Carina Hilders

Leadership in healthcare | Medical leadership | Future of healthcare

Prof. Dr. Carina Hilders is a leading healthcare executive, gynaecologist, and professor of Medical Management and Leadership. With her managerial experience and vision on innovation, appropriate care, and collaboration, she outlines a clear perspective on the healthcare professional and the healthcare of the future.

Employability:: Chairperson of the day, Keynote speaker, Workshop
Languages:: Dutch, English
Categories:: Artificial Intelligence

Behavior Change

Change Management

Governance & Management

Health and Care

Human-Centered Technology

Leadership

Leadership & Strategy

Technology & Innovation

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About Carina Hilders

Prof. Dr. Carina Hilders is one of the Netherlands’ most influential healthcare executives and Professor of Medical Management and Leadership at Erasmus University Rotterdam. As both a gynaecologist and healthcare leader, she brings together a rare combination of medical expertise, strategic insight, and people-centred leadership.

With more than twelve years of experience as Chair of the Executive Board at Reinier de Graaf Hospital and UMC Utrecht, she is widely recognised for her vision of compassionate leadership and her belief that healthcare can only remain sustainable when professionals are placed at its centre. She leads organisations through collaboration, trust, and a strong commitment to innovation.

Carina plays an active national role in healthcare policy, quality improvement, and efficiency. She chaired the Medical Specialist 2015 project group, contributed to national programmes aimed at reducing waste in healthcare, and initiated the Coalition for Resilient Healthcare. In addition, she serves on supervisory boards, including those of Radboud University Medical Center and Sanquin.

Her career began in fertility preservation for young women with cancer, leading to the creation of the Dutch National Fertility Network (NNF). She is also a leading voice in the life-course approach to women’s health, focusing on programmes such as A Promising Start and reducing social inequalities in maternity care.

As a keynote speaker, Carina translates complex healthcare challenges into what truly matters: empowering professionals to make a difference in an increasingly complex healthcare system. She speaks with authority, warmth, and vision about leadership, organisational development, innovation, and the future of healthcare.

Combining clinical experience, academic expertise, and executive leadership, Carina Hilders offers an inspiring and authoritative perspective on the challenges and opportunities shaping tomorrow’s healthcare.

Topics

1. Compassionate Leadership

Today’s leaders operate under constant pressure, balancing high stakes, complex decision-making, and continuous change. In this environment, compassion is not a soft skill—it is a prerequisite for effective leadership. Carina demonstrates how empathy, trust, and psychological safety lead to better conversations, stronger decisions, and teams that take ownership. A keynote exploring humanity as the foundation of sustainable performance.
2. Female Leadership and Inclusive Governance

Good governance requires more than oversight, compliance, and risk management. It calls for diverse perspectives, room for constructive challenge, and leaders who look beyond short-term results. Carina explores the value of female and inclusive leadership in executive and supervisory environments. She demonstrates how collaboration, empathy, and diversity contribute to better decision-making and stronger, more resilient organisations.
3. Leading Complex Organisations

Hospitals are among the most complex organisations in society, where medical quality, financial sustainability, politics, workforce challenges, technology, and public expectations intersect every day. These complexities offer valuable lessons for any organisation with multiple stakeholders and competing interests. Drawing on her executive leadership experience, Carina shares practical insights into decision-making under pressure, engaging professionals, balancing conflicting interests, and creating a culture in which people feel safe to speak up before problems escalate.
4. Future-Proof Healthcare

Healthcare is facing fundamental choices. How can we keep it accessible, affordable, and of the highest quality in a society characterised by ageing populations, workforce shortages, and a growing number of people living with chronic conditions? Carina brings together prevention, digital transformation, workforce development, governance, and healthcare financing into one integrated perspective. She shows that lasting change is only possible when leaders are willing to look beyond the boundaries of their own organisation and collaborate across sectors.
5. Healthcare Financing

Today’s healthcare system still too often rewards volume rather than value, while the greatest challenges lie in improving health outcomes, strengthening collaboration, and creating long-term value. Carina explores what this means for patients, healthcare professionals, and organisations. Drawing on current developments, she explains why traditional funding models are increasingly unsuited to integrated care, prevention, and chronic disease management, and highlights alternative approaches that can improve outcomes while ensuring a sustainable healthcare system.
6. Women's Health

Women often experience diseases differently, receive diagnoses later, and have historically been underrepresented in medical research. As a gynaecologist, Carina is committed to advancing women’s health and increasing awareness of sex- and gender-specific care. She connects medical expertise with a broader societal and governance question: how can we build a healthcare system that truly recognises and responds to differences? Better diagnosis, more targeted research, and personalised treatment not only improve healthcare outcomes but also reduce long-term societal costs.
7. Life Course Medicine

Health does not begin the moment someone becomes a patient. Genetics, hormones, lifestyle, social circumstances, and environmental factors influence our health throughout every stage of life. Life course medicine therefore looks beyond individual episodes of illness, focusing instead on prevention, early detection, and personalised interventions. Carina explains what this approach requires from healthcare professionals, leaders, and policymakers, and how it can contribute to healthier generations, lower healthcare costs, and a more sustainable healthcare system.