When Carole Bennett talks about Sutter Health University, she doesn’t talk for program statistics first. She talks about one of her teammates.
He joined Sutter Health in environmental services, what Sutter calls EBS work. He entered the Sacramento, Calif.-based health system with simply a job, not thinking about a career. He cleaned patient rooms but had his sights set on something more. Over the years, through mentorship, tuition reimbursement, LinkedIn Learning and a succession of Sutter’s internal leadership development programs, he became a nurse and eventually, a nurse executive.
“He leaned into LinkedIn Learning first and started looking up what does it mean to be in these roles and what are some of the skills these folks have,” Ms. Bennett said during an interview with the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.” “And then through his mentorship of others, he started to take some of our programs and classes to grow his own internal capability.”
That trajectory is what Sutter Health University was built to make possible at scale. The program — an enterprisewide learning ecosystem spanning more than 60,000 employees — has grown 120% in participation year over year, with a 216% increase in total learning experiences. Ms. Bennett, who leads the program, says the numbers didn’t come from adding more content; they occurred after changing the fundamental logic of how the health system thinks about learning.
“Traditionally, leadership and professional development and learning within an organization in this way that’s focused on career aspirations has really been somewhat of a nice to have,” she said. “Something that is good for an organization to have for the employee, but not necessarily a focused part of the strategy. What really changed from the very beginning was we need to provide an environment to really drive growth as part of a strategy.”
The university organizes learning pathways by role, career stage and capability. It offers in-person, virtual and on-demand formats so employees can access development in whatever mode fits their work. LinkedIn Learning is integrated directly into the learning management system and connected to individual development plans. Critically, the program is not something leaders do on the side, it is embedded in leadership expectations and performance management.
“The biggest unlock for us was making this development planning as part of our leadership expectations,” Ms. Bennett said. “It’s not something in addition to; it was this idea that to be a great leader, you are always learning.”
That philosophy starts at the top. Sutter’s president and CEO Warner Thomas has been personally committed to the principle of “learning for all, differentiated for some” — meaning broad access scaled across the organization, with personalized pathways for individuals.
Ms. Bennett describes Sutter Health University as the “connective tissue” across the enterprise’s development efforts, linking clinical education, academic partnerships, simulation teams and on-demand content into a single unified ecosystem. Stanford, Harvard Business School and the University of California, Berkeley partnered with Sutter to keep executive development current on fast-moving topics including AI and the future of healthcare leadership.
“We’re increasingly designing learning around these actual challenges that leaders are applying new skills directly to the business and care delivery problems,” said Ms. Bennett. “More broadly, the future of workforce development and healthcare is really about this idea of adaptability and building a workforce that continuously learns, evolves and responds to the rapidly changing environment while delivering on our mission and continuing to cultivate talent that really can lead this future together.”
For other health systems looking to build or strengthen internal education programs, Ms. Bennett offers three principles distilled from Sutter’s journey. First, treat it as a strategic system, not a collection of programs. Second, design for both scale and relevance — pathways that reach everyone and personalization that makes individual employees feel seen. Third, embed learning into how leaders lead every day, so development stops feeling like a separate initiative.
“When those elements come together, the strategic system and the scale and relevance embedded in how leaders lead, it really becomes the core part of how the organization operates, as opposed to something separate from it,” Ms. Bennett said.
She acknowledged being genuinely surprised by the pace of adoption. The 120% growth reflects not just institutional investment but individual initiative, employees raising their hands for more, and coming back to teach others through what Sutter calls a “leader as teacher” model, where program graduates return to instruct the next cohort.
“I continue to be astounded by the passion and dedication of the people who put their hand up and say, ‘I want to learn something more’,” she said.
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