Ms. Holecek is executive vice president and CNO at RWJBarnabas Health, where she provides enterprise leadership for nursing-related patient care services across New Jersey’s largest academic health care system. She oversees more than 11,000 nurses and leads system nursing strategy spanning strategic planning, fiscal decisions, patient satisfaction, care coordination and quality. Throughout her tenure, she has strengthened patient experience efforts and standardized nursing clinical practice, instituting policies and programs that promote professional development, research and service. A signature accomplishment is co-creating RWJBarnabas Health’s Institute for Nursing Excellence, a systemwide framework that aligns professional practice, education, innovation and research, advances simulation and standardized specialty training, and deepens academic partnerships and interprofessional collaboration. She also established the first systemwide professional nurse practice council to align unit-based governance, launched specialty collaboratives like wound and perioperative, supported a system operating room simulation center, and co-sponsored an obstetrics collaborative focused on maternal morbidity and mortality. She advanced transition-of-care nurse roles to strengthen discharge safety and led programs for succession planning, nurse leader development and registered nurse residencies, while co-leading a workplace violence initiative and supporting nurses’ mental health and wellbeing.
