John Nickens IV was named president and CEO of Phoenix Children’s in July 2025, succeeding Robert Meyer, who led the system for more than 23 years. In the months since, Mr. Nickens has reshaped the executive team around a strategy that puts operational leadership at the center of the system’s continued growth.
The appointments have come in close succession. Phoenix Children’s has named a COO and chief nursing executive, an interim chief development officer, an SVP of corporate finance and a chief legal officer, administrative and strategy leaders, a chief pharmacy officer, a community hospitals leader and its first executive to oversee all hospital-based care. On Sept. 2, the system named Tarra Kerr, DNP, RN, senior vice president and CNO.
Mr. Nickens told Becker’s the appointments reflect where freestanding children’s hospitals are headed. Phoenix Children’s has grown from one campus to four and from 300 beds to 600 over roughly 15 years, while its total workforce has grown from 2,500 employees to about 8,000.
“To go from one campus to four campuses, and from 300 beds to 600 beds, you start looking at what it takes to accomplish that,” he said. “It’s difficult along the way to keep up with your thinking and say, how are we going to be, five years from now, a very robust integrated delivery system, a health system, not just a children’s hospital?”
One of the new positions combines the COO and chief nurse executive roles. Jamie Wiggins, PhD, RN, will serve as executive vice president, COO and chief nurse executive, a combination Mr. Nickens said he created to ensure nursing has a voice in operational decisions. Nurses are the system’s largest single employee group by job description, and Phoenix Children’s is pursuing Magnet designation, which it has not previously held. Dr. Kerr will report to Dr. Wiggins and lead nursing operations and strategy for the system’s more than 2,100 nurses, while Dr. Wiggins provides system-level clinical leadership, according to a Sept. 2 news release.
“It is critical for there to be a nursing voice sitting right beside me, making sure that I hear what … our largest single population by job description … are saying as nurses,” Mr. Nickens said. “We need to win the day. I want nurses to pick us, not different children’s hospitals, so I need someone who understands nursing while they’re running the operations of the hospital.”
Mr. Nickens also created a chief administrative officer position, with legal, HR and physician services reporting to the role. Catherine Codispoti, who joined from Chesterfield, Mo.-based Mercy, where she was chief people officer, was named to the position. Mr. Nickens said he adjusted the organizational structure in part to recruit her.
“To get someone of Catherine’s caliber, I might have to be a little bit more creative than maybe I had to be in the past,” he said. “But I need her to help us think like a system. I don’t want to go through the process of learning from our mistakes. Let’s learn from what other people who have already done it know.”
He also created a physician executive role focused on hospital-based services, including intensive care units, the emergency department, pathology and radiology. Mr. Nickens said he called several children’s hospitals looking for an existing title for the position but did not find one that fit what he had in mind.
“When you think about it, the majority of our practice of medicine is ‘I need to get a test,’ which is radiology or pathology,” he said. “So now I have a doctor who every day is thinking about how we provide that test at the highest level of quality for the cheapest cost.”
Asked what he would tell other executives weighing C-suite changes, Mr. Nickens cautioned against making those decisions without considering the operational leadership an organization
“Be careful when you’re making decisions, because you need good, strong operational leaders to mitigate risk: financial risk, turnover risk, you name the risk,” he said. “So you have to be careful. Every health system has its own journey.”
Mr. Nickens said Phoenix Children’s remains focused on managing its cost structure, but not at the expense of care and operations.
“I believe value is quality divided by cost. I want to be one of the least expensive,” Mr. Nickens said. “I want to be attractive to both the payers and the employers by managing my cost structure effectively. But first, I have to deliver on outstanding care and operations and make sure that we heal sick children.”
For health system leaders considering their own structural changes, Mr. Nickens said the decisions should follow a defined set of principles rather than the latest approach to reducing administrative costs.
“So my answer to you would be to find principles that you’re making decisions on, like the idea that good, strong operational leaders mitigate risk, rather than just going with the latest and greatest strategy of ‘I bet we can take these two jobs and combine them and not have this job anymore,'” he said.
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