinical research trials, and 5,000 scientists and staff who are transforming the treatment of conditions like lupus, arthritis, sepsis, cancer, psychiatric illness and Alzheimer’s disease. Feinstein has gained stature as the global headquarters of bioelectronic medicine research, where physician scientists are tapping neural pathways that signal the body to heal itself, reducing reliance on prescription drugs.​

Under Mr. Dowling’s leadership, Northwell has also pursued a visionary approach to medical education, developing innovative curricula at its Zucker School of Medicine and the Hofstra Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. Northwell’s graduate medical education programs have become one of the nation’s largest, training more than 1,900 medical residents and fellows annually. Further underscoring his commitment to education, Mr. Dowling’s first act when becoming Northwell’s CEO in 2002 was creating a corporate university, the Center for Learning & Innovation, which has helped instill a culture of lifelong learning among employees at all levels of the organization.​

Mr. Dowling’s highly visible leadership style enabled the health system to successfully navigate the intense challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, most notably in 2020 when the New York metropolitan area was at the epicenter of the epidemic’s first wave. Mr. Dowling detailed his and Northwell’s experiences in a book titled Leading Through a Pandemic: The Inside Story of Humanity, Innovation, and Lessons Learned During the COVID-19 Crisis.
Northwell clinicians treated more than 350,000 COVID patients and the health system used its innovative culture to significantly expand bed capacity and leverage its resources to ensure adequate supplies of lifesaving drugs, ventilators, personal protective equipment and other essential provisions to protect patients and caregivers, including administering the nation’s first COVID vaccines in December 2020.​
In addition to his 2020 book about Northwell’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Dowling is the co-author of a 2020 memoir titled After the Roof Caved In: An Immigrant’s Journey from Ireland to America, which chronicles his poverty-stricken childhood in Ireland, his years as a social policy expert in academia and in New York State government, and his ascent to becoming one of the health care industry’s preeminent leaders. He is also the co-author of the 2018 book, Health Care Reboot: Megatrends Energizing American Medicine, about the trends that are driving the nation’s health care system toward greater quality, safety, access and affordability.​​