Kelly M. Johnson, PhD, RN, NEA-BC

Senior Vice President of Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer

Headshot of smiling woman with light skin tone and short grey hair wearing dark teardrop earrings and a black top under a plaid grey suit jacket against a blurred outdoor background

Kelly M. Johnson, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, joined Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in 2023 as Senior Vice President of Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer (CNO). In her role, Dr. Johnson oversees and provides strategic direction, planning and leadership for the Patient Care Services disciplines of nursing (including inpatient, emergency, ambulatory and surgery); advanced practice professionals; patient- and family-centered care; rehabilitation services; patient and family experience; psychology; patient care services education and research; social work; and care coordination.

Dr. Johnson has more than 40 years of nursing and nurse leadership experience, including holding CNO roles at Children’s Hospital Colorado, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, and University of California Benioff Children’s Hospitals in Oakland and San Francisco. She has led multiple successful Magnet accreditations in her career, including two first-time designations and three redesignations. Prior to joining Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, she served as Senior Vice President, CNO of Queens Medical Center and Chief Nurse Executive at Queens Health System in Honolulu. She also launched her own health care leadership consulting and coaching group and served as the Director of Administration, Operations and Community Relationships for a statewide healthy child initiative that is a collaboration between the Nancy Atmospera-Walsh School of Nursing at University of Hawai’i Manoa and 173 schools overseen by the Hawai’i Department of Education.

Earlier in her career, Dr. Johnson worked as a nurse primarily in rehabilitation medicine, including serving as a spinal cord injury clinical nurse specialist, spinal cord injury nurse practitioner, trauma recovery unit rehabilitation nurse specialist. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Nursing from the University of Northern Colorado, her master’s in Family Health Care and Neuroscience from UC San Francisco, and her PhD in Nursing from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.