Fatema Zanzi

Fatema F. Zanzi is Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative and Legal Officer, and Corporate Secretary at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, the region’s largest pediatric healthcare provider, with nearly $2 billion in annual revenue and more than 250,000 patients served each year. A transformational healthcare executive, she oversees human resources, government relations, strategic communications, legal services, board governance, risk management, insurance, cybersecurity, internal audit, compliance, and privacy. She advises the CEO and Board of Directors on enterprise strategy, institutional risk, and complex organizational decisions, and is national speaker on healthcare leadership and the evolving policy landscape.

Throughout her career, Ms. Zanzi has led organizations through transformational change and periods of significant complexity. At Lurie Children’s, she guided multidisciplinary teams through the COVID-19 pandemic, a criminal cyberattack, union organizing efforts, financial pressures, and an evolving regulatory environment. She led an enterprise governance transformation across the hospital, foundation, research institute, and parent organization, implementing leading nonprofit governance practices and modernizing the bylaws governing the relationship between the hospital and its medical and dental staff. She also led the consolidation of subsidiary entities into one of the nation’s largest multispecialty pediatric medical groups and she designed and negotiated a pediatric affiliation with Rush University Medical Center, expanding access to specialized pediatric care across the region. As Co-Chair of Lurie Children’s Champion Equity Council, she helps advance enterprise strategies that foster inclusion, belonging, and organizational equity.

Before joining Lurie Children’s, Ms. Zanzi was a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Office Partner-in-Charge of the firm’s Chicago office, where she doubled the office’s size within one year while advising clients on major healthcare transactions and behavioral health integrations. Previously, she was a partner at Faegre Drinker, where she represented hospitals and health systems in transformative transactions, including the landmark merger that created Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey’s largest health network. Earlier in her career, she supported the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights in developing HIPAA privacy and security regulations.

Ms. Zanzi earned her Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, with a Certificate in Health Law from Loyola University Chicago School of Law and holds a Bachelor of Arts in History of the Americas from Northwestern University. She just completed her six-year term on the Loyola University Chicago School of Law Board of Governors. She is a founding board member of Unified Youth, Inc., a national nonprofit organization focused on improving youth mental health and wellbeing through creativity, play and community connection, where she is Board Secretary, Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee, and a member of the Executive Committee. Her previous leadership roles include Vice Chair of Partnership for a Connected Illinois, Chair of the American Health Law Association’s Children’s Health Affinity Group, board member of the American Board of Medical Specialties Research and Education Foundation, and volunteer attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center.